Vactrain: Travelling by Train from Shanghai to London in 1 Hour

By Fouad Sabry

What Is Vactrain

A vactrain is a conceptual design for an extremely high-speed rail vehicle that is currently under consideration. It is a maglev line that operates in tubes or tunnels that are only partially evacuated. Because of the decreased air resistance, vactrains may be able to move at very high (hypersonic) speeds with just a little amount of power, reaching speeds of up to 6,400-8,000 km/h (4,000-5,000 mph). This is five to six times the speed of sound in the atmosphere of the Earth as measured at sea level.

How You Will Benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Vactrain

Chapter 2: Pneumatic tube

Chapter 3: Transrapid

Chapter 4: List of proposed future transport

Chapter 5: Inductrack

Chapter 6: Maglev

Chapter 7: Atmospheric railway

Chapter 8: Transatlantic tunnel

Chapter 9: Beach Pneumatic Transit

Chapter 10: Gravity-vacuum transit

Chapter 11: High-speed rail in India

Chapter 12: StarTram

Chapter 13: ET3 Global Alliance

Chapter 14: Magnetic levitation

Chapter 15: Hyperloop

Chapter 16: Virgin Hyperloop

Chapter 17: Hyperloop pod competition

Chapter 18: Keio Alpha

Chapter 19: The Boring Company

Chapter 20: TransPod

Chapter 21: Arrivo

(II) Answering the public top questions about vactrain.

(III) Real world examples for the usage of vactrain in many fields.

(IV) 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technologies in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of vactrain' technologies.

Who This Book Is For

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of vactrain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022

Book preview

Copyright

Vactrain Copyright © 2022 by Fouad Sabry. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover designed by Fouad Sabry.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Bonus

You can send an email to [e-mail] with the subject line Vactrain: Travelling by train from Shanghai to London in 1 hour, and you will receive an email which contains the first few chapters of this book.

Fouad Sabry

Visit 1BK website at

www.1BKOfficial.org

Preface

Why did I write this book?

The story of writing this book started on 1989, when I was a student in the Secondary School of Advanced Students.

It is remarkably like the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Schools, which are now available in many advanced countries.

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. This term is typically used to address an education policy or a curriculum choice in schools. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy.

There was a weekly class in the library, where each student is free to choose any book and read for 1 hour. The objective of the class is to encourage the students to read subjects other than the educational curriculum.

In the library, while I was looking at the books on the shelves, I noticed huge books, total of 5,000 pages in 5 parts. The books name is The Encyclopedia of Technology, which describes everything around us, from absolute zero to semiconductors, almost every technology, at that time, was explained with colorful illustrations and simple words. I started to read the encyclopedia, and of course, I was not able to finish it in the 1-hour weekly class.

So, I convinced my father to buy the encyclopedia. My father bought all the technology tools for me in the beginning of my life, the first computer and the first technology encyclopedia, and both have a great impact on myself and my career.

I have finished the entire encyclopedia in the same summer vacation of this year, and then I started to see how the universe works and to how to apply that knowledge to everyday problems.

My passion to the technology started mor than 30 years ago and still the journey goes on.

This book is part of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies which is my attempt to give the readers the same amazing experience I had when I was in high school, but instead of 20th century technologies, I am more interested in the 21st century emerging technologies, applications, and industry solutions.

The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies will consist of 365 books, each book will be focused on one single emerging technology. You can read the list of emerging technologies and their categorization by industry in the part of Coming Soon, at the end of the book.

365 books to give the readers the chance to increase their knowledge on one single emerging technology every day within the course of one year period.

Introduction

How did I write this book?

In every book of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies, I am trying to get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of the people, trying to answer their questions about the emerging technology.

There are 3 billion Google searches every day, and 20% of those have never been seen before. They are like a direct line to the people thoughts.

Sometimes that’s ‘How do I remove paper jam’. Other times, it is the wrenching fears and secret hankerings they would only ever dare share with Google.

In my pursuit to discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas about Vactrain, I use many tools to listen into autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question, the people are asking around the keyword Vactrain.

It is a goldmine of people insight, I can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products, and services. The kind people, like you, really want.

People searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche. Therefore, this book is a live product, and constantly updated by more and more answers for new questions about Vactrain, asked by people, just like you and me, wondering about this new emerging technology and would like to know more about it.

The approach for writing this book is to get a deeper level of understanding of how people search around Vactrain, revealing questions and queries which I would not necessarily think off the top of my head, and answering these questions in super easy and digestible words, and to navigate the book around in a straightforward way.

So, when it comes to writing this book, I have ensured that it is as optimized and targeted as possible. This book purpose is helping the people to further understand and grow their knowledge about Vactrain. I am trying to answer people’s questions as closely as possible and showing a lot more.

It is a fantastic, and beautiful way to explore questions and problems that the people have and answer them directly, and add insight, validation, and creativity to the content of the book – even pitches and proposals. The book uncovers rich, less crowded, and sometimes surprising areas of research demand I would not otherwise reach. There is no doubt that, it is expected to increase the knowledge of the potential readers’ minds, after reading the book using this approach.

I have applied a unique approach to make the content of this book always fresh. This approach depends on listening to the people minds, by using the search listening tools. This approach helped me to:

Meet the readers exactly where they are, so I can create relevant content that strikes a chord and drives more understanding to the topic.

Keep my finger firmly on the pulse, so I can get updates when people talk about this emerging technology in new ways, and monitor trends over time.

Uncover hidden treasures of questions need answers about the emerging technology to discover unexpected insights and hidden niches that boost the relevancy of the content and give it a winning edge.

The building block for writing this book include the following:

(1) I have stopped wasting the time on gutfeel and guesswork about the content wanted by the readers, filled the book content with what the people need and said goodbye to the endless content ideas based on speculations.

(2) I have made solid decisions, and taken fewer risks, to get front row seats to what people want to read and want to know — in real time — and use search data to make bold decisions, about which topics to include and which topics to exclude.

(3) I have streamlined my content production to identify content ideas without manually having to sift through individual opinions to save days and even weeks of time.

It is wonderful to help the people to increase their knowledge in a straightforward way by just answering their questions.

I think the approach of writing of this book is unique as it collates, and tracks the important questions being asked by the readers on search engines.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is harder than I thought and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. None of this would have been possible without the work completed by prestigious researchers, and I would like to acknowledge their efforts to increase the knowledge of the public about this emerging technology.

Dedication

To the enlightened, the ones who see things differently, and want the world to be better -- they are not fond of the status quo or the existing state. You can disagree with them too much, and you can argue with them even more, but you cannot ignore them, and you cannot underestimate them, because they always change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones or amateur, others see genius and innovators, because the ones who are enlightened enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do, and lead the people to the enlightenment.

Epigraph

A vactrain is a conceptual design for an extremely high-speed rail vehicle that is currently under consideration. It is a maglev line that operates in tubes or tunnels that are only partially evacuated. Because of the decreased air resistance, vactrains may be able to move at very high (hypersonic) speeds with just a little amount of power, reaching speeds of up to 6,400�8,000 km/h (4,000�5,000 mph). This is five to six times the speed of sound in the atmosphere of the Earth as measured at sea level.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Bonus

Preface

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Epigraph

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Vactrain

Chapter 2: Pneumatic tube

Chapter 3: Transrapid

Chapter 4: List of proposed future transport

Chapter 5: Inductrack

Chapter 6: Maglev

Chapter 7: Atmospheric railway

Chapter 8: Transatlantic tunnel

Chapter 9: Beach Pneumatic Transit

Chapter 10: Gravity-vacuum transit

Chapter 11: High-speed rail in India

Chapter 12: StarTram

Chapter 13: ET3 Global Alliance

Chapter 14: Magnetic levitation

Chapter 15: Hyperloop

Chapter 16: Virgin Hyperloop

Chapter 17: Hyperloop pod competition

Chapter 18: Keio Alpha

Chapter 19: The Boring Company

Chapter 20: TransPod

Chapter 21: Arrivo

Epilogue

About the Author

Coming Soon

Appendices: Emerging Technologies in Each Industry

Chapter 1: Vactrain

A vactrain, also known as a vacuum tube train, is a concept that has been floated for the development of extremely high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev (magnetic levitation) line that utilizes tubes or tunnels that are only partially evacuated. Because of the decreased air resistance, vactrains may be able to move at very high (hypersonic) speeds with just a little amount of power, reaching speeds of up to 6,400–8,000 km/h (4,000–5,000 mph). This is five to six times the speed of sound in the atmosphere of Earth as measured at sea level.

In the year 1799, George Medhurst of London dreamt up and received a patent for an atmospheric railway. This kind of railway had the capability of transporting people as well as freight via pressurized or evacuated tubes. Steam power was necessary for the operation of the first atmosphere railroads and pneumatic tube transit systems (like the Dalkey Atmospheric Railway), such as the Dalkey Atmospheric Railway.

In his short story An Express of the Future, written in 1888, Michel Verne, son of Jules Verne, imagined a submarine pneumatic tube transport system that could propel a passenger capsule at speeds of up to 1,800 kilometers per hour (1,100 miles per hour) under the Atlantic Ocean. This system would be referred to as a transatlantic tunnel.

In 1904, while attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the United States as a first-year student, Robert H. Goddard came up with the idea for the vactrain proper. After that, in 1914, he presented an idea called the vacuum train in the book Motion without friction (airless electric way).

In 1955, Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem in a novel The Magellan Nebula wrote about intercontinental vactrain called organowiec, It traveled through a clear tube at a speed more than 1,666 kilometers per hour (1,035 mph).

Towards the end of April in 1962, Mercenary by Mack Reynolds is where the reader first encounters the vactrain, Then he makes a brief reference to the Vacuum Tube Transport in the background.

Robert M. Salter of RAND, a prominent proponent of vacuum technology, was responsible for publishing a number of in-depth technical studies throughout the 1970s.

The Los Angeles Times published an interview with Robert Salter earlier this week (June 11, 1972). He went into great length on the relative simplicity with which the government of the United States might construct a tube shuttle system utilizing the technology that were available at the time. Because maglev technology was so undeveloped at the time, he suggested using steel wheels instead. The door leading from the chamber into the tube would be opened, and a sufficient amount of air would be let in behind it to speed up the train as it entered the tube. A additional acceleration of the leaving train down to cruising level would be provided by gravity. After reaching cruising level, the train that was about to arrive would begin to slow down by compressing the rarefied air that was in front of it, which would then be released. Because losses caused by friction or air leaking around the sides of the train could be compensated for by pumps located at the stops, the train itself would not need an engine. This combination of modified (shallow) gravity train and atmospheric railway propulsion would consume very little energy but would limit the system to subsonic speeds. Because of this limitation, initial routes of tens or hundreds of miles or kilometers rather than transcontinental distances were proposed.

It was planned for there to be no need for couplers on trains; instead, each car was going to be directly welded, bolted, or otherwise securely attached to the next. Additionally, the route was not going to need any more bending than steel's inherent flexibility could readily manage. The train would be turned on its side and placed into the end chamber of the return tube when it reached the terminus of the line. The railway would consist of an outside tunnel in addition to an inner tube that was evacuated. At cruising depth, there would be enough water in the area between for the vacuum tube to float, making the voyage more comfortable.

It was decided to create a route that would go across the Northeast Megalopolis and have nine stations: one in the District of Columbia, one in each of the following states: Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, and two in the state of Connecticut. The regions around San Francisco and New York have commuter rail systems that have been drawn out. Compared to the intercity version, the commuter version will have trains that are longer, heavier, and will be driven less by air and more by gravity. There were going to be three lines in the New York system, and they were going to terminate at Babylon, Paterson, Huntington, Elizabeth, White Plains, and St. George.

Salter made the point that such a system would help lessen the environmental harm done to the atmosphere by aircraft and land traffic. He included this in his presentation. He referred to the construction of subterranean Very High Speed Transportation (tube shuttles) as the natural next step for his country. The plans were never developed any further than they already were.

When these findings were released, Japan's national reputation was a concern since the country had already been running its flagship shinkansen for some years, and maglev train development was a cutting-edge field of study at the time. In the United States, transcontinental subway service would be established with the help of the American Planetran, which would make it possible to travel from Los Angeles to New York City in only one hour. The tube would be dug to a depth of several hundred feet in solid rock formations. During construction, lasers would be used to assure proper alignment, and tungsten probes would be used to liquefy their way through volcanic rock formations. The tunnel would maintain a partial vacuum to decrease drag. Because passengers would be subjected to accelerations up to 1.4 times that of gravity during a flight that averaged 4,800 kilometers per hour (3,000 miles per hour), gimbaled chambers would be required. Salter's concept was never completed for a number of reasons, the most significant of which being the enormous expense of construction, which was projected to be as high as one trillion dollars.

Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing into the early 1980s, it was proposed that the Swissmetro would utilize the invention of the experimental German Transrapid maglev train and run in large tunnels at a pressure altitude that was reduced to the level at which the Concorde SST was certified to fly. This pressure altitude was 21,000 m (68,000 ft).

In the 1980s, Frank P. Davidson, a founder and chairman of the Channel Tunnel project, and Yoshihiro Kyotani, a Japanese engineer, proposed a solution to the transoceanic issues by floating a tube above the ocean bottom and anchoring it with cables (a submerged floating tunnel). In order to prevent turbulence in the water, the transportation tube would be buried to a depth of at least 300 meters (1,000 feet).

An application for a patent pertaining to a vactrain system was submitted by Gerard K. O'Neill on November 18, 1991. VSE International is the name he gave to the business he planned to start, which stands for velocity, quietness, and efficiency..

Since 2001, James R. Powell, who was a co-inventor of superconducting maglev in the 1960s, has been