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Space Science

Space Railroad 25

Posted by michael from the little-station-that-could dept.
Pig Hogger writes "Nasa will launch the first space railroad in April. The one-car train will run at speeds as high as 100 meters per hour (relative to the space station) or 27 megameters per hour (relative to the Earth)."
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Space Railroad

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  • Will this train have a "Space Cow catcher"??

  • schedules... (Score:3, Funny)

    by NaturePhotog ( 317732 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @09:13PM (#3197876) Homepage
    Let's hope they get Deutsche Bahn to keep it on schedule, rather than Amtrak. Any anybody besides British Railways to keep it on track...
    • Oh, I've got quite a bit of experience with the British rail system as well as with Amtrak. Yes, the UK rail system has had problems in the past year. These problems are embarassing, especially when comparing it to other European rail systems. But it is still miles ahead of Amtrak (unless you live in the northeast US, where Amtrak is basically a commuter line). In my experiences, any Amtrak trip that takes more than about 5 hours is guaranteed to be at least 1 day late. Yes, 1 day. Not 1 hour. And not because of worker strikes. It's just sheer incompetence, coupled with a lack of investment on maintaining lines. Yes, Amtrak is still the king of poor rail service.
  • Anybody ever watch that anime movie, "Galaxy Express" [crosswinds.net]?

  • Silly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Account 10 ( 565119 ) on Wednesday March 20, 2002 @09:17PM (#3197896)
    What a silly comparision.

    If I'm walking in the ISS then I'm moving v.fast relative to the earth.
    Hell, If I'm standing still on the ISS then I'm still moving v.fast relative to the earth.
    Even if I'm dead and buried on Earth I'm moving v.v.fast relative to the center of the galaxy.

    It isn't anything to get very excited about ... hey Mum, look at me I'm moving at 0.99c relative to something
    • They even say as much:

      "It's built for precise positioning and smooth velocity control; it's not built for speed,"

      I suspect NASA's engineers are rolling their eyes at their PR crews' headline just as much as we are.
    • What's funnier is that, even if it tries to go the other way, it's still going ~27 megameters per hour in the wrong direction!@ - relative to the Earth.
  • And this train will be going 300 km/s relative to the cosmic microwave background. Just like the rest of us.

    Could this story possibly be any more pointless? And what the hell is it doing in the science section?

    • I do belive the point is they are putting train in orbit, rather than anything to do with the speed it is moving at.

      Nothing greatly spectacular about this, it seems a perfectly logical way of moving the robot arm around.

      This clearly violates the slashdot moto. It isn't stuff that matters.
      • Right then, why is this a news story at all? Let me tell you, it's a new thing for orbit, just like the robot arm was at one point. Not really all that exciting to those that don't care much about space flight, and rather a logical step when you think about it, but it's a major developement as far as building the Space Station goes. I thought it was cool, I'm glad /. posted it.

        And yes the speed thing is rather pointless, I guess it's there to get Joe Bloe off the street to read the article.

  • Lame editors (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is as bad as abcnews.com's tech section.
    Don't BS the title and summery, once people
    read the article, they only think, "How Lame!"
    You don't win with fake hype.

    yes, I'm hiding (it's my first /. flame)
  • one-car train will run at speeds as high as 100 meters per hour (relative to the space station) or 27 megameters per hour (relative to the Earth)."

    Ok, besides the "27 megameters per hour!" silliness, a quick look at the actual article states the rate of travel Imperial Units, _not_ metric:

    on this railway will have a top speed of only 300 feet per hour, but the entire line -- tracks and all -- will travel almost nine

    100 Meters per hour does not equal 100 Yards per hour. Getting your measurement units right doesn't seem like a big thing, but it really really is important, especially in engineering situations. It's like "O" and "0" in a computer character set; they appear similar, but are completely different. Try doing things with ASCII value $4F where $30 was intended will lead to completely different results, all over something that seemed trivial.

    Same with getting your measurement units right. It's important. Use the wrong ASCII character, and your program crashes; uses the wrong measurement units, your probe crashes.
    • Wasn't it the mix between passing metric units and expecting English that trashed the Mars probe during the descent stage? Or vice versa?

      So Units matter. Don't want to program it to stop, 39+ inches past the end of the track :-).
    • Alright, so a meter is 39.37" instead of 36". Big whoop. We're reading about the damned thing, not driving it. What are the odds that it actually travels at perxactly 300 fph? I've got a buck says that's a rounded figure anyway, quite likely rounded from 100 meters per hour (since I would also guess that the ISS is metric, what with the "I" and all.)
    • Yes, and in many engineersing situations there is sufficient tolerance to handle 10% variations from spec. *Real* engineers are aware of specifications, knowing that real world parts vary from the specs. And they design around it.

      I think 100m is close enough to 300ft that I will do the same conversion (and, yes, I actually am an engineer) in casual conversation, or on stories to slashdot. For God's sake, haven't you seen the spelling and grammar on Slashdot? With the English language being slaughtered so badly, you've got the nerve to complain about a 10% variance in a conversion from metric to Imperial? And then you try to act like you're some expert engineer? Get a life. Sorry for being so harsh, but your message really rubbed me the wrong way.

      Oh, and for the record, the *exact* conversion from metric to Imperial is 2.54cm 1 inch. By definition.
      • and along those same lines, do you rant at whomever posts an english correction?
        Nobody that matters paid any attention to the post, because they know about varience.
        man, I hate to see you use "big" measurements. 300 Kilometers an hour, 300 miles an hours, close enough.
    • Use of the backwards, *ahem* Imperial/Conventional system in scientific applications can bite my shiny metal ass!
  • "...this is no way to run a railroad!"
  • Here is an old (April 2000) article from Civil Engineering Magazine [asce.org] about the Space Truss ("railroad")
  • When everyone is talking about awsome speeds and making it sound like this is a transport between the earth and the ISS, few people took the time to read that this train is designed to transport material around the station for assembly... and travels at a bone breaking speeds varying from one-tenth of an inch to one inch per second. Did anyone read before posting?
    • Um, have you read any of the posts? Nobody (not at +1 anyway) is making these claims. Scratch that, nobody posting at -1 made any comments like that either, Mr. Superior. Why are you bitching about non-existing posts? Are you confused, or just an ass?
    • and travels at a bone breaking speeds varying from one-tenth of an inch to one inch per second.

      The speed by itself isn't the impressive thing, it's the fact that it will be carrying large (23 ton large) cargo at those speeds, while not twisting and turning the space station in the process (in order to keep the net force/momentum the same)...
  • It's kinda funny that it had a "text only" version of that article linked at the bottom of the page.... looking at it, I would think that it was the text only version...

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