All language subtitles for impossible.engineering.s01e05.worlds.fastest.train.hdtv.x264-w4f

Today on
"Impossible engineering,"

the Shanghai Maglev...
The fastest passenger train

on the planet,
with a top operating speed

of 268 miles per hour.

The Maglev is faster than
the formula one car.

It is flying along.

A train that defies
the most basic laws of motion.

The thing that's
different and very unique

about the Maglev is the fact
that it floats.

It took centuries of innovation

and experimentation...

Wow, it looks like something
out of the future.

To make the impossible possible.

Captions by vitac
www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by
Discovery communications

China is a country on the rise.

Its largest and wealthiest city,
Shanghai,

attracts people
from all over the world

with its ambition.

As Shanghai's population
increases,

so does its demand for space.

The city faces
heavy traffic jams

and congestion on a daily basis.

Shanghai is busy.

Cars, as well as buildings,

fight for space on the ground.

It can be very difficult
to move around.

By the beginning
of the 21st century,

Shanghai streets were
at maximum capacity.

A heavily congested
eight-Lane highway

was the city's only link

to the Pudong
international airport.

To get to the airport by car,

it takes 45 minutes.

You really need something
to cut through the city

to get to the airport
without stopping

and without encountering
any other vehicles.

I, like most people
in this city,

don't have time
to sit in traffic.

China's solution...

The Shanghai Maglev,
or transrapid...

A cutting-edge,

high-speed train,
the fastest in the world.

The thing that's
different and very unique

about the Maglev is the fact
that it floats.

It hasn't got any wheels.

It floats across the guideway
all the way to the airport.

Now the Maglev is just about
to pull out of the station.

When it's at its top speed,

it'll be moving
at 431 kilometers an hour.

That is just beyond belief,
incredible.

To design a passenger train

capable of reaching
268 miles per hour,

the Maglev's engineering team
had to toss out

many of the design features

we've come to associate
with trains.

First, their train
wouldn't have an engine.

Huh?

Then they would do away
with one of engineering's

most fundamental inventions...
The wheel.

Finally, they would defy
the most basic laws of motion.

Ow!

Ooh!

Wow! Ooh!

But before engineers
could design

their futuristic train
with no engine or wheels,

they had to figure out
a way to fit it

into the already overcrowded
streets of Shanghai.

Shanghai is one of

the most heavily populated
cities in the world,

and the population
is increasing.

Now, building the infrastructure
it needs is very challenging

just because there is no space.

Like all the buildings
around here,

the only place really to build
is to go up.

Chicago is one of
the world's busiest cities.

The logistical challenge of
moving around its inhabitants

is a daunting task...

But the city's early planners
came up with an idea

over 100 years ago that still
keeps the city moving today.

In the late 19th century,

Chicago is one of
the fastest-growing cities,

if not the fastest-growing city
in the world.

In the 1840s,

shortly after the city
was established,

we had roughly about
4,000 people.

And by 1900, we've got over
a million and a half.

Our city is rapidly expanding.

It's almost the Shanghai
of the late 19th century.

So, how did engineers

and planners deal with the need

to transport the city's
growing population

without clogging the busy
city streets even further?

So this is the solution
that was developed,

to elevate the city's rail lines
above the street traffic.

Although it's not cheap to do
this type of infrastructure,

it is cheaper, of course,
than building subways.

Work began
on Chicago's train in 1892...

But building tracks
30 feet above

the city streets was not
welcomed by everybody.

Third-floor apartment tenants

now had to keep their curtains
closed if they wanted privacy,

and young women were
warned to be careful

of roving,
railborne Peeping Toms.

Nevertheless, the system
was a big hit for most.

It was lovingly nicknamed
the "I," short for elevated.

We're here at Quincy.

This "I" station
has been restored,

and it gives us a sense of what
commuters would have seen

in the late 1890s.

And the basic concept of moving
people in and out of the city

at a different level

than street level has not
changed since then.

Elevating the city's train

was a solution so successful

that, more than 120 years later,

the "I" is still transporting

a half-million passengers
each day.

The growth of the "I"

and the growth of Chicago
are synonymous.

The boom of population

in the late 19th century
follows right along

with the growth of
this transit system.

And I don't think, without
the "I," we would have had

this great, vibrant American
city that we have today.

Engineers of the Shanghai Maglev

are taking Chicago's idea

of an elevated
passenger train...

Ooh!

That was fast.

...And giving it
a 21st century twist.

Engineers of the Shanghai Maglev

have taken Chicago's
century-old solution

of an elevated railroad
and created their own

19-mile guideway
high above the city streets.

The advantage
a system like this has

in already built-up urban spaces

is it's very easy to install.

It doesn't interfere

with underground services.

It doesn't interfere
with existing

infrastructure at ground level,
which is really good.

But building
an elevated guideway

in this part of the world

came with some
unique challenges.

Shanghai sits in an area
of great seismic activity.

It also has weak Clay soil.

The risk of liquefaction
is very high.

Liquefaction is an unusual

and dramatic phenomenon

that can occur during
an earthquake,

when solid ground turns to mush.

Aah!

Physicist Andrew Steele

has prepared a simple
demonstration

to show how liquefaction works.

So this water represents
the groundwater.

This ground has got
a very high water table,

so it's only got a thin layer

of dry soil on top of
the saturated soil underneath.

So, imagine you build
on this land,

you construct
your beautiful city.

But you built on Sandy soil,

and you build on a fault line.

So there's the danger
of an earthquake.

You can see that,
as you shake it,

then the groundwater
is forced up

into the top layer of the soil,
and that changes its state

from that of a solid to very
much behaving like a liquid,

and the buildings are just
sinking straight into it.

Earthquakes are
a constant threat in Shanghai.

If the ground liquefies,
the Maglev's designers

had to ensure the tracks

wouldn't sink
into the soft soil.

So engineers developed
a technique called piling.

They built each support pier
on top of a giant concrete cap.

Underneath the caps are concrete
piles,

which are driven 200 feet
into the ground.

If the soil near the surface
liquefies,

the deep roots will hold
the Maglev's track in place.

In less than nine months,

Chinese engineers constructed
over 2,500 concrete columns

to support the guideway.

This would be
the fastest train in the world.

But trying to get
a train up to speeds

pushing 500 kilometers an hour,

designers would be faced
with the problem

of wind resistance or drag.

The greater the speed,
the greater the resistance.

And all this air movement has

the potential effect
of slowing the train down

and wasting valuable energy.

To build a train

that can break
300 miles per hour,

engineers had to look back

to the great innovations
of the past for the solution.

The earliest evidence
of railroads

can be traced back
to ancient Greece.

Men and animals pulled wheeled
vehicles in limestone grooves.

The grooves prevented the wagons

from leaving
their intended route.

Railroads were developed as
a way of reducing friction.

In 1805, the English discovered
that a good horse

on an ordinary road could pull
a wagon weighing a ton.

But on rails,
that same horse could pull

12 wagons each weighing
three tons for six miles

in just two hours.

Oh.

When steam power was introduced,

continents could be
crossed with ease,

transforming the modern world.

Railroads dramatically
changed the way we live.

But throughout the 19th
and early 20th century,

train design was
at a standstill.

Train design fundamentally
hadn't changed for 100 years

since this, stephenson's rocket.

You can see the classic
cylindrical boiler.

We got a smokestack
at the front,

and its completely snubbed,
flat, unaerodynamic nose.

It would take a radical thinker

to shake things up.

And in the 1930s, england
steam locomotive engineer

Nigel Gresley designed a new,
sleek machine that would,

at the time, be the fastest
train in the world...

The Mallard.

Everything about this
locomotive is designed to go

as fast as possible.

You've got these massive wheels
driving it forward.

We've got a double chimney
to suck out the exhaust

as quickly as possible
at high speed,

and then you've got this
beautiful streamlined shape

in stark contrast to the trains
that had come before.

Gresley used a wind tunnel

to develop the Mallard.

Wind tunnels
had been used on planes

but never on a train before.

He made some interesting
discoveries.

Andrew Steele is visiting a test
center called the train rig

to see firsthand the difference

a streamlined train design
can create.

This is the test track.
It's 150 meters long,

and we can accelerate trains
to 75 meters a second,

which is over
250 kilometers an hour.

Today we've got
two different trains

that we're going to be testing.

This is a flat-nosed
freight train,

which represents sort of
an unaerodynamic train

as they were
originally designed.

And this one here
is a high-speed train.

Got this sloped nose.

We're going to see what
difference that makes

to the speed the train
can travel at.

And this is what
we're going to be using

for the actual experiment.

These things here
are light gates.

And when the train
goes past this one,

it interrupts the light beam,
and we can detect that time.

Then, a fraction
of a second later,

it'll go past this light gate,
interrupts this beam,

and by measuring the difference
between two times,

we know this distance here,

so we can work out exactly
how fast it's going.

The model trains are fired

using giant rubber catapults.

So I was just applying
some tension to the track now,

and that's pulling the train
back into the firing position.

I'm almost as tense
as the train is.

Okay.

So just...
Here goes.

Ooh!

That was fast.

Ooh!

And believe it or not,

that was a sort of
slow test run.

So now that we've done
that test run,

the key thing is to find out
the readings that we got

from these light meters.

We've got two readings here.

At the first set of light gates,

it was doing about
36 meters per second.

But then, by the time the second
set of light gates,

just a couple of meters later,
it's only doing 34 1/2 meters

a second, so you can see
it's lost some speed,

the aerodynamic drag
has kicked in

and slowed the train down.

In the short distance
between gates,

the flat-nosed train loses
around 5% of its speed.

Next to be tested is
the sloping-nosed model.

Ready, aim, and fire.

Phew!

Wow.

Oh.

The sloping-nosed
model's speed reduces by only 2%

between the light gates.

Phew!

So these numbers,
they're quite subtly different.

But when you scale it up
to a full-sized train

and you're looking to propel it
constantly down the track,

this can translate into a big
change of efficiency.

A fact

Nigel Gresley discovered
while designing the Mallard

and exploited brilliantly.

Gresley's engineering really was

a complete step change.

Although we'd used aerodynamics
in planes

and hydrodynamics was known
about in boats,

this was the first time

those principles had been
applied to a train.

And that is what enabled
the Mallard

to travel at 126 miles per hour.

In 1938, the Mallard
set the record

for the fastest
steam train on rails,

a record which
still stands today.

The designers of
the Shanghai Maglev

have learned from
the breakthroughs

made by the Mallard
and created a train

that travels at speeds that
innovator Nigel Gresley

would have thought
to be impossible.

In one test run, it exceeded
300 miles per hour...

Almost three times what
the Mallard was capable of.

You can see it has a very sleek,

streamlined design

with a very smooth,
sloping nose.

Also the train wraps itself
around the guideway

which reduces turbulence that
might otherwise be generated

between the train and the track.

But to build

the fastest passenger train
on the planet,

engineers would need more than
just an aerodynamic design,

so they drew inspiration

from a decades-old
engineering experiment...

They combined the principle
of the hovercraft

and a jet engine,

and they smashed
the rail speed record.

...To create their own
impossible engineering.

The Shanghai Maglev

is the fastest passenger train
on the planet.

It travels at an astonishing
top operating speed

of 268 miles per hour.

The train has transformed travel

between downtown Shanghai
and Pudong airport.

The Maglev runs

all the way from here
to Pudong airport,

which is a 34-kilometer journey
in that direction.

Now if I was to get the Metro,

it would take me over an hour.

If I got a cab, it would take me
40 minutes or so.

But if I got the Maglev,
which I like to do,

it takes me only seven minutes.

But the development

of the futuristic Maglev
took decades of experimentation

before it reached its incredible
21st century performance levels.

Created in Germany,

the first
passenger-carrying prototype,

the transrapid Maglev system,
was unveiled

in 1971.

It traveled at speeds

where little consideration
to aerodynamics was necessary.

But as experiments continued

and speeds rapidly increased,

the train car design
that now graces

Shanghai's elevated track
took shape.

However, increased speed

means increased
engineering challenges.

The Maglev going to the airport

and the Maglev
coming from the airport

pass each other at
incredible speeds,

potentially
a combined speed of over

860 kilometers per hour.

And this could cause
a potential problem.

However sleek the design,

any object passing
another at speed

creates a change in pressure
between them.

Lower pressure,
as the trains are together,

followed by a return to a higher
pressure once they've passed.

This could potentially cause
stresses to the cabin walls.

So maglevs have been engineered

with an aluminium
composite shell,

light, but at the same time,
strong and stiff enough

to support the pressure

acting on the structure
by high-speed traveling.

But there were
other design elements

that the Maglev's engineers
had to consider

if they wanted their train to
achieve record-breaking speeds.

It's not just the wind

that provides friction
on the train.

One of the biggest
losses of energy

that occurs
in a traditional train

is produced by the friction

between the wheels
and the track.

The more friction there is,
the more power is lost.

In a car like this, for example,

1/3 of the fuel is spent on
overcoming friction.

To limit the negative
effects of friction,

engineers designed
the Maglev in a way

that only some of history's most
daring engineers have attempted.

Physicist Andrew Steele is in

the French countryside looking
for the remains of a system

that could have been
just as revolutionary

as the Maglev.

So here it is, over 50 years old
and covered in moss.

This is what its creators
thought would be

the future of
high-speed mass transit...

A single concrete rail,
straddled by a train,

capable of traveling

at 422 kilometers an hour,
at a time

when the speed record
for a conventional train

was just half that.

So what kind of vehicle

was capable of overcoming
the forces of friction

to travel over
250 miles per hour?

The answer lies in
a closely guarded warehouse.

I've come to
a top-secret location

somewhere outside Paris

to get a rare look
at what could have been

the future of land
transportation.

Hello.
Good morning.

So, where's it kept?

Hidden among

an assortment
of military vehicles

are the last surviving examples
of an extraordinary experiment.

Wow.

So this is the Aérotrain.
Yes.

It looks like something
out of the future.

Designed by engineer
Jean Bertin in the 1960s,

the Aérotrain 01 and 02 are
the only surviving prototypes

of a system that hoped to change
train travel forever.

You can see the Aérotrain
doesn't have any wheels.

Now that might seem strange,

but although the wheels
have been the basis

for land transport
for thousands of years,

they come with a big
disadvantage,

because the wheels
rub against the ground.

They create friction,

and the Aérotrain
tries to get around that.

Engineers and scientists have
been toying with the idea

of frictionless travel
for some time.

The idea is that,
if you can remove

that frictional resistance
to motion,

then you can make things travel
faster and more efficiently.

The simplest way
to do that might be

to levitate it
on a cushion of air,

and that's the principle behind
how a hovercraft works.

We've got our own very simple
model of a hovercraft here.

It's just a cd with the top
of a drinks bottle on it

and then a balloon.

Before we inject
that cushion of air,

the cd only moves a very small
distance across the table

when I tap it.

However, what we can do

is attach a balloon
to this drinks bottle top

and see if that makes
any difference

to the way that the cd moves.

So here we go.

You can see that now,
with a tiny tap,

the cd moves a long way.

And just as long as the balloon
has got some pressure

to force that air down
underneath the cd,

then it'll keep on
moving around freely.

But when the balloon runs out,
of course,

the cushion of air vanishes
and the cd is just as hard

to move across the table
as it was before.

In here, we've got the guts
of the Aérotrain.

And incredibly,
there were just two regular

car engines
which power massive fans.

And that blasts air downwards

to lift the train up off
the ground and then inwards

to keep it centered
on the track.

That means the train isn't
in contact with the ground

or the track, and so that source
of friction is removed,

and that means that
more of the energy

from this engine up here,

the propeller, can be used
to power the train

to move forwards.

It's 11 meters long,
weighs 2.6 tons,

and yet the air gushing
out of these nozzles

is enough to keep it floating
two or three millimeters

above the track.

By 1967,

the Aérotrain was proving
its potential

on the test track
as the next generation

of passenger transport.

A plan to build a track

for the Aérotrain between
Paris and Orléans...

65 miles in 35 minutes.

For Aérotrain mark 02,

Jean Bertin went
all out for speed.

The Aérotrain 02

was a futuristic combo
of fighter jet, race car,

train, and hovercraft.

It looks like something
out of a Sci-Fi movie,

but the technology itself
is actually pretty simple.

I think my favorite control

is this one that goes marché
and arret.

So it's basically stop and go
just by flicking a switch.

Nevertheless,
it was the combination

of engineering ideas

that made Jean Bertin's
Aérotrain groundbreaking.

Bertin's ideas
really were revolutionary.

They combined the principle of
the hovercraft and a jet engine.

This was the first time
it had ever been done.

Combined, they smashed
the rail speed record.

An aircraft jet engine
gives initial thrust

up to speeds of around
185 miles per hour.

An additional rocket motor
boosts the mph to 235.

Sadly,

Jean Bertin's dream
of friction-free travel

died in the 1970s

when the French government
abandoned the experiment.

But almost a half century later,

the Aérotrain has
a familiar-looking cousin

over 3,000 miles away in China.

The Shanghai Maglev...

The world's fastest
passenger train,

a unique engineering feat

situated in one of China's
most ambitious cities.

This Maglev here is the only

high-speed Maglev in the world,
and that kind of

chimes in with
the ambition of Shanghai.

People come here to design
daring buildings

and daring systems.

And one of
the most daring of them all

is the Maglev...

Traveling at a staggering
268 miles per hour,

appearing to defy physics.

The first time I
traveled in the Maglev,

we hit 400, and I thought,
"oh, my goodness."

And then it continued
to travel even faster.

I could not believe what I was
seeing and experiencing.

And it is currently doing
a top speed,

flying pretty much at
431 kilometers an hour.

And it still feels
very comfortable

for the speed at which
it's traveling.

The Maglev is faster
than the formula one car.

It is flying along.

The Maglev's record-
breaking speed is possible

because it's levitated
above the track

by powerful electromagnets

instead of a hovercraft design
like the French Aérotrain.

But levitating
a train with magnets

would be impossible without one
of science's great innovators.

Born in 1791,

Michael Faraday was the son
of a blacksmith

and received little
formal education,

but he would go on
to revolutionize

the engineering world.

His original laboratory

still exists at London's
royal institution...

I'm going to give it
a little push.

Where physicist Andrew Steele

is exploring how Faraday's
discoveries

made magnetic levitation
possible.

Faraday's discoveries
revolutionized

our understanding
of the interplay

between electricity
and magnetism.

And one of the things that this
understanding allows us to make

is an electromagnet.

So an electromagnet is made
of a coil of wire.

You then need to get the ends
of those pieces of wire

and plug them into
a power supply.

And, finally, to magnify
the magnetic effect,

you often place a core
of a material like iron

in the middle of the magnet.

Let's connect this up.

And to prove to you that
that's magnetic,

you can see...

That even with this extremely
simple setup,

we can actually get a piece
of metal to stick to it.

Another crucial factor
about electromagnets,

if you want to use them
for levitation,

is that we can change
their strength,

and we can do that very easily.

Just by changing
the electric current

passing through this magnet,

I can turn the current down

and make the attraction
much weaker.

Or I can turn the current up
and make that attraction

get stronger again.

Not only can
electromagnets be adjusted

and turned on or off at will,

but they're also significantly
stronger than ordinary magnets.

If you want to suspend
an entire train,

you're going to need a pretty
powerful electromagnet.

And actually, electromagnets
are pretty strong.

This little one is enough to
suspend my entire body weight.

And actually,

this thing needs surprisingly
little electric current.

There's less electricity
flowing through this device

than there is through your hair
dryer or your kettle at home.

We've got an electrical current

flowing through this
electromagnet.

If we connect it to the piece
of metal on my back,

then, hopefully, there should be
enough strength

to hold me above the floor.

And there you have it.

On the Shanghai Maglev,

powerful electromagnets

are installed into the underside
of the train cars,

allowing them to float.

Guidance magnets
keep the train centered,

and support magnets pull
the unit

to the underside of the track,
lifting the train above.

The entire train floats,

suspended 10 millimeters
below the track.

Not only does this reduce
wear and tear,

but it also makes for

extremely fast,
friction-free travel.

Because there's no contact

between the train
and the guideway,

there is no friction,
and this means that the train

can have a lifetime
of up to 50 years

with minimum maintenance
required.

But while designing

China's futuristic
passenger train,

developers couldn't just
focus on speed.

They had to ensure the Maglev

was environmentally
friendly, too.

China,
like all modern economies,

is worried about
its carbon emission quota.

As development continues,

the demand for oil
will also likely increase,

but China has a limited
domestic oil supply.

With its current gas-guzzling
congestion problems,

greener transport initiatives
are drastically needed.

Otherwise, the city will choke.

Their environmentally
friendly solution

came from one of history's
great engineering innovators.

In the late 1940s,

a British engineer's
groundbreaking experiment

would earn him the nickname

"the father of the Maglev."

This is a sheet of aluminium.

When I put it on the motor
and switch on the magnets,

something pretty
dramatic occurs.

Electrical genius
Eric laithwaite

developed the first practical
linear electric motor,

creating an effect he later
dubbed the magnetic river.

First of all, it will levitate,

or support, an aluminium plate.

It will guide it sideways,

and it will also
propel it along.

The linear motor

takes a traditional coiled
electric motor and unrolls it.

Instead of spinning a rotor,
what was the coil, or stator,

provides a bed that drives
the object along its length.

And there you have your modern

vehicle being guided,
lifted, and propelled,

all by means of
the same set of coils.

Laithwaite's experiments

provided the key that unlocked
the potential of the Maglev.

The builders of
the transrapid Maglev system

constructed a series
of stator blocks.

They are the main component
of the linear motor

and act as the propulsion system
for the train.

Once installed,
they were tested in Germany,

and in combination
with the support

and guidance magnets, enabled
the Shanghai Maglev to levitate.

The train can travel
over 300 miles an hour

without an on board engine.

A linear motor
is embedded into the guideways.

But don't be fooled

into thinking this whole track
is electrified all the time.

What is so brilliant
about this system

is that only the sections
of the track

on which the vehicle moves

is powered at any time.

So as it sets off, the track
ahead of it is dormant,

and only the section in front
of the Maglev turns on.

As soon as the Maglev has passed
over the short section of track,

it turns off again,

as the job of pushing
the Maglev along is taken up

by the next section of track.

And so on and so on,
all the way to its destination.

But with less than six inches

between the Maglev
and its guideway,

even the slightest malfunction
could be catastrophic.

It is critical to maintain

an even gap between
the train and the track,

no matter how many
passengers are on board.

To do this,
the Maglev's builders

had to create one last piece
of impossible engineering.

Traveling at an astonishing

268 miles per hour

while floating on
a magnetic field,

the Shanghai Maglev is the only
high-speed train of its kind

operating commercially
in the world.

But having a levitating train
fly through Shanghai

at such high speeds comes with
several engineering challenges.

There is a carriage
hurtling along

at over 430 kilometers per hour.

So it is critical to control

fluctuations in
the magnetic field

and maintain an even gap

between the train and the track,

no matter how many passengers
are on board

or what variations there are
in the load it's carrying.

With just six inches between

the Maglev and its guideway,
any errors could see the train

crunch into the track.

The engineering team's solution,

as physicist Andrew Steele
demonstrates,

relies on sensors
constantly regulating

the current flowing through
the electromagnets.

There we go.

You can see this
permanent magnet

is suspended underneath
this electromagnet.

Whenever
the permanent magnet moves

slightly imperceptibly closer,

this little sensor on
the bottom here detects that,

sends a message down
to these electronics,

and tells the electromagnet
to become a little bit weaker.

It turns down the current.

That allows the ball to fall
away a little bit.

As it falls away,
the sensor detects that again

and increases the strength
of the electromagnet

and pulls the ball
back towards it.

So one complication
of this system

is that your feedback system
always needs to be working,

and it needs to be
working very fast.

You can see this ball

is spinning and wobbling
a tiny bit,

and that's fine for a little
demonstration like this.

But if you got a train traveling

at hundreds of kilometers
an hour along the track,

you're going to need
a very, very sensitive

and accurate feedback system.

The Shanghai Maglev

takes this simple concept
to a whole new level.

There are 128 sensors in each
section of the Maglev vehicle.

They feed back the distance
between magnets and track

thousands of times a second.

Powerful computers adjust
the electromagnet's current

constantly
with microscopic accuracy.

This is the guideway,

and the train floats one
centimeter from the guideway.

Now, that is incredible
precision.

Now, there's a computer system
that makes sure

that, all of the time,
the train floats

at one centimeter
from the guideway.

An advanced computer system

regulates the operation
of the train service.

Each journey's travel time
is predictable to the second.

Now, this is
the ambition of the Maglev,

with computer systems

able to achieve
an extremely precise service.

It's taken decades of planning,

design, and testing to create

the world's only commercially
operating high-speed Maglev.

It's a unique concept that
throws away the rule book

for traditional train travel

and makes high-speed journeys
possible in engineless vehicles.

A system like the Maglev

points to the future of
transport in our world,

incredible things
to be achieved.

This shows us that
we can get people moving

from "a" to "b" in short
periods of time,

which is great.

By drawing on
the innovations of the past,

adapting, improving them,

and making breakthroughs
of their own,

the designers and engineers

of the Shanghai Maglev

have realized the dream
of a super-fast train

that flies without wings

and have succeeded in making
the impossible...

Possible.

It's kind of unbelievable

that there's a train that goes
over 400 kilometers an hour.

It is a vision of the future,

and it's here right now.