Elon Musk Promises Longer, Curved Tunnel For Future Hyperloop Contests (engadget.com) 111
Shortly after the 2019 Hyperloop Pod competition ended, Elon Musk announced on Twitter that next year's Hyperloop competition will be held in a six mile curved vacuum tunnel. Previously, the competition was held in a straight three-quarters of a mile test tunnel which is located at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Engadget reports: The Hyperloop competition is a student engineering challenge where teams are invited to design and build a prototype vehicle to travel in the potential Hyperloop network. The vehicles must be self-propelled and achieve maximum possible speeds without crashing. At this year's competition, in which a team from Technical University of Munich (TUM) reached a top speed of 288 miles per hour before damage occurred and an emergency stop had to be performed, Musk mentioned the possibility of expanding the competition to include tunneling as well.
"We'll consider a tunneling competition," Musk said at a Q&A about the competition, TechCrunch reports. "I think a tunneling thing would be pretty exciting. Because as I just articulated the primary challenge is how do you tunnel effectively, especially how do you put in the reinforcing segments and get the dirt out effectively -- it's harder than it seems."
"We'll consider a tunneling competition," Musk said at a Q&A about the competition, TechCrunch reports. "I think a tunneling thing would be pretty exciting. Because as I just articulated the primary challenge is how do you tunnel effectively, especially how do you put in the reinforcing segments and get the dirt out effectively -- it's harder than it seems."
Relying on outsiders for all the R&D? (Score:4, Insightful)
The competition seems to be a way for Musk to get outsiders to do the R&D, after which he just picks one already-developed technology to use. Who knows what share of the eventual profits will go to the competition winner and what share to Musk, but I wouldn't bet against Musk.
Now it seems that the competition format will be used for the vehicles AND the tunneling.
What's left? Is it true that Musk has zero new ideas in relation to the Hyperloop, and he's just hoping that his celebrity power will attract enough outside ideas to make it viable?
He's the visionary talking about vacuum tunnels. (Score:3)
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Vacuum tunnels have been talked about for over 200 years. [wikipedia.org]
Re:He's the visionary talking about vacuum tunnels (Score:5, Interesting)
Vacuum tunnels have been talked about for over 200 years. [wikipedia.org]
... and they have been in actual use for almost as long. The French post office used pneumatic tubes to transport mail in Paris [wikipedia.org] beginning in 1868.
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The London Pneumatic Despatch Company [wikipedia.org] was formed in 1859 and begun operating in 1863, so the French were actually late to that party.
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The London Pneumatic Despatch Company [wikipedia.org] was formed in 1859 and begun operating in 1863, so the French were actually late to that party.
The French system was far more extensive.
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Big difference between a tube for mail and a tube for people.
Not only much larger volume to keep in vaccuum, the challenge of keeping a milles long structure strong enough to withstand the differential between vaccuum and sea level atmosphere from expanding and contracting itself to peaces. Add to that the critical failure modes.
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It is not the same thing. Pneumatic tubes work by creating an airflow moving an unpowered payload, not by pulling a vacuum and running a powered vehicle inside it. The pumps are designed for high airflow, not high pressure/vacuum. Also pneumatic tubes don't always involve vacuums, high pressure can also be used, anything as long a a pressure differential is created.
And AFAIK these things are still used to move cash in supermarkets, among other things.
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Whoa, time to switch to decaf, April!
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Vacuum tunnels have been talked about for over 200 years. [wikipedia.org]
These Hyperloop contest vehicles are self propelled. No vacuum is mentioned.
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Sure, but maintaining vacuum is expensive. If you're not using it to achieve high speed, then there's not much point in maintaining it at all.
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>(think "vehicles crashing into one another as the front most hits high pressure but the vehicles behind don't.")
Sure, but it seems rather stupid not to have everybody put on the brakes the moment a catastrophic breach occurs - it's not like pressure sensors to detect such an event are expensive. And there's not much short of a bombing that would cause a such catastrophic failure to begin with. Shoot the thing with armor-piercing bullets and you just punch a bunch of little holes in it so that air beg
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Idividually, the sensors are not expensive. Integrating them into a system that doesn't shit it's electronic breeks when a sensor fails is rather more difficult. Even more so when you're going to have to build them to a standard competitive with the death rate in the lowest death rate in the transport industry, which is in railway tunnels. Railway signalling is very tightly regulated, because the industry has a long history of companies tr
Re: He's the visionary talking about vacuum tunnel (Score:2)
"Sorry, Sixty-Year Old Virgins; Star Trek never had anything on real Sci-Fi."
Re:Relying on outsiders for all the R&D? (Score:5, Interesting)
My take is that he released a whitepaper on this concept, just throwing it out there in case anyone thought it was interesting. It took off more than expected, so years later he made his own hyperloop company.
Alternatively, proposing a basic concept and leaving it up to others to make specific implementations, choosing which one to give final funding to, is exactly what NASA does. Aside from the pork, that seems to get things built.
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Probably because high speed loops have to be big.
A 6 mile loop would have a 1-mile radius, which at 300mph would mean a centripetal acceleration of about 1.2g ( (134m/s)^2 / 1537m = 11.7m/s^2) A bit much for prototypes to deal with, and a *lot* more than you'd want for a passenger hyperloop. And it gets worse rapidly as speed increases: if someone managed to reach 500mph they'd be dealing with 3.33g of centripetal acceleration.
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Re:Relying on outsiders for all the R&D? (Score:4, Insightful)
It will not be viable. There is a reason nobody ever looked into the idea to a greater depth: It does not make sense once you look at the details. Musk probably got the idea from some children's books about the future way back (Yes, I had such books too. But I grew up at some time.) and falsely believes that technology can solve anything. It cannot.
Re:Relying on outsiders for all the R&D? (Score:5, Informative)
Genuinely curious what you think the showstoppers are? I have my doubts about the economics of it, but the biggest issue I see are the g-forces around tight radii at the proposed speeds and "following highways". I think expansion and atmosphere in-rushing from failure are all overblown issues that could be engineered around.
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I think expansion and atmosphere in-rushing from failure are all overblown issues that could be engineered around.
How are you going to engineer around a wall of air rushing at basically mach 1 through the tunnel to fill the vacuum? Magnets, I guess.
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Not saying this would be the best practical solution, but large "gate valves" serving as protective devices that engage when a breach is found - these would help stop or diffuse a shock. They wouldn't need to seal 100%. On the vehicle side you could have what would amount to very large airbag deploying gas canisters like sodium azide, or even a conventional solid rocket engine. This would help slow the vehicle while the expanding gas going forward would meet the shock front and help diffuse on-rushing gas.
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Not really. It's just a thinly disguised recruitment tool for emerging engineering talent.
Re:Relying on outsiders for all the R&D? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's never going to be viable, because the capacity is too low. If you run the numbers for minimum safe distances between pods and capacity of each, it just doesn't stack up against high speed rail. Especially against maglev.
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I disagree.
A pod can be quite large, lets think about a bus.
Secondly you will run a bundle of pipes connecting two hubs. Such a bundle is perhaps 10 pipes, plus maintainance and rescue pipes. But more likely you could run a cable for emergency were a broken down vehicle can attach too to pull it out.
Think about in my case Munich to Berlin.
The hubs would probably be 10km - 20km outside of the city. And the city had 20 or 30 or more small stations that are connecting to the hubs.
If we find an easy - as in qui
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The point of hyperloop was to have small pods in small tubes so that they would be cheaper to build and take up less space.
If you make them bigger you might as well just use a proven, existing technology like maglev.
For safety Japanese high speed rail, around 300 kph, is spaced at 15 minute intervals. When calculating the safety margin you have to consider not just how long it takes to stop, but how long it takes you to notice that the vehicle in front has stopped. The only reliable way to do that is fail-s
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The point of hyperloop was to have small pods in small tubes so that they would be cheaper to build and take up less space.
If you make them bigger...
You confused yourself with excessively simple words.
"Bigger" could mean increased radius, as you seem to imply, but it could also just mean increased length which would not really impact the "small pods in small tubes" "taking up less space" idea.
When calculating the safety margin you have to consider not just how long it takes to stop, but how long it takes you to notice that the vehicle in front has stopped. The only reliable way to do that is fail-safe occupancy sensors.
When faced with an engineering problem and you only have one idea, it never implies there is only one way, or only one reliable way, or only one true Scotsman. It always implies that you didn't think of anything else.
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High speed trains leave a trail of 'dead wire' behind them.
A following train will stop automatically due to lack of current.
I assumed the hyperloop pods would be maglev anyway ...
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The fact he's including tunneling is a tell that he's finally realizing that tunneling is too costly for widespread hyperloop implementation. Stuff most of us figured out when he first started making crazy claims about hyperloop.
Industry has tried many tunneling methods, Musk isn't likely to find the answer in a science fair competition.
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"The competition seems to be a way for Musk to get outsiders to do the R&D, after which he just picks one already-developed technology to use. Who knows what share of the eventual profits will go to the competition winner and what share to Musk, but I wouldn't bet against Musk."
Like NASA and Google?
The bastard!
Well, that makes it boring . . . (Score:3)
The vehicles must be self-propelled and achieve maximum possible speeds without crashing.
No crashes? Take a look at Formula 1 or NASCAR . . . people watch that for the crashes.
Free bread and gladiator fights could further get more folks to watch.
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The vehicles must be self-propelled and achieve maximum possible speeds without crashing.
No crashes? Take a look at Formula 1 or NASCAR . . . people watch that for the crashes.
Free bread and gladiator fights could further get more folks to watch.
How many people get on train or plane or whatever and think, I hope this thing crashes.
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How many people get on train or plane or whatever and think, I hope this thing crashes.
Mad Mike Hughes? [wikipedia.org]
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How many people get on train or plane or whatever and think, I hope this thing crashes.
Probably over half the people riding on Kim Jong Un's armored train while it is outside the country.
looking forward to the xkcd solution (Score:3)
all i can think of is: how would the black-hat guy on xkcd solve this. it'd probably involve opening a wormhole to another dimension (like they did on Stargate) and dumping all of the soil into another universe. the last picture in the cartoon would of course have things like "look, son, this hole in the sky just appeared and started dumping a mountain of earth on us: the good news is, they dumped gold on us too, we're rich!"
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I think it's an above ground tunnel, or at least that was the plan. Basically just big pipes mounted on struts.
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.... with billion dollar engineering teams would already have had optimal solutions after the better part of a decade.
The solutions to tunnel boring were found a long time ago, and it is done routinely. There are several major tunnels being bored in other parts of the World as you read this.
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The solved this in Boston; you just keep throwing money into the tunnel opening, and the progress decreases according to the inverse square law.
If only (Score:2)
"the primary challenge is how do you tunnel effectively, especially how do you put in the reinforcing segments and get the dirt out effectively -- it's harder than it seems."
He should start a company that specializes in digging holes. Nah, guess not, that'd be too boring.
Relax, guys (Score:3, Funny)
It's okay if your tunnel is slightly curved. That's perfectly normal and there's nothing wrong with it. If there any people who don't want to use your tunnel just because it's a bit bent, they're merely young and naive to the realities of the different shapes of tunnels.
That said, if your tunnel is bent so much that it interferes with its safe operation, please consult with an engineer.
(Or if you don't like that one, "Sure, Elon says it'll be six miles long, but if you actually measure it's more like 5 1/2 miles.")
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That said, if your tunnel is bent so much that it interferes with its safe operation, please consult with an engineer.
(*) Order of operations is the responsibility of the user.
Will the new tunnel be underground? (Score:2)
I wonder if making it an underground system would solve the issues that Thunderfoot brought up in his infamous Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
- Expansion and shrinking of the metal tube due to heat differences over the course of a day. Underground temperatures are more stable?
- Dealing with the 10 ton air pressure per m2. Would encasing it underground relieve this stress?
- Better protection from crazy people shooting holes in it.
Although having it underground would probably create wholly new
Re:Will the new tunnel be underground? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. The whole thing is too fragile, too inefficient and too impractical. Admit that the US has screwed up massively on long distance ground transportation and just get a high-speed rail system like everybody else. But no, it has to be "superior". And hence you will continue to have nothing and fall behind even further.
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An elevated maglev would be more than good enough. In a lot of scenarios, elevated regular rail would do just fine, too.
Imagine just constructing new rail lines over the median strip of major highways, for instance.
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Maglev is not viable either under most circumstances. The Germans tried it (Transrapid), but, as it turns out, there are numerous problems that make it excessive expensive and problematic.
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Actually not.
It worked extremely well, but there was no political will to build one.
Now our mag levs are running in China, or do you think they invented them?
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Yep, the German maglev train is running in Shanghai [wikipedia.org].
Meanwhile in Japan, they are building a much longer maglev line [wikipedia.org] to relieve an existing overcrowded HSR line.
Maglev is a perfectly viable technology. Right now there's a very small economically sensible niche for it, but as human wealth and travel demand grow in coming decades, this niche will grow.
A lot of the expense is not due to the maglev system per se - it's that any vehicle going extremely fast needs a very straight path to be comfortable for passeng
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Heavy weather is going to wipe out surface rail. A train might be able to plow through snowdrifts as tall as the locomotive, but it's not going to do the same trick through so much hail.
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Fucking Guadalajara recently got three feet of hail, which compared to their usual weather is a change of biblical proportions. Snow is light and fluffy which is why a train can blow right through a bunch of it (impressive videos abound on the tube.) Hail isn't light and fluffy, and it doesn't take much sunlight to turn it into a fairly solid mass. And global warming is actually getting worse, so get ready for more shit you ain't never seen, all over the planet. Cars can detour, but trains generally can't.
I
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Right. That new-fangled surface rail will never work!
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It's old-fangled, and the world is new. Locomotives have never had to operate in the modern climate, which is getting worse and not better. Go ahead and pretend nothing is changing, though. Surely the old ways of doing things will suffice for ever!
Re:Will the new tunnel be underground? (Score:5, Interesting)
Boring tunnels is very expensive. Musk has talked himself (or at least his own fans) into believing that he can do it orders of magnitude more cheaply.
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Boring tunnels is also high-risk because you do not really ever know what you find. Most tunnels get delayed. Musk is either incompetent or in denial. But if you have a lot of money, it takes a while for your pipe-dreams to fail.
Re: Will the new tunnel be underground? (Score:1)
Dealing with the 10 ton air pressure per m2.
Sounds a lot more dramatic that way, doesn't it. I run three times as much in my tires and thrash them. Me thinks keeping that pipe from deforming or imploding simply isn't the engineering challenge you're trying to make it out to be.
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Even a slight deformation will be lethal. Hence you need a larger concrete structure around it and a clearance between the two. You also need access for any kind of rescue efforts on accidents, i.e. a 2nd tunnel in parallel. Tunnels are exceptionally expensive and longer ones take decades to build.
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Engineers everywhere are fleeing from the very thought in droves.
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Well, yes. I was not aiming at a complete list. There is just so much wrong with the idea that it will be hard to provide one.
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A 1 inch wide, 12 inch long steel rod scaled up 100 times is a 100 inch wide, 100 foot long steel rod.
I would very much like to see you bend a 100 inch wide steel rod.
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Dealing with the 10 ton air pressure per m2.
Sounds a lot more dramatic that way, doesn't it. ... Me thinks keeping that pipe from deforming or imploding simply isn't the engineering challenge you're trying to make it out to be.
Does that sound dramatic? It sounds factual to me - or have I missed something? It is being expressed in a fairly reasonable choice of metric units (OK he could have said "tonnes" but little difference). He could have expressed it in N/sq mm, or bar, or Kg/sq cm, or psi, or whatever, but I'm quite capable of doing the conversions without freaking out, as could most /. readers I expect.
It is not a "challenge" anyway, just workaday engineering, nothing that can't be solved with some money. It is going to
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I wonder if making it an underground system would solve the issues - Expansion and shrinking of the metal tube due to heat differences over the course of a day. Underground temperatures are more stable?
Yes, It does solve the primary problem, that of thermal expansion / contraction, which is why I suggested years ago putting the tubes underground. The funny thing is the actual expansion /contraction problem isn't the one that most people envisage, or at least comment 'knowledgeably' about, but it's about large scale movement of the tubes - I wonder if you remember your high school physics: if you take a metal ring and heat it up it expands, i.e. the hole in the middle of the ring gets bigger, because there
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Americans find it hard to multiply or divide by 10, 100 or 1000.
They prefer multiples of 3, 12, 1760, 5,280 or 63,360.