China‘s “T-Flight” train is moving so quickly that we may decide to forgo airplanes entirely.
According to Chinese engineers, their technological marvel recently smashed the global speed record on a test track by reaching a record speed of 387 mph.
To put things in perspective, the fastest train in the world right now, the MLX01 Maglev from Japan, can travel up to 361 mph.
But, once commercialised, engineers hope the T-flight train will reach speeds of 1,243mph, which is faster than the speed of sound and more than twice the speed of a Boeing 737 plane.
The train uses magnetic levitation (maglev) technology to reach its incredible speeds, removing the need for wheels and instead replacing them with magnets, which lift the pods above the track to allow them to glide effortlessly.
The concept was first proposed by Robert Goddard, a US engineer in 1910, but came back into fashion after billionaire Elon Musk wrote a white paper on the subject in 2013.
Now, the T-Flight has been built by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) in the hopes it could be used as a hyperloop train to transport people from one place to place.
If the engineer’s predictions are correct, the T-Flight could travel from Wuhan to Beijing in just over 30 minutes, rather than the four-hours it currently takes to make the journey on a high-speed train.
Testing took place on track roughly 1.2 miles (2 kilometres) long in a low-pressure vacuum tube, which was flattered within a 0.01-inch (0.3 millimetres) tolerance to ensure no friction could affect the train so it could reach its full potential.
In its second phase of testing, the agency aims to extend the track 60 km to allow the train to hopefully reach 621 mph.
‘Science and technology progress step by step, and some aspects of this project are still in uncharted territory in China. Every step is challenging, and it’s a complex system,’ said the project’s chief designer Mao Kai.
South China Morning Post reports the test proved that the vehicle tube and track interact well, and the heavy maglev vehicles floats steadily. The safety controls also functioned as expected.
So just maybe, we can grab a high speed train cross country.
