Travelling in any kind of tunnel is no more claustrophobic than this is it?
The passenger compartment mockups indicate there won't be enough room to sit upright . I'm sure the seats will make this comfortable for people of average stature who aren't afflicted with claustrophobia, but there will be much less room than tunnels that accommodate e.g. upright humans or subway trains.
Why worry initially about a disorder that only affects 5–7% of people. Fix the transportation problem for a large majority of people first, anyone else still has existing transportation as an option.
On a bus you have the chance to get off every 5-10 minutes, that's a big difference. There will be thousands of passengers on that day. Just imagine if you have to do this trip 10 times a day every day for 100 days, will you still take risk? Update (since I've been downvoted): All these buses analogy isn't exactly the same case because they still have the option to stop somewhere, which give the passengers the assura…
You're thinking city buses. I'm thinking long-haul busses (like greyhound in the US). Greyhound buses likely have facilities, what I'm actually talking about are the buses used a core parts of the transportation infrastructure all over South America. Many of these also have facilities but I've been on many where the bathroom isn't functioning or just plain isn't there. You can easily travel for 30 minutes to an hour…
Headline: Musk reveals Hyperloop. Americans too fat and incontinent to use.
It's too bad the tubes and trains can't be made transparent. Imagine the view!
Use the technology from Google Streetview to composite the views from cheap cameras mounted at 1/24 second intervals at the top to the tube. You use a cluster of these for a 360 view.
On a bus you have the chance to get off every 5-10 minutes, that's a big difference. There will be thousands of passengers on that day. Just imagine if you have to do this trip 10 times a day every day for 100 days, will you still take risk? Update (since I've been downvoted): All these buses analogy isn't exactly the same case because they still have the option to stop somewhere, which give the passengers the assura…
You're thinking city buses. I'm thinking long-haul busses (like greyhound in the US). Greyhound buses likely have facilities, what I'm actually talking about are the buses used a core parts of the transportation infrastructure all over South America. Many of these also have facilities but I've been on many where the bathroom isn't functioning or just plain isn't there. You can easily travel for 30 minutes to an hour…
All these buses analogy isn't exactly the same because they still have the option to stop somewhere, which give the passengers the assurance that if they can't hold it's not the end of the world. Taking that into consideration, I think it could solve most people's bathroom concern by adding bathroom stops to the loop, in the case of semi-emergency, ideally a pod should be able to make a stop upon request within 5-10 minutes without disrupting other pods.
Some financial incentive might be needed for encouraging people to hold longer but I do see legal risks in that approach.
"The maximum width is 4.43 ft (1.35 m) and maximum height is 6.11 ft (1.10 m)." Yeah, that's a little bit more claustrophobic than your average underground train.
The passenger compartment mockups indicate there won't be enough room to sit upright . I'm sure the seats will make this comfortable for people of average stature who aren't afflicted with claustrophobia, but there will be much less room than tunnels that accommodate e.g. upright humans or subway trains.
Strap on an Oculus, and simulate a train car. Or, project windows onto the interiors. (Since we're talking future technology)
Yes I expect every visible interior surface would have display capability. A popular mode would be the view outside the tube, which could be constructed from fixed external cameras, and wouldn't have to be precisely "live" anyway. Some masochists might prefer the view inside the tube, which could be prerecorded or even animated.
I worry that the necessary straightness of the tube will be difficult to achieve. The pads float 0.5 to 1.3 mm from the inside of the tube, so deviations from straightness on that scale will cause the pads to crash. Any contact at 760 mph would probably damage the pad, plugging the air holes.
He doesn't properly address thermal expansion of the entire system. A long straight steel tube from SF to LA will expand a total of 300 meters over a 40C temperature change. Where does it go?
The focus from people on bathrooms is puzzling to me. I've been on buses, without facilities, that go for hours without stopping. This is a 35 minute ride with restricted movement, if you greatly fear being able to hold it for that long, there are other, less efficient methods of transport to accommodate you.