you're right blueflame they failed miserably and should kill themselves.

Quote from BlueFlame :

It's like saying Alain Prost is handsome, apart from his bent up nose.

Owen Wilson has still had quite a successful career on the big screen despite his nose!

Quote from Crashgate3 :

Apart from air resistance, yes.

Build a tunnel. Put in a train. Seal it off. Take all the air out. Drive at mach speeds with ease.

The crazy thing is that it just needs the superconductor to keep cool in order to work, there's no real input of energy needed. If you could cool down the whole thing and put it in a vacuum then there would be almost no heat gain by the superconductor and it would, essentially, be frictionless.

Quote from Shotglass :

am i the only one amazed that none of you seems to have seen this before?

I'm completely baffled by this thread. Yeah, specific doped superconductors can't move relative to magnetic field lines without applying a comparatively high force. Next week: The speed of light is (spooky voice) finite.

Vain

Quote from Crashgate3 :

The crazy thing is that it just needs the superconductor to keep cool in order to work, there's no real input of energy needed. If you could cool down the whole thing and put it in a vacuum then there would be almost no heat gain by the superconductor and it would, essentially, be frictionless.

At the cost of Monaco and some..

friggin magnets ffs...

Let's base a future world on this.

Liquid nitrogen isn't that expensive.. A few cents per liter.
Even if you go with the low-temperature materials, liquid helium can be obtained for a measly few dollars per liter.

Quote from RasmusL :

Liquid nitrogen isn't that expensive..

But creating a huge national vacuum, or international vacuum tunnel isn't?

Sure it's a multi-billion dollar project, but it's not a totally impossible idea. IMO the superconducting part is further fetched than the vacuum tunnel

http://www.smartplanet.com/blo ... lev-high-speed-train/9594