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Old 02-22-2010, 01:38 AM   #4
Phil Masters
 
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Default Re: Vehicles (3e) - Maglev Speeds?

Quote:
Originally Posted by jalapeno_dude View Post
As far as I can tell (and maybe it is there and I'm just missing it), none of the entries for maglev cars in In the Well include what their streamlining is. Doing a quick reverse-engineering using Vehicles indicates that the streamlining for the passenger car is about 8 -- between "very good" and "superior". To match the Shanghai maglev train I need total SI of around 37 (or 31 if the vehicle has a "responsive structure"). That's streamlining between "excellent" and "radical". The guidelines in Vehicles (p. 11) suggest that "slow but highly-streamlined craft" should have "very good" streamlining, but presumably that increases with TL...

Anyway, it definitely doesn't have to do with assumptions made about Mars (both Vehicles and ITW are clear that top speed depends on mass, not weight). But it might have to do with assumptions made by the writers of the book--without an explicit entry for streamlining, it's hard to tell.
A quick look at a picture suggests that the Shanghai trains have neat wedge-like noses, but I'd hesitate to call their streamlining "radical". And the Martian atmosphere is markedly thinner than Earth's, though far more than "trace".

I'm guessing that either the In the Well designs are rather under-powered, or the Vehicles system has a bit of a glitch here. Might be interesting to try and do the Shanghai system under Vehicles, then advance the TL a bit to see what happens to the numbers.
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