I'm finding the center alignment of the text bothersome.
Aside from that, very cool!
SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
71–80 of 132 posts
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer is an emphatic no. Concrete can do many things, but it will not hold back a slip fault. Concrete roads, bridges, etc will buckle and break in the slip zone no matter what they are rated for. Take the 1906 earthquake as an example. As http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq3/move.html says, the horizontal slip was 21 feet at one point. Something like the Hyperloop has to be designed with the expectation of facing a…
How is the issue of a horizontal slip different for a tunnel versus for an above ground structure? Neither piece of infrastructure can be economically designed to withstand a seismic movement if the structure crosses the fault where the offset occurs. Why does the possibility of an offset result in a tunnel being an "emphatic no" while still allowing for this pylon idea?
Because steel is very ductile and tough, where as concrete is very strong, but brittle.
Make a tunnel in the ground with concrete and if the ground moves, your tunnel moves too, along with it. Unless your tunnel is stronger than the ground. Which it isn't. Or if it is, it's a 10ft diameter tunnel with 40 foot thick walls. Which is SEVERELY uneconomic.
Make it out of steel and put it in the air, and things get a lot different. The air doesn't make the tunnel move so instead of being surrounded on all sides by things which can exert force (in the ground) it's instead only acted upon by the pylons.
The pylons are supposed to be around every 100 feet. That means if the earth moves 20 feet sideways between two pylons the steel has a chance to bend and move rather than be sheared. And you can design the pylons to be strong enough to hold the tube up, but not so strong as to break the tube. So if things move a long distance, the closest pylons will break free from the tube and the tube will be supported by pylons which are further apart. That reduces the angles necessary to keep the rest of the tube on the remaining pylons which support it, and that means you're asking even less of the steel.
Sure the tube might get some bends in it that it wasn't designed for, and it might even sag down. But you can give the cars braking mechanisms that'll automatically be triggered in an earthquake so that the forces experienced when encountering these new features isn't so unpleasant.
The alternative with the concrete tube in the ground is that the tube shears into two parts which are no longer connected. That means that the tube suddenly stops and you're crashing into the dirt at 500+ mph.
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#73Any engineers or mechanically inclined folks around LA interested in assembling a team? Let's chat. About me: full stack software engineer with a degree in Systems Engineering from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I work on classic cars and build shit with my hands when I'm not coding. I'm into efficiency, and I loooove the idea of building a better, faster cheaper CA high-speed railway.
I'm an aeromechanical engineer around LA and might be interested in contributing some design/analysis work in a non-leadership role. Current work is in structural analysis, interested in aerodynamics though (was my master's concentration years ago).
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#74I wonder what they will do about claustrophobia? > The capsule itself would need to be small—4.43ft (1.35m) wide and only 3.61ft (1.10m) high. No standing room No windows, pod inside a metal tube, seats reclined with minimal head room. There's no rational reason to panic in that position, but many people will not be comfortable. Video displays might help, but only to a point.
VR goggles.
I was about to say that sounds even more vomit-inducing, when you consider all the g-forces going on, and then add goggles on top of it. But then, if the g-forces match what the passenger is seeing through the goggles, that could actually be less vomit-inducing maybe? It's an interesting idea. I personally find the idea of spending an hour in a tiny enclosed space with no ability to move to be quite disturbing, and I'm not sure if the idea of doing it with VR goggles makes that less disturbing or more.
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#75The projections of capacity seem way too low. It says it can do 840passengers/hour.
In the UK each 11 car train on the West Coast Mainline can take about 600 passengers seated + maybe slightly over 100 more standing. So around 700. We have 3 trains per hour between London and Birmingham, which adds up to a rough capacity of 2200 per hour.
This doesn't even take into account the multitude of slower trains that go between the two cities.
All these trains are generally congested as hell at peak (and increasingly off peak).
How is 840 passengers/hour enough for two big cities? I would assume making each pod bigger and heavier would require a greater stopping distance between them so the only way I can see to add more capacity is to build parallel hyperloops. At that point you've got the land take and the expense that comes with it.
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#76I wonder what they will do about claustrophobia? > The capsule itself would need to be small—4.43ft (1.35m) wide and only 3.61ft (1.10m) high. No standing room No windows, pod inside a metal tube, seats reclined with minimal head room. There's no rational reason to panic in that position, but many people will not be comfortable. Video displays might help, but only to a point.
At 600MPH, I'm not sure I'd want to see the ground speeding past a few feet below...
"Commuter Luge"
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#77If it works well, I'd like to see these in LA or other big cities too, not just long distance. Would be great to get on one of these and end up at the beach in Santa Monica at high speed instead of suffering through traffic.
Would a Hyperloop system work well in a system with frequent stops, where you wouldn't be able to get up to full-speed because you needed to stop and the stops could disrupt other express traffic. Would you really be gaining that much over other traditional rail transportation options? It seems like the strength of the Hyperloop is extremely fast travel over long distances. Personally, I think having a line between L…
I think it would, however I didn't realize until now how small the tubes and cars are, might make a metro-type system challenging. Or, it could be widened for metro usage, like the disneyland monorail.
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#78If it works well, I'd like to see these in LA or other big cities too, not just long distance. Would be great to get on one of these and end up at the beach in Santa Monica at high speed instead of suffering through traffic.
Would a Hyperloop system work well in a system with frequent stops, where you wouldn't be able to get up to full-speed because you needed to stop and the stops could disrupt other express traffic. Would you really be gaining that much over other traditional rail transportation options? It seems like the strength of the Hyperloop is extremely fast travel over long distances. Personally, I think having a line between L…
Would a Hyperloop system work well in a system with frequent stops, where you wouldn't be able to get up to full-speed because you needed to stop and the stops could disrupt other express traffic.
No, which is why it's strictly city-to-city. It's supposed to compete with short haul point to point airlines. Those don't have neighborhood stops either.
Re: SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not over the parking lots or back alleys, etc?
Cost. A full-scale hyperloop needs to be on pylons, but a 1-mile test track can be built directly on the ground, which would be a lot cheaper. Why pay for pylons if you don't have to?
Right. Wait for the stentorian voice to tell you when you need more pylons.