SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track 124
Jason Koebler reports that SpaceX is building a small-scale version of Elon Musk's hyperloop transport tube system, which can move cargo and people at speeds over 700 mph. The test track will be approximately one mile long, and its inner diameter will be between four and five feet. But while SpaceX is building the track, it's not going into full development mode. Instead, the company is turning it into a competition. Other organizations will be invited to build pods — the containers that move through the tubes — and test them inside the track. They say the competition will be geared toward university students and independent engineering teams. SpaceX expects the testing to happen next June, and they've published a document with details on the competition. They add, "The knowledge gained here will continue to be open-sourced."
LOL ... awesome ... (Score:3, Funny)
We should totally avoid testing on humans ... so I propose lawyers and sales people for the full acceleration/deceleration tests.
Because I'm betting this has the potential to liquefy the humans inside it.
Re:LOL ... awesome ... (Score:5, Funny)
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You're right of course. That leaves the lawyers...
And human resources reps....
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Our rep answers every question with a spreadsheet. Sometimes two spreadsheets.
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Everyone hates a lawyer until they need one.
And then they hate the fact that they need one.
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No, the fact that our legal system is so complex that even simple matters can often require legal counsel.
The fact that lawyers tend to become judges and lawmakers, seemingly for the very purpose of ensuring that there is no streamlining the system, which of course turns into more wallet-lining for them.
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Without salespersons, you do not have a job. They are paid to do what you cannot.
They are paid to do something that I refuse to do, not something I cannot do.
I *could* go out and lie to the customer and get them to buy stuff from us, but my problem is that I would KNOW what I was saying was a lie... Even though I'm capable of it I refuse to lie.
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Some people do not get it sometimes....Sigh.... Think joke based on stereotypes... But having to point it out ruins what little humor it had to start with.
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Good Salespeople cannot be automated away. And contrary to popular opinion, the best ones won't lie to you, because you'll always associate the lie with the person lying.
Good Sales is all about the customer's needs, and making sure you address them. I have told plenty of "customers" that my product/service wasn't a good fit for them and recommended someone/something else. In the end, many of them came back when it was a good fit.
That being said, the best line I had for getting rid of an unrealistic customer
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If only all salespeople were good.
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If only any salespeople were good.
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Why the fart do you think a test on humans is required?
Especially for acceleration and deceleration?
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Lawyers ... will they blend.
Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop (Score:2, Interesting)
1. All the diagrams give the impression that it will be like people flying through tubes as in Futurama. Instead you will be sealed inside a metallic "bullet", that runs in a metallic tube - no windows for you (sort of like James Bond in The Living Daylights). It's a pity if you have any sort of claustrophobia.
2. While the device doesn't run in a complete vacuum, it runs in an atmosphere that is low to the point of being unbreathable. But the device doesn't contain any onboard air supply - instead it rel
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Holding your breath in a (near) vacuum is a sucky idea...
I don't usually hold my breath when it's cleaning day, no problems so far.
Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop (Score:5, Insightful)
These seem like they may be valid complaints, I don't know. But you're complaining about something in the prototype/proof-of-concept phase. If it works, then they can go about trying to turn it into a practical method of transportation, but at this point, we may as well be complaining about what color it is.
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These seem like they may be valid complaints, I don't know. But you're complaining about something in the prototype/proof-of-concept phase.
Right now, the hyper loop concept seems to me like a bad kickstarter project that is all full of dreams, but is missing a practical design. But safety can't be tacked on at the end, it has to be considered up front and will impact the design. Yet nothing in the designs shows any thoughts to safety or survivability. I was puzzle by this (as I know that Musk is a smart guy), but just now Bruce Perens made a comment below [slashdot.org] that made my head spin bit. Basically his comment is that Musk is somehow conspiring
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But safety can't be tacked on at the end, it has to be considered up front and will impact the design.
Every new mode of transport has had safety very much tacked on at the end. Get it working first, then figure out how to make it safe. That was the pattern for shipping, trains, cars, aeroplanes, rockets and hell, even horses have been bred for docility over the years.
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But safety can't be tacked on at the end, it has to be considered up front and will impact the design.
Sure it can. Seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, windshield wipers, and whatever else, there are lots of safety precautions that were added on later. In fact, that's pretty much inherent in the way these things work. First, you build it. Then you see how it's likely to fail. Then you build protections against those failures. When it seems safe, you start using it, but over the next few years, or the next few decades, or the next few hundred years, you keep finding new risks, new things that could go wr
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I have no knowledge of the politics of high speed rail, but the inadequacies of the hyper loop as passenger transport is puzzling. It is much better suited to transporting freight.
Guess how trains in general make most of their money?
Transporting freight.
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It may come as a shock to you, but being an expert in one field doesn't make you an expert in every field. There is nothing that makes Bruce Perens's opinion on this conspiracy theory any more valuable than,
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But the device doesn't contain any onboard air supply - instead it relies on the driving compressor/fan assembly to compress the air to a human sustainable amount.
Yeah, we've never operated passenger compartments full of people in low-pressure environments [wikipedia.org] before. There's probably no way to do that safely [wikipedia.org].
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There's probably no way to do that safely [wikipedia.org].
To quote from the link you so kindly supplied:
oxygen production typically lasts at least 15 minutes
Do you want to speculate how long it will take to extract people from a hyper loop capsule?
Here, let me help you.
1. Time to locate the capsule
2. Time for the Hyperloop Emergency Extraction Team to respond.
3. Time transport man lifts to the location of the capsule at some arbitrary point between the start and finish location
4. Time to safely raise those man lifts to to the height of the pipe
5. Time to safely cut through the pipe and capsule.
I'd wager that it is a
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To quote from the link you so kindly supplied:
oxygen production typically lasts at least 15 minutes
Do you want to speculate how long it will take to extract people from a hyper loop capsule?
Here, let me help you.
1. Time to locate the capsule
2. Time for the Hyperloop Emergency Extraction Team to respond.
3. Time transport man lifts to the location of the capsule at some arbitrary point between the start and finish location
4. Time to safely raise those man lifts to to the height of the pipe
5. Time to safely cut through the pipe and capsule.
Because there's no way you could let air into the tunnel, of course.
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Because there's no way you could let air into the tunnel, of course.
And how quick do you want to do that? And what do you think about being hit by a hypersonic shock wave?
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Because there's no way you could let air into the tunnel, of course.
And how quick do you want to do that?
That's a tough one.
Maybe over a span of fifteen minutes or so?
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That's a tough one.
Maybe over a span of fifteen minutes or so?
So do you want to fill the whole pipe up at once? Or are you going to break it into airtight sections with pressure proof doors at each end? Because each set of doors you insert into the system will cost money in maintenance and testing and will have to be available 100% of the time.
Now lets do some basic math. Suppose that you let the air in at 1/3 the speed of sound in order to protect equipment and people. Assume no friction and that the air travels down the pipe as a plug. So the maximum distance b
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Now lets do some basic math. Suppose that you let the air in at 1/3 the speed of sound in order to protect equipment and people. Assume no friction and that the air travels down the pipe as a plug.
This is the only way you can think of to fill a tube with air? Really?
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Pete from Oz seems to have some 'limitations' in his own mind.
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Pete from Oz seems to have some 'limitations' in his own mind.
It'll never work! [lhup.edu]
"In Bavaria the Royal College of Doctors, having been consulted, declared that railroads, if they were constructed, would cause the greatest deterioration in the health of the public, because such rapid movement would cause brain trouble among travelers, and vertigo among those who looked at moving trains. For this last reason it was recommended that all tracks be enclosed by high board fences raised above the height of the cars and engines.
Rail travel at high speed is not possible because
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Death to all humanity!
Wait, you have a solution?
I'll pose another easy stumper question!
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How else would you fill a tube with air?
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Solenoid valves sticking off the side of the tube every couple hundred feet?
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This seems like the same concept: insert mechanical devices every X feet. In case of emergency open hole in pipe using mechanical device. Have air flow through vacuum to trapped people.
I don't think it's a bad solution... I think it's the only one. I just don't get how it solves the problems off routing maintenance and testing.
Also, truthfully, I doubt that the airflow would be sufficient, unless you're saying you would open all the possible valves.
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Quick, tell all of these hyperloop people that their idea can't work because you have found a fatal flaw that they never have considered.
I'm sure they will thank you and go back to designing fossil fueled cars.
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A working hyperloop system will need those doors anyway - because the only way of changing tracks is old-school stub switches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What? You thought Hyperloop would be a single continuous tube from end to end?
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Now if you can seal off discrete sections of the tube, you can reduce that volume, but those kinds of emergency seals will be expensive mechanisms to install, so don't expect there to be very many of them, so you are probably still dealing with a LOT of volume, just not an absurd volume.
Now it would probably be a lot safer and faster to use fre
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You forgot:
0. Time to notice failure as the sensor didn't go off as expected and nobody was notified until the tubes were late to arrive. Then when people started calling, nobody answered the phones. Whoops.
(These kinds of things happen with trains)
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First, the only way the hyper-loop or any other very high-speed, high-efficiency transportation system can possibly work is in a low-drag environment. The only way to establish low drag is to lower the air pressure. There aren't windows because the vehicle is in a tube that's been depressurized. If they reach the target speed of 700 mph, windows wouldn't help regardless. The terrain would move by so quickly that it would be nauseating and disturbing to most people inside. Even on high-speed trains, like the
Silver Lining (Score:3)
On the other hand, whether a successful trip or not, it won't last long.
Re:Reasons why I don't like Musk's hyper loop (Score:5, Informative)
Rather than windows, it's to have large digital wall displays that show the outside as if you had giant picture windows. This is the direction airplanes are looking to move in [telegraph.co.uk] the future as well. Tests run by researchers have shown it to be well received by passengers.
The seats are actually quite roomy - check out the dimensions in the Hyperloop alpha document.
Yes, it does. Section 4.5.2. Same system as on an airplane.
It's two tubes, one for each direction. In the event of a long term outage, the one open tube can be periodically reversed to allow traffic in both directions, at a cost of throughput.
All capsules have mechanical braking systems and are spaced five minutes apart, automatically triggered in the event of an obstruction. They also all have powered wheels for low-speed travel. Section 3.5.2.
It'd be nice if you'd read the document before complaining about the concept.
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The seats are actually quite roomy - check out the dimensions in the Hyperloop alpha document.
Claustrophobia has nothing to do with seat size. Imagine a failure mode where the power goes off, the screens die and all movement stops. And the only way to get out is someone on the outside with a power saw.
Yes, it does. Section 4.5.2. Same system as on an airplane.
And where do you think airplanes get their oxygen from? Its called the outside atmosphere. If a plane stops flying it descends to a lower height with a breathable atmosphere - something that the hyper loop can't do. And emergency oxygen in planes is predicated being able to descend to a safer le
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Claustrophobia has nothing to do with seat size. Imagine a failure mode where the power goes off, the screens die and all movement stops. And the only way to get out is someone on the outside with a power saw.
Yeah, we've never run trains in tunnels [wikipedia.org] before. Probably can't be done.
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Another false analogy. The chunnel is not hermetically sealed, and reduced pressure. It has an additional service tunnel. And trains are not the size of a metal coffin.
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Claustrophobia has nothing to do with seat size. Imagine a failure mode where the power goes off, the screens die and all movement stops. And the only way to get out is someone on the outside with a power saw.
Imagine a present where every major building has a transportation device that crams a bunch of people into a tiny space, and has a failure mode where the power goes off, the lights go out and all movement stops. And everybody inside is trapped between floors with no personal space until rescued. Oh t
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Rather than windows, it's to have large digital wall displays that show the outside as if you had giant picture windows. This is the direction airplanes are looking to move in [telegraph.co.uk] the future as well.
The difference with planes is that any camera attached to the capsule will still be inside the metallic tube and thus useless. They could show some unrelated video footage or a pre-recorded one of the trip however.
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"All capsules have mechanical braking systems and are spaced five minutes apart, automatically triggered in the event of an obstruction. "
For the envisioned capacity, that means you're looking at pods carrying several hundred people (if not a couple of thousand) with their attendant slow loading times.
It's far more likely that you'll use block management to get closer spacing and entrained groups of capsules, quite possibly linking up whilst in motion out of terminii.
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So ... in a hyper loop, nobody can hear you scream?
Cue movie trailer voice!!
In a tube, in a world ...
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Numbers 1 and 2 are easily addressed. Number 3 perhaps as well, but I only have ideas for 1 and 2.
1) No windows
Problem:
It's a pity if you have any sort of claustrophobia.
Solution: Use LCD screens instead. [wired.com]
2) No air
Problem:
[T]he device doesn't contain any onboard air supply . . . if the device loses power for any reason (electrical, mechanical, computational) then you better be able to hold your breath for a long long time.
Solution: Add an emergency air supply.
Anyone with ideas on Number 3?
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[T]he device doesn't contain any onboard air supply . . . if the device loses power for any reason (electrical, mechanical, computational) then you better be able to hold your breath for a long long time.
Solution: Add an emergency air supply.
Worst case scenario: So the problem capsule stops halfway between LA and SFO. No problem, the tubes are running along the freeway, so are easily accessible by heavy equipment. But this occurred on a foggy day and there was a huge pile up on both sides of the freeway and all lanes in each direction are blocked - so no emergency services can get through.
Now how large are you going to size that emergency air supply?
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Now how large are you going to size that emergency air supply?
Large enough such that in the ultimate emergency there's enough time to repressurize the tube safely plus a nice fat margin of error.
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long enough to seal a 50 foot section of tube and open some valves?
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Have you never heard of vents? Controlled by open solenoids?
Problem solved. It isn't that hard.
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You didn't even bring up what happens if aliens attack, or if there's a zombie outbreak, or Nixon comes back from the grave as a hyperloop bandito!
We already travel in planes, and if they fuck up, you get spread over the side of a mountain really nicely. If you're scared, just say so - I doubt anyone will think any less of you.
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It's not as if emergency air inlet valves can't be fitted along the tunnel.
For added safety they can be positively powered (ie, they "fail to state=open") and small enough that any particular one wedged open won't be enough to overcome the vacuum pumps. Power-off would mean the tube repressurises quickly and evenly (which avoids shock loadings)
Because the tube is under vacuum, emergency access doors are relatively easy, They'd be held shut by air pressure until things equalise. These doors will be needed fo
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Travel in the tube is stopped anyway so just let air into the tube.
Possibly the only comment that makes some sense. However if you just fully open up the pipe to the outside world then you will subject the capsule to one hell of a shockwave which would make pulp of the people inside (one way to solve the rescue problem), and would probably damage the pipe.
On the other hand if you bleed air in to restrict the shockwave you will still be in the same boat of needed to have air in the capsule - a 4 foot tube several hundred miles long has a huge volume and will take a very l
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assuming a valve every 10 feet, each valve only has to pass a couple hundred cubic feet of air. Easy over one minute. As a bonus, the valve can probably be used to suck the air back out once everything's fixed.
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It's a pity if you have any sort of claustrophobia (Score:2)
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1. All the diagrams give the impression that it will be like people flying through tubes as in Futurama. Instead you will be sealed inside a metallic "bullet", that runs in a metallic tube - no windows for you (sort of like James Bond in The Living Daylights). It's a pity if you have any sort of claustrophobia.
If you dislike the idea of long-range transportation without windows, I have bad news for you...
http://motherboard.vice.com/re... [vice.com]
2. While the device doesn't run in a complete vacuum, it runs in an atmosphere that is low to the point of being unbreathable. But the device doesn't contain any onboard air supply - instead it relies on the driving compressor/fan assembly to compress the air to a human sustainable amount. So if the device loses power for any reason (electrical, mechanical, computational) then you better be able to hold your breath for a long long time.
Really? Are you seriously so close-minded to think of this as a problem? I guess you got this idea by taking airliner as reference which is simply dumb. The reason why airliner need onboard air supply is because there's not air available in case the cabin pressurisation fail. But in Hyperloop case, engineering emergency exit system seem far more logical than oxygen mask.
3. There was no indication that the loop itself was anything more than a single tube. Thus there is no capability to bypass any section. So if a device fails, all devices that are already in transit and behind it are screwed (see 2 above).
Yeah...if
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Wow, you're nitpicking very specific features of a system that doesn't even exist in prototype form yet.
1. Windows will no doubt be added so long as it is mechanically sound and doesn't endanger the passengers, and so long as seeing the landscape at such high speed so close to the ground isn't disorienting.
2. I'm sure before any people travel on this system (for which there isn't yet even a prototype) a safety analysis will be performed to see if an auxiliary air supply is necessary. They may well add brea
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3. There was no indication that the loop itself was anything more than a single tube. Thus there is no capability to bypass any section.
I didn't RTFA but perhaps it would be possible to design some equivalent of a railway switch. The loop from NY to LA would be most efficient if it never needed to stop, but a switched network of loops could provide service between cities all over the continent with many fewer loops. This would have a side effect of increasing resiliency, since many areas of loop could be more easily bypassed on the event of failure.
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Indeed, while it's not discussed in the Hyperloop Alpha plans (surely they don't want to complicate the issue at this stage), there's no reason why one couldn't. The main challenge is this isn't some sort of freight switch, at such high speeds you have exceedingly tight tolerances. I almost wonder if the best solution wouldn't just be to briefly retract the skis a centimeter or so for just the brief moment where the craft passes over the switching point - not long enough to "fall" by any significant amount.
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1. All the diagrams give the impression that it will be like people flying through tubes as in Futurama. Instead you will be sealed inside a metallic "bullet", that runs in a metallic tube - no windows for you (sort of like James Bond in The Living Daylights). It's a pity if you have any sort of claustrophobia.
So you'd need some kind of fancy window like display that could update with local scenery or anything else.
2. While the device doesn't run in a complete vacuum, it runs in an atmosphere that is low to the point of being unbreathable. But the device doesn't contain any onboard air supply - instead it relies on the driving compressor/fan assembly to compress the air to a human sustainable amount. So if the device loses power for any reason (electrical, mechanical, computational) then you better be able to hold your breath for a long long time.
So it operates just like a modern airliner
3. There was no indication that the loop itself was anything more than a single tube. Thus there is no capability to bypass any section. So if a device fails, all devices that are already in transit and behind it are screwed (see 2 above).
It's a test environment. These things can be developed.
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2) odd. What you just described is exactly what we call an airplane. And there is no reason why there would not be compressed air on-board.
3) yeah, sad that nobody on the hyperloop team will think like that.
In the mean time, I will trust that hyperloop will get there sooner than can be believed.
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1. Not really a problem. Plenty of trains go through tunnels for long stretches of time, and in those there are small compartments in which people sit. Claustrophobia isn't that big of a deal, as people who are claustrophobic don't travel in claustrophobia-inducing modes of transport, as they're not idiots. This goes for planes, trains, cars, and so on.
2. There is no "device" yet to judge. The capsule design is still in development, and competitions for designs will be held.
3. A hardly insurmountable
To head off the Hyperloop misconceptions... (Score:5, Informative)
1) It's not a vactrain. It's not even that similar to a vactrain. It functions like a very high altitude aircraft, with such rarified air (and the ground-effect surface for lift) being provided by a tube. Nothing is "sucking" or "pushing" it, and nor is it maglev. The compressor at the front exists to stop a column of higher pressure air from building up in front of it, not for propulsion.
2) It is not a train. Rates for building train tracks, rail bridges, etc, are not applicable. Of human structures it's most similar to, an oil pipeline [eclectablog.com] is the most apt comparison - very long, continuously welded elevated tubular steel segments capable of withstanding a pressure differential. It has some disadvantages versus a pipeline, such as much tighter tolerances, as well as some advantages, such as not containing environmentally-hazardous flammable materials. A full comparative list is too long to go into at the moment.
3) Like a pipeline and unlike rail, costs for elevating it are significantly reduced because it doesn't experience wide load swings. The cars are an order of magnitude lighter than a high speed train and thus exert an order of magnitude less loading as they pass (and only briefly). The difference in throughput is compensated for by much higher launch frequency via computer control. With dramatically reduced loading comes dramatically reduced support structure costs - more akin to the supports on the Disney Monorail [wdwinfo.com] than that of a rail bridge [wikimedia.org].
4) It is not meant (as per the source) to be an exact replacement for rail; it's meant to be an intermediary transportation system between rail and air travel.
5) Yes, the original design has flaws. No, none of them are fundamental. Yes, the concept can be significantly improved upon.
Back to your regularly scheduled thread.
Re:To head off the Hyperloop misconceptions... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the front of how the concept can be significantly improved upon, here's one: pumping is a very small fraction of the total costs. You could significantly increase the pumping and not have a significant impact on the costs. If you increase the pumping by, say, an additional 4x and inject water vapor, then you will achieve an 80% water vapor atmosphere (water does not condense at such low pressures). This offers a ~40% increase in the speed of sound and thus the maximum speed of the vehicle and reduces its resistance at a given speed.
One can take it further and inject hydrogen instead of water vapor. Most of the downsides that immediately come to mind don't actually turn out to be problems in practice - at such low pressures it's not flammable even if mixed with air, such low pressures aren't an embrittlement risk, the quantity of hydrogen needed is trivially small and thus costs little and poses little ozone hazard, etc. It's basically still "nearly a vaccuum", just with trace hydrogen rather than trace air. Pure hydrogen allows a maximum velocity nearly 4x that of the standard Hyperloop approach.
(Helium is another option, though not quite as good as hydrogen and more expensive. Also, if one wants to go faster and with less resistance than hydrogen, then there's only two options: 1) hot hydrogen, and 2) hard vacuum with maglev (aka, not hyperloop))
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Is making the hyper loop even faster considered desirable? Unless they can find a way to make the path of the track/pipe perfectly straight, the passengers will experience g-forces proportional to the velocity of the vehicle whenever they go around a curve. Too much speed could make the ride rather uncomfortable. (You can reduce that by making the track straiter, of course, but that reduces your flexibility in placing the track)
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It gives you the option to go faster where you have sufficiently straight paths - it doesn't mean you have to go faster all the time. While paths straight enough for extreme speed travel are somewhat limited in California, in other locations, such as the US midwest, such straight paths are the norm.
Let's be honest about the purpose of the hyperloop (Score:4, Interesting)
Although the hyperloop is possible and might even be practical someday, let's please be honest about the reason it was created. Elon Musk just wanted to kill the California high-speed rail.
That might have been OK if there was a hope that we could actually replace it practically with a hyperloop. But given the history of bleeding-edge rail - ride any maglevs lately? We haven't even had much success with monorails outside of theme parks and Las Vegas - we don't really have any working system to replace high-speed rail. Hyperloop should really be called "Pipes that carry People" and we need decades of work on it before considering intercity lines.
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Interesting comment. It seems to me people in this country don't have the culture or mindset for high speed rail. In US especially California they are trains of railroad tracks that great grandpa built with grade crossings (problems of cars getting hit by trains, people committing suicide). In other countries HSR are systems (and there are no RR crossings, roads and walkways either go over or under). And then there is the "government is the problem!" bitching while infrastructure continues to deteriorate in
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Elon Musk just wanted to kill the California high-speed rail.
if it weren't so laughably or desirably easy to do this, you would have a point.
Let's take a look:
* the founder of Paypal, largest digital payment system;
* and SpaceX, the company to be the first to land rocket stages backwards cutting launch costs to 10% what they were before;
* and Tesla, the only electric car company to actually make it, much less thrive
says he can do it again for much cheaper.
I, for one, welcome our new John Galtian overlord.
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Hey, I hang out with a lot of creative people. Not Elon Musk, but Steve Jobs for more than a decade, and lots of people at least as smart that you don't know. They can be really brilliant, and successful, and they can still make really stupid mistakes and sell them to the rest of us pretty well because they believe in themselves completely and they have a track record. I've done that too.
That's the hyperloop. Something Elon never meant to stand behind (and still really isn't), just put out there to torpedo
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Solar, wind and tidal power are all boondoggles which simply can't provide enough energy to satisfy worldwide demands and aren't reliable enough for distributed grids.
Schemes to put solar farms in the Sahara and pipe all that energy north ignore the burgeoning demands to the south, etc.
The mid-term answer is likely to be Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors - which aren't your grandfather's steam engines with red hot pokers in the boiler that the current water-based systems all are and don't have the safety issues
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Why the lack of monorails? Because of lobbying. Not because of engineering or superiority. Monorail IS cheaper and superior to any of the twin rail systems. The real issue is that twin rails were established in nearly all nations over 100 years ago. So, it is hard for Monorail to gain traction, esp when there are multiple designs.
Now as to hyperloop, it really has the only design that can make it cheap to build and safe.
You say that it is not safe, when the exact opposite is true. They are looking
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No aircraft ever had to come anywhere remotely close to pressurizing air from 0.1% (one millibar) to about 75% (what you need in a cabin when not using breathing apparatus). The Concorde had to pressurize from 7.5%. Typical airliners of today pressurize from about 25%. This is a hell of a lot further from the Concorde than the Concorde was from sea level.
So no, we haven't been "doing this for 60 years".
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2) It's significantly more expensive than any of those. It has to hold what amounts to passenger vehicles in a very low pressure atmospheric internally, while said vehicle zooms along at HIGH speed. This takes a lot more engineering, material, skill, and precision than any old pipeline.
3) I don't know what the numbers actually are, but the increased speed is in many ways like increasing mass since the kinetic energy involved is not exactly small. You know, that
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1. Nor can you breathe in the environment out your window in an airplane. Your point being?
2. "Precision" was listed as one of the examples of where Hyperloop has greater costs than pipelines. But it also has significantly reduced costs in others like, as mentioned, the lack of highly flammable and environment-contaminating contents (also significantly reduced thermal management challanges, far fewer "pumping" stations containing far lower-wear hardware, etc). The environmental and fire issues are the bigge
Re: (Score:2)
Let's not underestimate just how ridiculously low the pressure will be. It's actually damned close to a vacuum. The audacity of it impressed me. The quoted one millibar of pressure corresponds to about 48 km of altitude. The highest cruising altitude for any passenger aircraft was the Concorde at 18 km, corresponding to 75 millibars. Consider: the pressure at the Concorde's altitude was 7.5% of sea
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Indeed, hence the "very high altitude". The key point is that there's still enough pressure that it has aerodynamic effects (for both good and bad). This differs fundamentally from a vactrain where it's critical that there are effectively no aerodynamic effects, or you end up pushing a column of air.
I heard (Score:4, Funny)
that Elon was going to name it the Ted Stevens memorial hyperloop
It's not my problem... (Score:1)