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

Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 517 posts

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#221

Post by SubiculumCode »

I know there are feasibility questions, but have you thought about how such travel could affect the course of U.S. politics?

One could feasibly live in Utah where land is cheaper, but still commute to California for work. This would both lead to a purpling of many red states, as well a providing a path for interior state natives to find good jobs in coastal city centers.

Knowing the status of American politics where highly populated coastal states are overpowered in the Senate by the seats of the near empty states in the interior, one can see that if the potential for hyperloops is realized, there will could very well be a massive shift of power back to the populace with more equally distributed representation.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#222

Post by GuB-42 »

dx034 wrote: post #118
jandrese wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't they just put accordion joints on the junction at every pylon? It's not like the tube is going to be built as one gigantic piece. It has to be assembled from parts.

The vacuum is the problem. With HSR you also have small gaps in the system to allow for expansion but nothing there requires a perfect surface.

AFAIK, high speed rails do not have gaps. Expansion is controlled by brute force : lots of clamping and massive supports.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#223

Post by mseebach »

Brakenshire wrote: post #188
jaredhansen wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the problems facing construction of "viable high speed rail" in the US (they already exist in many other places), I don't think Hyperloop competition is among ... the top 50. Practically anything could be "a clever political ploy", but where's the evidence for this? Any in the absence of such evidence, why speculate? Just as a thought experiment, could HN user daemin's comments be part of a clever ploy to inve…

We're just building a new major high speed line in the UK, and you'd be surprised how often you hear people say that it shouldn't be built because the technology will be superseded by the hyperloop, or autonomous cars, or whichever. It's one of the major talking points, even if it isn't one of the major blocks.

Meh. The imminency of "Major New Technology Just Around The Corner" has always been a favourite argument for the anti-progress crowd.

EDIT to add: Before Hyperloop, it was Maglev.

And frankly, a significantly better argument against HS2 is that it's an impossibly expensive boondoggle.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#225

Post by Robotbeat »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #28
dmix wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of marketing, very little engineering. It started as a technical whitepaper, not a marketing campaign, and multiple companies are building experimental models. I don't think this critique is accurate or fair. There have been far worse vapourware and hype-only concepts that haven't gotten close to hyperloop's tangible progress. No tech can be perfected from the planning stage either, it takes talent, money, and…

>it's not like there are some obvious alternatives are being neglected A high speed train like the ones they've had in Europe for a long time? You know, the ones that regularly reach 300 km/h? If that's not fast or flashy enough for you, what about Maglev? It actually exists, and the tracks are extremely expensive even though they don't even have to maintain low air pressure

We have natural gas pipelines that have to maintain a far higher pressure difference, and they are in the same order of magnitude in diameter. They're not expensive. Way less than high speed rail lines per mile.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#226

Post by nradov »

valas wrote: post #219
microcolonel wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be a good idea to make sure the California "high speed" rail program is never funded. It is a terrible idea. As it stands, it would be as slow as conventional rail, redundant with AmTrak, and the most expensive rail line ever built. It would be absolutely devastating for the government's relationship with at least tens of thousands of land owners, hundreds of thousands of home owners, who would see d…

"it would be as slow as conventional rail" - citation? Even Reason Foundation (which is as biased as it gets - it's funded by Koch brothers and ideological critic of almost any government investment) claim SF to LA times will be 3:30 to 4:40, which is faster than any train today.

That's barely faster than driving, once you account for the time spent moving between your origin/destination and the train station as well as transferring luggage.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#227

Post by mseebach »

jey wrote: post #220
daemin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that because the freight companies are the ones that actually built, own, and operate the tracks? If Amtrak or another passenger company owned the tracks, their trains would get priority.

No, Amtrak supposedly has priority by law: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/29/...

Yes, and that law didn't come out of the blue. More pertinently, a purpose built passenger rail line will have priority for passengers.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#228

Post by NegativeLatency »

GuB-42 wrote: post #206
rando444 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good thought experiment, and not without precedent.. however the main problem holding high-speed rail back in the United States is that freight trains have priority over passenger trains. Without changing this, high-speed rail in the US will never be a reality without building an entirely separate rail network.

Are they? AFAIK, passenger trains have priority. However, if the passenger company rents a specific timeslot from the railway and isn't on time, it isn't surprising if there is traffic along the way. And high speed trains usually require dedicated tracks to operate at full speed anyways.

And straight track runs for really high speed. Which means that you need to acquire land to build through.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#229

Post by Robotbeat »

wlesieutre wrote: post #12
Filligree wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pressure tube doesn't need to be at near-vacuum. By the drag equation, air resistance is proportional to pressure; merely cutting pressure by 90% would reduce air resistance by the same amount, and that's trivial with perfectly ordinary pumps. Serious vacuum pumps are not required. This is not to say that keeping it airtight won't still be a major engineering problem, it just isn't as near-impossible as near-vacu…

Doesn't the Hyperloop concept rely on not having a perfect vacuum? It's supposed to suck in air on the front and blow it out the bottom as an air cushion. Without the air cushion you just have "maglev in a vacuum" instead. I'm sure that's also a fast mode of travel, but like you said, the vacuum part of it takes a lot of money.

Does the vacuum part take a lot of money? I would think that if anyone knows, it'd be someone like Elon Musk who has built a spacecraft company from the ground up.

For many of Elon Musk's projects, I get the idea that Elon is mostly just bringing broad, multi-domain knowledge to bear on industries that have been siloed for a very long time. So everyone scoffs at a long vacuum tube and using turbomachinery, etc, but for someone with a physics background with extensive knowledge of the spacecraft environment, turbopump rocket engines, and all the subsystems and ground testing systems that enable all this, it really isn't far-fetched at all. Most physicists (of the experimental kind, i.e. those who have to have hands-on knowledge fabricating things in addition to theoretical background) that I've talked to understand his ideas and think they're fairly reasonable.

People seem to base most of their criticisms on the fact that it's different than what we already do without a fundamental, first-principles understanding of the system.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#230

Post by zip1234 »

Pxtl wrote: post #187
reacweb wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The track should be cheaper because hyperloop has (almost) no impact on existing infrastructures. Expropriation costs for train are huge.

How could the Hyperloop not require the same expropriations? A giant tube isn't any smaller than a train track. Is it the fact that it's elevated? Rail can be elevated. Yes, rail is heavy, but so are giant evacuated steel tubes.

Run it down the center of the freeway? Having stations for trains in the middle of freeways isn't great for pedestrians, but might be fine for long distance transport such as hyperloop.
Post reply on HN