Levitation trains in the USA

1991/04/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Garraioak

The EU government has spent $12 million in research on rail levitation. Japan and Germany are the countries that have made the most progress in this field and the US does not want to stay behind.

The government has received almost 250 research proposals. The study of these proposals was commissioned to the Argonne National Laboratory, in Illinois.

Argonne's physicist, Don Rote, says that this year will spend twice the amount spent last year on levitation research.

In the year 1.192 the government must make a decision. According to Mr. Rote there are three possible tracks. The first, would leave things in their existence and, therefore, feed the market German and Japanese technology. The second option is to collaborate with Germans and Japanese. The last is to develop an own research. If you leave this last way, the cost of obtaining a prototype would be the order of a billion dollars.

A research program consists of two parts. The first refers to the levitation, guide and control of the train. The second refers to the condition to the environment and the possible condition of the magnetic field on the human being.

The application of the levitation train in the US is sufficiently clear. Cities less than a thousand kilometers are joined by plane today. Taking into account that the speed of these special trains is 500 km/h, it can replace the planes, thus avoiding the obstruction that the current airports suffer.