T-Flight One Belt, One Road Plan: China’s Supersonic Flying Train Would Reach 4000 km/h
Geschreven op 12-9-2017 - Erik van Erne. Geplaatst in Vervoer en OV
The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation says it is making plans to build T-Flight a flying train concept high speed train that could travel as fast as 4000 kilometers per hour inside sealed tubes using magnetic levitation technology.
The proposal is part of a massive $3 trillion Chinese global infrastructure proposal known as One Belt, One Road.
China announced a plan to develop T-Flight, a supersonic train system that would reach 4000 km/h. Mao Kai, technical director of the T-Flight train system project with the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, said that: In the first phase, we’ll realize the speed of 1,000 kilometers per hour for domestic intra-city commuting; the next phase will see speed of up to 2,000 kilometers per hour for domestic intra-region traveling to link up economic zones of Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Wuhan. The third phase will realize the speed of 4,000 kilometers per hour. In the future, a flight train network covering countries along the Belt and Road region will be formed to support the Belt and Road Initiative”
The similarities the Hyperloop concept are evident. But where that concept is intended to travel at roughly the speed of sound, the T-Flight proposal would be 5 times faster than a conventional airliner as it whooshes along at Mach 4 speeds — eventually. Its designers say they are targeting 1000 km/h for the initial phase of the project before doubling that to 2000 km/h, then doubling it again to 4000 km/h. Each pod would carry about 20 passengers. Turnaround time between the end of one trip and the beginning of the next would be about 3 minutes, thanks to highly advanced turntables at each terminus.
Mao Kai, the chief designer of the system, claims that the T-Flight trains will accelerate and decelerate more slowly than a commercial jetliner so that passengers will feel no discomfort. He also pooh-poohs suggestions that the trains will be prohibitively expensive, something that proved the undoing of the Concorde SST airplane system. CASIC already holds more than 200 technology patents for the system, he says.
See also: China’s One Belt One Road: The New Silk Road – China’s New Silk Road by DW Documentary
