this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
235 points (94.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43945 readers
623 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fewer major repairs is the way they save you money. Fewer moving parts, less friction, less wear and tear. All the energy savings gets tossed out the window in the interest of going faster, in the ones we've made so far anyway.
There may be fewer moving parts but that does not necessarily mean cheaper/less repairs. Current railway parts (especially wheels) are fairly low tech and easily fixed. What if the cooling of a superconducting magnet fails? Thatβs expensive.
Sure, I didn't say they never require maintenance or anything. Simply that over a long period of time they become cheaper to operate, after taking into account repair and replacement costs.
If you don't take repair and replacement costs into account, they become more expensive. This is probably another reason there are not many of them. Repair is where they save you the money though, due to how infrequently they require it.