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Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

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Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#161

Post by manigandham »

noonespecial wrote: post #148
manigandham wrote: post #72

The engineering has never been a problem, vacuum-tube trains are an idea that's been around for centuries. [1] Removing friction and air resistance is a simple physics problem, and there are already operational maglev [2] trains so putting them in a low-pressure tunnel is not a major revolution. The real issue is the viability of such a transport because of the cost, complexity, and construction effort involved. We (…

> We (in the USA) can barely build a high-speed rail line effectively We went to the moon. We send car sized rovers to Mars. We certainly can (in the technical sense) build a friggin' train. Its a political problem that keeps us from doing it. So its more like "we won't build high speed rail", and there are plenty of interesting reasons why this is so. The point is that the mystical sounding Hyperloop might be just w…

Sure, it's a combination of political/social/economic factors but "futuristic" doesn't seem to have much impact right now (if it ever really did). NASA's trip to the moon was funded by war motives and we've since had the decline of both the space station and the shuttle programs. It's great to see SpaceX doing new things but there's definitely profits in reducing launch costs (again driven by war and business motives).

What exactly is the Hyperloop going for? Short trips are already served by buses, subways and light-rail. World-wide trips won't be feasible against air travel anytime soon, and will probably require the same security procedures as flying because of the speeds and risks involved, especially if crossing national borders.

So connecting major metros is the potential scenario but airlines have already proven that the vast majority want wifi and food so we can be productive and entertained in transit rather than paying a big premium to save a few hours.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#162

Post by slobotron »

cjbillington wrote: post #109
lisper wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There can be absorption points along the track Sure, but these have to hold a vacuum. No one has figured out a way to do that.

I work in a lab with vacuum systems that get heated and cooled and we just have segments of flexible bellows like this: http://www.pchemlabs.com/subcatagoryb.asp?pid=flexible-bello... Not sure if the same thing will work at larger scales, but I'm not sure its a fundamental problem.

Wowza, 5" bellow is $450, how cheap could they make 6' one, even in bulk?

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#163

Post by LowRezSkyline »

detritus wrote: post #128
eradicatethots wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also was confused, but they probably mean “ Brand son”

Yes, there we go. I'm genuinely surprised it was anything other than fairly obvious. Perhaps his reputation's different away from the UK?

How dare you be clever... don't you know that if you make the very very smart people and or the mods feel less smart you will get smacked down on HN?

Or maybe it was your foolish statements of a personal nature cause that's not scientifically, rigorously provable, cause you know, personal experiences are invalid! Why... well the very very smart people know more than you!

As Jobe from Arrested Development would say ' COME ON ! '.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#164

Post by mrguyorama »

_zachs wrote: post #111

Imagine if half of these commenters were around when the Wright brothers were pioneering aviation?

This kind of skepticism would have been perfectly acceptable had the Wright Brothers wrote three pages of guesswork and napkin math instead of actually building a plane.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#165

Post by daemin »

Just as a thought experiment, could the promotion of these "hyperloop" projects be a clever political ploy to misdirect/divert attention and prevent a viable high speed rail network from being built?

Elon's main business is electric cars and (one of) Branson's is airlines. So a reasonable competitor to both is fast and cheap(er) public transport along a major travel corridor in the USA.

This means that by promoting this alternative to high speed rail as faster, cheaper, better, they are undermining public support for a real project, which could mean its end.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#166

Post by detritus »

waegawegawe wrote: post #153
detritus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes? Presumably not from Britons or anyone who knows anything about the guys history? So what HAS he done then, other than brand anything he can then offload to third and fourth parties to run the businesses for him? And don't say Virgin Galactic - that's just some clever peripheral branding to encourage the likes of the downvoters here that he is in any way novel or dynamic. He's marketing clever, not strategi…

Well, you're criticizing him for only acquiring things and slapping his brand on them. But the criticism is leveled in the context of him investing in an unproven technology. It seems like your comment would be more apt if he were taking an action that follows the pattern you are criticizing. For example, if he were acquiring a computer company and calling it Virgin Computing or something.

That's fair enough, I suppose. I guess I simply distrust his motivations beyond self-aggrandizement and inflating the idea that he's somehow an ideas man, when I can't for the life of me think of anything novel he's done for literally decades.

I'm coming across like a 'crab in a bucket' here - I've nothing against the guy or his success, but I'm not for one second convinced he's 'challenging the impossible'.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#167

Post by dom96 »

adventured wrote: post #160
detritus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvotes? Presumably not from Britons or anyone who knows anything about the guys history? So what HAS he done then, other than brand anything he can then offload to third and fourth parties to run the businesses for him? And don't say Virgin Galactic - that's just some clever peripheral branding to encourage the likes of the downvoters here that he is in any way novel or dynamic. He's marketing clever, not strategi…

He's worth $5 billion. He's a high-school drop-out dyslexic that started from nothing. He built a successful airline and record label, along with countless successful branded companies whose success partially rides on the vast effort he has put into building his own well-known brand - a substantial feat unto itself. Yes, golly gee, what HAS he done.

While what he has done should be commended, I don't think it's fair to say that he "started from nothing". His own mother was an entrepreneur, obviously not as successful as him but come on, he went to a "prep school" for goodness sake[1].

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson#Early_life

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#168

Post by JumpCrisscross »

The original Hyperloop paper quotes its design pressure as “about 1/6 the pressure of the atmosphere on Mars” [1]. Martian atmospheric pressure is “about 0.6% of Earth's mean sea level pressure” [2]. So 0.1% of Earth’s surface pressure, or a 1,000:1 pressure change.

To put that in perspective, the Boeing 787’s GEnx-2B67, the most powerful GEnx engine variant, generates a 43:1 pressure ratio [3]. To get a sense of the engineering differences between 6:1 and 1,000:1, look at NASA’s Space Power Facility [4].

The Hyperloop’s thermal issues are a hard enough problem that they alone put this in the domain of materials science. That’s the same category of problems separating us from a space elevator.

The Hyperloop always seemed like a transportation system not for this planet. The thermal issues, too, become trivial to solve on Mars: bury the tube. Mars does not appear to be too seismically active [5] and has no existing property rights to take into account [citation needed]. (The lack of water also makes steel more viable.)

[1] http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-201...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_GEnx

[4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Power_Facility

[5] https://www.space.com/418-marsquakes-red-planet-rumble.html

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#169

Post by imron »

Pxtl wrote: post #147
martinald wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this not an attempt to just derail CAHSR, or HSR in general? Nearly every anti-HSR comment is now 'we should build hyperloop instead!'.

That's impressively cynical, but Musk obviously stands to gain a lot if people keep California using roads. California wants to go green and he sells the best technology for green road-based transportation.

To be fair, he also stands a lot to gain if Hyperloop becomes a reality.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#170

Post by imron »

jandrese wrote: post #99
warent wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, if Elon worked in the project for 40 - 80 hours a week, he probably could get a team to accomplish it at 1/8th the cost or lower. Consider he did this with rockets, getting them to under 1/10th the cost

With rockets he was competing with fat and lazy government contractors for the most part. The hyperloop will be competing with already cutthroat airlines, the goddamn personal automobile, and, ...well, a fat and lazy passenger train company. IMHO he'll be well over 1/10 the cost before he finishes the thousands of land deals he would need for this, even if he somehow got permission to build it over the highway.

> even if he somehow got permission to build it over the highway.

Hence the boring company.

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