

Japan's levitating maglev train reaches 500km/h - mwc
http://bbc.com/news/world-asia-30067889

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ChuckMcM
On their 27 mile test track. Which is too bad since at 300mph that would be a
4 minute ride :-) I expect it spends all of its time accelerating and
decelerating. I suspect such trains will only be practical in the 'real' world
by having them in some sort of fully enclosed track. It doesn't have to be a
solid tunnel but something that keeps out birds and other debris from the
area. Nothing like hitting a pigeon or catching a flying bit of branch at
300MPH, hurricanes put 2 x 4s through houses 2/3rds that speed so that would
be a challenge.

That said the only other remarkable thing was how shaky the video was at
500km/h if the train was really moving around that much it wouldn't be too
sustainable. One of the amazing things for me on the TGV was how smoothly it
rode even going 200km/h.

~~~
Anechoic
_Nothing like hitting a pigeon or catching a flying bit of branch at 300MPH,
hurricanes put 2 x 4s through houses 2 /3rds that speed so that would be a
challenge._

At 250 mph, the TransRapid TR-08 simply vaporized any biological object it
hame across little-to-no-damage to the vehicle (but there was a mess to clean
up). A large object can be an issue, but small objects will likely be pushed
aside by the pressure wave ahead of the vehicle.

 _That said the only other remarkable thing was how shaky the video was at
500km /h_

The vehicle is still undergoing testing, the facility may not have figured out
or implemented the ride-quality algorithms yet.

~~~
ekianjo
> The vehicle is still undergoing testing, the facility may not have figured
> out or implemented the ride-quality algorithms yet.

The Maglev train between Shanghai airport and the city is perfectly stable at
500 km/h if I remember correctly. Japan is very, very late for Maglev
technology.

~~~
ewang1
If I recall correctly, the Shanghai one topped out at around 478km/h... They
actually run at that speed only a couple times per day.

~~~
jpatokal
431 km/h. I've ridden it, and it vibrates, for lack of a better word,
disturbingly; you can really feel that it's pushing the envelope of what's
possible. Not a big deal for a 7-minute ride, but would be a bit annoying to
put up with for an hour.

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bsaul
Tgv beat that speed many years ago, on rails :
[http://youtu.be/8skXT5NQzCg](http://youtu.be/8skXT5NQzCg)

~~~
dllu
Maglev also beat that speed many years ago:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_veh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles#Maglev_trains)

In 2003 the Japanese maglev test train running on the same test track reached
581 km/h. It was not until 2007 that the TGV reached 574 km/h.

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mkonecny
How do the engineers account for earthquakes on these trains? I could see it
being quite disastrous if one were to occur while this train travelling at
500km/h. Also I wonder what the efficiency is given that the train needs to
push through the thick atmosphere at 0 altitude compared to airplanes which
fly at their top speed in a very sparse atmosphere.

~~~
jpatokal
Thanks to the Shinkansen, Japan's had _plenty_ of practice with this. Their
"UrEDAS" (theoretically "Urgent Earthquake Detection and Alarm System",
although this is just a backronym for _yuredasu_ "starts to shake") monitors
both P and S waves and brings trains to a halt automatically, and is
considered the gold standard for this kind of thing. In the 50 years they've
been running trains, there's been one (1) derailment due to an earthquake,
with zero fatalities.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Earthquake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Earthquake)

[http://sdr.co.jp/papers/13wcee_uredas.pdf](http://sdr.co.jp/papers/13wcee_uredas.pdf)

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kyleblarson
I am sitting on the Sakura Shinkansen headed towards Shin Osaka as I read
this.

