No.
I suspect HN will be seeing more of this particular user/comment combination in the future…
Betteridge's Law of Headlines:
Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
31–40 of 178 posts
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tube would be evacuated on earth. Which is why they need a tube in the first place: Mars According to Musk, Hyperloop would be useful on Mars as no tubes would be needed. This is because Mars' atmosphere is about 1% the density of the Earth's.[10][45][46] For the hyperloop concept to work on Earth, low-pressure tubes are required to reduce air resistance. However, if they were to be built on Mars, the lower air r…
> a hyperloop to be created with no tube, only a track Don't we call that a “train?”
yep
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#33This technology has been around for over a century. Remove wheel friction and air pressure as the primary barriers to speed with the pinnacle being maglev in a full vacuum (something that was proposed for 5000mph trains crossing the ocean on the seabed at one point). The Hyperloop concept has relaxed these constraints by allowing for some atmosphere, which also greatly reduces the top speed, but fundamentally it's th…
> Air travel is already very streamlined and inexpensive for crossing big distances and has the advantage of not requiring the infrastructure and real estate that a train needs.
Hyperloop is very specifically aimed at medium distance routes. SF to LA, for example, where the plane has relatively little time cruising at altitude, where it can fly efficiently. If a plane is spending most it's time flying through denser aid, then it's not flying efficiently, and burns a lot of fuel on a per-mile basis relative to a longer flight. Hyperloop is specced to be more efficient than air travel at the distance it's proposed.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The tube would be evacuated on earth. Which is why they need a tube in the first place: Mars According to Musk, Hyperloop would be useful on Mars as no tubes would be needed. This is because Mars' atmosphere is about 1% the density of the Earth's.[10][45][46] For the hyperloop concept to work on Earth, low-pressure tubes are required to reduce air resistance. However, if they were to be built on Mars, the lower air r…
> a hyperloop to be created with no tube, only a track Don't we call that a “train?”
The original design did not have a 'track' along the full route. Cars would more or less hop between different sections. On Mars that represents clear reliability issues, but the ability to avoid building load barring bridges over gorges could be a major cost savings.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#35I think you know you've got a winning idea when the esteemed commenters on HN all dismiss it out of hand.
I hope I can Hyperloop from NY to LA some day, and if we can leverage the current high investment traffic to get that to happen, I'm all for it.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#36No.
I suspect HN will be seeing more of this particular user/comment combination in the future… Betteridge's Law of Headlines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
I think dang will take care of this comment (and the account?) in short order, novelty accounts are verboten on HN (as they provide no value).
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#37Why not create hyperloops for ultra-fast (yet relatively cheap in volume) trans-Atlantic merchandise shipping? Surely that would be a highly profitable project from the start?
> Why not create hyperloops for ultra-fast (yet relatively cheap in volume) trans-Atlantic merchandise shipping 1) There's very little merchandise that needs to be shipped trans-Atlantic that quickly. 2) Shipping containers are huge and heavy. Transporting a cargo-ship's worth requires a lot of energy, which translates into high expenses. 3) If shipping a cargo-ship's worth of containers, this will become an impossib…
The original plan was to reuse existing infrastructure and have very few stops outside city center. For that scenario the number were holding up.
Now the question is what problem is this solving: you have cheap novel transport system for passenger between 2 points nobody is really interested in.
And that's the wall all the project around hyperloop are hitting. Either you need the government to step in to make it competitive for endpoint that people are currently interested in. Or you keep the original design, but you need the government to step in to ensure those uninteresting endpoints become interesting.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
The journalist is wrong/simplifying See wikipedia [0]: "pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
Both BBC quotes are in full agreement with the document at http://spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf . Page 12, "100 Pascals", that's roughly 99.9% of the air removed. The distinction between "very low pressure" and "vacuum" that is implied by the "hyperloop is not a vactrain" camp is a fantasy.
It is pretty relevant at the speeds being discussed.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#39This technology has been around for over a century. Remove wheel friction and air pressure as the primary barriers to speed with the pinnacle being maglev in a full vacuum (something that was proposed for 5000mph trains crossing the ocean on the seabed at one point). The Hyperloop concept has relaxed these constraints by allowing for some atmosphere, which also greatly reduces the top speed, but fundamentally it's th…
> Air travel is already very streamlined and inexpensive for crossing big distances and has the advantage of not requiring the infrastructure and real estate that a train needs. Hyperloop is very specifically aimed at medium distance routes. SF to LA, for example, where the plane has relatively little time cruising at altitude, where it can fly efficiently. If a plane is spending most it's time flying through denser…
Efficient != cheaper.
The only thing that matters is what people are willing to pay, and that's not much for medium distance. And for the billions it costs to install the track in the first place, you can buy several airlines and operate them for years.
Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
"What is Hyperloop? "Hyperloop is a conceptual transport system in which passengers are loaded into pods and fired through vacuum tubes at more than 600mph (1,000km/h).... "Pumping the air out of the tubes reduces resistance, allowing high speeds to be achieved, potentially using less energy than a train."
The journalist is wrong/simplifying See wikipedia [0]: "pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors" [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop
The MIT prototype, and some of the other proposals, are really a maglev system. The original Hyperloop proposal called for aerodynamic support, with very tight tolerances, but that turns out to be iffy.
A maglev system needs a much more expensive track and/or a lot of energy from the vehicle to power the lift. This is the big problem with maglev - track cost. Maglev works fine; the Transrapid system in Shanghai has been running for 12 years now without serious problems. Top speed 300 MPH.
The Hyperloop is only interesting if it's far cheaper than a maglev. The Transrapid maglev system has far more capacity, can corner better, and can climb steeper grades.