As I recall, they do plan to run these in reduced air pressure tunnels. It's not so much that the tech doesn't work, it's just a lot harder to implement and maintain.
The advantage of lowering air pressure is less wind resistance which is a factor. However if the tubes are longer the more likely they are to break and not able to be hold pressure. Also between stops, if the tunnel needs to be re pressurized which could logistically lose any advantage of time savings of pressurized tubes.
Maybe it can work if they build it very deep and it an express train that only goes between capital cities of each province or something like that.
Okay, so this breakthrough was just Maglev. But they do plan on using a Hyperloop eventually?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Musk releases the Hyperloop thing to try to prevent California from getting high-speed rail? The whole thing is he wanted trains to die so that cars would remain popular so that he could push for self-driving cars for high-speed highway travel that would normally be boring to drive. He always knew that the Hyperloop was basically impossible.
And hasn't hyperloop been basically discredited as a realistic form of long distance travel? Outside of a kilometer or two of distance, keeping even a moderately low pressure environment is Too difficult, cost ineffective, and a maintenance nightmare.
Sorry for so many follow up questions. I am perpetually away from a high quality research machine, so I can only yell at clouds right now. But this just seems strange to me.
However, situation in China is very different because there's already a ton of high-speed rail there. I think the goal with this sort of transport system would be to remove the need for domestic flights as opposed to compete with rail.
In terms of feasibility, it's not trivial, but I doubt it's impossible. It likely more of a fact that it's just not cost effective for private companies to build such infrastructure, but that's true for a lot of large scale projects China undertakes. Hence why we never see such projects happening in the west. Any new technology is challenging, but there are also benefits to pushing the envelope.
Another fun future possibility is that this kind of stuff could be put to use on the moon. China is already planning a base by 2030. And if the plan is for long term habitation we may see many bases at some point in the future, and then those could be connected by this type of maglev systems. You don't have to worry about atmosphere, there are no earthquakes, and no flooding to worry about. Just dig a tunnel and you're good to go.
A base on the moon by 2030 is pretty amazing of an ambition already, so I'm looking forward to how that develops. Any sort of Maglev tunneling system would be pretty amazing to witness, even in video.
Back to on Earth. Yeah, that makes sense. Replacing flying is a really big deal. I'm just really worried about the engineering implications of this. If it's not actually feasible, then they're gonna waste a lot of time trying to make it happen. Then again, they do have trains pretty much figured out and they can walk and chew gum at the same time as opposed to any Western government which can't even get the basics right. So at least they have the expertise to at least attempt it.
I guess I just had it in my head that it was basically a big scam and was so infeasible it wasn't really worth trying. Then again, their public infrastructure is all state-owned, right? So it's not like there's some capitalist who's making bank on selling this idea with no possibility of a product.
Then again, it would be funny if China succeeded in this, where everybody else has failed. Hey, they've got the smartest engineers, so I guess I'll sit back and watch the development.