I just posted a link to the Hyperloop spec, written as a "tree document"... Makes it easier to quickly absorb the main points.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newest http://gingkoapp.com/hyperloop
Hyperloop
861–870 of 983 posts
Re: Hyperloop
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah! Note that the pods are far lighter than trains, being more like a lightweight aircraft. This would reduce the effect considerably.
Vibration from trains is proportional to the unsprung weight of the vehicle (basically the axle, wheels and traction motors) rather than the vibration of the whole vehicle (which is isolated by the primary and secondary train suspensions). For a heavy rail transit vehicle (NYC transit, MBTA Red Line, CTA vehicle, etc), you're talking about 2,700 kg. I don't have numbers handy for HSR trainsets.
The air cushion isolates the entire vehicle... perhaps making the "unsprung" weight 0?
Re: Hyperloop
#863Earlier quoted context omitted.
The frequency already accounts for the time component. (People/Car)*(Car/Hour) = (People/Hour) = Throughput At a constant frequency and higher speeds, you will simply have less trains on the track at the same time.
Yes, I guess you're right, but the maximum frequency is bounded by vehicle length and speed (you can't have a vehicle pass every thirty seconds if it takes more than thirty seconds for a single vehicle to pass a given point).
The longest TGV and Shinkansen consists are around 400 m, so they pass a given point in 30 seconds at about 50 km/h (30 mph). Of course there's spacing for safety and so on, but 50 km/h is so low that it's really a factor in practice unless you also have non-HSR traffic on the line.
A bigger factor in practical capacity is loading and offloading people and switching near termini.
Re: Hyperloop
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Wow. I'm an Elon Musk fan too but this is a bit much. He didn't give anything to the world. He is a businessman-he gets paid very handsomely to do the things he does.
That is an absolutely disgusting attitude.
True innovators carry all of humanity on their backs, and give massively to all of humanity, present and future.
The fact that they get some monetary compensation doesn't entitle you to not be grateful and to not recognize their heroism.
It does not entitle you to imply, as you have, that they deserve the same level of praise as any person who is paid for any work whatsoever.
You are, by implication, equating Elon Musk to the teenager flipping burgers, or any other menial laboror.
That is moral treason.
Without innovators, we would all be dying in pestilence-ridden Stone Age villages. In my opinion, those who claim that innovators do not deserve the highest of possible praise _deserve_ that fate.
Re: Hyperloop
#865I'm curious how well this thing can "maintain distance between the capsule and tube walls". It seems like this is a much tougher problem than simply levitating the whole thing off the ground where the forces are relatively stationary. It also doesn't look like any of the artist renderings address this, and only consider the airflow lifting the thing off the ground.
Re: Hyperloop
#866Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not get this part. These are not advantages of tube v railway track, because a railway track can also be built above ground and can also be build from prefabbed sections. In fact I would think that building a railway track would be much cheaper than building an airtight tube.
Railway track built above ground has to support weight of the cars, which seems significantly higher ....
Unless Musk has found a way to make the cars weightless, the tube must support the weight of the cars. Further, the pylons must support the weight of the tube and the cars, over a smaller footprint.
Re: Hyperloop
#867Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plus Airtravle could be made 10x better without all that usless security shit. I fligh often from Switzerland to Germany and most of my time is spend standing in one line or another on the airport. I see no reason that boarding a plane cant be as efficent or almost as efficent as getting on a train.
Because you can't crash a train into a skyscraper. I don't know if that's a good reason, but that's the reason.
The problem (as I'm sure many others have stated before) is that airport security doesn't really solve the problem of being able to crash a plane into a skyscraper. However, reinforced cockpit doors, armed pilots, and a belief that a hijacker will use a plane to commit suicide instead of as hostage do effectively solve this problem.
Re: Hyperloop
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Wow. I'm an Elon Musk fan too but this is a bit much. He didn't give anything to the world. He is a businessman-he gets paid very handsomely to do the things he does.
At very least, it is in society's best interest to socially reward people working on solving big problems instead of doing lucrative things that just exploit people.
Re: Hyperloop
#869Earlier quoted context omitted.
Density is destiny. Population densities: 407/km² England 256/km² UK 93/km² California 32/km² USA
2.8/km² Australia And here you can travel from most parts of Melbourne to most parts of Sydney with just two train changes. One at a Melbourne hub to the interstate trains and one at Sydney to the local system. Even so, we feel our train systems suck too.
That figure is meaningless considering Australia is a large piece of largely uninhabited land, with two or three metropolitan areas on the coasts.
Unless you can take a train into the center of Australia, in which case I apologize.
Re: Hyperloop
#870Earlier quoted context omitted.
you speak as though it needs to be run as a charity to be a game changer. I only mention that price point because that is just underneath the cost of flying, and that's how economics works. The operator will likely want to make as much profit as it can, while still sucking customers away from the airports. In the beginning, the operator will likely charge MORE than the airplanes, because the customer will be liable t…
You have to get the thing built before you can start charging a premium for it. Without a strong constituency, you can't get a giant infrastructure project off the ground. If your constituency is people like me, who can afford to fly, you've already lost the game.
I think the point is that Elon Musk started thinking about this because he's tired of flying SFO-LAX.
You mention that he considers the alternative as supersonic jets, and discusses why they don't work for SFO-LAX.