21–30 of 46 posts
About the land access concern, in France we had the aerotrain which was developped as an alternative to high speed train but did not survive the conventional railroad lobbies. There is still 60 km of test track south of Paris. The track is 10 m above the ground and is built using pillars every 20 m. It has been there for more than 40 years for it's considered too expensive to dismantle for actual very limited annoyme…
"It leaves when you arrive" This doesn't work for an electric aircraft, or many normal public transport methods as they are all focused on batching people up into large groups (planes, trains, etc). Also, Elon has called Hyperloop 'another type of transport', i.e. nothing like we already use, whereas I would say this idea is just an aircraft with a new type of launch system; not as different as Elon suggests it will…
True, but as the batch size gets smaller, so does the interval between vehicles. "one every minute, on the minute" is not much different from "It leaves when you arrive". This may not work for aircraft, but it certainly would for automated light rail systems.
why is everyone taking this thing so seriously? correct me if I'm wrong but it seems so vague as to not deserve the current hype, regardless of who Musk is
Is there a complete list of Musk's statements about Hyperloop, constraining its nature?
Elon Musk said it was nearly impossible to get injured in his system. Which means that any aircraft travel is out, because all it takes is an engine failure to kill everyone on board. The safety reason is a big reason why I'm going with the underground tubes between LA and SF.
I don't think it can be underground, since Musk said it would cost $6 billion to build. Also, the plan is to build something similar for east-west coast travel, and underground would be even less possible.
About the land access concern, in France we had the aerotrain which was developped as an alternative to high speed train but did not survive the conventional railroad lobbies. There is still 60 km of test track south of Paris. The track is 10 m above the ground and is built using pillars every 20 m. It has been there for more than 40 years for it's considered too expensive to dismantle for actual very limited annoyme…
Keeping a passenger aircraft at constant speed of 600 mph is not realistic with the current (or near-future) battery technology, even if the initial kinetic energy comes "for free".