Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop': More Details Revealed 533
astroengine writes "Entrepreneur Elon Musk revealed details today about his concept for a high-speed transportation system he calls the Hyperloop. After tweeting that he'd pulled an all-nighter preparing for the announcement, Musk told Businessweek that the design could transport people as well as cars inside aluminum pods that move up to 800 miles per hour through a tube. The tubes would be mounted on columns 50 to 100 yards apart, not interfering with land needs because it would essentially follow major highways, such as I-75 in California."
I-75? (Score:5, Informative)
. . . it would essentially follow major highways, such as I-75 in California.
Let the record show that TFA correctly states "I-5". Somebody in Michigan needs to watch his typos.
Re:Cool but probably not feasible... (Score:4, Informative)
It seems to me he has absolutely NO idea about the very real engineering challenges to something like this.
As opposed to some smartass cunt on the Internet.
By your logic we should be hand-carrying water buckets around to wash our ass with. FUCK I wish this site would go back to what it once was.
Re:I-75? (Score:5, Informative)
Lets see... build a system where one small misalignment will mean crashes that kill passengers, in a state that has more earthquakes than anywhere else in the US... Riiiiiiiiiiiight...
The faultlines are mostly along the coast. The hyperloop would run mostly through the central valley. Even if there was a big quake, the seismic waves would take time to propagate, so there would be time to react.
It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be an improvement on the alternatives. If you look at the current plan for high speed rail between SF to LA, almost anything would be an improvement.
Re:How safe would this be? (Score:4, Informative)
A fast deceleration caused by what?
Like detecting a crack or fault in the tube structure shortly ahead of the current location and it needs to come to an immediate stop.
Most fast-decelerations that planes suffer are imposed at 9.8m/s^2...
Actually almost None do, a plane becomes a glider when it's engines quits and glides to the ground. 9.8 m/s^2 would imply that it descends straight down like a rock with no air resistance. When engines fail planes can glide to a landing and then skid on the ground with the resistance of the ground slowing the plane down during the "slapdown"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Impact_Demonstration
Re:How safe would this be? (Score:5, Informative)
The target speed was never 4000 MPH (I think you're confusing this with ET3's proposal). For deceleration: emergency brakes and the cars have wheels for emergencies. One question that should be asked is, what is it going to crash into? Not other capsules, they're moving away from you and have a huge safety margin of distance between them. Not the station, it's a passive system that handles deceleration (no power required). If the capsule needs to decelerate themselves for some reason, you're going from a maximum of 760 MPH to 0 MPH using the capsule's mechanical emergency breaking system. At the same deceleration as the capsules would accelerate, that's about seventy seconds over roughly seven and a half miles. Which is much faster than a high-speed train can do the same thing.
The document Must posted does cover several emergency scenarios. Passenger health emergency? Best thing is to keep going to next station as scheduled, with a maximum trip length of 35 minutes it's the fastest way to get an active response, and much faster than you can get emergency services to an in-flight aircraft. Major depressurization of a car? Actuate emergency breaks on all cars and rapidly re-pressurize the entire tube. Major earthquake (beyond the ability of the pylon dampers to handle)? Emergency break all the capsules and wait it out. Power outage? The system has many times more stored battery capacity to complete all in-progress journeys. Power failure of system itself? Cars are self-powered, so can coast a decent distance themselves, and then the batteries normally used to power the turbine can be used instead to power motors on the emergency wheels to get the capsules either to the station at the end of the line or the closest emergency exit location. I'm sure there are tons of possibilities that haven't been accounted for, but many are.
Re:Magnetic fields for passengers (Score:4, Informative)
Read the paper [teslamotors.com] [PDF] not the article. There are no magnetic fields impinging on the cabin space. The proposal is to use pressurized air as the suspension medium, not magnetic levitation. The turbine used to pressurize enough air fast enough is electric, but it keeps its fields tightly inside itself, as with all good electric motors.
Re:very unfeasible (Score:5, Informative)
Amtrak spent $80 million back in the 1980s on a plan to build a high speed rail from LA to San Diego. Every little burg between the two cities sued to stop it. They finally sold the plans to somebody for $5 million.
Re:Remarkably Cheap! (Score:4, Informative)
If you read the paper in detail, you'll find some numbers. Since it's not a really hard vacuum inside the tube, and since it's cylindrical, the tube isn't as thick as you'd think. The tube walls are 20 to 23 mm thick (0.8 to 0.9 inches). That thickness can handle the load of the pressure differential, the torsion of its own weight between pillars, and the loading caused by the passing of the capsules, as well as standing up to quite a bit of seismic activity. Steel is pretty strong stuff. Cost for just the tube in the passenger-only model is $650 million. Upgrade the width to allow it to transport cars and light trucks and the tube costs somewhat less than twice that. $1.2 billion or so. That includes fabrication.
Surprisingly enough, the pillars cost more than the tube. Steel reinforced concrete with height adjustment gear should run around $2.55 billion for the passenger-only version or $3.15 billion for the vehicle version.
I suspect the competing design is spending more on real estate than the entire Hyperloop system. Hyperloop can use much of the I-5 route, saving a fortune in real estate costs, an option not available for heavy rail on the ground.
Re:Cheaper than high-speed rail??? (Score:5, Informative)
"this will be cheaper than a high-speed rail?"
Red tape? ROW restrictions? Sound Pollution? Grade restrictions? base material restrictions? etc. High speed rail has some pretty significant drawbacks that limit its use and increase its costs. There are some pretty significant advantages to elevating the "tubeway", decreasing the size of the footprint (ROW in this case) and simplifying the "cars". Not saying its going to be a walk in the park, but with high speed rails mounting costs ($65-117 Billion and climbing) for Californians HSR project alone and ever distant completion times (2040 at the earliest) alternatives should be considered.
Re:very unfeasible (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously you didn't RTFA as a ordinary idiot. Part of the proposal is to turn that boundary layer problem into an advantage by turning it into an air bearing and having a turbo fan engine (electrically powered... another of Elon Musk's ideas he has toyed with so far as to make electrically powered airplanes) suck up the air in front of the pod and blast it out of the back of the pod.
The air itself in the tube isn't really moving. The tube is kept at a partial vacuum, but it doesn't have to be a perfect vacuum. Essentially, the pod is "flying" through the tube in a fashion similar to an airplane.
At least download the PDF file and make some intelligent comments rather than suggesting the guy is insane based upon wild ass speculation of what folks thought the concept might be prior to Musk's announcement.
Re:I-75? (Score:4, Informative)
Musk's design document (the PDF he provided) calls for three dampeners per pylon to mitigate earthquake damage.
Re:Real prices vs. fantasy prices (Score:5, Informative)
The pipeline industry has been solving it for decades. There's even an oil pipeline over a fault in Alaska that moved by ten metres in an earthquake which survived because of a clever design of a couple of bends over the fault. For extreme thermal expansion problems look at power station pipework, and something like this is not so limited to materials that can withstand high temperatures and pressures. Great big compressible plastic rings are used between segments of some water pipelines for instance.