New Hyperloop Cargo Company Promises Deliveries at 600 MPH (cnn.com) 173
Virgin Hyperloop One just announced that they're teaming with the supply-chain firm DP World to build hyperloop-enabled cargo systems.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Called DP World Cargospeed, the venture claims it will be able to "deliver freight at the speed of flight and close to the cost of trucking..." So far Virgin Hyperloop One's test capsule has reached speeds of 387 kmph (240 mph), but the company predicts it will send cargo at a top speed of 1,000 kmph (621 mph). In a blog post by Virgin Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd, he calculated a four-day truck journey could be cut to 16 hours. While costs are estimated to run 50% higher than truck transit, Cargospeed believes it can be over five-times cheaper than air freight...
In the announcement, time-sensitive goods such as food and medical supplies were highlighted as items that could benefit from hyperloop's speed. Renders released with the announcement suggest there are plans to integrate drone delivery into the supply chain too.
Virgin Hyperloop One also released a slick video about the venture promising that they're "pushing the boundaries of innovation."
The Washington Post reports that company officials "said they hoped to start construction on a test site in India next year."
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Called DP World Cargospeed, the venture claims it will be able to "deliver freight at the speed of flight and close to the cost of trucking..." So far Virgin Hyperloop One's test capsule has reached speeds of 387 kmph (240 mph), but the company predicts it will send cargo at a top speed of 1,000 kmph (621 mph). In a blog post by Virgin Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd, he calculated a four-day truck journey could be cut to 16 hours. While costs are estimated to run 50% higher than truck transit, Cargospeed believes it can be over five-times cheaper than air freight...
In the announcement, time-sensitive goods such as food and medical supplies were highlighted as items that could benefit from hyperloop's speed. Renders released with the announcement suggest there are plans to integrate drone delivery into the supply chain too.
Virgin Hyperloop One also released a slick video about the venture promising that they're "pushing the boundaries of innovation."
The Washington Post reports that company officials "said they hoped to start construction on a test site in India next year."
Cargo is patient (Score:2)
Cargo generally doesn't mind sitting on a truck an extra day. It rarely complains at all. There are some exceptions, but are there enough to make it worth building a Hyperloop?
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I think they will be awesome. I don’t think they will be competitive for cargo. By the time Hyperloop is done it will have to compete with robot trucks. Robot trucks don’t have to stop for the driver to rest, and with self driving cars highway speeds can go up. And trucks actually go to the cargo's destination, not the hyperloop cargo terminal.
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On the flip side, there's only so much you can do to increase highway speeds. At some point, you hit the limits of what is safe and feasible, even with self-driving tech. I'm not sure where that limit is, but I'm pretty sure it is nowhere near 600 MPH. I don't think you could physically move a tractor trailer on the surface of the earth at 600 MPH. The wind resistance would rip the sides of the trailer right off. And even if you could, the cost per mile would be enormous.
So it's really a question of h
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This isn't about trucks. This is about replacing Union Pacific and the like.
This is the modernization of intercity rail cargo transport, which hasn't appreciably changed since they stopped shoveling coal into a boiler.
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I think the energy equation will actually play out in favor of Hyperloop. On the road, you've got to constantly add energy to overcome friction of the tires and air resistance, plus you have to carry additional weight in fuel or batteries. In the Hyperloop, you've got minimal air resistance, and keeping the capsule elevated. You do have to use power to get up to speed, but you will reclaim the energy when you slow down. All in all, the net energy use should be close to even with a huge time advantage to the
Lol, there is some truth to that (Score:2)
> you drive on interstate highways because Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander and not the penny-dick doubt chislers
Well said. :)
I'm not too sure about hyperlink - it's an interesting idea with a lot of unknowns. Leadership is proven thing, though.
Hyperloop. Darn autocorrect (Score:2)
That should be "I'm not too sure about hyperloop".
I think hyperlinks are pretty well proven now. Starting with HyperCard.
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Hyperloop is a proven thing.
It won't be proven, as nothing is, until an example is working in service at full speed and with paying payload.
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There's a massive R/D and infrastructure investment up front, but you drive on interstate highways because Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander and not the penny-dick doubt chislers of 2018 slashdot, pardon my invading France.
The difference is that Hyperloop is actually a good idea, while the interstate highway system was a shit one. It was created as a handout to big auto and big oil. The claim was that it was for military purposes, but rail can move military hardware faster and cheaper.
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Actually the Interstate did enforce even more segregation and (surprise) affected poorer communities more than richer ones. That wasn't the plan, that was an unintended consequence of doing an enormous project.
The major force behind the Interstate was Russia (or some other generic boogyman). This was a system that allowed the Army to move lots and lots of stuff to the West Coast when it was invaded. Or fell into the Pacific. Or godzilla.
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Wow you are a massive retard.
You are a tiny coward. Come at me, bro. I'm not even mad.
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Lousy muzzle velocity but (Score:2)
if I can deliver 200 lbs of lead at that speed, it would be ok.
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You there, what were you jacking off about? Guns? Why guns? Why are you softly moaning to yourself about guns HERE though? What? This is your cover, you're compensating for something? I'm ruining it? Oh.
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No he isn't. Learn to read. Protip: sometimes the subject line is informative.
released a slick video about the venture (Score:2)
I perused the first two or three paragraphs foregoing the instinctive judgement to label this submission as an advertorial. [wikipedia.org]
Fortuitively, discovering they released a slick video about the venture, my fears were assuaged.
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Press Release.
Look at phys.org - its about physics in the form of Press Releases.
This was about blue smoke in the form of a Slash Dot Post,
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What is KMPH? (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess CNN has invented a new unit of speed measurement. I'm guessing 'kmph' would be 1000 miles per hour so 378 kmph would actually be 378,000 mph.
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Same is to be said about the moderators, this should at best be rated Funny.
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Kilometres per hour ... is nothing mysterious to the rest of the world, even when abbreviated as kmph.
As a European former railway engineer well versed in working in kph, someone writing "kmph" is a mystery to me as to why they should be so stupid. I have never seen "kmph" written or spoken before in my life, and the OP was right to poke fun at it.
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It wasn't that I had no idea what the author meant, my post was supposed to be a funny comment on how stupid CNN is. In fact I did google it and came up with two items. It is the stock symbol for a company called KemPharm and the call letters for a TV station in California. Nobody in the US uses KMPH as a unit of measurement and since everyone else is metric, neither do they.
It all comes down to one thing (Score:2)
Sounds
Just my 2 cents
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Cost per mile. If it work out finanically, maybe it will be tried. If not it will be like high speed rail in California between what, LA and San Fran. How is that project working out?
It's not working out well, ironically, because California respects the law more than other states. In almost any other state, they would have pissed all over everything to make it happen.
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If it is "over five-times cheaper than air freight", that means they pay you.*
Where do I sign up?
*One time cheaper is free.
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A Hyperloop will in most places go underground, it does not require any level or otherwise troublesome crossings.
The NIMBY community can't complain about a new eye or ear sore and the terminals will be much smaller than a typical airfield.
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Our advantage is the soil is relatively soft, the disadvantage is it will be water logged.
But as they manage to build metros under cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam then this small diameter Hyperloop tunnel is a piece of cake. The lack of real estate will be the rule in nearly every city so the Boring Company has a lot of work ahead.
Back to the original article, when us
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You realize your entire nation could fit into the corner of an average sized American state? You should get out more.
At last, the right approach (Score:2)
Hyperloop is the kind of technology that should be tried out first on cargo. If it proves successful, that will generate interest in using it for passengers.
Virgin (Score:2)
Virgin - because none of their stuff goes all the way.
Fantasies on top of fantasies... (Score:2)
So we now have a pie in the sky delivery service to go along with the pie in the sky tube train...
*sigh*
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Basically, Branson is just a good salesman.
I've seen this before (Score:2)
liquids (Score:2)
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Second, the unmitigated potential for absolute lethality.
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Absolute legality would swiftly follow absolute lethality.
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Providing no external visual reference frame in combination with acceleration is the perfect recipe for inducing nausea.
It would be very easy to display a visual acceleration reference on screens that look like windows, if needed.
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You know that subways exist, right? They manage to accelerate without having to mop out gallons of vomit after each trip. External visual references, or "windows with lights in the tube" are solved problems. Even the Gemini capsule had windows while being exposed to much harsher conditions - why couldn't this? Plus, the need probably isn't as dire as you think it is - thousands of people are in middle seats on wide-body airliners every day, nowhere near windows, looking straight ahead and don't turn int
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Providing no external visual reference frame in combination with acceleration is the perfect recipe for inducing nausea
Not a problem, provided that the acceleration is smooth and constant.
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The shockwave from a tube rupture...
Oh yes, that shockwave propagating through a near vacuum exactly how? You do realize that other than E&M waves, waves need a medium to propagate through.
If you had said capsules slamming into the wall of air due to a rupture, you might have at least been somewhere in the realm of reality. Even then, however, I'm not sure how realistic that is. Air isn't going to propagate down the tube like a piston. Typical flow patterns in pipes are highest in the middle, dropping off towards zero next to the walls. W
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14.5 PSI is the change in pressure which each 33 feet (10 m) of depth.
The tires on most cars have about twice that pressure in them.
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Everything is expensive if you have no need to build it in quantities. Economies of scale are your friend.
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Actually this makes more sense than people moving to me - cargo is also less attractive to mess up for random idjits.
It would also take JIT inventory up a notch.
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Actually this makes more sense than people moving to me
It is called an outbreak of common sense. A similar is happening with Boring - initially it was to provide an underground railway* with "sleds" carrying cars lowered from the surface. A moments thought will reveal that the traffic jams at street level to get onto the ride would make it impractical unless it were restricted to a few billionaires like Musk himself. So Musk has now added that it would be for pedestrians and cyclists too - in other words a conventional underground railway.
* "Subway" in the U
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I'm not sure it will fit the conventional subway - the hyperloop does better at high speed trips over longer distances. Going 0.5 - 1 miles as is typical for a NYC or London subway stop is not efficient for something like this.
Putting and airport 20-50 (or more) miles outside a major city is typical but then you have a 1-2 hour commute to where you want to be. A hyperloop could cut that down to 5-10.
Similarly, medium size cities in an area could now share a single, larger airport and have more flights for
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Who wanted the Internet before it existed? Who wanted New Coke? That pretty much brackets the range of possibilities.
Manufacturing is certainly a plausible use because one of the well-established ways to improve a manufacturer's profitability is to reduce the amount of capital tied up in materials inventory. That savings is limited by how quickly you can get those materials from your supplier. If getting the stuff you need to fill orders is slow and unreliable, you have no choice but to stock those mate
Re: Why (Score:2)
That savings is limited by how quickly you can get those materials from your supplier. If getting the stuff you need to fill orders is slow and unreliable, you have no choice but to stock those materials.
Or you could just order your supplies four days earlier and save on shipping charges.
I'm trying to imagine a scenario where a responsible manufacturing concern would need some necessary component in under 4 hours and would be willing to pay for this hyper loop service.
Of course, to make such deliveries worthwhile:
A) your supplier needs to me very close to a hyper loop 'station' - what good is. 4 hour delivery time if it takes 6-8 hours to get the goods to the hyper loop station?
B) their goods need to be pac
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I'm at a loss to think of any product that would require such immediate transit, except for transplant organs.
I also happen to believe the business case is weak for this but I can see there would clearly be more use for it than that.
* Much of our food travels a long distance before we eat it on slow transport, during which it degrades. You would get better food if most of it could be transported at airline speeds for rail prices.
* There are a lot of advantages for manufacturing for "Just in Time" delivery practices. In Japan many vendors must commit the specific hour of delivery and if they don't make it there i
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* Have you seen the scale at which next-day parcel delivery services operate? Fed-Ex, UPS, USPS, DHL all spend fantastic amounts on air cargo
Indeed. FedEx had revenues of $60 Billion last year, and has a fleet of 650 aircraft.
There is enormous demand for fast delivery. Replacing aircraft with a series of tubes could be a big cost saver and a big win for the environment.
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But these measures like refrigeration and conservation all have a price that is influenced by the duration expected.
When you can make this delivery much faster your associated conservation costs are going down and the quality of the produce goes up.
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If you imagine a small shop, sure it's hard to see. But the thing is as businesses get larger the principle of get the customer's money soon and hang on to it as long as possible starts to get pushed to what the layman appears ridiculous lengths. With enough volume, pennies per unit in time value of money add up to significant amounts.
It's like my old school friend who became an automotive engineer, and was astonished by how engineers sweat bullets over $0.50 on e $30,000 vehicle. If it's an F-150 pickup
Re: Why (Score:2)
Hyperloop transport is not going to be like vacuum tubes - it will resemble train travel - it will be folly to think a chef in Texas can decide to feature Jersey Tomatoes on their dinner menu and be able to order them in the morning and have them for dinner that night, fresh from Jersey.
To meet a manufacturer's Just In Time needs, their supplier needs to be the warehouse.
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Well, that's not the operational profile Musk is pitching. He's pitching greater scheduling flexibility than trains, allowing traffic to be added on a flexible ad hoc basis up to the carrying capacity of the tubes.
But he hasn't proved he can make the concept physically work yet, much less operate it economically. Assuming that it is physically feasible with near-term technology, economic feasibility depends on it carrying enough traffic to recoup the fabulous investment costs. And to me, that's the bigg
Re: Why (Score:2)
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I thought the future would be that your highly automated factory in Louisville could 3D-print all the parts they need?
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Where did you get the 'rail prices'? From the backers of this entertaining notion?
Every land owner in the country is planning on giving away nice clear parcels for this endeavor? Or are we going to bore holes underground (always an easy thing to do on continental distance scales)? Rip up the rails? The Interstate?
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It doesn't seem to offer anything over maglev, while having many disadvantages. Maglev is proven technology, cheaper and can carry a lot more. Speed is about the same.
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Maglev is proven technology
Hardly. There are only a handful of working Maglev systems, and they are all heavily subsidized and uneconomical. I have taken the Pudong-Shanghai Maglev, and it was a fast and smooth ride, but it was also nearly empty since it is twenty times the cost of the bus, while only shaving 30 minutes off the trip time.
cheaper
Total hogwash.
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And somehow a hyper-loop over the same distance will be cheaper?
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And somehow a hyper-loop over the same distance will be cheaper?
What's your point? That maglev makes sense because there is something else that is even stupider?
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I'm thinking of the new maglev shinkansen. It's reasonably priced, fully expected to be profitable and not going to cost much more than the current ones to ride. They expect it to hit 1000kph in due course too.
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I'm thinking of the new maglev shinkansen.
Since it isn't working yet, I wouldn't call it "proven technology".
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Solution looking for a problem (Score:2)
A common theme throughout all the Hyperloop news in the recent years, is that Hyperloop is obviously a solution looking for a problem.
There are high-speed rails running in Europe, Japan, and more recently China. Thousands of miles of it, carrying millions of people around every day. In the past few years, when all you get from Hyperloop is talk of what it "promises", China had built thousands of miles of HSR tracks around the country.
These real world HSR only need the laying of tracks and overhead power c
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Indeed, but you are overlooking the American mindset that conventional railways cannot go at more than 40mph and the trains are constantly derailing. They don't have a clue. In fact Musk etc studiously avoid the word "railway" and if you want to stir things up, try suggesting that Hyperloop, Boring etc are types of railway.
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One thing I see going for (some) Hyperloops is that they probably can be placed high above ground for cheaper than conventional trains - saving on the footprint and especially the need to build tunnels/overpasses needed to accommodate high-speed rail.
Do you seriously think that the Hyperloop can be built over land paying only for the few square feet that its pylon feet actually occupy? I don't know what country you are living in (the desert?) but Hyperloop will need to buy all the area it overhangs and a lot more too. Crops do not grow well in partial shadow (take a look under and around motorway viaducts, they are bare soil shitholes), and as for going over cities there will be a legal fight for every inch of the way.
As for saving the need to build o
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If Hyperloop really made good economic sense, then *somewhere* in the world would have built one already.
What? That's stupid. It could reasonably have only recently come to make good economic sense. You forgot to account for time in your reasoning.
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Pipelines can make abrupt changes of direction to avoid obstacles and hug the ground, and can go up and down steep inclines, so their supports are cheap. Hyperloop, at its speed, will only be able to make very gentle changes of direction. So budget for some long tunnels and spectacular viaducts. The pipeline analogy is BS.
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The exact same question can be said for planes. Aren't boats, trains and cars fast enough for you?
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My guess would be "anything you're already using air freight for, but don't want to pay air freight prices for."
Which equates to "anything going air freight where this service is available."
Seems fairly obvious to me.
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Why do you think this would be cheaper than air freight?
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This Hyperloop thing running in near-vacuum requires a lot less energy than an aircraft.
And that equates directly to less cost but at least as important indirectly to a much smaller carbon foot print, something that is outside of Trumpworld a BIG thing.
Also, because the Hyperloop, like a train, does not need to carry its own fuel or power it can easily be powered by alternative sources.
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All it needs is a dedicated bit of space the size of a highway spanning large amounts of area. At least with aircraft you don't need to build a new road every time you change destinations - just a runway. Even Elon has had to make up some new Tom Swift like concept to push this further (at least they're tubes). Sure, it won't need much energy. Just gobs and gobs of cheap, easy to obtain real estate.
Right.
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Sorry, was thinking of the budget for California's High Speed Rail plan. I'm not sure what the cost for hyperloop would actually be
You answered that in your first post - trillions.
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Realise this tube is only near-vacuum, that makes a differential pressure of about 1 bar (14.5 psi).
Around the world there are many thousands of miles of high pressure gas distribution lines with typically a pressure in the area of 60-80 bar (900-1000 psi) and they don't leak.
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They leak. You just don't hear about it unless it burns down a neighborhood or incenerates a train full of vacationing children. (both have happened)
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Yes, but the leaks are fairly small - and a similarly small leak in a hyperloop can pretty easily be pumped out.
They don't need perfection or a hard vacuum. The point is to greatly reduce air friction, not try to eliminate it entirely. That last percent would cost more than the previous 99%.
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Leaks come in all sizes. Lunatics regularly shoot pipelines with rifles. In Nigeria they drill holes into them and scoop up gasoline with buckets then run, the slow ones get incinerated. People are generally assholes.
The last % is impossible without a diffusion pump.
If they ever build one, most of the air 'leaks' will come from airlocking to let people and cargo in/out. Important details like tube switching and loading/unloading haven't been worked out, just hand waved away.
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Thanks for the explanation - that a Hyperloop executive believes it will be five times cheaper. No further discussion is needed.
I assume you were after "Funny" mods.
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Especially the motion itself is near frictionless, making the tube vacuum is a one time investment that only requires maintenance.
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It doesn't take much engineering acumen to understand a Hyperloop requires a lot less energy than a plane.
Propulsion energy is only a small part of the cost of most transport systems. The capital required to build Hyperloops, and the cost of maintenance, will be enormous.
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We can just ignore capital costs because they're 'one time'?
Back to Engineering school for you, you lack acumen. Do you even 'present value'?
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It's doomed, but not a bad idea. All publicity is good.
Just don't put any money in it.
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It takes a massive amount of energy to maintain the vacuum.
"Nature abhors a Hyperloop." -Aristotle
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I don't like your style of engineering, period.
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I've never seen "kmph" before, but "kph" seems to be an Americanism. Kilometres per hour is abbreviated to "km/h" in countries that use metric units.
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I've never seen "kmph" before, but "kph" seems to be an Americanism. Kilometres per hour is abbreviated to "km/h" in countries that use metric units.
Your post made me wonder - how come the "Metricites" never re-defined time in decimal ten units? you would think that minutes, hours, days & so on would drive them nuts.
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I'm not using any parcel service ever again unless they deliver directly from the source to my house with no stops or transfers and have plastic bottles to piss in.
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Direct high speed transport can be effective like many of Japan and Euros high speed trains, but these share infrastructure with lower speed rail.
No high speed trains don't generally don't share infrastructure, but can when it is advantageous like getting into city centres instead of unloading miles away like airports do. In many cases the high speed routes are entirely new, in other cases there are quadruple (or more) tracks, two for lower speed trains and two for higher speed trains.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-1... [bbc.co.uk]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]