[ExI] Earth hoola hoop generator/transport ?

[Alex Blainey]

 I had a crazy idea while designing an integrated solar panel roof system the other day. What if we make a maglev track around the equator, build a big solid continuous train on it like a hoola hoop around the world.
Would it start to rotate with no driving force other than Earths rotation? Effectivley it would actually be standing still and the planet continuing to do what it does and rotating underneath it.
We could put it in a vacuum tube to remove friction. Im assuming it would be levitating using halbach arrays which opposes coils in the track, so no friction there. Just the massive enertia of the thing.

If it did move, what speed would it get to? In theory somewhere round the 1000mph mark which seems like a reasonable transport speed to me. Even with losses of 25% for magnetic cogging, eddy currents, unseen forces it would still be faster than a passenger jet.

So what if we also used it to generate electricity? No reason why we can't use it as the rotor in an earth sized generator?
Do we have the resources for such a thing?

Then it got really wierd. What would happen to such a stationary (non rotating from a helio centric point of view) object? I personally believe that Earths orbit around the sun is partly a reaction to teh gravitational pull from the sun. In a "force felt on a rotating body is felt at 90 degrees" kind of way. If so, would the thing actually rotate under the force of gravity?

I have neither the time or maths for such thought experiments at this time of year (or any other come to think of it), Christmas is coming and I have crap to wrap!
just musing. :oD
A


 
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