Hyperloop Freight is a Joke • Hacker News Board

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#51

Post by notahacker » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

Xorlev wrote: post #5

Russell91 wrote: post #2

I always come to these hyperloop criticisms expecting to find some sort of fatal flaw in the physics of energy efficient supersonic travel. But to my surprise, they instead tend to be pessimists saying things like, "You'll never get past my friends: the regulators, the government bureaucrats, and especially the lawyers!. We will drive up your costs and make you look foolish". First, no one said that designing this th…

Reading through the criticisms the consensus is "sure, this can work if you allocate 10-100x more money than estimated." I'm not sure if it's truly innovative if it costs more, places considerable stress (up to 0.5g!) on the rider/cargo (what the author calls a "barf ride"). The analysis picks apart the touted benefits of additional speed when ultimately the capacity is lower and it takes longer to depart. In the cas…

I think the biggest point the article makes is the great deal of care that needs to be taken in packing loads to meet weight requirements and avoid movement of goods in transit.

What makes sense for international air mail doesn't make sense for a four hour journey by truck, especially if that truck can take a container straight from the ship to the city depot without carefully repacking everything, or go door to door with smaller loads.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#52

Post by flukus » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:13 PM UTC

riffic wrote: post #39

problems wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best legitimate criticisms I've seen are here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk Basically expansion and contraction as well as just plain vulnerability of running a vacuum make it extremely difficult to do practically. The phrase he uses, "all the problems of space travel except in a gun barrel" is a pretty accurate description of the issue. Any loss of vacuum will almost guarantee loss of life. No reali…

You assume that Hyperloop's tube will run a vacuum, which is a misconception. The Hyperloop One design uses low pressure tubes which is completely different from being completely evacuated.

Without a vacuum it's just a train with no need to be enclosed.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#53

Post by taneq » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:13 PM UTC

Xorlev wrote: post #5

Russell91 wrote: post #2

I always come to these hyperloop criticisms expecting to find some sort of fatal flaw in the physics of energy efficient supersonic travel. But to my surprise, they instead tend to be pessimists saying things like, "You'll never get past my friends: the regulators, the government bureaucrats, and especially the lawyers!. We will drive up your costs and make you look foolish". First, no one said that designing this th…

Reading through the criticisms the consensus is "sure, this can work if you allocate 10-100x more money than estimated." I'm not sure if it's truly innovative if it costs more, places considerable stress (up to 0.5g!) on the rider/cargo (what the author calls a "barf ride"). The analysis picks apart the touted benefits of additional speed when ultimately the capacity is lower and it takes longer to depart. In the cas…

A train that accelerates at 0.5g to 1200kph would be awesome and I would ride it at every available opportunity.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#54

Post by kinofcain » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:15 PM UTC

mangeletti wrote: post #48

kinofcain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit Among other things it's more efficient to send electricity than to send air.

I don't mean as a means to maximize efficiency, but to avoid a lot of the problems (e.g., the risks of a vacuum, the cost of engineering one, etc.).

Instead of the air resistance of a train-sized object (about a quarter mile long) you'd have air resistance equivalent to a train 300 miles long (think of the tunnel as an inside out train). It's inefficient by several orders of magnitude.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#55

Post by jschwartzi » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:16 PM UTC

Tade0 wrote: post #36

cmrx64 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get all that helium?

I don't know, maybe from the 175 million cubic meters produced annually? For a 300km, two lane stretch you'd require around 7.5mln cubic meters - sure, that's a lot, but it's not an impossible amount.

I think GP was asking: how do you get the helium from thousands of wells spread throughout the continent to the pump stations in California? Surely there are some logistical challenges involved in that.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#56

Post by jfoutz » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

Side effects, side effects, side effects.

Hyperloop may be an unmitigated disaster. But the effort has clear benefits.

An innovative solution to shifting loads would be immediately useful to air freight, and probably trucking and shipping.

Some solution to the sudden loss of vacuum would be useful in everything from oil pipelines to freeway traffic. Turning the wall of air into a smooth gradient in seconds is perhaps impossible, but even a partial solution would create a whole host of companies to take advantage of the new technique.

New materials developed for the pylons, and techniques for manufacturing those pylons are likely broadly applicable. Bridges are of course an obvious example.

Does every flaw with the hyperloop require science fiction? Or is it just out of reach?

It seems like the Department of Transportation should provide a whole bunch of grad students money to answer the questions, rather than private investors, because those problems sound very big and very risky to me. But if they think they can do it, why not go for it?

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#57

Post by bigger_cheese » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:18 PM UTC

One thing the article misses is inflexibility. One of the big disadvantages of rail is that once the track is deployed it is very costly and difficult to upgrade it. One thing I'd want in any "futuristic" freight hauling method would be ease of scaling I don't think Hyperloop offers anything over rail in this regard once track is installed you are more or less stuck with the installed capacity forever.

A computer analogy I'd give is to think of freight handling like information communication - the big issues are bandwidth (How much can you send/receive in one shipment) latency (How long does it take to arrive) and throughput (How many shipments can you handle at once).

Hyperloop addresses the latency issue but does little to nothing to address the other two problems

From what I see working in a heavy industry which relies on bulk freight (for import and export). Throughput (i.e Congestion) is the hot issue - we have a rail terminal and a deep water berth (which handles capesized ships). The rail corridor is shared and at times pretty heavily congested we use road trains (b-double trucks) to make up for the shortfall.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#58

Post by brianwawok » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:21 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #47

Spooky23 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forces of nature or other things never suddenly disrupt infrastructure. See: http://whns.images.worldnow.com/images/22787728_SA.jpg

It's an elevated track so it really could be designed to deal with that kind of break. Water, Oil, and Gas pipelines for example have long dealt with those issues without breaking when designed correctly.

How do oil pipes do this? Automatic cutoffs every mile?

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#59

Post by the_duke » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:23 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #50

the_duke wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so many are using the 'playing at moonshots with other peoples money' criticism. It's not like investors are blind or dumbstruck just because it's an idea from Musk. They do their due diligence and if they think the plan has potential, they invest. I'm sure there were countless technical issues and big challenges around airplanes in the initial stages. And cars. And trains. And, you know, every new technology. Could…

One need look no farther than Silicon Valley to see a plethora of starry eyed investors who are either blind, dumbstruck, or simply haven't done due diligence. Isn't the bubble about to pop... again?

I don't think we are in a bubble anything like the dot com debacle.

The industry as a whole is far more mature now, and paths to monetization are clearer. Competition is high, so is the competence of most VCs and investors.

I'd also place an engineering project like Hyperloop in a whole different space than the typical SV stuff.

Re: Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

#60

Post by xt00 » Sun, Oct 30, 2016, 11:26 PM UTC

foolfoolz wrote: post #30

xt00 wrote: post #21

When people talk about using high speed rail in the US and talk about how it doesn't work, I think the problem is exemplified by how any rail system seems to get implemented in the US. Basically what I have seen in virtually all cities around the US that I've traveled, the train goes close to downtown or close to the airport, but not actually into the actual terminal in the airport. Or you have a fast train that drop…

the goal of high speed rail project in California is not taking you from SF to SJ. it's the bay area to LA area. this is not a train for within Bay Area commuters Caltrain with express trains works very well. sfo and oak have trains that go into the airport. caltrains goal of electrification if it ever happens should make SF to SJ a lot faster. trains in the Bay Area are not as bad as you make them out to be. persona…

Yea I understand that the goal of the california HSR is to get you from SF to LA in its current form, but I guess what I'm getting at is that these systems become much more viable when they truly get you from point A to point B for commuters extremely quickly -- ridership goes way up. If it takes you 30 mins to get someplace that previously took an hour or more, then taking that small transfer seems like a small burden to add onto that. So at least if part of your trip is at very high speed that is extremely helpful, and focuses additional density desires for people who want to move there or build houses. For example, the Taiwan HSR can get you from Taipei downtown to Hsinchu in around 45 mins, and its around the same distance between SF and San Jose -- 50-ish miles. The baby bullet assuming you can actually catch one will take around 1.5 hours to get from SF to San Jose. In Taipei, driving to Hsinchu vs taking the HSR is kind of ridiculous because you hit so much traffic just trying to get out of the city and then the toll roads along the way can be backed up at various points.. so the result is that if you can take the HSR, a large percentage of people do take it. BTW to get that 45 minute time between Taipei and Hsinchu, it stops at I think 2-3 stops along the way. So, you could have SF downtown, SFO, maybe Redwood City, Mountain View, and then San Jose. I mean these trains can go 170 miles per hour and they only take a couple of minutes to get up to around 130 mph, so its not like they need to have zero stops. But I guess if a 1.5 hour commute vs. 45 min commute people don't care too much about, then HSR is not really that useful, but I do think people would really want that. The HSR in the SF peninsula area as far as I know will not go much faster than any trains on that same corridor right now for a variety of reasons. So basically what we really need is a totally new corridor that separates grade such as elevated or underground in order to get the speeds and safety.