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Transportation Businesses

Virgin Hyperloop One Shows Off New Futuristic Travel Pod (cnet.com) 76

Posted by BeauHD from the shiny-and-new dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: It's an interesting time for Virgin Hyperloop One, which saw one of its board members arrested on fraud and embezzlement charges in Russia last week and three other high-profile directors departing the board, according to Bloomberg. But that hasn't stopped the futuristic-transport startup from showing off its latest pod prototype, first for the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and now for the rest of us via the video above. The charges faced by Russian billionaire and board member Ziyavudin Magomedov are reportedly unrelated to Virgin Hyperloop One, and he is appealing the arrest. The video from Virgin above appears to show a full-size pod prototype on an enclosed test track at the company's test facility in Nevada. How fast it's going is hard to say. So far we've seen the company achieve speeds of 240 miles per hour in tests, or roughly a third of the speed it hopes to eventually achieve.
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Virgin Hyperloop One Shows Off New Futuristic Travel Pod More

Virgin Hyperloop One Shows Off New Futuristic Travel Pod

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  • Translation (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "saw one of its board members arrested on fraud and embezzlement charges in Russia"

    Either wouldn't pay the bribe or wouldn't give the contract to the right people or wouldn't give a seat on the board to a rich man's idiot son.

  • Travel like "SPAM in a can."

    Packed into a windowless pod surrounded by near vacuum with no means of escape if something fucks up. Claustrophobia city, even if there are nice flatscreens to "view" the outside world. If this is the future, then bugger the future with a turbocharged chainsaw.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Marlin Schwanke ( 3574769 )

      Travel like "SPAM in a can."

      Packed into a windowless pod surrounded by near vacuum with no means of escape if something fucks up. Claustrophobia city, even if there are nice flatscreens to "view" the outside world. If this is the future, then bugger the future with a turbocharged chainsaw.

      So, if you didn't get a windows seat, this is just like your last plane flight? Oh, except that you don't plummet 30,000 feet to a certain death when something "fucks up".

      • I always get a window seat -- I won't book the G-d damn flight if I can't reserve one.

        • Good for you, the vast majority of people on the pane obviously disagree.
          So do you when you have to pull the blind on the red-eye trans-Atlantic for 90% of the flight.

      • (also, 30,000 ft altitude is a feature, safety-wise, not a bug. if something gets fucked, there's often enough time to un-fuck it before you encounter cumulo-granite. not so at 700+ mph 6 inches from hard objects.)

        • also, 30,000 ft altitude is a feature, safety-wise, not a bug

          Damn, you're really on a roll, aren't you?? Do you take the time to even think before you type? To be fair, I admit I don't, either... but I also don't come up with gems like the one above.

          Eat more fish, perhaps??

          • Yeah. I actually think. Separation from immovable objects is actually a safety feature and allows addressing of failures in a timely manner. Commercial aviation is extremely safe.

      • But you still might crash and end up in a massive underground fire for which there is no escape.

        • Absolutely! Because of the near vacuum, the fire will explode into giant fireballs! Fueled by the thousands of gallons of jet fuel on board!

          HOLY SHIT, THE HYPERLOOP IS A TERRIBLE IDEA!!!!! ECLECTRO, YOU'VE SAVED US ALL!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        An airplane can have a hole in it and you don't die.

        • An airplane can also not have a hole in it and you do die.
          I'll admit, generally holes are formed in the split seconds before you die though...

    • except for the no window that is hardly any different from modern air travel. Personally anything that makes the unpleasantness over with faster I will take.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )

        You can have a window seat in modern air travel, and you're not going 700 mph a hand's distance from immovable objects.

        Landing and takeoff are also beautiful and kinda fun. Being stuck in a fucking windowless box for an hour has all the charm of traveling in a porta-potty.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Or sitting in a movie theatre. Or a typical office.

          • Neither of which are going 700 MPH 6" from a concrete wall. Neither of which generally have interesting scenery outside which isn't visible except for their windowless misdesign.

            • Do you get upset sitting in the park? You're going over 1000 MPH right on top of thousands of miles of hot, unstable rock.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              I'm sure they'll keep airplanes around for people who like looking at the scenery. Also cars and bicycles. You might want to be careful about that airplane though... it has turbines spinning at more than 700 MPH a millimetre or so from the rest of the airplane. The car has some pretty fast spinny bits with tolerances much less than 6" too.

        • You can have a window seat in modern air travel, and you're not going 700 mph a hand's distance from immovable objects.

          You "can" have a window seat if you are lucky enough. I gather you also don't travel in cars or trains or any other high speed mode of transport that involves travelling at speed just a hands breadth away from death? Not saying I would enjoy travelling in a cramped box, but if it shortened the travel time by even 20% I would take that over the agony of plane travel.

          • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

            by b0s0z0ku ( 752509 )
            Cars and trains don't go at 700 mph through a near-vacuum 6" from a concrete or steel wall. Fuck that idea.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by SirSlud ( 67381 )

              Trains go at "you're dead if you hit it" speeds 6" from concrete walls all the time. Man, I feel like you've never been on a train.

    • If this is the future, then bugger the future with a turbocharged chainsaw.

      You remind me of the people who say flying is a bad experience. You're being whisked away at incredible speeds to a different place using a system which priorities your time and your ability to get to the destination. That is orders of magnitude better than being stuck in traffic. The future can't come fast enough!

      • fuck both flying and the hyperloop. I like trains. nice big windows, fast speeds, pretty views.

  • Finally, they have a tube and a pod? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The real breakthrough is to run the pod in vacuum at high speed safely. All others are just copying the existing products. They made a pod and filmed a cheeky video to show the world? I am not impressed.

    I don't think hyperloop is a good business case because the running cost would be on par with the airplane with much higher infrastructure cost. Yes, you need less fuel to run the pods in the vac. But to maintain the vac, you need energy, a lot of energy. The infrastructure cost would be as high as the norma

    • But they might also save energy on aerodynamics. (You don't need full vacuum anyway in this system.) That's not to say that it's practical but I'm not sure that the energy needed is the greatest obstacle.

  • kiss of death (Score:5, Insightful)

    by niittyniemi ( 740307 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2018 @07:59PM (#56384363) Homepage

    If the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is interested in it, then I'm not.

    His track record is not good:

    • Building new city in Saudi at vast expense to attract businesses and tourists. Pitch: "If getting hanged and flogged is your bag then you're coming to the right place!"
    • Started never ending war in Yemen with resulting starvation, huge cholera epidemic and attendant death and destruction from high explosive supplied by US and UK.
    • Kidnapped Lebanon's leader and made him resign on Saudi TV.
    • Kidnapped 300 of the wealthiest and most powerful in the country and shook them down. Result: turned them into 300 slightly poorer but still powerful enemies.
    • Came to London and spunked a million quid on adverts featuring his gurning face and telling us British peasants how wonderful Saudi now is thanks to him. We may be fucking stupid but please...
    • Has invested 750 million in Virgin Galactica (aka virgin on the ridiculous) Branson's doomed "space" effort that isn't close to orbital.
    • Opening dozens of cinemas in Saudi although 'Snow White' likely to be banned. Some tart without a burkha sleeping with 7 dwarves? Are you sure?

    Tl;Dr: MbS is a moron and bellend. Hence, Virgin Hyperloop must be doomed.

    • Sounds like the Saudi Howard Hughes!

    • His track record is not good:

      Building new city in Saudi at vast expense to attract businesses and tourists. Pitch: "If getting hanged and flogged is your bag then you're coming to the right place!"

      Saudi Arabia is actually a tourist Mecca.

    • Still a better love story than the Trump presidency.

    • A sociopath and a world-class creep, sure. A moron, no; believing that would require attributing his recent success to sheer dumb luck which would make the believer a far bigger moron. Yes, he clearly thinks the English people are morons but to paraphrase Mencken a tad, no one ever went broke underestimating their stupidity; MbS merely demonstrates his awareness of this.p Coming out on top of his recent "housecleaning" strongly suggests that he knows exactly what he's doing; others shouldn't assume they do

  • They have an underground train at this point.

  • Seriously, just build a mobile PVC extruder and extrude a big long tube.. Make the mobile extruder sit on a computer controlled magnetic cushion, on long poles large wheels. This can provide smooth elevation changes with sub-millimeter precision over very diverse terrain. The extruder will require a large tank of PVC resin, a plasticizer, heating element, and extrude likely about 1 to 1 and half inch thick walls. It should probably drive and power by a common liquid fuel, such as diesel.

    As for stability

  • Stupid idea?? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by pablo_max ( 626328 )

    Perhaps someone here can educate me in case I am mistaken. From what I have seen from CGI videos and presentations, the hyperloop seems to be an incredibly impracticable idea.
    All the videos show cars driving onto some kind of platform for sled, then lowering down on an elevator and taking off down the tube? How can anyone possibly think that would work?
    Are there 50 lanes in the tube so lowering elevators don't block the traffic flow?
    Is the elevator in a side tube that connects to the main tube?
    Best case, a

    • I think you are mixing up two different crackpot schemes that Musk has dreamed up.

      The cars on sleds scheme is the "Boring" scheme which resulted from Musk being stuck in traffic on his commute. He thought that if there were a tunnel with sleds that his car could be lifted down onto, and pop up further on, he could jump the queue - him and an other similarly rich people anyway. As you say, it could not cope with mass traffic because of the delay with the lifts [= elevators] and loading - anyone else ever b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pots ( 5047349 )

        people will welcome a 3 metre steel tube passing over their property

        One of the selling points of the hyperloop proposal was that most of it would be built over the expressway, with the support pillars in the median strip, which would drastically simplify that problem. It was originally suggested as an alternative to the high speed rail that California is currently building, which is going to cost something like $60 billion because it can't be built over the expressway and is suffering from the issue that you're talking about.

    • Not sure what videos you've been watching but let me clear a few things up:

      You sound like you're talking about videos from the Boring company. This is Virgin Hyperloop One we are talking about, it's no different to a train.
      But let's talk about what you saw:

      - You saw something outdated. No one is planning on using the elevator concept to an underground transport system for cars anymore, not even Musk.
      - Yes there was an elevator off the side in several of the original videos as well. It makes no sense to drop

  • I hear those things are awfully loud.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      The funny thing is, I was reading a conversation a couple weeks ago, and a person suggested a monorail as an alternative to Loop (not Hyperloop). So I started quoting from the monorail song to him. Except he'd apparently never heard it before and kept making serious replies to each of the "questioner" lines in the song. I couldn't stop laughing. Unfortunately he stopped responding once I asked him if he was sent here by the devil. ;)

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