It will soon be possible to get from Milan to Rome in half an hour. The super-train will connect the two "capitals" of Italy at supersonic speed: but when? In 2050. A date that in terms of investments for the future is not as far off as it seems. Indeed, the progress of infrastructures has been very rapid in recent years if we think that in 1905 the State Railways, born in that year, took 14 hours to travel the same distance by steam train. Today the Frecciarossa and Italo-Ntv connect the two cities in 3 hours and the Frecciarossa 1000 in two and a half hours.
What will happen in the next few years? It is being talked about at World Congress on Railway Research, the world congress of railway innovation. The train that will transport us from Milan to Rome (or vice versa) in half an hour will be similar to a long tube inside which will run an aluminum capsule of almost the same section. There will be no wagons but only one locomotive-torpedo which will also accommodate 40 or 50 passengers. It will travel on a magnetic levitation track of the type that already exists today, but the novelty will be that a kind of fan – placed in front of the locomotive – will suck in the air, creating a vacuum. In this way the torpedo train will be sucked into the tube without creating friction.
The predictions of the engineers are that the new super-train will exceed the speed of sound. Are we traveling in a stellar film? Not at all. The super-train project is called Hyperloop and was subjected to a feasibility test in Nevada this year (without passengers) and in a few years it could start the first trips, at reduced speed, between Los Angeles and San Francisco and between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
