World's fastest train under Olympic starter's orders

[Indenturedebtor]

Source: New Scientist

The fastest rail service on the planet will begin next Friday, linking Beijing with one of China's Olympic co-host cities, nearby Tianjin.

The spacious interiors – more like aircraft cabins than train carriages – will ferry passengers at speeds reaching 350 kilometres per hour, cutting the current journey time by 1 hour, to 30 minutes. In tests the trains have reached 394kph.

"Its operational speed is the fastest in the world. It's very comfortable and quiet," said Zhang Shuguang, head of the Railway Ministry's Transport Bureau. "There's a French train that has gone 500kph in tests, but only in tests."

French high-speed trains currently hold the record for greatest operating speed. On the the LGV Est Line between Paris and Strasbourg, trains are able to reach 320kph.


Read more: http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14380-worlds-fastest-train-under-olympic-starters-orders.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_dn14380

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Oh but we just couldn't make it work here... :sarcasm:

[Doctor Cynic]

1. They also have the world's fastest maglev train.

Go figures.

[DS1]

2. 350 kph plus 'Made in China' just doesn't sit very well with me

[Indenturedebtor]

6. Lol they actually already have a wonderful national train system

That puts ours completely to shame. It's comfortable, fast, reliable, and of course cheap. Oh and the food is good ;)

[DS1]

7. I suppose they do have ~some~ rail experience

:D

[Indenturedebtor]

8. It just shames me to death how we've let our country go

China shouldn't be leading us in anything :(

:puke:

[whistle]

9. I was in 9th grade high school when the USSR successfully launched

...Sputnick and were the first Superpower in space and also first with jet passenger aircraft.

The propaganda was that Russia may have been first, but their technology was inferior and untested and dangerous which was total bullshit.

China has more engineers and technology skilled young people than we have here in the U.S. and that has given China a competitive advantage over the U.S. However, we do not need a ne cold war with China today along with a technology and infrastructure race.

Instead, we can enter into trade agreements with China, Russia and India along with other countries to throw off the monetary Central Banking and Wall Street monsters that are strangling the life and spirit out of our economy. Fair trade, not free trade for our mutual benefit with fixed rate currency exchange system for the next 50 years to put people back to work and let the phony speculators and financial investors sink back into the ether of nothingness that they came from

[WriteDown]

3. Is it being pushed by...

a few thousand peasants?

[whistle]

10. Get serious, that is total nonsense

[LiberalFighter]

4. What happens if it crashes with Olympic athletes on board?

[Occulus]

21. From what I've read, these trains are ridiculously safe

Their safety record is actually better than conventional rail or air travel, as I understand the statistics on the matter.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. All those news about spiffy wonderful things oin China depress me like hell.

Democracy is OUT! The way to success is dictatorship and slave labor! Hooray!

Stop the world, I wanna get out.

[whistle]

13. You have that just a bit out of focus, the way to succeed is to have a specific purpose

...which is of benefit to a broad segment of humanity, set goals, devise a long range plan, assemble a work force and provide them with the skills necessary, motivate them and reward hard work and loyalty.

[Indenturedebtor]

14. Indeed. We seem to have forgotten that. Everything here only takes off if it can fleece pockets

And they have their share of corruption in China. I think that we may be one of the most corrupt countries on the planet though. Everything is so fucking twisted here now. That's why we can't do anything worthwile anymore.

The only thing we seem to be doing well is blowing people up... and we only do that because there's lots of money in it for our ruling class. I'm sick to death of it.

[slackmaster]

11. That's one of the best ambiguous headlines I've ever seen!

It could mean that the world's fastest people are training under the orders of an Olympic starter.

[Indenturedebtor]

12. Yeah lol it's pretty bad. I had no idea what it meant either but rules are rules ;) n/t

[crimsonblue]

15. this is ridiculously expensive

not to mention that the article is completely innaccurate. The distance from Beijing to Tianjin is only 69 mi (112 km). The rail line cost $3 billion to build, so that equates to $44 mil/mi ($27 mil/km).

How is it possible to have cut off the journey time by an hour and a half? Running at 350 kmh, the train would travel from Beijin to Tianjin in 32 minutes. So, did it previously take 2 hours to reach Tianjin by rail (or even auto)? Nope.

This article is just another example of BULLSHIT Chinese propaganda aimed at trying to portray the communist and human-rights denying country as technologically superior. As shitty as things have been here in the US lately, I'll take corrupt democracy over corrupt totalitarian states.

[Indenturedebtor]

16. It said from 1 hour to 30 minutes. Though it is indeed expensive!

However - I'm sure that they will recoup that initial investment in a few years. Lots of people riding trains in China.

We don't need an authoritarian government for projects like these. What we need is a new New Deal! Lets build some shit Democracy style baby! :woohoo:

[crimsonblue]

18. my bad

that makes more sense. I think we need to accept here in the USA that petrol will always be necessary for transportation. However, we need good fuel economy and better development of electric vehicles and renewable energy (Just say NO to Hydrogen power). We shouldn't use petrol for anything other than transport, as all our electric needs can come from other sources, and biofuels can be used instead of petrol for plastics production.

[Baclava]

17. They built a stadium with no roof?

Forget pollution, it's rain Beijing fears most

We're not talking about a light shower or a steady drizzle here. At this time of year, Beijing is regularly doused in tropical-like downpours that bring outdoor activity to a halt.

With the three and half hour Olympic opening ceremony planned to start at 8.08pm on the 8th day of the 8th month (8 being the luckiest of numbers in Chinese culture), there is a very real chance that the ceremony will be ruined by rain.

At one time this was a problem that could be ignored. The ceremony will take place at the brand new Beijing National Stadium, otherwise known as the Birds Nest. Early designs included a retractable roof that would have prevented the ceremony being hit by bad weather. But the roof was cut out of the design to save money.

This left organisers with a headache. The plan they came up with is to seed clouds heading for the stadium with silver iodide so that they dump their load in the mountains that surround the city. The city has set up a number of cloud seeding guns in these mountains for just this purpose. (more)

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/07/forget-pollution-its-rain-beijing-fears.html

[Xithras]

19. Nearly 3 billion to go 70 miles. NY to LA, with Chinese laborers, would be 105 billion.

Even more if you paid the laborers a wage that could actually feed them in the U.S.

And that just gets you a single run between two cities. We'd need hundreds of additional runs, and thousands of spur rails, to build a useable high speed rail network in the U.S.

[Indenturedebtor]

20. Yes but I bet we could do it cheaper :D It didn't cost the french that much

Hell the french and the english built a highspeed line between london and paris under the ocean!

[Xithras]

22. Both labor and materials prices were cheaper then.

All of the worlds great rail systems were built in the 1970's and 1980's when labor was cheaper and materials were inexpensive. I don't know if you've heard, but steel prices have doubled in the last year alone. They have increased many times over since the Euros and Japanese built their lines. Concrete costs are going through the roof, and proper union labor doesn't come cheap.

Heck, they're talking about building a high speed rail between LA, SF, and Sacramento here in California. That one rail system will cost about $40 billion and will be fairly useless for commuters because it won't actually provide ANY direct links between the locations where most California commuters are actually driving. It'll need at least another $40 billion to get the spur links in place to make it somewhat useful for most of us.

[Indenturedebtor]

23. Problems problems always problems. Problems when the hoover dam was built as well!

We can do whatever we choose to do! We just haven't been choosing to do anything worthwile for a long time.

[dysfunctional press]

24. the rockies might raise that number a bit.

nt