The anti-gravity on a SW landspeeder is very quiet. It’s the propulsion that’s loud. A landspeeder at rest makes no noise, but still floats. It’s only loud when you get out in the desert and really open up those jet engines on the back.
And a vehicle moving at speed is still going to kick up dust just from the air it displaces as it moves, even if it’s not touching the ground. Especially in the desert.
Came here to mention wing in ground effect craft and the possibility of superconducting levitation. Neither would be practical for everyday use but I could see special racetracks devoted to SW-style “pod racing” (for Grand Prix drivers and jet test pilots who have gotten bored with how dull and unchallenging their careers have gotten).
Probably could use some implementation of an etheric rudder.
WIGs are better than hovercraft / ACVs in that they can fly some 10-100 feet above the surface rather than tangent to it. But they’re still smooth surface machines. they like open water not in a storm, bays, estuaries, large lakes, very flat land.
They would not be good in the rolling terrain of much of the northeast US, much less in the Appalachians or Rockies.
ISTM there are two reasons to build a repulsor-tech landspeeder. It avoids the need to build roads and the reduced rolling friction would be good for efficiency. But at least in the subset of movies I saw, we don’t ever see a landspeeder or equivalent vehicle in rough terrain. Maybe those things are ubiquitous on very low-relief planets and unused on the high-relief planets. Earth would not be a great planet for them except in built-up areas.
I guess magnetically-levitated trains would be here before we have landspeeder.
But I hear magnetically-levitated trains are super costly I don’t know if this is super costly to build or super costly to operate. And why it is super costly?
I guess magnetically-levitated trains will have to be build by the government not the private sector.
I hear if there was advance in the technology of magnetically-levitated trains it could bring the cost down.
The hoverbikes in Return of the Jedi are used in dense forest similar to what’s found in the Pacific Northwest. Though, one might point out that they’re used very poorly in that terrain.
Both. You need superconductors for them, and superconductors (at least currently) require cryogenics. It’s not an advance in maglev trains specifically that we need; it’s an advance in superconductors. And a room-temperature superconductor would revolutionize all sorts of things.
The Shanghai maglev is 30 km long.
While it only covers a route that is also served by a subway, it’s quick and useful enough that I’ve ridden it approx 30 times. I won’t argue that it’s a financially good deal for the government but it is practical from a passenger POV, not merely a gimmick.
I was surprised to discover it’s the world’s only high speed maglev in regular use. I took it as much for granted as the paternoster at my university (chain of continuously moving elevators, that basically don’t exist anywhere any more).
We can do it now. Just put mirrored skirts all around and your car angled away from any onlookers. Boom “floating” car.
What is wrong with superconductors today? And can you explain room-temperature superconductor how that would change every thing? Why do they want room-temperature superconductors?
Incidentally, some OLD pre-Discourse threads on this topic that may be of interest:
The most realistic way to make something that looks like a landspeeder is to obscure the wheels of a wheeled vehicle. While still not practical, it’s at least possible in principle to put a skirt around the bottom of a vehicle that diverts light in such a way that the wheels can’t be seen from the side.
You don’t seriously expect me to read a thread before posting my nonsense in it, do you?
One reason for this is the Lathen Maglev Accident. 23 people killed. Caused by human error.
If we are going to have maglevs, they need to be at least as safe as other trains.
Sheffield? I went there.
In a few simple sentences:
Practical superconductors would enable major leaps in power density and efficiency. Which would change everything about electric motors, power transmission, batteries, and magnets for everything worldwide. And make using magnetism as a replacement for wheels on rails and many other load-bearing uses.
Superconductors today only work at very very cold temperatures, hundreds of degrees below zero. The machinery to maintain those cold temps on both the train and the thousands of miles of track would be prohibitively impossible. So no superconducting trains are possible / practical today. Nor are lots of other awesome but imaginary gizmos.
If we could figure out superconductors that work at normal outdoor temperatures, the need for all that cryogenic cooling stuff would disappear. If we could make the material easy to & cheap to manufacture and easy to use that would really help too.
All those improvements are pure science fiction today. They’re not wacky-impossible like antigravity is. But they might be impossible. We just don’t know. Yet. Where “yet” is measured in multiple decades and multiple billions of dollars of diligent research.
So the problem is magnetically-levitated trains are super costly to build and operate because of the superconductors have to be extremely cold cryogenic cooling for it to work. But if they found room temperature superconductors that would change every thing and become much cheaper.
Also why is it only Japan and China built magnetically-levitated trains? I believe Germany did test built just for research only but never built it. As it was only for research.
With it being super costly now to build and operate is it some thing only the government can do today because of the cost.
In case of Japan and China was it some thing the universities or the government? Was it more research thing than public transportation thingstrong text.
What is the state of magnetically-levitated trains or sadly today it’s reach it’s limit with cheaper faster trains?
De Montfort uni. It had two paternosters; the one in my building was the larger; 10 stories.
We’d jump on and off them very casually, finding it funny how nervous freshers were at riding them.
But it turns out that nervousness is actually justified; there was no safety so, although they are slow-moving, you really don’t want to get a limb trapped.
There are no more paternosters at DMU, and I honestly thought they were essentially extinct for the aforementioned safety reasons. But on googling, I’m dead wrong; there are lots. And the one in Sheffield is much bigger in fact.
Someone was killed in the Newcastle paternoster. Bringing the conversation back to maglev trains and levitation in general, you really need good safety protocols and a safe failure mode.
The Star Wars landspeeder is supposed to be risky, but I doubt they will ever be built unless they can just glide to a stop instead of slamming into the nearby ground at speed…
As I mentioned in this post, the maglev train in Germany had a disastrous accident.
But the accident was not directly connected to the levitation system; just someone forgot that the track was already occupied. A fully certified maglev railway system should have the same sort of signalling protection that any high-speed railway would have, and preferably better. Despite increasing speeds, railway systems are considerably safer nowadays than they were forty years ago