So What's the Word on Shanghai's Maglev

[Dinner]

Originally posted by aahz_capone
I hope china's will to dominate space (they want to go to the moon and mars too!) will rekindle the space race. Since the Cold War ended, the country with most chance of doing much,USA hasn't done much at all.

The US kind of got bored of space after we landed on the moon. Satillites are the only profitable part of space so that's where people are likely to continue to concentraite on.

[aahz_capone]

Yeah, but still, there should be like mars explorations and moon bases and orbital elevators and ion cannons and warp cores and temporal distortion and klingons and deathstars and buck rogers and lightsabers and zapp and zapp frooooowssshsh fwoosh crackle vrooom!



sorry, I get carried away.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by SpencerH
What are the health effects of maglev trains do you think? AFAIK no one has proven detrimental effects of strong magnetic fields but personally I'd avoid em.

Well, the magnetic field is pretty much contained between the track and the train, so any magnetic fields humans are subjected to will be very low... if you go to the site of the German maglev firm, www.transrapid.de, you will actually find out the magnetic field inside the train is much lower than that of many household appliances, such as your computer

Anyway, the strongest magnetic fields in use today are not to be found in transportation or household appliances... medical equipment or equipment found e.g. in physics laboratories produce much greater fields, so their users would be most at risk, should any effects actually exist. And still, I believe that e.g. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) devices are safer than for example x-rays, which are also used in medicine even though they are *known* to be a cancer risk.

[DaShi]

I heard that it railed.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Jarouik

Well, the magnetic field is pretty much contained between the track and the train, so any magnetic fields humans are subjected to will be very low... if you go to the site of the German maglev firm, www.transrapid.de, you will actually find out the magnetic field inside the train is much lower than that of many household appliances, such as your computer


Anyway, the strongest magnetic fields in use today are not to be found in transportation or household appliances... medical equipment or equipment found e.g. in physics laboratories produce much greater fields, so their users would be most at risk, should any effects actually exist. And still, I believe that e.g. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) devices are safer than for example x-rays, which are also used in medicine even though they are *known* to be a cancer risk.

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, I think their figures are crap. A magnetic field strong enough to levitate a train is only twice that of the earths magnetic field? Since a hair dryer produces 10 times the field of the maglev what could it levitate? There is no scale and therefore no way to interpret their deceptive figures (graphs).

MRI does create a strong magnetic field, but you dont spend hours a day everyday in one as you would on a commuter train.

[Sava]

I hope that America will replace Air-Travel with high-speed rail like that...

[DaShi]

Why are those guys laying magnets toward the White House?

[mindseye]

Bad news, folks.

I just discovered that the new maglev line won't be open for public use until "sometime later in the year" (one source says March). In the meantime, the train will operate only on weekends, and only for parties of ten with advance reservations, and at a fare of 150 renminbi each way (once truly open, the fare will be just 50 rmb each way)!

300 rmb roundtrip is really expensive by local standards, the equivalent of something like US$200 to an American. For that reason, it looks like I'll be waiting a few months before taking a ride.

Surprisingly, even at those rates, as of yesterday, January 2, the train is currently booked until January 12!

Why the restrictions? The only reason I can come up with is that the local gov't wants to ramp up publicity so that when the train "really" begins service, there will be high demand. Chinese people can be astonishingly ignorant of local affairs, here in Shanghai most of my students (college-aged and adults) were, as recently as last week, completely oblivious to the train's existance! Without insured high demand, I suspect the local gov't was wary of the negative publicity of international journalists photographing such an expensive shuttle system whizzing back and forth empty.

Maybe there is some other reason for the phased-in opening, this is all I could find out for now. Sometimes basic information (like when the #@%$ maglev opens) is hard to obtain here.

Rest assured, as soon as the thing is running at 50 rmb each way, I will report back with details and photos.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by SpencerH


Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, I think their figures are crap. A magnetic field strong enough to levitate a train is only twice that of the earths magnetic field? Since a hair dryer produces 10 times the field of the maglev what could it levitate? There is no scale and therefore no way to interpret their deceptive figures (graphs).

MRI does create a strong magnetic field, but you dont spend hours a day everyday in one as you would on a commuter train.

Well, if you read the text more carefully, you would notice your mistake... the magnetic field *inside the train* is just twice the Earth's magnetic field. Of course between the train and the track there is a huge magnetic field to levitate the train and move it forward, but you couldn't even fit into the space between the train and the track, I think, so that should be no problem