171–180 of 517 posts
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Or turbojet trains[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbojet_train
Or Ekranoplans[2] [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekranoplan
All of the Hyperloop development efforts are ignoring the elephant in the room: thermal expansion. If you do the math, the ends of a viable hyperloop track will have to move hundreds of meters [1]. No one has yet advanced even a viable idea for how to deal with that, let alone an actual design. Until that happens, the Hyperloop is vaporware. [1] It's a trivial calculation. The thermal expansion coefficient of steel i…
I am curious, does an expansion joint not help here? Is it impossible to make an expansion joint that deals with the kinds of pressure involved?
That's the thing about Hyperloop. It's not technologically impossible. It's just not economically viable.
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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.
He has a certain reputation here in Britain, however we here in Britain also have a certain reputation of shitting on people's success - I sincerely hope that's not how I'm coming across here.
Anyway, this is tangential nonsense, I'm sorry for diluting discourse!
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 t…
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 t…
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 (…
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 t…
Branson's also in railways – Virgin Trains.
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 t…
Without changing this, high-speed rail in the US will never be a reality without building an entirely separate rail network.
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Branson's missing a d from his almost nominatively-determining name — the guy's got a talent for self publicity over challenging the incumbency, which for the most part he hasn't since launching Virgin Airlines and Megastores, which were both back in the 80s.
I don't know much about that, but ever since the 'Traingate'[1] spectacle I've lost all respect for Branson. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47fqjA8CwGE
Minded me of the sort of criticisms he'd level at the likes of BA back in days of yore...
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"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" "simple" Getting to Mars is a simple delta-v engineering problem. Nuclear fusion is a simple magnetic field engineering problem. Self driving cars are a simple programming problem. Don't ever change, Hacker News.
Ok, we did get rovers to Mars decades ago so I'm sure you know what I mean here, but you seem to be making my point that it's not worth it. Simple isn't the same as easy, but an evacuated train tunnel with air or magnetic tracks does not require new science. The physics are well understood and simple. The hard part is evolving the tech to be reliable and cheap so that people will use it and pay for it - but that does…
Reducing the amount of steel used in a bridge or a building is part of engineering. The Concorde wasn’t just a failure to understand what level of demand the world economy could support, it was that they didn’t solve the problems necessary to make it viable at scale. In that way it was not a complete product, it was a proof of concept.
Or, another example, it is not market dynamics alone that have changed the economics of what’s feasible with transistors. It is engineering that has made them viable at a massive scale.