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Hyperloop

spacex.com

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Re: Hyperloop

#421

Post by athenagoras »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #88
qiemem wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pumped air is also used to create an air cushion around the pod to keep it suspended at high speeds. Also, solar panels line the top of the tube so that it is self powering.

If this is going to be running above ground, how do they purpose to find space to even build this? http://mappery.com/maps/Los-Angeles-California-Transportatio... My only guess would be to build it vertically. . which is were everything is going anyways, right?

It would not be built anywhere on the map in your link. The LA station is in Santa Clarita which is further north and west. It seems to me that he has laid out a route that avoids as much as possible dense urban areas. Even his extensions out to Vegas and San Diego by pass most of the urban development in the LA basin.

Re: Hyperloop

#422

Post by lnanek2 »

It's nice that it doesn't have drivers. As someone who visits the SF area a lot, the BART drivers strike way too much and have to be replaced by automated trains. So this is a nice step forward.

Re: Hyperloop

#423

Post by javert »

threeseed wrote: post #202
aresant wrote: post #32

"In the case of the Hyperloop, Musk started focusing on public transportation after he grew disenchanted with the plans for California’s high-speed rail system." And who says that big government stifles entrepreneurial innovation? If ALL Musk does with the Hyperloop announcement is shed more light on the potential debacle that is to be our $70b+ high-speed rail in California, we owe him a debt of gratitude. PS - Dire…

Can you please clarify why the high speed rail is likely to be a debacle ? It seems pretty clear that California needs it and generally HSR is a pretty sensible infrastructure investment.

Among other things, rail is worthless in CA, because you need a car to get anywhere anyway.

If you can afford to rent a car at the end of your train ride, you can afford a plane ticket.

In my opinion, most likely, the CA rail proposal is just a political folly being undertaken by corruptocrats who have ideas to profit from it.

Yes, the rail would be useful for poor people who want to visit family, but that is not a business case, and does not justify harvesting tens of billions from the innocent citizens of CA. (Even if a tyranny of the majority voted to do it.)

Re: Hyperloop

#424

Post by mcintyre1994 »

jfb wrote: post #379
cpeterso wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The choice was fast trains or no trains.

Well, fast trains or no new trains. It is still technically possible to get on BART in San Francisco and get off from a train in Los Angeles. You wouldn't choose to do this -- nobody would choose to do this [1] -- but it is possible. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14Train-t.html?pa...

I see, fair enough, cheers for pointing that out. I'm in the UK and we're pretty well connected by rail, I wasn't expecting the alternative to be that ridiculous, just normal slower trains.

Re: Hyperloop

#425

Post by Florin_Andrei »

greedo wrote: post #208
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> The drive from SF to LA is about 5.5 hours (per Google Maps).

If I tried to do it in 5.5 hours in the real world, with traffic, I'm pretty sure I'd get arrested at some point.

Re: Hyperloop

#426

Post by dragonwriter »

javert wrote: post #423
threeseed wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please clarify why the high speed rail is likely to be a debacle ? It seems pretty clear that California needs it and generally HSR is a pretty sensible infrastructure investment.

Among other things, rail is worthless in CA, because you need a car to get anywhere anyway. If you can afford to rent a car at the end of your train ride, you can afford a plane ticket. In my opinion, most likely, the CA rail proposal is just a political folly being undertaken by corruptocrats who have ideas to profit from it. Yes, the rail would be useful for poor people who want to visit family, but that is not a b…

> Among other things, rail is worthless in CA, because you need a car to get anywhere anyway.

Which is one reason a not-insignificant part of the HSR plan in California is improving commuter rail and other connecting mass-transit systems that will interface with HSR, to reduce exactly that problem.

Re: Hyperloop

#428

Post by javert »

Anechoic wrote: post #224
goodcanadian wrote: post #188

I am intrigued, but not overwhelmed. Many of his reasons why his hyperloop is superior to high speed rail are not specific to the hyperloop. For example, you can put railway tracks up on pylons, too, with very little impact on the ground. It is common to do this in urban areas, but it is rarely done in rural areas because it is flat out cheaper to put it on the ground. I don't believe that an experimental tube is goi…

I don't believe that an experimental tube is going to be somehow magically cheaper and easier to route and build than train tracks. Do you really think the special interests that are making HSR so difficult and expensive would say, "Oh, do whatever you like with your tube."? These are extremely important issues that advocates seem to be glossing over. Putting the guideway on pylons doesn't magically eliminate land is…

> Musk should do what the Germans did with the TR0x series of maglev vehicles

Musk has already given more than enough for the world and done more than enough. Somebody should do it, but we should not expect him to do it.

Re: Hyperloop

#429

Post by Florin_Andrei »

jswhitten wrote: post #78
tootie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it support multiple pods in the tube at once?

Yes, a pod would depart every 2 minutes or less, which puts about 23 miles between them.

I think it's actually more useful to think in terms of "2 minutes between them", as opposed to "23 miles".

2 minutes is all you have - to detect the situation, make a decision, then stop.

Re: Hyperloop

#430

Post by skore »

dragonwriter wrote: post #387
skore wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be true, but the only thing you really need is to find a company that is willing to build this while chipping in some of the R&D cost. I don't think such a company would be hard to find because if they get this done, they are now the only vendor of a highly desirable technology. Pretty sure they'll be able to get back that early investment... and then some. (And remember - Musk contrasts $6b to what he estim…

> And remember - Musk contrasts $6b to what he estimates could possibly grow to $100b for the current proposal, so even if they end up needing to double their budget, they'd still be off by an order of magnitude.) Why should we think that Musk's estimates for a technology which still isn't well defined (read the "Future Work" section at the end of the document) are reliable even to within an order of magnitude, and w…

Alright, safe for the fact that this may still turn out to be an impossible technology after all for something we're all missing and also for Musk being off by an order of magnitude (which I don't see to be that plausible).

Even if you worst-case Musks plan and best-case the traditional concept * , you end up in about the same cost bracket. Just that in the one case you get incredible space tech and in the other, you get a boring train that isn't even as great as it could be with 20 years old tech.

As for the "Future Work" section - I don't really see how they could explode the budget. Only two points (station design and comparison with traditional Maglev) seem concerned with R&D work - for station design, you're not really looking for any breakthroughs, just packaging and mentioning Maglev seems more like a "just make sure" point that isn't really about physical cost at all.

* This part is highly unlikely - government issued endeavors like a long distance train routes have a pathological tendency to run over budget (a few billion here and there, who's going to notice?!). Of course, the same applies to Musks concept, but starting at an order of magnitude lower means that the kind of petty "I'm going to carve a piece from that cake, too" budget overruns should be well within range.

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