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Transportation Businesses Technology

Hyperloop Firm Eyes Indonesia For Ultra-Fast Transport System (cnbc.com) 58

An anonymous reader shares a CNBC report: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), one of the companies developing the futuristic transport service dreamed up by billionaire Elon Musk, said it was exploring Indonesia as a potential site to put one of its tracks. The so-called "feasibility study" contract is worth $2.5 million and will look into whether a hyperloop system would work initially in the capital Jakarta, and then connecting Java and Sumatra. A hyperloop would work by propelling pods through a large tube at speeds of 750 mph using magnets. It is seen as a solution to long distance travel, but also alleviating congestion in many cities. Jakarta is the world's third-worst city for traffic, according to a study by navigation from TomTom released earlier this year.
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Hyperloop Firm Eyes Indonesia For Ultra-Fast Transport System

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  • ...but one of the principal reasons why transport in just about every form that we now see it is due to cost. It's a lot cheaper to build the least expensive road/path/tunnel/track possible, even if that means that the vehicles that travel those paths must be more expensive in order to self-propel. For this to be otherwise the usage must be very high. To a more pedestrian example (ha!), moving sidewalks are not terribly common. They're found only where extremely high volumes of foot traffic are present

    • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      Cheaper to build, cheaper to run is PRT, whether this takes the form of cooperative autonomous vehicles on roads (or paths), or an elevated system like http://www.skytran.com/ [skytran.com] depends on who gets a working system deployed first. SkyTran hasn't shown a working mesh network. How does the system scale to NYC levels, replacing all the roads and trains with a single integrated PRT system with billions of trips a day?

      Then, once you have NYC done and DC done, and Phily and Baltimore between, you can have a quie
      • by TWX ( 665546 )

        That's all dependent on the system being designed properly or revised properly as demands change though. If demand for corridors outstrips carrying capacity it'll still result in traffic jams. The idea of cooperative systems isn't bad, but the passengers are probably only going to put up with a small amount of delay before finding the system unacceptable. It also breaks-down where the density drops too far. This could even be a problem in a city like New York, the density is high in Manhattan, but start

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Hyperloop is cool, especially if you're a fan of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's science fiction works, but it has all of the downsides of maglev combined with all of the downsides of building subways, so the ridership would have to be massive to make it cost effective.

      But there already are routes where this is the case - high volume routes with lots of people heading one way or another. LA to San Francisco is one, but there are many more where there are many flights per day between two destin

  • I get the traffic issue, but I don't think the economics of the area will be very helpful. Maybe if you need a government that's not afraid of taking property by force to get your track built, that has loosey goosey liability laws and can be easily bribed this is a good choice. I'm inclined to think it's a bad choice, but hey, hope that works out for you.

  • Man, that sounds like a massive success-story. But first let's do the Mars colonization real quick to free resources for building those vacuum tubes.
  • by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Wednesday March 08, 2017 @04:57PM (#54002191)

    As long as they do not have the concept worked out all those stories are pure fiction. It might be feasible it might be stupid. However, you cannot say, as the specs are not out. Yes I know there are some specs on the tech and some issues with the solution. However, this is not a solid concept, as there are so many missing pieces. Therefore, they should not come up with ideas where to build it, but with a general solution.

  • See this takedown [wordpress.com].

    Musk hasn't gotten any Western country to bite and invest money. Maybe in a third world country with less education and a restricted media, he'll find takers.

    • Thunderf00t [youtube.com] has the best evisceration of this lunacy. Beyond the severe cost and implausible engineering problems, any tiny breach anywhere in the tube, intentional or accidental, will kill everyone using it with a wall of air that moving at the speed of sound.
  • If there weren't terrorists this would be a superb idea, well worth the investment. Just imagine how vulnerable hundreds of miles of a sealed transit system will be to terrorists, or even hormone crazed adolescents. The idea is sound. Modern human nature is not going to let it happen in the real world.
    • actually, I heard terrorists like to bomb standard trains too. and bus stops. and they hijack planes. maybe we shouldn't have ordinary rail and bus service.

    • Financial vulnerable, yes. Blow up a part of the pipe and the trains stop for weeks.
      In terms of human life: absolutely not vulnerable, unless you can blow up the pipe when a train passes. Seems exactly the same thing like blowing up a train on a regularly rail to me.

    • No, it still wouldn't be a good idea:
      https://youtu.be/QXF2qcu-tFw [youtu.be]

  • or they could use the money to build an airline if they need fast commute, the technology is here, it works, it's proven, it can be measured in terms of costs and profits upfront, it doesn't require a weird infrastructure setup that is the Achilles heel of hyperloop - a very long thin steel vacuum tube. A thin steel tube will expand and contract due to temperature fluctuations, flexible joints will have to maintain vacuum somehow? Anybody with a tiny amount of explosives (or even with a rifle) will be abl

  • You jump in first, Elon!

  • It should really be called an rloop.

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