Removing the rails

Trains do it, roller coasters do it, rail guns and to a lesser degree coil guns do it, and now NASA may even give it a shot, but why must magnetic propulsion run on rails? Oh sure, stability you say. While that seems like the perfect motivation to tether a magnetic force in such a way, I find it cumbersome. Infrastructure, materials, and for gosh sakes space runs rails directly into the path of most resistance for me. Tear down the rails!

Electromagnetism can be projected, magnetic levitation and electrodynamic suspension can be achieved. Hydrogen floats, not because it's lighter than air, but because of it's atomic energy potential. It has so much energy potential, that within the field (here) where it exists, the path of least resistance is up rather than down.

Sure all the physicists and engineers haven't quite figured out how to harness electromagnetic energy in such a way as to make it a viable option for propulsion to the moon, or into the next galaxy, but why not to just try for down the road. Why are we reaching so far, when it could be applied so much more easily to oh say transportation problems closer to home.

Do we really have to build the rails higher and longer to reconnect the world in steel instead of concrete? Can't we scrap the metal and build an electromagnetic freeway of contained fields? Personal vehicles could be lifted into or lowered out of the fields magnetically, and propelled through them with no resistance, no wear, and no driving. Sure containment of the fields is necessary, we don't want all the random pacemakers across the country to flicker out when we apply a current, but I'm sure the answer to that problem lies in the Halbach array.

I know what you're saying, the Halbach array uses permanent magnets, and is exactly the sort of technology applied to rails, because it requires infrastructure to achieve the array. But is there some electromagnetic law which requires the array to be produced by permanent magnets, or could you use electromagnetic field generators, which produce variable magnetic outputs to reproduce the array as a projected field, mimicking its properties?

I bet if Tesla was here, he would be working on containment. So the Halbach array may or may not be able to be reproduced with magnetic field generators, there seems to be little published on the subject. But if the fundamental forces of gravity and electromagnetism are coupled, instead of trying to create some sort of anti-gravity via electromagnetism, couldn't we use gravitational forces to contain electromagnetic fields. It sure worked for the earth well enough. Not that I have an artificial gravity machine hanging out in the garage or anything, but think about it. Instead of fighting these natural forces, what if we simply redirected them, siphoned them. "Man vs. Nature: the road to victory!"

I have no diagrams or explanations, just questions. I am no engineer. I don't even like physics. But these questions are not only theoretical, they're fictional, the basis for my utopia, the backbone of my Eden. How can I create this world without the logistics well in hand? I'm not writing a book, I'm redesigning the world outside your window, and harder questions make for better answers, ask any journalist (except everyone at the FTU.)

These ideas do sap some energy from my character treatment this week, but it must be done. Settings: check, Heroins: check, basic invasion strategy: done, the world for which a Secret Monkey Robot Army is employed to bring about: gotta work out some of the bugs. This problem with rails is a big fat cicada, stuck to the screen door and driving me crazy!