Wednesday, October 18, 2006

maybe you should do some research first

There's a documentary on Discovery right now about high-speed rail systems. Out of the Maglev segment, they went to a short segment about NASA's designs on going into space using a maglev system. Right at the end was a computer sim of a theoretical Maglev launch system for a space shuttle. The voice over said "..someday there may be a maglev fast enough to launch us... into space." Set aside the ridiculous voice. This man is suggesting - I'm sure that it's not actually NASA suggesting this - this man is suggesting that a maglev train can accelerate a payload, weighing hundreds of tons, to escape velocity.

Escape velocity is eleven kilometres per second.

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