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Yes, a little. In freefall, such as on orbit, you need 1 gravity of centripetal acceleration. a = v²/r; v = √(ar); if we assume a 3-meter radius (roughly Gravitron size) we need about 5.42 m/s tangential velocity to get one gee. The moon's gravitational acceleration is 1.62 m/s/s; to find the centripetal acceleration needed to get a Pythagorean sum of one gee, we take √((9.81 m/s/s)² - (1.62 m/s/s)²) = 9.67 m/s/s. That means that now our √(ar) tangential velocity is just 5.38 m/s, which is less than 5.42 m/s. Does that help? The main thing stopping earth trains from being faster is politics, not engineering. Trains have been occasionally going over 300 km/h since 01955, decades before maglev. The Shanghai Maglev Train has been running at 430 km/hr since 02004. The Euroduplex regularly runs 320 km/hr on regular 1435mm standard-gauge rails and reached almost 575 km/hr in a test in 02007. 300 km/hr trains have been in regular service since 01989. There are several other train lines that run over 300 km/hr, in Taiwan, PRC, France, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Korea, and Switzerland. Soon India and the US will join them. The big advantage of maglev is actually not smoothness or absolute speed but acceleration and deceleration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroduplex
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail#Speed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-speed_trains
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#Comparison_with_convent...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_High_Speed_Rail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_Zefiro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centripetal_force
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_vector#Addition_and_... |