Future On Rails

       It probably is one of the  oldest form of travel. Railways had defined our civilization like no other transport has. Our trains have, however, been limited to a basic old concept. It has not been able to transcend itself into the future yet. Only now, the great minds have started thinking on this particular issues and have come up with some answers which are mind boggling yet so simple.  We will explore the future of railways in this article.

First, we will look at some of the problems that the modern railway system is facing:- 

1. Power- This is probably the most vital problem that has to be  overcome. Power is the quintessential necessity of the future, but from where do we get it? How do we make it economical enough for it to use enough of it? How do we make it ecologically sound?                                                                                                                            
2. Cost-Effectiveness- After you have solved all that, how do you keep up with the growing cost? Eventually, the cost of building the current system is going to skyrocket. What we need is a cost effective yet a powerful railway system which is capable of delivering its promise in the near future.                                                                                                                                                                                 
3. Speed- The need for speed is very real. Averagely, 152 hours are spent per year by an average person to commute to work but that's not it. The distances between the laces are quiet vast. Air travel is the fastest way to traverse those distances but it is expensive and not at all convenient. Plus, it takes a heavy toll on the environment. Above all, its still slow! Its at least not as fast as we want it to be.

The Geniuses of our time has come up with some abstract yet brilliant concepts which can change the face of railways. Some are listed below.

STRING TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM



   The String Transportation System is the brain child  of Russian inventor Anatoly Yunitskiy. It uses 2 'strings' or rails as tracks and a wheeled vehicles riding on it. The string system requires minimum ground clearance. The rails are built with high-tension steel wires  inserted into a concrete core and enveloped in a steel shell. This causes the strings to be very resilient and sturdy requiring minimal ground support. The vehicles are streamline and require very less power to operate. This system has proved to be very stable conceptually and has the ability to operate even under extreme conditions without loosing traction. This system is ideal to access remote location and can be quite effective in an urban landscape.


TUBULAR RAIL SYSTEM



    This system takes the tube rail system to new heights,literally! In this system, the wheels stay fixed on the enclosed pillars and the rails are attached to the vehicles itself. This creates a stable structure where the vehicle is firmly locked in to place eliminating the chances of derailment. In this contraption the vehicles move at a very high speed without much power loss. This is a very effective system for intercity transportation and can take you to the city center without much hassle. Moreover, to build it, no additional technological advancement is required, ie, all the required technology is already in place. This system has shown a lot of promise and just might be the first step towards the modernization of our centuries old railway system.

STRADDLING BUS 

    This is by far the most interesting concept ever seen. The 3D Express Coach, also known as the Straddling Bus idea was first unveiled at the 13th Beijing International High-tech Expo, in May 2010. The straddling bus is designed to be used on the existing roads with slight modification. Its passenger compartment spans the width of 2 car lanes and the undercarriage straddles along a specially built rails. The passengers will get on and off the bus via an elevated platform similar to the urban rail stations. The most important fact is that, cars will be able to pass right underneath it without any hindrance, thus the bus doesn't require extra space! The estimated cost of $80400000 dollars for 40 km of this bus service which is 10% of the cost for a subway system of similar distance. This system can thus revolutionize the modern urban commute with relatively lower cost and with in a very short period of time.

HYPERLOOP TRAINS



    The Hyperloop Train System is the brain child of  Entrepreneur Elon Musk. This system proposes a vehicle riding inside vacuumed steel tubes as tracks and floating on a cushion of air instead of magnetic levitation. This reduces the drag caused by the air and makes the ride smooth as there is hardly any friction! The speeds proposed by this technology, however, surpasses any technology we have today. This train service will have an average speed of 962 km per hour which maxes out at 1220 km per hour! That is incredibly fast! The initial cost for this transportation is estimated to be at $6 billion to $7.5 billion, which is contested by many to be underfunded for such a project! This project is still in developing stage and a working prototype has not been build yet. In spite of all the opposition, it seems to be quite feasible and holds a lot of potential for the future! this is one thing we should look forward to!

SOLAR BULLET



    Another project which has all the necessary technology in place, the Arizona bullet project is as green as it can get. The 360 km per hour speed train could really be fantastic if not for its tremendous price tag of $27 billion! There is another problem! The train system is completely powered by the sun and can only operate when the sun is shining. More research is needed for this project to become a working reality.

MAGLEV



    Maglev trains do exist with full scale commercial operations, but is still classified as a mode of transportation in the future as it is not widespread and we have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities. Theoretically, Maglev trains are capable to travel at supersonic speeds but currently no such operations exists. The Fastest we have gone is in the Japanese concept Maglev which has been clocked at a speed close to 600 km(581 km, to be exact) per hour. It has to be excepted that Maglevs are costly. The development of the Transrapid Maglev in Germany took a staggering $125 Billion and another $1.2 billion t make the system in Shanghai. We can only hope that with time, the cost for manufacturing the Maglev system will become viable.

VACTRAINS



    Vactrains are trains which run in partially or completely vacuumed tubes. As the biggest oppressor to fast travel is air resistances, Vactrains are able to completely eliminate that factor. The idea has been around for quite some time but only recently has become more approachable. It is estimated that Vactrains will increase the power ratio by 50% making them super efficient! The critique to this is mainly the concern that the cabin may become depressurized and suffocate passengers unlike an aircraft which can simply descend to lower altitudes. The challenges are many but the reward is unlike any other.

CLIP AIRTRAIN




    Till now we have seen trains which were ground based. Not anymore! This is where the humble everyday train takes a skyward approach. This is concept developed by Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has taken a new turn. People will board the train modules at regular station. the train will then take them to the airport where the module will be attached to the plane and it will take off towards the destination. This model is very far fetched and has to overcome a barrage of difficulties before it becomes a possibility. The main difficulty is the large amount of research which is yet to be done on this model followed by the barrage of new infrastructure. However, more research is needed on the mode of power for the aircraft as the current aircraft come in a lot of significant technical issues which can jeopardize this plan. This is not a plan which we might actually see in future.

GROUND EFFECT TRAINS



    Another idea conceived in Japan, the Ground Effect trains also strive to eliminate ground contact by flying close to the ground, unlike magnets which floats by magnetic levitation. The Ground Effect Trains achieve this due to the  effect called Wing in Ground effect. In this phenomenon, the wing achieves more life when close to the ground than when high up. This causes the train to be super efficient. The energy comes from the solar powered propellers which use 1/4 of the electricity used by maglevs. At top speeds, the Ground Effect trains can reach 420 km per hour, making this concept probably the most energy efficient and cost effective way of travel in the future.

GRAVITY TRAINS

    If you were given a task of designing a transportation system that requires zero fuel, zero energy and yet traverse the world at speeds never imagined, what would you do? Well, you would build the Gravity train! This idea has actually been with us for a long time. It was first described by Robert Hooke in a letter to Issac Newton and the first serious model was introduces in 19th century to the Paris Academy of Science. Even though this project is way ahead of our time and will not be possible even in the far future, the reason we have not been able to reject it is because of the fact that Gravity train promise some thing which no other mode of transportation can do. Can you imagine going from New York to Sydney in 42 minutes, London to Delhi in 42 minutes, Dubai to Vancouver in 42 minutes? The gravity train promises to this! It can reach speeds no one can ever dream of achieving! At a max, the Gravity train reaches a speed of 29000 km per hour! The proposal is that, a tunnel is dug through the CENTER OF THE EARTH (through its core and emerging at your destination on the other side of the earth! Jules Verne, it seems, was not the only one mad enough to dream about a journey to the center of the earth! There are 2 challenges which we face in creating the Gravity train. The first is the most obvious one. Making through the earth's core is currently impossible. The Temperature at the core is 5400 Celsius and has a pressure of about 36,00,000 atm! Talk about the pressure of the worlds on your shoulders! The second is that for the 42 minutes time schedule, the whole tube has to be vacuumed. Unless all the air is evacuated from the tunnel, frictional losses due to the air resistance would render the gravity train unstable. So as of now, we don't get to make a journey through the earth's core but who knows what the future holds? 

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Why do we explore space?

When man was nothing more than animalistic nomads, roaming the earth in herds and scrounging for food, he did not know what Newtonian mechanics was. He did not think about the various philosophical ideas that dictate our morals nor did he ponder upon the theory of relativity. Man, however, had one problem. He did not understand what he saw. He might have tried hard to find out  the reason but he could not even come close to providing the answer.  This made him realise that there must be something more powerful than himself which was controlling them.He must have thought that rain was water from the sky. Someone has poured water from up there! He might think that lightning was some kind of weapon! Someone must be  really angry up there! Then he looked up at the night sky and saw the stars. Millions of them twinkling away. Some were big, some small. Some red, some blue, some white, etc. These became his gods! He carefully observed the heavens and realised that they are not static but they too move. He observed them carefully to predict the future, to make proper time for his rituals and sacrifices in order to please his gods. In doing this, he discovered the first science, Astronomy.  Since then we have all looked up to the night sky and wondered,... "What is up there?"

However, soon we need to ask ourselves, "How do we live up there?" Resources on earth are limited and anyways we are destroying the planet faster than anything else. the least we can do is to leave it alone! But what options do we have anyways? Eventually, the sun will run out of fuel and become a red giant. It will bloat up is size,its surface reaching as far as the orbit of earth and consume it, or at least make life impossible on earth. if we don't move out by then we would definitely be toast but you must be still asking yourself, "Why do we spend billions of dollars to take pictures of space dust when that money can be  put to better use on earth?" Let me tell you what would happen if we didn't.

Imagine a scenario where in an international level meeting, someone has a bright idea of  cancelling all the space programmes around the world and using all that amount in social welfare to try to solve the problems here on earth first. Everybody agrees and suddenly all the space programmes are halted and all the money is put into the accounts of the various NGOs' and  government aids, which increase their budget by a mere 2%. The space industries uses about $289.77 billion yearly most of which is used to pay the salary of the many skilled worker roughly about 380,000 directly plus many more people indirectly. This will have a very negative effect on the world economy. Even then, we continue with our policy of no space programmes. Slowly, global warming and abuse of resources start to take lasting effect on our environment. Our water becomes toxic, our land becomes toxic and even our air becomes toxic. The rising sea claims most of our irrigable land.

The predicted map of the world with the ice caps melted

The world leaders fight over the left over resources due to which wars and bloodshed ruins the human race. The remaining freshwater resources, oilfields and irrigable land are guarded by the countries with arms. As the war for the basic resources continues, the use of nuclear weapons becomes inevitable. The land becomes full of nuclear fallout contaminating all the leftover resources. This eventually leads to the long impending destruction of the human race. Wouldn't it have been better that we should just leave our planet alone and explore what else the mighty universe has to offer?

 I hope, by know you have understood what we can actually get out of space exploration besides just knowledge? We must understand that we have already damaged our planet beyond repair and may not be able to undone what should have been done years ago. The only thing we can do is to leave earth and become the pioneers of today. Pioneers of the Universe.

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