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Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

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Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#421

Post by nihonde »

nihonde wrote: post #333
Animats wrote: post #295

Maglev in a tube is a proven technology at full train scale. Here's the Chuo Maglev from the inside.[1] 500KPH in tunnels. They're not pumping down the tunnels, just plowing through on sheer power and money. The Chuo Maglev makes the Hyperloop One look like a toy project. Watch the video. They have a production-quality train, with tourists and whiny kids riding it, going 500km/h. They've hit 603km/h in tests, but don…

Amen. If you want a fast train in 2017, hire the people who have been winning in that department since 1964.

Also, the リニア will cut travel time between Tokyo and Nagoya from about 100 minutes to 40 minutes, which is a big difference for people who do business between those two regions.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#422

Post by nerfhammer »

Robotbeat wrote: post #413
beaner wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't he actually design the first rocket himself? He's quite smart. I don't think "industry experience" counts for much. By the way you're using "Dunning-Kruger," it's unclear that you actually know what it means...

I just Dunning-Krugered myself about Dunning-Kruger.

DKE = lowest skilled people think they are a little above average. Low skilled people do not think they are as good or better as a very high skilled individual would be.

Look at the graphs in the actual study:

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/...

It's more like the range of 10-90% actual skill is simply transformed to 50-80% perceived skill. The absolute ranking of person by skill order is still accurate.

If Elon Musk is actually at about the 75% percentile of skill which maybe he is, if you turn the graphs that DK reported into a function of actual to perceived skill, if you fed 75% into that you would get like maybe 73%. The real vs. perceived skill curves cross at about 70%.

Versus the popular supposed version of DK, being something like "you are wrong and you do not know it." It's easy to describe the DK to sound like it's a profound explanation of that, but if you look at the data they reported, it's a much more timid effect than it sounds like it is.

To put it another way, low skilled people think they are better than most of the other low skilled people, but they themselves do not perceive themselves to be better than someone who does in fact know what they are doing. Low skill people would think they are a bit above average, not a superconfident expert.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#423

Post by pokemongoaway »

jfoster wrote: post #417
kumarski wrote: post #8

Something I wrote a while ago.... w/ back of the napkin calculations....... Why I wouldn’t invest a money into Hyperloop - Stabilizing a single fault line risk pylon is more than $250K. - How many million are needed for vacuum pumps to evacuate 100+ million cubic feet of of pipe to 100 Pa? - Hot air discharge needs to go somewhere. For every 1 bar pressure, you need ~200 to ~400 cubic meters of volume which is larger…

I don't think it's right to use figures that can change to disprove an Elon Musk concept. If you did that back in the day, you would say there's no way Tesla could work because the cost of batteries is prohibitive and the supply too limited.

Yes, but we could see that batteries needed to get X better in order for us to achieve Y results in the future. But how much better do vacuum chamber technologies have to get before you can make the biggest one ever built, that also has a high-speed capsule traveling through it, that is also impervious to armor piercing bullets? Furthermore, imagine if every airplane had to fly the exactly same path, and if any failure on that path prevented (at the very least) all subsequent planes from traveling that path. And finally, how are security lines going to get shorter if the stakes will be at least as high as airplanes?

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#424

Post by ac29 »

rrix2 wrote: post #369
ac29 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rail route has ran continuously since 1971: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Starlight . The transbay tube connecting Oakland to San Francisco via BART opened in 1974.

it's worth noting that coast starlight's once-a-day-each-way schedule sort of makes it limited as a commuter rail option.

Its too long and slow to be commuter rail anyways. The Bay Area -> LA segment takes about 12 hours (of a total 35ish), if its on time (its often multiple hours late). Even if it was never late and left every hour, it wouldnt be a very practical commute.

It is fun if you enjoy trains though! Take it if you have the time.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#425

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #295

Maglev in a tube is a proven technology at full train scale. Here's the Chuo Maglev from the inside.[1] 500KPH in tunnels. They're not pumping down the tunnels, just plowing through on sheer power and money. The Chuo Maglev makes the Hyperloop One look like a toy project. Watch the video. They have a production-quality train, with tourists and whiny kids riding it, going 500km/h. They've hit 603km/h in tests, but don…

[deleted]

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#426

Post by TeMPOraL »

olegkikin wrote: post #172
dmoy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Expansion joint is likely the way to do it, but I'm not aware of vacuum expansion joints of that size. Even if it's possible, it sounds very expensive to make and to maintain. Just like everything in this project. That's the thing about Hyperloop. It's not technologically impossible. It's just not economically viable.

> That's the thing about Hyperloop. It's not technologically impossible. It's just not economically viable.

That's probably why this is an idea from Elon, not from the industry. The guy has a habit of forcing the market itself to accept beneficial ideas, and in the process they become viable.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#427

Post by jcranmer »

jfoster wrote: post #417
kumarski wrote: post #8

Something I wrote a while ago.... w/ back of the napkin calculations....... Why I wouldn’t invest a money into Hyperloop - Stabilizing a single fault line risk pylon is more than $250K. - How many million are needed for vacuum pumps to evacuate 100+ million cubic feet of of pipe to 100 Pa? - Hot air discharge needs to go somewhere. For every 1 bar pressure, you need ~200 to ~400 cubic meters of volume which is larger…

I don't think it's right to use figures that can change to disprove an Elon Musk concept. If you did that back in the day, you would say there's no way Tesla could work because the cost of batteries is prohibitive and the supply too limited.

There's a very pertinent historical reference point: Ferdinand de Lesseps. He built the Suez Canal from 1859 to 1869, a task which was considered by many to be impossible or at least impracticable [1]. After achieving resounding success, he then turned to Panama to try building the Panama Canal. In this venture, he turned out to have several very wrong ideas (it's not feasible to build a sea-level canal in Panama), and the French effort failed so hard it actually brought down the French government [2]. He was successful in the first venture but for different reasons than initially assumed (namely, the Suez Canal isn't all that challenging from an engineering perspective; it's just capital-intensive), and his failure in the second venture comes from misunderstanding the problems.

[1] There had been canals in the past that traveled from the Red Sea to the Nile delta, but these invariably silted up rather quickly (the Nile was sediment-heavy, and wind-blown sand is quite common in the region). Thus there was historical evidence favoring the idea that the dredging maintenance fees would exceed the revenue from passing ships.

[2] Of course, this was the Third Republic, which is notorious for having provided series of weak, unstable governments replete with scandals that prompt new governments. Ironically, the Third Republic was the longest-lasting form of government France has had since the Ancien Régime.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#428

Post by skinnymuch »

evanlivingston wrote: post #300
Robotbeat wrote: post #296

The biggest problem people have with Hyperloop is because it certainly seems like Elon Musk just waltzed into the high speed rail debate and Dunning-Krugered some crazy scheme that doesn't look anything at all like conventional approaches to the problem and thus doesn't jive with any common sense we might have built up around different transport methods. But that's kind of what Elon Musk does: he Dunning-Krugers hims…

The moral might be that hubris along with billions in cash can accomplish the things the person with hubris set out to do.

He spent all his money on his trio of companies by 2008. He could've relatively speaking for people worth a hundred million to billions, be worth very little today.

I don't think he has ever in his life had a billion in liquid assets. You could argue I guess, but he likely wants to keep a majority stake in SpaceX, and likely doesn't want to go below 20% stake in Tesla.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#429

Post by TeMPOraL »

nkoren wrote: post #96
lisper wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be more precise: not ones that 1) will hold a vacuum and 2) are available in the 3+ meter diameter that the hyperloop requires and 3) provides the smooth inside surface that the hyperloop requires and 4) are economically viable.

This kind of Hyperloop criticism is commonplace, but strikes me as intellectually lazy. Did you read Robotbeat's link? Particularly with respect to to the MNLC Bellows Expansion Joint. > 1) will hold a vacuum Plain wrong. > 2) are available in the 3+ meter diameter that the hyperloop requires This is a simple manufacturing problem, although calling a "problem" seems like an overstatement. Obviously not everything to…

RE 4, there are also two "kinds" of economical viability: the fundamental one, derived straight from physical limits, and the usual "market couldn't be bothered with it" one. Knowing Musk's companies, he cares only about the former, and is willing to push through the latter. Thanks to that, fully electric cars with reasonable range are now not only a possibility, but a desirable product every other car company wants to build too.

The number crunching should tell in which category of viability Hyperloop is.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#430

Post by skinnymuch »

nihonde wrote: post #421
nihonde wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. If you want a fast train in 2017, hire the people who have been winning in that department since 1964.

Also, the リニア will cut travel time between Tokyo and Nagoya from about 100 minutes to 40 minutes, which is a big difference for people who do business between those two regions.

That's insane. If you didn't have to switch trains for Philly (30th St) to NYC, an avg ride could take a bit than 100 min if there are only around 7 stops the entire way (normal stops would make the ride like 2 hours). Reducing those numbers by more than half would be incredible. Even if this is just a pipe dream and there isn't a direct train between the two cities right now anyway.
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