Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hyperloop

spacex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 983 posts

Re: Hyperloop

#771

Post by acqq »

krschultz wrote: post #459

This is very serious first proposal. As a professional mechanical engineer I have worked on high quality steel tubes (nuclear submarines) before. The immediate thing that sticks out to me in this proposal are the tight mechanical tolerances that have to be maintained. Talking about tens of thousandths of an inch tolerances on a 10' diameter tube is not to be dismissed lightly. That is going to be tough to maintain -…

Thanks for writing! I can also imagine that when there's one very long tube there's going to be a lot of the length change with the temperature, ideally one wouldn't want to have any hard joints at all to allow the individual pieces to extend and shrink. One hundreds of miles long welded tube does sound potentially problematic.

Re: Hyperloop

#772

Post by TWAndrews »

newbie12 wrote: post #567
purplelobster wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're right, but in reality most people haven't even heard of Elon Musk. I've had to explain to many highly educated people what he has done, what SpaceX is, what Tesla is etc. While he's been rather successful so far, he's not in the clear when it comes to either of his companies right now, he's not exactly at the Gates level of success yet. I'm rooting for him though, he has the potential to be one of the m…

Musk is not financially Gates but he's already had a greater impact. PayPal, Telsa, SpaceX, and even that Solar company could easily be more important than creating the most successful PC operating system. The PC boom would have happened without Gates but Musk is pioneering entirely new business categories.

If the Gates Foundation really does eliminate polio and make any sort of dent in malaria, that sets a very high bar for Must to jump over.

Re: Hyperloop

#773

Post by kemiller »

Aloisius wrote: post #616
MikeCapone wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> take into account electrification costs (because it does get cloudy) Did Musk say his Hyperloop wouldn't be tied to the grid?

Yes. It says it is self-powering using battery packs and solar.

No, it specifically says it's tied to the grid for backup power. Section 4.3.

Re: Hyperloop

#774

Post by hisabness »

9999 wrote: post #370
lmg643 wrote: post #180

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…

Jerry Brown's political career is coming to an end, so there are no long term political consequences for him. He's also traditionally been an opponent of government waste. I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that he would choose an unproven but promising technology over our existing useless high speed rail project. The assembly is another matter. If you think hyperloop is interesting, write and call your state…

aren't 90% of technologies promising?

Re: Hyperloop

#775

Post by kemiller »

Aloisius wrote: post #560
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…

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. Really? Because it looks like this is an attempt to derail CA HSR using a proposal for an experimental technology that offers a fraction of what CA HSR does, but is potentially faster. CA HSR replaces/upgrades two metropolitan rail systems…

West Oakland is 10 minutes from downtown SF (Embarcadero station, nearest to the HSR terminal) by BART, and you can take any eastbound train, so you rarely have to wait more than 2-3 minutes during the day to catch one. The area is already set up for rail, and land is relatively cheap. It's a fantastic location for it. The only reasons to go to SF proper are politics and pride.

Re: Hyperloop

#776

Post by LockeWatts »

drharris wrote: post #758
LockeWatts wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you take your political opinions and shove them down a dark hole somewhere? Most people are here for a discussion of the technology, not your rhetoric.

It's not really an opinion so much as fact. Labor unions have proven to be beneficial only for the members of the union and politicians. If you had ever done business around them, you'd agree.

Wait, your political opinion reinforced by your own personal experiences is what passes as fact now? By golly, I've never met someone so enlightened.

Please, tell me more.

Re: Hyperloop

#778

Post by ctdonath »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #695
adventured wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This system would seem very weak to criminals / terrorists / whatever firing bullets at it. It would be exceptionally difficult to track where the shot/s came from, and it would cause serious pressure problems.

As opposed to aircraft sitting on the tarmac, which are not subject to such problems?

Airplanes leak so much air that a couple more half-inch holes would not affect overall integrity. Most control systems are implemented with redundancy, so taking out a control point would just failover to a backup. Occupants aside, there little such damage could do to an airplane; noting the occupants, worst case is a couple casualties, not loss of everyone on board. And, of course, you could simply choose to not take off.

As mhandley noted, Hyperloop might be more susceptible, as the concern is more like your airplane flying an inch off the ground and hitting a stationary large brick.

...which reminds me of an old analogy: Back when large-capacity (ooh! 10MB!) hard drives were becoming common, I recall hearing the comparison that the read head was akin to a 747 traveling Mach 3 just 1 inch off the ground. Perhaps Elon wondered how this might work in real life, and so came up with Hyperloop.

Re: Hyperloop

#779

Post by gsnedders »

arrrg wrote: post #602
gsnedders wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, most of those things vary massively between classes of trains, and there's no simple low-speed/high-speed distinction. Seat width varies massively between body shell designs, softness often depends on how long since the last refurbishment more than anything else, number of tables and luggage space are often based on the target market for the class, electrical outlets are more and more common (even on comm…

Dude. What are you on about? At least in Germany WiFi sucks and is not available everywhere – and even if it is you have to be lucky and actually be in a train that supports it. In general seats are most definitely more comfortable in longer distance trains. Yeah, you can find a seat that’s less comfortable in a long distance train than in a regional train, sure, but that’s hardly the point, is it?! And electrical ou…

You said it may differ elsewhere — I was providing a more general view of what I would expect in Europe.

WiFi varies a lot from country to country — some places you're lucky to get it on any train, others it's becoming coming common on even regional trains; seats on a lot of the older ICE2 sets were really quite terrible prior to their recent refurbishment, and a lot of IC trains in Germany had far better seats; electrical outlets differ from place to place — the TGV Duplex will never have power outlets at all seats, for example, despite being a high speed train, as there simply isn't sufficient power spare to provide them, and as another example in the UK it depends far more on rolling stock age (or refurbishment date) than whether it's a long-distance train or not.

Re: Hyperloop

#780

Post by ash »

SolarNet wrote: post #566
toble wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one advantage of air travel is it's distracting. Busy flight attendants, announcements from pilots, plane moving to the runway, taking off... so there's less reason to concentrate on the lack of space while stuck in the seat.

In this case it looks like you could have a great view.

What do you mean? Hyperloop capsules have no windows.
Post reply on HN