Bobsled?

On reading Gerard O'Neill describe his "floater" technology, I had
thoughts of a "magna-luge".

O'Neill's floater was a mass transit system where the vehicle has
superconducting magnets and travels over a curved aluminum trough. The
moving magnets produce eddy currents in the conductive trough which
produce opposite polarity magnetic fields of their own, generating
dynamic lift. There is a certain drag associated with the resistive
losses in the eddy currents, but an interesting aspect of this is that
the higher the velocity, the less the drag. The opposite of the
situation for every other transportation system you can think of. For a
change, energy efficiency and customer preference are on the same side.

The dynamics of a floater skimming down its curved aluminum trough would
be similar to those of a luge sliding down its track. After thinking of
the "magna-luge", I then thought it might make an interesting
replacement for the roller coaster. One aspect which might not score
very highly with roller coaster aficionados is that the rackety roar
would be gone. It would be totally silent, except perhaps for a faint
whoosh of displaced air. But you couldn't beat it for speed and
smoothness.

Interestingly, there's a scientist out there who seems to have
independently re-invented Gerry's floater, though he improves on the
design by substituting Halbach arrays of permanent magnets for the
cooled superconductors on the train. Although he talks a lot about a
track of passive coils, he did have a design for a conductive trough
that he allowed would be cheaper to produce per foot. The reason, I'm
sure, why Gerry talked exclusively in terms of a curved aluminum trough
guideway.

Regards,

Mike Combs