New Maglev Proposal

[parallelepipete]

As soon as you've got a reliable service into space you'll get people doing REAL skydiving...

That would be cool.

Until you reached terminal velocity and burned up on re-entry, of course

 

[KeyboardJockey]

No! Atmospheric railways are the transport of the future!

Wasn't there one of them in South London once upon a time in the 19th Century. I seem t o recall that there was problems with sealing the compressed air in using t he tech of the time.

 

[WouldBe]

Until you reached terminal velocity and burned up on re-entry, of course

Sure you could develop a heat resistant material to prevent that. Worse would be to get the angle wrong and skip off the atmosphere and out into space.

 

[Bob_the_lost]

Sure you could develop a heat resistant material to prevent that. Worse would be to get the angle wrong and skip off the atmosphere and out into space.

Nah, small chute to slow you a bit, you'd need oxegen and a thermal suit anyway so that wouldn't be too much extra effort to make the suit out of the same stuff as firefighters gear.

It'll happen.

 

[WouldBe]

Nah, small chute to slow you a bit, you'd need oxegen and a thermal suit anyway so that wouldn't be too much extra effort to make the suit out of the same stuff as firefighters gear.

It'll happen.

Where did I argue it wasn't possible?

I was just concerned about the re-entry angle being wrong.

I've got enough problems with faulty memory as it is without any help thanks.

 

[_pH_]

Wasn't there one of them in South London once upon a time in the 19th Century. I seem t o recall that there was problems with sealing the compressed air in using t he tech of the time.

No, Brunel's atmospheric railway was in Devon. There's still a pub in Starcross called The Atmospheric Railway. It was a disaster really; the only material available at the time for the valves was leather which kept getting eaten by rats so it never stayed airtight.

Here's a link

 

[KeyboardJockey]

No, Brunel's atmospheric railway was in Devon. There's still a pub in Starcross called The Atmospheric Railway. It was a disaster really; the only material available at the time for the valves was leather which kept getting eaten by rats so it never stayed airtight.

Here's a link

Aha! I stand corrected.

 

[_pH_]

Aha! I stand corrected.

I think what you may have been thinking of, was a system for powering trams in (possibly) South London. There was a live rail buried in the middle of the street covered by a leather flap which opened as a pick-up shoe ran along it. IIRC there was a section of the track on display in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, but it's a few years since I went there.

Me? Ex-train spotter? Nooooooooo..........

 

[MikeMcc]

Sure you could develop a heat resistant material to prevent that. Worse would be to get the angle wrong and skip off the atmosphere and out into space.

Hate to rain on the parade, but theres already been a jump from 102,800 feet in 1960. The guy reached over 600mph on that jump, but he also holds the parachuting speed record of over 700mph for a previous jump.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kittinger-jump.jpg

 

[WouldBe]

Hate to rain on the parade, but theres already been a jump from 102,800 feet in 1960. The guy reached over 600mph on that jump, but he also holds the parachuting speed record of over 700mph for a previous jump.

I refer you back to my post #35

 

[parallelepipete]

Sure you could develop a heat resistant material to prevent that. Worse would be to get the angle wrong and skip off the atmosphere and out into space.

That could be good fun - like extreme pebble-skimming! World record for number of bounces off Earth's atmosphere in one jump - what kudos!