Chinese aerospace company announces ‘flying train’ concept

Just months after China’s “Rejuvenation” bullet train broke 400 kilometres per hour on its maiden voyage, the Chinese Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation is seeking to increase that speed by a factor of ten, according to the South China Morning Post. Last week, the company announced a plan to create a “flying train” combining technology from supersonic aircraft and magnetic levitation trains. The train would travel four times as fast as Elon Musk’s proposed Hyperloop, allowing passengers to travel between Beijing and Wuhan in just half an hour. The proposal has been met with scepticism by the scientific community. A professor told the paper that the human body could only tolerate such acceleration and speeds for very short periods of time. The company said it would begin rolling out trials at 1,000 kilometres per hour in regional cities and build up to its planned speed of 4,000 kilometres per hour.