Interesting Links for 12-03-2012

[fearmeforiampink]

• We already have the technology to send trains into space, at a fraction of the cost of rockets
  'Startram, a proposed launch system that would use magnetic levitation trains, a 1000-mile tunnel, and a superconducting cable to reach low Earth orbit.'
  (tags: posttofacebook technology space humanity; actually able to do some awesome stuff after all science SCIENCE!!! awesome )
• Shed of the Year 2012 entrants - Telegraph
  Sheds galore!
  (tags: photos sheds sheds as far as the eye can see wtf amusing )

Comments

[dainul.livejournal.com]

Love their suggestion for keeping it up. Surely no-one would object to having several hundreds of miles of cabling generating a magnetic field equivalent to being inside an NMR machine at a distance of ~ 170m?

If we assume 200 km of such a cable (depending on the angle of inline and so forth - this is about 125 miles) we'd be looking at somewhere in the region of 100 square km in which most modern electronics would not work. More descriptively, we'd be looking at 100 square kilometers in which they'd have to prevent anyone taking any magnetic metals, as any such material unless properly secured would be accelerated into the superconducting cable, probably shutting it down (possibly quite explosively) as its cooling jacket was ruptured. Que the levitated cable crashing down to earth.

And this is supposed to be feasible?