for those who didn't know that's how we're making these floating skatebords and such the technique was discovered in 1911. how it works is that certain metals are super-conductant capable. What that means is that at below -269°C the metal will loose all resistance allowing it to develop very interesting properties when use in conjunction with a magnet or an electromagnet. basically the way of the future is finding a means to conserve temperatures with no loss or next to no loss. as the sub-zero part is the essential element and it is pointless if we must embark a great source of energy to power a refrigeration system. but basically "flying" or at least levitating cars could be on their way.
The only problem is the technique cannot work over any surface, like concrete. There would need to be magnets everywhere for it to be viable.
there is no "technique". it really is a superconductant and a magnet. I don't understand why you want to remove the magnet from the equation. of course it doesn't work then. it's the combination of the two that makes a whole. Have you ever heard of the JR-Maglev ? they didn't seem to take issue with building a whole railway system out of electromagnets. so why not a highway made of magnets ? this makes all of this : very possible. given we can fit an energy (cold temperature) conserving mechanism inside a car-sized skeleton. the initial great amount of cold could be provided either at the factory chain during construction or a a "cold refueling station" ^^ On the other hand. what you could have said (but I already said it the OP) is that it's not realistic to be using liquid nitrogen as a "second fuel". the stuff is just too expensive and the effect too short.
Unlike you, I've actually researched how expensive it would be to replace our entire roadway system with electronic power and monitoring systems. It's way too expensive for our current level of technology.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...es-the-way-for-billions-of-dollars-in-savings That's mostly true. New York has had one doing a similar thing before this, but the point remains. As an aside: That superconductor is relatively hot, same with the one in New York, to the traditional near 0K.
EDIT : fine. I was wrong. why wouldn't there be? there's an illegal market for high tension lines for christ's sake. "also"? this is the tech I linked in action. the skate park (I'm sure you noticed how spanking new and chrome it is) is stuffed with magnets. It of course does not work outside. that skateboard could be as thin as a real skateboard if we found a (skinny) way to conserve temperatures near losslessly instead of having that huge liquid nitrogen reservoir for longevity. still I doubt it lasts a whole day without needing refueling.
Tatsujb, why are you trying to talk about intelligent things? That's clearly not your field of expertise. And you say things like "did you know that to pointlessly argue, we are sending information to servers cross sea through cables that likely date back to 1860 or thereabouts and are made of copper not fiber optics?" Read before you write, learn before you try to teach.
Liquid nitrogen is cheaper than bottled water. If I could fuel a car with liquid nitrogen I'd sell that patent to oil companies faster than you could blink. EDIT: Just so we're clear, I DO understand that's not what's being proposed.
Yea the liquid nitrogen is the least of your problems. They've been looking into this for power cables and even that was very iffy. The power requirements for refrigeration and the cost of materials involved (i've yet to see a superconducting material, or powerful magnet, made of something cheap) is far, far worse than liquid nitrogen. Not to mention moving over to a magnet grid is going to be absolutely hell considering the differences between a car and a hovercar. There's a reason they did this on trains first. You can just build a track and a couple of trains that only run on that track. You don't need to switch tracks to other places, you don't need to build it so regular trains can run on it too. You don't need do deal with 2-d problems (train either goes back or forth) so it can be neatly stabilized.
about the liquid nitrogen I said price was an issue evidently it's not. the fact remains it's unrealistic to imagine hauling a whole tanker of it just to keep your car floating long enough. the weight of it alone makes the problem multiply itself. but it's not unrealistic to imagine this as progressively implemented. heck there's places where they build roads and bikeways that are crammed with solar panels. roads full of coils to charge your electric car through induction so it can run indefinitely. they start out by building a test city block then they try applying the model on a path between two points and then it spreads.
The problem is that hovercars have so many other problems. You need powerful magnets (Neodynium, probably. All those windmills are already putting quit the pressure on the world Neodynium supply), but also cars modified to hover. Regular cars will be driving over a very expensive road (which i imagine would be very bad for the road itself), while the modifications add to the weight of the car under any other circumstance. Solar panels in roads and coils in them don't hinder in any way. Regular cars can drive over them just fine, electric cars with induction charging can benefit from them while normal electric cars don't notice a difference. The infrastructure for electric cars is still there. A hovercar is just a more expensive car outside the hovergrid, with a worse economy. Lastly, somehow energy or money needs to be saved. Maglev trains are used because not only are they faster, they're also less maintenance-heavy (fewer moving parts) and the track itself needs minimal maintenance (no contact). Furthermore, important problems like leaves and ice on the rails are nonexistent which saves the company a lot of money. If you're gradually implementing hovercars, most of that is irrelevant.
Lol if you want a hover car you can do it with a petrol engine and a fan (otherwise known as a hovercraft, I've built one btw as an aside ). Hovercraft are surprisingly fuel efficient, especially when crossing water (the energy required to lift a hovercraft is small, much less than the energy required to drag a hull through water at any speed, a 10hp lift engine is sufficient to lift a hovercraft the size of a car and move 4 occupants plus luggage easily, the main downside efficiency wise is the poor input to output ratio of propellers for the forward thrust). The reason hovercraft aren't used more, is mainly due to the difficulty in safely piloting the things. They are notoriously hard to control and the motto of all hovercraft plots is 'if it looks like you might hit something, you're going to hit it'... I don't see that using a super conductor and magnet system really helps with that issue. Having wheels in contact with the floor gives unprecedented control compared to any hover system. Whilst these machines make sense for specific, controlled situations, the concept of Joe public having them en mass on the open road network is frankly terrifying
i don't imagine they would share it. normal cars can't drive on walls and the ceiling. actually the OP video demonstrated that it really does : the super conductor can only "glide" along a rail and is otherwise "locked". LEMME HAVE MY FLYING CARS WHY WON'T YOU!
