The Hyperloop Industrial Complex 218
Jason Koebler writes: Two and a half years after Elon Musk pitched the technology, actually traveling on a hyperloop is still theoretical, but its effect on business is not. There is a very real, bonafide industry of people whose job description is, broadly speaking "make the hyperloop into a tangible thing." The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Weekend at Texas A&M University earlier this weekend was the coming out party for people in that industry.
another obstacle for HSR in USA? (Score:3)
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i my mind, HL is just an evolved form of HSR. and unfortunately, chances are it will be implemented exactly in the same manner. we can't do HSR because it costs too much but we will do HL because is costs even more?!! yeah i won't hold my breath. heck we don't even have a decent public transport system within cities.
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Where are you getting the idea the HL costs more than HSR? The whole point of it is it is supposed to be much cheaper. The initial proposed route of LA-SF is supposed to cost $6B for HL, or $70B for HSR.
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USA struggles just to get started in high speed rail systems of what rest of industrialized countries has for years.
Expensive HSR just doesn't make sense in the US. Look at a map of Japan, for example - its geography forces the major cities to be more or less lined up, such that rail built between any two major cities will be usable by a lot of traffic not necessarily going to or from those cities. The major cities in the US are all over the place, often with huge distances in between. You'd limit the potential passengers to only the people going between that handful of cities (which is made even worse, since with more m
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Expensive HSR just doesn't make sense in the US. Look at a map of Japan, for example - its geography forces the major cities to be more or less lined up, such that rail built between any two major cities will be usable by a lot of traffic not necessarily going to or from those cities.
California is also long and narrow. A lot of those cities in Japan that are along their HSR were non-existant or very small towns before it was built. If anything, they should build it along an emptier stretch of land than along an already populated city centers. That would make HSR much cheaper. HSR is an investment into a longer term future of population growth.
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It works great in Japan and Europe where towns are closer together.
That makes no sense--with high speed rail, you want fewer stops and longer runs, not stops that are close together. One of the challenges is that every town with rail running through it wants the HSR to stop there. Once it does, it's not "high speed" anymore.
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Technically solved problem but a political challenge. The small towns need to suck it.
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I agree with this completely. That said, the OP I was responding to claimed that HSR was efficient in Europe because everything is close together. That's simply not true--more distance = more gain with HSR. Less distance = inefficiency.
I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more. (Score:2)
Seriously. I was a big fan of Hyperloop Alpha. But the MIT team that won the "Hyperloop" contest is proposing something nothing like Hyperloop. The test track that SpaceX is building is designed to support a wide range of vehicles, most nothing like that in the Hyperloop Alpha document. So if I say "I like hyperloop", I don't know what exactly it is I'm supporting anymore. What exactly is "Hyperloop" these days?
All I can say is that I really liked the alpha one. The MIT team's maglev thing is Meh^2.
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Indeed. That's one of the few things that one can say has nothing to do with either the original Hyperloop alpha concept or the new college competition entries. Pneumatic tubes mean that they make use of pressure to push things - that's what the word "pneumatic" means. Pressure being the one thing Hyperloop (all permutations) distinctly lacks.
A few potential issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Now here's a huge issue I haven't seen anyone talking about that gets progressively worse as the track/tube length increases, subsidence and ground movement.
Yes, that's right, all those super tight tolerances needed to keep it air tight and within safe turning range of a high speed capsule are at risk.
No matter how much we like to pretend, the earth isn't 'rock solid steady'.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up soil subsidence, faults, and even earth tide.
Earth tide is an interesting one and it can be around half a meter, depending on location and conditions, but it effects pretty much the entire planet.
The point is, there are serious issues about trying to keep an airtight low pressure tube of extraordinary length intact and functionally safe, especially when you're going to be shooting giant passenger carrying bullets down it. That's one target you better not miss.
Yes, there are probably a ton of other issues I've never thought of, but I'm not an engineer and it's not my job to be intimately familiar with variant thermal expansion rates or whatever else might go wrong with this concept. I still think it makes cool mad science fiction, but I don't see it being a rational expenditure of resources and effort at this time. (By the way, how much material would such a full sized tube use up, and whats the current national production of said materials?)
Re:A few potential issues (Score:4, Informative)
Now here's a huge issue I haven't seen anyone talking about that gets progressively worse as the track/tube length increases, subsidence and ground movement.
The subsidence / ground movement effect is dwarfed by the simple thermal expansion of the tube over the day/night cycle, which can grow/shrink up to hundreds of meters over the length of the tube. This effect can be compensated for by allowing the tube to slide smoothly across the pylons to achieve tensile equilibrium. (Perhaps with motorized assist to overcome friction.) The "slack" is taken up at the endpoint stations, through a telescoping system. Each pylon can allow for perhaps a meter of lateral flex to account for local ground shifting, and the pylons themselves can be easily repositioned if they start to get close to their tolerances in a local area.
By the way, how much material would such a full sized tube use up, and whats the current national production of said materials?
The complete Alpha-design hyperloop from LA to SF would use about 1 million tons of steel, or about 0.02% of the world's current annual steelmaking output. For scale, this is about 10x more steel than the Birds Nest stadium in Beijing, or about 100 Eiffel Towers' worth.
California? (Score:2)
California is a strange place to start the hyperloop project. There are two mountain ranges between LA and San Francisco, and the dominant cost of the high-speed rail project is bridges and tunnels to cross the mountain ranges. Hyperloop is designed to go over twice as fast as high-speed rail, which means the curves have to be much more gradual, meaning longer and more expensive tunnels and bridges.
Musk should really think about starting the project in a flatter area, perhaps between Chicago and Dallas, whe
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The entirety of hyperloop is built on pylons of varying heights. In effect the whole thing is one big bridge. This is one of its major selling points, and why CA is chosen.
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Three-meter-high pylons are cheap. But when you're climbing a thousand-meter mountain range, either your pylons have to be hundreds of meters high (and thus VERY expensive), or else you need to navigate curves at lower speed.
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Oddly enough, the people at SpaceX managed to think of that! Their calculations show they need 14768 6-meter pylons, 2175 15-meter pylons, and 966 30-meter pylons, for a total cost of $2.5B. There is nothing even close to 'hundreds of meters high'.
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CA's central valley is flat and boring. The only reason the current HSR proposal goes all the way into SF is politics. The SF locals had to be paid off.
Sensible plans would put the northern terminal at the southern end off Caltrain or in Sacramento, linking with the AmTrack commuter line. Gets you away from the seriously expensive real estate and many of the real industrial grade crazies.
Similar solutions exist in the south. I'm less familiar, not having ridden them.
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I should note: Once SF has finished spending it's budget to _not_ upgrade the CalTrain right of way, HSR will stop at the southern terminal anyhow. They will bitch and moan and demand the feds give them more money to continue not upgrading the right of way.
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I have a sneaking suspicion that there's some really, really smart people who have considered the day 1 "why this won't work" aspects of the project like terrain.
My guess is that pretty much anywhere has geographical hurdles to cross for that kind of distance. From what I have read the land rights issues are much, much more difficult to overcome so a place that is effectively nothingness between two points makes it much more attractive.
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There's no reason to believe that those day 1 concerns aren't valid. Some people who have a lot of money are willing to do things inefficiently for their personal convince... like put projects close to their house at thrice the cost.
Capitalism is stupid (Score:2)
Film at 11.
Hyperloop Hipsters (Score:2)
They were in the hyperloop industry before it was cool, or even a thing.
Pro-tip: You might want to let someone prototype and test the concept and see if it actually works before getting carried away about building the infrastructure for the hyperloop economy. Speculation is great until you fuck up and get it wrong and are left with a lot of pissed off investors and a hyperloop seat cushion factory that no one wants.
Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:5, Insightful)
A ground-level, rail-mounted tube doesn't expend energy holding itself against gravity, and faces less wind resistance than an airplane in orbit. That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane.
The Tesla car has higher instantaneous torque and a flat torque curve. The cost for me to drive 300 miles on gasoline is around $25 now; on biofuel, it's around $35; on diesel, it's around $12; on electricity, it's $3. Battery storage loses less energy in conversion than biofuel chemical storage. Electric cars are less complex and require less maintenance than reciprocating piston engines. Superior power, performance, durability, longevity, and cost doesn't seem inferior.
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But, a massive expenditure of energy to build this thing and connect it to where you want to go .. which means you spend a LOT of money building it.
And presumably, things like trans-oceanic things require vast bits of infrastructure of a sort we've not built.
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I would think a Hyperloop would be best started "Small" scale, like within a City like LosAngeles. or NYC. And then connected to other nearby cities. However, with NYC, you'd piss off Taxi companies.
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A hyperloop within a city makes absolutely no sense at all. At that scale you just have a low-capacity subway. Hyperloop makes sense where the alternative is flying or high-speed rail.
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Hmm... Lots of the roads, specifically the large interstate highways, were built after the New Deal had ended. They were built under the auspices of Present Eisenhower. He'd seen the military and civilian value in the autobahn and wanted to emulate its successes. (Note: The autobahn was not completed and was smaller then than it is now.)
I believe the story goes a bit like this:
Eisenhower saw a photograph of some Panzers going balls out in a line down the freakin' highway. He looked to his Aide De Camp and s
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The only way that diesel costs half
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Uh, the Jetta TDI gets 62mpg in practice (someone did a 5,000+-mile trip going counterclockwise, west across the northern U.S. and then east along the southern U.S), while its gasoline counterpart boasts 32mpg on the highway and 27mpg in the city.
In most of the U.S., you need ULSD. Here on the east coast, gasoline costs $1.55 now and diesel is going for $1.75. A 300 mile tank on my Mazda 3S with the 2.4L (averaging a good 25-28mpg) costs $18 now; a few months back it was still around $25, when gas was
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1. You're citing MPG from a Volkswagon diesel car? Can we turn off most emissions controls on the gasoline engine too, or is that considered cheating?
2. You're comparing someone's hypermileing adventures in a TDI on low roll resistance tires to EPA estimates for
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Emissions control on a VW TDi in test mode gets worse performance, lower fuel mileage, but better emissions. So yes, let's turn the emissions control on the TDi into the correct operating mode and get 70mpg instead of 62mpg.
Most of the emissions control systems on gasoline cars actually improve mpg. EGR improves performance *and* fuel efficiency.
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Regular gas is actually $1.95 in California (source: filled up today). Of course, it could easily be $5 again in a year with the right combination of events. Electricity prices are considerably more stable.
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The Tesla car has higher instantaneous torque and a flat torque curve. The cost for me to drive 300 miles on gasoline is around $25 now; on biofuel, it's around $35; on diesel, it's around $12; on electricity, it's $3. Battery storage loses less energy in conversion than biofuel chemical storage. Electric cars are less complex and require less maintenance than reciprocating piston engines. Superior power, performance, durability, longevity, and cost doesn't seem inferior.
While I'm a huge fan of Tesla, I also greatly enjoy my dinosaur-burning sports cars. So I'm going to argue a few points here. For comparison's sake, consider a Chevy SS, powered by a LS3 6.2L OHV aluminum V8. IMO one of the greatest engines ever invented. Let's also consider a hypothetical engine swap with the torque-monster direct-injected LT1 from the Camaro and Corvette (the LS3's direct successor engine).
1. Performance. While the Tesla has instantaneous torque, the LT1 still delivers 300 lb-ft at ~1
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the batteries aren't even lasting as long as promised, and the total extra cost of the car would buy decades of fuel. the math proves electric car at present more expensive
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Sarcasm is lost on some I guess...
Fear not for your batteries! (Score:5, Informative)
How much does the battery cost to replace?
Or is the battery non-expendable?
This is what a special-interest framing argument looks like. It puts the question into the reader's mind, and without context (and noting that most readers don't take the time to think about things) it makes it seem like an insurmountable problem.
(Viz: "Ted Cruze's Canadian birth will be a problem for him, I'm just 'sayin".)
Tesla is addressing the battery issue directly, with a buy-back program [cleantechnica.com].
Also note that Lithium batteries have an exponential usage lifetime [cleantechnica.com] ('sorta), which means that once you've depleted your battery to 90% of it's capacity, it'll stay at that level for a long time.
Also also note that a battery which is taken out of service will still have 85% of it's charge capacity for a really long time, and there are a lot of uses for such storage. A factory building filled with old Tesla batteries could help smooth out electrical grid demand - supplying power during peak times, and recharging at night.
(Put that building full of batteries next to a wind farm, or inside the industrial area of a large city.)
Again, the batteries will keep 85% of their capacity for a long time, and if the application doesn't care much about space or weight, this makes a good use for older batteries.
Also, no one has even begun thinking about recycling the batteries. Ten years from now we might start thinking about reforming batteries, and making removable/reusable cases with the option to recycle the lithium inside. Like we now do with lead.
And finally, all of this information is just a click away using this neat new service called "Google".
Implanting doubts, uncertainty, and fear in the minds of readers is so much harder nowadays.
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not trying to troll but your link "Tesla is addressing the battery issue directly, with a buy-back program" doesn't "directly" address the battery cost. it does address the resale value like a conventionally leased car.
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Implanting doubts, uncertainty, and fear in the minds of readers is so much harder nowadays.
hahahaha
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Probably, the biggest is that Tesla HAS been thinking about recycling. In fact, GF is build just for that. Likewise, they will be re-using a number of the cells from a 'spent' pack to run their GF, prior to recycling (which is cool).
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Tesla claim to have tested up to 750,000 miles with around 85% capacity remaining. That is about what you would expect, giving that the Panasonic cells they use are rated for 3000 cycles, and each cycle is 300 miles range, so 900,000 miles over their lifetime. Lifetime is defined as >80% remaining capacity.
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notice the "Cash on hand" numbers? If you only look at EPS, I really hope for your sake that you're not in finance.
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considering average purchase of a car in US is 3.5 years... the battery is a moot point when it comes to this replacement issue.
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How much does the battery cost to replace?
/quote>
Unknown since it is not known how soon one needs to replace it. With the first round of the batteries in the MS (i.e. 2012 version), it appears that somewhere around 200-250K miles, is when the battery pack will be around 85% level. So most ppl think that it new packs will be needed around 2020-2022. At that point, it might costs 5K for a change.
Of course, with 200-250K miles on an ICE car, you will most likely have to rebuild the engine, along with all of that nasty maintenance.
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Because airplanes (and runways) don't wear out?
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airplanes last for decades properly maintained, they don't salt the roads up there
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Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
With a hyperloop ... you need either central hubs to get people to their destinations, or multiple routes to get to multiple destinations. Just like cars and trains do now.
Connecting all of your destinations with lots of routes, that's going to get expensive. Doing them with many hubs and hops from one
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Except nobody has proposed any of that. Hyperloop is not supposed to replace long-distance flying, it is supposed to be an alternative for high-speed intercity rail.
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I said 'long distance flying'. HL is supposed to replace SHORT distance (few hundred miles) flying. And he says where he gets his cost estimates - from building pipelines, which we do today using the same materials.
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Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
You mean other than the entire airspace spanning Air Traffic Control infrastructure that costs ~$7B per year to run? Lots of radar, stations, towers and other stuff to control things other than just the end-points.
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You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.
You are ignoring costs such as:
- pilot labor (hyperloop will probably be fully automated)
- air traffic control (could be mostly or fully automated as well)
- maintenance (not sure the maintenance requirements of hyperloop but surely not as extensive as aircraft maintenance)
- security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)
You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.
Same concern with roads and railways, with the same answer: it only matters if the economic advantage isn't high enou
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security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)
I think you have this the wrong way around. The only drawback I can see with Elon's Hyperloop is it's susceptibility to terrorism; you need to keep airport-level vigilance over its entire track length, that's a lot of razor wire, dogs and operatives.
Re: hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:2)
Trains are much easier to derail, yet don't have the levels of security that you speak of.
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The original railways lines in the UK were formed by making lots of small connections at first and then connecting them up later. London's underground started off as a tunnel going underneath the Thames and avoiding the smell and muck on the bridge. Then others started building more tunnels, eventually they kept extending all the tunnels until they started going over land as well.
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Still ignoring the whole 'airplanes' aspect of it I see. I wonder why that is? Do a sufficient number of airplanes to cover a route just appear out of nowhere for free?
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Airplanes for free?
I thought that they cost tens of millions of dollars each and hundreds of millions for airports and more for air traffic control systems.
Somebody has to pay for that.
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Uh yeah, that is my point.
Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:5, Insightful)
"That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane"
Besides the energy needed to ,you know, *build* the entire infrastructure... Which wears out, as opposed to air.
And why do you call it an "air plane" in two words? Are you posting from the 19th century?
The estimated cost of the hyperloop is between $6 and $8 billion.
The cost to build one terminal in a big city airport is in the neighborhood of $2 billion (terminal 4 at JFK, in today's dollars). And the hyperloop would replace two ends, so double that to $4 billion.
So as a quick estimate you could build the hyperloop and replace the functionality of 2 terminals and it would cost roughly twice as much.
It would also use much less land (no runways needed), and could terminate in the middle of a city a'la Grand central station.
You could move twice as many people, lots more freight, and at the same time spend less on energy, use less land, make less pollution, have less noise pollution, and be safer.
It's not quite as cut-and-dried as your out-of-context note would indicate.
Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, you do make some good points (especially with regard to the utility of having the station in the city center, instead of a 30-60 minute drive outside of town), but, that said, you're also oversimplifying things. Probably the most egregious example is to suggest that building the hyperloop replaces the cost of two airline terminals (especially using JFK as a model). JFK serves dozens, if not hundreds, of discrete destinations, while the hyperloop serves two. Worse, the hyperloop destinations are only a few hundred miles apart. JFK has flights to six continents. In other words, unless you are advocating replacing all air travel with hyperloop style transport (something that would cost several orders of magnitude more than the short range test project) you are comparing apples to oranges.
Lastly, you are looking at sunk costs vs new investments. It's not "we can pay for the hyperloop instead of the airport" because the airport already exists.
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You are comparing the estimated cost of the hyperloop to the actual cost of an airline terminal. If an airline terminal actually costs $2 billion to build, do you really think that $6-$8 billion is a realistic estimate for the hyperloop? How would a hyperloop terminal be any less complex than an airline terminal?
Less land?? Are you forgetting the amount of land that the tube take up?
You could terminate in the center of a city iff you could acquire the right of way to the center of the city. Good luck with t
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You almost had it. It is Grand Central Terminal, not station, because that is where the rail lines terminate. The trains do not pass through Grand Central, they stop (excluding the subway).
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I have some doubts that these are equivalent costs. The terminals for the hyperloop won't be need to be as large to handle a large number of planes. How do the number of passengers compare? Also the airport terminal has to have luggage handling facilities that the hyperloop terminal won't.
And if you want to go from the first city to a third city with the hyperloop then it will cost approximately another $6B to $8B (assuming it's about the same distance). By plane you build a new airport at the third city a
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Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:5, Insightful)
My actual concern is our ability to maintain it. A good friend of mine who is a civil engineer specializing in trains has been involved in proposals to build things like mag lev trains in the US. His determination is that we generally do not do a good enough job of maintaining infrastructure for projects that require high tolerances. We like to build it, we like to run it, but maintenance... not so much. Hell even the bullet train in Japan, just a rain system, has a train packed with instruments that runs the tracks regularly looking for imperfections and issues, we can barely keep our bridges standing. What are the odds that we take sufficiently good care of the hyperloop system in order to keep it operating safely.
Perhaps we will develop it and the rest of the world will use it, but if we want to have nice toys like this we need to start dealing with the maintenance of such infrastructure (and maybe our other existing infrastructure while we are at it)
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We like to build it, we like to run it, but maintenance... not so much. Hell even the bullet train in Japan, just a rain system, has a train packed with instruments that runs the tracks regularly looking for imperfections and issues
They run them on normal rails to in the UK. I saw one parked at London bridge station a while back so I chatted to the techs. Impressive equipment on board. They've even got ground penetrating radar off to the side so they can examine platforms for structural issues.
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Sure, but consider that you are talking mostly about the US public infrastructure system. Private infrastructure has different incentives to keep up maintenance. That assumes a reasonable level of competition, of course.
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Or seriplane [reference.com], hyperplane [reference.com], or delaplane [wikipedia.org]!
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Um, it is exactly because the trains don't go fast enough. What convoluted reason do you think it is?
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Are you implying that people in general 'know how to drive' now?
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Once the vacuum has been created, the amount of energy required to maintain it is not significant assuming that there are no major leaks. I imagine that at the stations that the pod would enter a chamber where the air is removed before entering the main tube. Since most of the volume would be from the pod the amount of air needing to be removed would not be all that great. It also isn't a high vacuum, so it takes much less energy to obtain.
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Exactly. That is why every jar of vacuum packed peanuts has a little pump included that is running 24/7. Because it is not possible to maintain a pressure differential otherwise.
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hyperloop isn't a vacuum tube, and it has air compressors to make cushion of air.
vacuum packed food doesn't have hard vacuum, minus five psi is typical.
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Why do you stick with your idiotic 'it has to keep pumping' idea? Are you really that stupid? After the original evacuation the ONLY thing the pump needs to do is pump out the LEAKAGE. And if the thing is leaking 750 CFM per mile something is very wrong.
Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:4, Insightful)
Comparing a hyperloop to an airplane is apples to oranges. Misk himself says that longer journies (like east to west coast USA) would be more economically feasible by plane. A hyperloop is much more like a maglev train in that it's suited to midrange journies that take hours by car but aren't worth the hassle of an airport. When compared to high speed rail, hyperloops have some very real advantages.
Also, calling EVs Musk's expensive toys when you can clearly see the entire industry introducing their own EVs is disingenuous. Certainly you can see that EVs have some very real advantages over fossil fuel cars.
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HSR is a non-starter for most locations, IMHO. The cost is way too high for it to be functional.
Hyperloop is, from what I understand, way more flexible than HSR, and just as fast (or faster), with less of the overhead. That would make it a good replacement for larger citys like LA or NYC or even in metroplexes like SD-LA and the whole Beltway on the East Coast. It might even work for San Diego - Seattle or Boston-Miami runs.
Which is why I would suggest that if they start building it, start in NYC or LA with
Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well at least you know where the name came from: It took about as long as an actual 'desert wind' would take to get from LA to Vegas, maybe longer.
Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop (Score:4, Insightful)
If airports were cost-effective, airlines would build them. Airlines don't build airports; therefore, airports are not cost-effective.
If roads were cost-effective, drivers would pay the full cost of them. Drivers pay less than half the cost of the roads [uspirg.org]. Therefore, roads are not cost-effective.
So what's left? What mode of transportation pays for itself?
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Do airports pay property taxes? No. Do ticket prices cover the full cost of air traffic control? No [bostonglobe.com]. Do ticket prices cover the full cost of TSA screening? Also no.
Unfortunately, that is also false [wikipedia.org].
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Hyperloop is, from what I understand, way more flexible than HSR, and just as fast (or faster), with less of the overhead.
How the heck do you make out that the Hyperloop is more flexible than HSR? Just one example of HSR flexibility : it can run off its high speed lines onto slower legacy lines for the purpose of reaching into an existing city central station; the French TGVs do this for example. That sort of flexibility is lacking with any system that needs a non-standard track.
If the Hyperloop is going to run at the speeds claimed, it is going to need some serious civil engineering because the curvature will need to be
Cars & planes were once expensive toys, too. (Score:2)
Moron.
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You don't know what hyperloop is if you think air compressors are moving the train. Read up on it a bit.
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No, it is NOTHING like that. Perhaps you should consider reading more than one sentence. In those tubes there is different air pressure ahead of and behind the module. That difference in pressure causes the module to move. In the hyperloop, the air pressure is THE SAME throughout the tube. The pressure is kept low to reduce air resistance, NOT to provide propulsion. And the compressors are used to create the air cushion to keep the pod away from the tube. If the compressors fail, there is this amazin
Re:STOP AND BE QUIET (Score:5, Funny)
I am not quite sure what ultraistic means, but I suspect is has something to do with comparing a very smart man who has had success in at least four different industries, to you.
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I'm just guessing here, but poster may have been looking for 'altruistic', but who knows...
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Not the OP. But anybody who only knows one way to spell a word has no emagination.
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If you're dedicated enough to climb onto a well elevated tube, cut a hole large enough to pour concrete in through inch-thick steel - after sabotaging all of the pressure sensors tbrough the whole length of the tube and feeding them false data - and then using a concrete pump with a very tall boom fill in the tube with concrete, in order to kill people.... then why not just fly planes into skyscrapers like most people? I mean, if you're going to go through that much work.
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