621–630 of 983 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The R&D can't happen in government, but in some ways that's better - government projects are slower than this needs to be. What we need is for someone(s?) with deep pockets to bank-roll prototypes &c.
Sounds vaguely like maglev a couple of decades ago. It too was a neat idea on paper.
Only a small point. Other than to display ghastly advertising, why not a dumb monitor that interfaces with your phone/tablet? It's not like you're going to be able to watch a movie. And if we're seven years into the future on this, I'll be wearing my Oculus Rift 4.0 anyway.
Maybe I'm just too disillusioned by the systems used in aircrafts with their awful interfaces, lag, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be very surprised if the numbers really work out the way you claim: that the weight for carrying a passanger is similar for trains and a tube, and that the weight advantage of a tube comes essentially from 3x speed allowing for a one third the linear density of passengers. Do you have a cite?
No, this is just back-of-the envelope, admittedly. But the three factors that determine how many people you can move past a given point per unit of time are the frequency of the vehicles, the capacity of the vehicles, and the speed of the vehicles, so if you want to match the throughput of the proposed Hyperloop, but with rail traveling at 164mph, you have to either make the vehicles more frequent or higher-capacity,…
Why is speed relevant?
Appreciate Elon Musk for this idea. But do you really want a bus sized hunk of w(ever)tf this is made out of zipping by you at 700mph?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turn down the nastiness. It's totally non-obvious that this isn't overshadowed by the weight of the tube. And it does carry a motor with it, just not one that's responsible for initial acceleration or for large air resistances.
Sorry if you perceived that as "nasty". The motor that it carries with it is about 146 horsepower. That's less than a Kawasaki Ninja street bike. The General Electric E60 locomotives currently in use on Amtrak crank out 6,250 hp (4,660 kW) and weigh 423,000 lb (192,000 kilograms). The weight of the tube doesn't really enter into it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not clear to me that he is interested in being the one to build it. I think he wants somebody else to.
I'm sure he'd prefer someone else do it but then again he might have preferred that someone else would have conceived of and designed it -- or something similar. There's a chance, as with the leadership of Tesla, that no one else with the capability (or position/reputation) to execute will be found, and I'd be surprised if he were not heavily involved in seeing it through.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at the Armstrong limit (at 62,000´), a mayor problem to overcome if the tube is going to be at the equivalent pressure of 150,000´ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armstrong_Limit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_of_useful_consciousness Also look at the TUC (time of useful consciousness) that it´s below 5 secs when flying that high. That means that you have less than 5 secs to put your oxigen mask on before you los…
From the linked article: At or above the Armstrong limit, exposed bodily liquids such as saliva, tears, and the liquids wetting the alveoli within the lungs — but not vascular blood (blood within the circulatory system) — will boil away without a pressure suit As mentioned above, we have been boarding planes without pressure suits for decades, and the hyperloop has two security advantages: it has a large supply of co…
The Armstrong Limit is at 62,000 feet. Jetliners fly at below 45,000 feet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The problem is that, at least with the CA high speed rail system, the design is all theoretical at the moment. It may be a brilliant idea, but but moving from the core ideas in the document to actual working, build-able products, can be a slow process. And given the state of where CA is on their project, that may not put them on the same window.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately I walk a very fine line about what is sensitive and what is not. I really couldn't go any deeper than what I posted here.
Well, is it cool?
None of this is to say that Hyperloop is a bad idea. The idea sounds very interesting and I'd rather spend sixty billion building a Hyperloop --even if it fails-- than the ridiculous California high speed rail project. Cost is probably off by an order of magnitude, if not more. Why? Unions and other groups. Building anything in this country costs massively more (and takes significantly longer) than one could imagine…
Wow, can you not abuse this wonderful idea for a political forum on unions , of all things?
I asked a question in my post. Can you name any new major civil engineering project in the US in the last fifty years? Refurbishing an existing project does not count. I am talking about something major, say, a new conventional railroad.
The reality is that these kinds of projects are just-about impossible to realize given our political and, yes, labor framework. So, yes, unions are very relevant because it matters not if the physics of the project is brilliant and utterly peer reviewed. The various externalities I mentioned almost guarantee that it cannot built.
I'd love to be wrong.