371–380 of 983 posts
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Well it has to beat a standard commuter car (~$45 one way@34mpg) by a significant margin to be useful for consumers. What about freight?
Time is money too. The drive from SF to LA is about 5.5 hours (per Google Maps). 5.5 hours of stress and frustration, compared to 30-40 minutes of hyperloop...
First of all, I think it's genius how nobody saw this solution coming, despite all the speculation. Put the air compressor on the pod, and use Tesla's battery technology to power it. Seems evident in hindsight.
My biggest gripe is the non-inherent safety and thus the security issues. The evacuated tube is a real issue in my mind, and saying it will be re-pressurized in case of an accident seems dubious. Yes, like a modern jet, but planes can descend to 15,000 and people live. Also, planes don't fly at 150,000 feet (the pressure equivalent in the tube) and there may be other biological hazards other than breathing. But mainly, the vehicles are subject to the same exterior threats as airplanes, so security will need to be similar. In addition the tubes are also a target of threats, which is less of an issue with trains and not an issue with planes.
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You need government backing to acquire the land.
Ah, that's boring. Look, we're talking about progress here, no Government burocrat should be able to stop us. Just $1B extra in "fees" would get us all the Government backing in the world we want. Unless we're not really serious about the whole thing and not really confident about the end result. Or just have Jobs resurrected. This way we save $1B on the "fees" and he'll talk the Government officials into this for fr…
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Interesting point that big government provoked the advancement of the hyperloop idea - counterintuitive idea, and clearly yes. but any idea like this will need government cooperation. The real test of big government will be how they respond to the hyperloop. magic response: "of course we may be wrong, we'll look into this immediately." and then they decide to build it. likely answer: praise, perhaps even an evaluatio…
It was approved by a ballot measure, so in this case it may be the "idiocy" (or will) of the voter. http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition...
Reading the entire PDF is highly recommended; it contains a surprising amount of answers already (including many to comments below). I think, if anything, safety aspects haven't been sufficiently explored in the pdf. I'm quite happy to believe it's safer than other modes of transport, but I wouldn't be too quick to overstate it. Also, if anyone can explain what "Tubes located on pylons would limit access to the criti…
> "Tubes located on pylons would limit access to the critical elements of the system." is meant to mean in §4.5.6 I'd be grateful... You don't have to worry about cows wandering into oncoming vehicles like you do with cars and trains. It's also harder for non-determined people with malicious intent to interfere with operations. A determined attacker can, of course, scale pylons. But you don't have to worry about stuf…
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Interesting point that big government provoked the advancement of the hyperloop idea - counterintuitive idea, and clearly yes. but any idea like this will need government cooperation. The real test of big government will be how they respond to the hyperloop. magic response: "of course we may be wrong, we'll look into this immediately." and then they decide to build it. likely answer: praise, perhaps even an evaluatio…
It was approved by a ballot measure, so in this case it may be the "idiocy" (or will) of the voter. http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_Proposition...
This may work but it will be several times more expensive than the HSR system.
* Oh and by the way, it is completely misleading and annoying for musk to refer to this as merely 1/6th of Mars's pressure. That would be a really relevant statistic if he was building his thing on mars.
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I'm not claustrophobic, but this image ever so slightly terrified me: http://i.imgur.com/lGD9bUP.png I have to wonder, would making the capsule the size of a small subway car completely destroy the economics of it?
It's also scary that the passengers would suffocate if the life support system failed.
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I'm not from the area, so I don't know how such a ballot works but for voters who didn't have Musk-level engineering knowledge, was the choice the status quo of not fast trains and spending on fast trains?
The choice was fast trains or no trains.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14Train-t.html?pa...
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Might Tony Hsieh champion a group pushing for LA to Vegas? I imagine SF-Vegas might have a roundabout route.
That could definitely make sense. Vegas might even put up some capital to make it easier for people to visit and put their hard earned dollars to good use. I can also imagine that from an infrastructure standpoint building across desert you'd run into fewer obstacles, although that might be wishful / oversimplified thinking.
But the solar power mechanism would definitely be more viable in the desert.