The Story of the String Train

To continue the transportation theme for today, as we had the new trains, now something that was planned to be built 30 years ago, back in 1970s. It was called the “super string transportation system” and was claimed to come to replace the existing rail road technologies.

The steel cords under great tension had to be stretched on the polls across all the country to support the high speed (up to 500 km/h - 300 mph) trains movement.

The project was pretty fast approved by Soviet government because of its cheap cost if compared to conventional rail roads - no need to prepare Earth surface - just put some polls and you are ready to go.

As always, it started with just sketches on paper, made in the manner it looked to be contemporary in 1970s.

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New Trains

Category: Funny, Photos, Technology |

Now they have new trains going from Moscow to St.Petersburg with the speeds up to 300 km/h (200 mph).

6 Russian People Who Changed the USA

1) Sergey Brin – Google

Sergey Brin, who was born August 21, 1973, in Moscow, became a co-founder of Google, Inc., the world’s largest Internet company, providing users with a technology of search and a number of other important features in on-line world. In 2009 he was ranked as the 26th richest person in the world by Forbes. He immigrated to the United States in his childhood, when he was just 6, and when Sergey grew up, he began to study mathematics, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. First, Brin got a diploma of the University of Maryland, and then he became Ph.D in computer science at Stanford.

The Unknown Harry Potter Stories from Russia

In Russia Harry Potter is popular too, in fact it was way too popular so some book publishing companies came up with their Harry Potter clones, trying to make it sound close to original even in naming the characters, so the most two popular ones were (and still are) the Porry Gatter with its first book “Porry Gatter and the Stoned Philosopher” - you can see it’s cover above, and the girlish series “Tanya Grotter” - like if Harry Potter was a girl (on the photo below).

Each series got a few sequels and got appreciated greatly by the readers.

Then in order not to miss the buzz the Russian computer game producers came up with video games devoted to the stoned professor and Tanya Grotter, the first one was called “Tany Grotter and the Disappearing Floor” - for sure that disappearing floor was an evil trick of the Stoned Professor.

Brand New Mercedes

Before

After

When one has an old W124 Mercedes he can just live with this or he can’t.

If he can’t he can build his very own new model of the car to shock the neighbors and friends, like this guy from Rostov on Don Russian city.

Such kind of tuning looks bit like the Middle Eastern modifications, I wonder if the doors are being opened in Lambo style

Russian Jet Cabrio Flight

Those photos are real and were made during the filming of the Russian movie involving jet fighter stunts. In one episode they had to film the jet without a canopy, so rather to film it on the ground they decided to hire a high-class pilot to make a real flight without that glass thing. He had to take off a few times on such plane in order to film enough material to be included in the final footage.

“The maximum speed I achieved on the jet plane without a canopy glass was around two times greater than speed of sound. While on this speed I even managed to pull out my fingers in glove for an inch or two outside - it became heated very fast because of immense friction force plane undergoes with the air.“, writes the pilot.

“Usually such tests were conducted in winter time, so it was deadly cold without a canopy and I was pretty glad when this heating began, counting minutes before the plane would reach enough speed/velocity so that the air around becomes hot enough. But it wasn’t the main problem for me. In my personal rating of the dangers connected with such tests one of the most bad sides was the extreme roar. Because of this extreme roaring you couldn’t hear the radio so you were flying in deaf mode, you were afraid to pull throttle harder just because going faster was meaning going louder.“, he continues.