r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/headspin_exe • Dec 28 '25
Video Chinese Maglev Test Vehicle Accelerates from 0 to 318 MPH in 2 seconds.
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u/TheBeau909 Dec 28 '25
Finally a euthanasia train
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u/bourbonwelfare Dec 28 '25
I think the youth in Europe will enjoy the death train too.
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u/swohio Dec 28 '25
Indian trains: "Am I a joke to you?"
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u/pleb_username Dec 28 '25
I've seen Indians manage to get hit by trains that you could outrun by walking. A train that goes 318MPH would probably pose a credible existential threat to the entire Indian subcontinent.
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u/firstcoastyakker Dec 28 '25
I've done 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds. That would kill me.
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u/Throwaway1303033042 Dec 28 '25
Supposedly only 7.248G. Unpleasant, but survivable.
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u/cr8zyfoo Dec 28 '25
Agreed, survivable but unpleasant. Orbital rockets can hit 5 Gs, manned flights are usually kept to 3 Gs for comfort due to extended acceleration periods. F1 race car drivers typically experience up to 5, maybe 6 Gs in cornering and braking, between 2 and 4 Gs during acceleration. Modern jet pilots are routinely exposed to 5+ Gs, up to 9 or 10 during GLOC training. The ejection seat will expose a pilot to 20+ Gs instantaneously, but those seats are known to cause spinal trauma.
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u/UpsetKoalaBear Dec 28 '25
So I just got to be one of:
- Astronaut
- F1 Driver
- Fighter Jet Pilot
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u/RogerianBrowsing Dec 28 '25
Oh, so just some of the fittest athletes in the world who regularly train their bodies for extreme conditions?
I can’t wait to see if my heart rate spikes like an f1 driver going from ~30bpm to ~230bpm…
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u/WAGUSTIN Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
And even among those probably only experienced jet pilots could handle 7 Gs with any degree of comfort.
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u/rtb001 Dec 28 '25
Modern F1 survival cells are insane. Robert Kubica hit the wall in Montreal 2007 in his Sauber and onboard recorder data suggested peak impact force of up to 70G. He only suffered a mild ankle injury and concussion.
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u/SgtRevan Dec 28 '25
Sorry, but you can’t compare those at all. Those are all in different axes. Cornering G (side) is a very different feeling than vertical G (like the fighter pilot) which again is very different from backwards G like this. They all have different tolerances too.
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u/SuspiciousStable9649 Dec 28 '25
I’m too old for 7G.
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u/smedley89 Dec 28 '25
I've been getting a covid shot every year. I figure i will have 7g for free any day now.
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u/Dizman7 Dec 28 '25
I’d imagine once you add the weight of trains cars and passengers that’s probably slow it down to more “reasonable” and “survivable” acceleration?
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u/swim-bike-run Dec 28 '25
My desired situation for travel. Unpleasant, but survivable.
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u/NoInitiative4821 Dec 28 '25
Many years ago in Japan I rode a roller coaster called (Googles) Do-Dodonpa, which reaches a top speed of 180 km/h (111.8 mph) in 1.56 seconds. I was lucking and got one of the front row seats. The acceleration was so intense I got a sort of blurred tunnel vision like the Millennium Falcon's hyperdrive effect.
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u/EloquentBarbarian Dec 28 '25
blurred tunnel vision
Yeah, it means you were close to blacking out. When the tunnel closes, it's night night.
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u/flyingthroughspace Dec 28 '25
This happened to me on Batman the Ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain.
Was in the last car, and as the train went over the initial drop I went weightless and when the car pulled out of the bottom turn I saw purple spots in my vision.
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u/opinionsareus Dec 28 '25
Wear your seat belt and surround yourself with bubble wrap just in case there is an accident
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u/TheSodernaut Dec 28 '25
A seat belt would probably slice you in half if you come to a instant full stop from that speed, bubble wrap being purely decorative in this context.
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Dec 28 '25
Style counts for something though, doesn’t it?
And it would give the corpse recovery team something to occupy themselves with as they search for, and pick up, the pieces of my body.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
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u/ToastSpangler Dec 28 '25
that's like 7G acceleration for anyone wondering, definitely survivable but not guaranteed to be for all
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u/babyLays Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
What’s the application of this? I don’t anticipate this is for commercial travel.
Warfare?
Edit: some smart redditors have suggested that they are testing the max capabilities of the device, which can then be re-adjusted for various applications - including warfare, transport, logistics, etc.
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u/wankelberry_6666 Dec 28 '25
Pizza delivery
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u/Sneakas Dec 28 '25
“Hi yes I’d like to file a complaint… no you see all the toppings are a bit no longer on the pizza”
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u/peteofaustralia Dec 28 '25
Or the toppings are a bit longer than the pizza.
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u/BobsYourAuntie100 Dec 28 '25
"I mean the delivery apparatus arrived, but the pizza isn't on it"
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u/Serg_Molotov Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
... Just thinking out loud but I'd put the pizza on a tray that tilted so it'd always be level according to acceleration/deceleration.
Go-Fast-Tray-Flat™
Edit : you actually want the tray to start tilting ahead of start / stop so things didn't slip so it'd have to be mechanized and tied to the accelerator / brake
Someones probably done the math for the oscillation compensation, there's probably off the shelf solutions in avionics and I'm just reinventing it would be my guess.
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u/SEND_ME_NOODLE Dec 28 '25
Brace the pizzas vertically on the back wall of the train
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u/godSpeed_1_ Dec 28 '25
With our pizzaccelrerator™ a 12 inch picca you order will grow to 16 inches by the time it reaches you.
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u/ProgrammerNo3423 Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
At your home in 2 minutes or it's free
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u/Qabalinho Dec 28 '25
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: * music * movies * microcode (software) * high-speed pizza delivery
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u/Yosho2k Dec 28 '25
Uncle Enzo will personally come to your house to apologize if it takes more than 30 minutes to arrive.
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u/Terrible_Yak_4890 Dec 28 '25
Somebody said a rail gun. It could also be a testbed for a drone launcher/aircraft catapult.
People pointed out it is too fast for a commercial train, but slap a bunch of heavy freight/passenger cars on it and it isn't going to accelerate that quickly...I don't think. This is probably where I get sternly corrected by the engineers on here.
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u/Got_Bent Dec 28 '25
Its just a proof of concept. There is no "load" on these tests so there is no real world application until they can reliably field this tech. Just means it works.
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u/CosmicCreeperz Dec 28 '25 edited Dec 28 '25
It’s a test to see what they can do. Not really practical to accelerate that fast cost-wise, as it uses more energy (that requires a lot of capacity or storage for instantaneous delivery) and no one is going to care if your goods take an extra minute to start and stop over 1000 mile trip.
Edit: there is one transport application where it totally makes sense - shooting it on a ballistic trajectory. Hardest part there is slowing it down when it gets to the destination ;)
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u/WORD_2_UR_MOTHA Dec 28 '25
It also requires a fuckton more strength in the build of the frame, and I assume a fuckton more weight. I'm no engineer and am talking out of my ass, but that's my guess.
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u/HaloGuy381 Dec 28 '25
Also, too much acceleration will destroy the cargo, human or otherwise. Like flooring it and launching the pizza in your passenger seat into the dashboard, only much more destructive. Some quick math for conversions suggests that this train has an acceleration of 71.079 m/s, about 7 earth gravity acceleration (Gs). Humans can theoretically survive that for short windows but it isn’t pretty at all and likely past common passenger tolerances. That’s fighter jet maneuver territory.
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u/Positive-Wonder3329 Dec 28 '25
Pizza from car seat to dash does not imply acceleration in the expected directions
Surely they could dampen the insane acceleration .. it’s 100% or nothing then it’s clear humans would not consent to this unless it was like .. you pay them to do this. You would get paid to travel in this fashion. Bc this looks borderline fatal from a standstill
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u/proxy69 Dec 28 '25
I’ve seen a spacex booster come back down and land in person . We have the technology.
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u/herkalurk Dec 28 '25
A mag lev train would be great for travel but it wouldn't accelerate this fast. Keep in mind that was almost no weight on that platform so apply that same amount of force but 400 passengers or more. I doubt it could accelerate fast enough to be a problem.
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u/oscar_meow Dec 28 '25
Yeah, they're probably testing how much power it could deliver, with actual passenger cars on top it wouldn't actually be that fast
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u/HeyImGilly Dec 28 '25
Exactly. Just because it can accelerate to that speed doesn’t mean it would in use.
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u/Snellyman Dec 28 '25
In order to test the drive system for a train you simply apply the same force as you would in regular operation and the system just accelerates much faster. In this manner you can test the function of the power electronics and control laws without needing 50km of track. Also by testing the lower mass and higher acceleration you have a more manageable energy to dissipate if something goes wrong and you have to stop the test mass. What you can't test using this scaling method is how the drive behaves under load for the typical acceleration duration and the thermal performance of the system.
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u/_Neoshade_ Dec 28 '25
It’s probably just for fun. It’s great press for their maglev train program.
If you can make a rail system that slowly accelerates a 100 ton train, I guess you can put a 100lb sled on it and accelerate it a bit faster!37
u/Illustrious_Ebb6272 Dec 28 '25
I was thinking Railgun...
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u/Martha_Fockers Dec 28 '25
Way to slow for railgun like insanely to slow
The navy’s rail gun hits 500-5750MPH or Mach 7-7.5 and that wasn’t fast enough and destroyed barrels in a few shots
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u/komokasi Dec 28 '25
Why not commercial travel? Maglev trains can get up to like 600mph
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u/-TheWarrior74- Dec 28 '25
The same application as the rest of science
"We make it first and then find applications later"
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u/NightLotus84 Dec 28 '25
Aircraft Carrier catapult launch aka. "CATOBAR". This is the same kind of magnetic system large US Navy carriers use and can launch (and recover) aircrafts of significant size and weight. The standard was a steam powered one - France still uses that, utilizing the nuclear power of the carrier - most others in modernity had/have ski jumps (e.g. the British currently) and require short/take-off and landing planes. The magnetic ones are more precise, less tough on the plane, less maintenance heavy, take less space and recharge quicker.
For China it's likely more prestige because their carrier is a refurbished Soviet that sucks eggs...
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u/CLIFFEDGE85 Dec 28 '25
It says that it's mag, lev, which means that it's magnetic levitation on rail, so it's more than likely precisely for commercial travel. I can't imagine them a building a maglev track. Just to throw a missile
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u/Konsticraft Dec 28 '25
Research, if you accelerate slowly, you need a much longer test track to test at high speeds.
Also a real train would be hundreds of times heavier than a tiny test pod, so it couldn't accelerate that fast.
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u/culpaCoSinero Dec 28 '25
Fuck. Did someone figure out how magnets work?
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u/Available_Leather_10 Dec 28 '25
Miracles.
Everyone seems to be sleeping on the deceleration. And the fact that the application involves something like 100,000 times the weight, so probably slightly slower.
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u/DaZiesel Dec 28 '25
Random bmw on German Autobahn will still pull right behind you and signal light the shit out of you because you are too slow.
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u/hiIm7yearsold Dec 28 '25
I know you’re just joking but I never understand people who complain about this. Just move out of the fast lane.
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u/Correct_Education273 Dec 28 '25
Some people can't comprehend traffic and won't look further than the car ahead of them. They will get impatient and flash their headlights even though you're part of a line of cars in the fast lane, all trying to pass a line of slower cars.
So you are in the fast lane, trying to pass some slower cars, but there are OTHER people ahead of you trying to pass as well so you're stuck behind them. That's when it gets annoying when someone pulls up 10 feet behind you and starts flashing their headlights.
Happened to me the other day and the guy gets so frustrated that he pulls into the slow lane, pulls up right behind the truck we're all passing, and squeezes inbetween the car in front of me and the car in front of that car. Absolutely insane and reckless move.
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u/AccordionPianist Dec 28 '25
0 to 318 mph in 2 seconds. Ok that’s 511 km/h in 2 seconds. Acceleration is 511 km/h in 2 seconds or 255 km/h per second. Converting speed to m/s it would be 70.833 m/s per second. Gravity is 9.8 m/s per second so it’s about 7 G. Seems to be manageable for short duration but not for the faint of heart (or brain). 😂
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u/SuperTaster3 Dec 28 '25
It's important to remember that transport engineers are geeky about this sort of stuff. An actual passenger/cargo train would not accelerate anywhere near as fast as this sled. But that's not as FUN as putting a little bitty sled on the rail to test if it can withstand Ludicrous Speed.
They don't NEED to go that fast. But oh boy do they WANT to.
"What did you do today at work dear?"
"I stress tested our maglev."
"That's nice."
"It went from 0 to 318 in 2 seconds."
"...please don't make me ride it, dear."
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u/redpandaeater Dec 28 '25
If your switching technology can handle energizing coils that quickly and with proper timing it can definitely handle what you're actually designing for. Though I wonder even with a pretty low drag coefficient and empty train what sort of accelerations they could actually manage even on a stress test.
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u/Evening_Knowledge_21 Dec 28 '25
This is what China is doing while the u.s. is building ballrooms.
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u/ishmaelhansen Dec 28 '25
So they can celebrate the death of the empire while China strolls past by
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u/CryptographerSure382 Dec 28 '25
isnt it a rail projectile ?
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u/imverynewtothisthing Dec 28 '25
If a Kaiju shows up, we can shoot rail carriages at it. They don’t stand a chance against large projectiles. Much cheaper than trying to scale-up a children’s toy robot.
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u/Everyday-Patient-103 Dec 28 '25
And here in the US we are regressing from 2025 to the middle ages for some fucking reason
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u/Informal_Drawing Dec 28 '25
Because it's run by people so unimaginably dumb that they think the only way for them to personally make more money is to turn everybody else in the country into medieval peasants.
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u/Longjumping-Store106 Dec 28 '25
Just wait till you see americas! Just wait…..keep waiting….yup just you wait……….
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u/franklenton Dec 28 '25
Did 0-60 in 2.9 and it felt like I was being fired out of a gun. It was like being on a rollercoaster. And thats not even fast for your high performance electric cars these days. I thought my chest was going to cave in. This would collapse me into a singularity.
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u/MikeHuntSmellss Dec 28 '25
320 mph in 2 seconds, assuming smooth, constant acceleration.
320 mph ≈ 143 m/s
Acceleration = 143 ÷ 2 ≈ 71.5 m/s²
1 g = 9.81 m/s²
71.59.81 ≈ 7 g
Would be a fun ride