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What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

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Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#31

Post by escoz »

thufry wrote: post #10
acqq wrote: post #2

Anybody actually tried to imagine himself using it? It's rather claustrophobic experience, suited more to the astronauts than normal people: you can only be in some quite horizontal position, you can't even go to the toilet while you're in the capsule, the luggage capacity seems to be quite limited... It doesn't appear as something everybody would be ready to use? If it could be bigger and more comfortable it seems i…

I wouldn't use it because I would get claustrophobic. But I don't think it's being engineered for claustrophobes -- we'll take the train or drive, and people who are comfortable with Hyperloop will take that. No solution can meet everyone's needs.

Nice of you to recognize the thing is not targeted at absolutely everybody, like absolutely every other method of transportation. People here seem to be forgetting that.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#32

Post by [deleted] »

acqq wrote: post #5
zeteo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the trip is only half an hour. Do people have better comforts on a metro or bus commute?

Yes, people have orders of magnitude better comfort in metros and buses. You can exit the city metro or the city bus every minute. You can sit, stand up and walk in them. The buses for longer distances have the toilets and can stop whenever somebody really needs it. Here you'd be locked in the slanted chair for half an hour where you wouldn't be even able to stand up or stretch the hands! Sounds awful and has real im…

[deleted]

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#33

Post by travisp »

acqq wrote: post #5
zeteo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the trip is only half an hour. Do people have better comforts on a metro or bus commute?

Yes, people have orders of magnitude better comfort in metros and buses. You can exit the city metro or the city bus every minute. You can sit, stand up and walk in them. The buses for longer distances have the toilets and can stop whenever somebody really needs it. Here you'd be locked in the slanted chair for half an hour where you wouldn't be even able to stand up or stretch the hands! Sounds awful and has real im…

>Yes, people have orders of magnitude better comfort in metros and buses. You can exit the city metro or the city bus every minute. You can sit, stand up and walk in them. The buses for longer distances have the toilets and can stop whenever somebody really needs it.

This is not universally true.

For example, here in New York, the express bus from Staten Island has at least 45 minutes of no stops and has no bathroom (just a regular bus). If you do somehow convince the driver to let you off, good luck finding a bathroom anywhere near the places you'd probably find yourself. Some of the Subway trains (such as the N train between Canal St and Atlantic Ave) run express and is about 10 minutes non-stop (and you're a long trek from a bathroom at either end).

Plus, try going to the bathroom in the first or last 30 minutes of a flight. You have a reasonable chance of being arrested.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#34

Post by defen »

acqq wrote: post #2

Anybody actually tried to imagine himself using it? It's rather claustrophobic experience, suited more to the astronauts than normal people: you can only be in some quite horizontal position, you can't even go to the toilet while you're in the capsule, the luggage capacity seems to be quite limited... It doesn't appear as something everybody would be ready to use? If it could be bigger and more comfortable it seems i…

Solution to the claustrophobia problem: Oculus Rift. Note that I don't have claustrophobia so I don't know if this is a realistic solution; it's just the first thing that popped into my mind.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#35

Post by mikeash »

acqq wrote: post #8
angersock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's aimed at commuter traffic--as somebody who has routinely made a backpack's worth of clothing last a week on trips, I also don't think that the luggage is that much of an issue. The bathroom critique is again silly--it's a thirty minute trip; if you can't hold it that long, you probably need to repeat preschool.

Has it occurred to you that not everybody has perfect health all the time? You can't actually expect that you wouldn't get sick the first minute after you enter the tube. Then imagine yourself having to remain there next 29 minutes and die! This would happen. A lot. Then imagine who'd use that cleverness after the first such case and after every next. I'd rather say "it's aimed at astronauts" than "commuters." Astron…

A cruising airliner is at least half an hour away from any sort of outside medical help. On oceanic flights they can be up to three hours away. Yet few people die on them and few people use that as a reason to avoid them.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#36

Post by anologwintermut »

anigbrowl wrote: post #26
anologwintermut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if $2.5 billion for land acquisition is realistic (if you build most of it next to I5 and need a 10ft wide swath of land, it might be), the route would never be approved by the california legislature. A large part of the problem with infrastructure costs is politics, not engineering.

It'd be more likely to be approved with only 2 endpoints, since the logical thing then would be to make the route as short as possible. OTOH HSR's route through the Central Valley is partly dictated by the availability of funding from the federal government for development in that part of the state; if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline.

Until all the cities on the proposed HSR route want in. Now, maybe it's cheap enough that's not a problem. Wanting to be part of a $6B project v.s. a $60B project, but I doubt it.

The first thing someone is going to try to do is get it to connect somewhere in the middle of no where to San Jose to inflate their real-estate prices.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#37

Post by coldtea »

acqq wrote: post #8
angersock wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's aimed at commuter traffic--as somebody who has routinely made a backpack's worth of clothing last a week on trips, I also don't think that the luggage is that much of an issue. The bathroom critique is again silly--it's a thirty minute trip; if you can't hold it that long, you probably need to repeat preschool.

Has it occurred to you that not everybody has perfect health all the time? You can't actually expect that you wouldn't get sick the first minute after you enter the tube. Then imagine yourself having to remain there next 29 minutes and die! This would happen. A lot. Then imagine who'd use that cleverness after the first such case and after every next. I'd rather say "it's aimed at astronauts" than "commuters." Astron…

>Has it occurred to you that not everybody has perfect health all the time?

Then those people can avoid riding the hyperloop?

Luckily we didn't use the same BS excuses to stop building planes...

>You can't actually expect that you wouldn't get sick the first minute after you enter the tube.

What? That's what 100% of the population expects when entering any vehicle. "Getting sick the minute they enter" is neither a common expectation nor a common occurence.

>Then imagine yourself having to remain there next 29 minutes and die!

Well, that escalated quickly.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#38

Post by Aloisius »

anigbrowl wrote: post #26
anologwintermut wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if $2.5 billion for land acquisition is realistic (if you build most of it next to I5 and need a 10ft wide swath of land, it might be), the route would never be approved by the california legislature. A large part of the problem with infrastructure costs is politics, not engineering.

It'd be more likely to be approved with only 2 endpoints, since the logical thing then would be to make the route as short as possible. OTOH HSR's route through the Central Valley is partly dictated by the availability of funding from the federal government for development in that part of the state; if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline.

> if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline.

Actually, the only two cities it connects to in the Central Valley are among the largest population centers in California: Fresno (#5 largest city in CA) and Bakersfield (#9 largest city). By comparison, there aren't any large population centers southwest of San Jose until you're almost to LA with maybe the exception of Salinas.

Plus, if you want to swing up to Sacramento (#6 largest city) at a later point, then going inland makes more sense.

The whole thing built out with all phases connects 9 out of 10 of the largest cities in CA (Oakland is the only one left out).

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#39

Post by ricardobeat »

anologwintermut wrote: post #18
ricardobeat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it being very light is a consequence of the design as a whole. Light rail is already as light as it can be given cost/materials. We already have rail transport on pylons, usually an implementation of a monorail[1], but it only solves the right-of-way issue. Everything else (energy consumption, speed, efficiency, passenger flow, safety) is not much different from standard transportation. [1] http://en.wikipedia.or…

I disagree about the weight. If you took the proposed capsule, added wheels, replaced the 1,500kg batteries with a motor and powered the thing from a third rail, you'd get something rather light with enough power to move at i'd guess 200 or 300 mph(think what you could get out of a Tesla if it had extra motors instead of batteries). This and the route would get you most of the cost savings. The speed is the huge bene…

That's what high-speed rail is. Wheels can't get you to 300mph, so you need maglev. The added weight would mean massive pylons, huge energy consumption. There is nothing new about that. It's more expensive, slower and less secure. Can you imagine the result of the recent spanish crash if the rails were elevated?

There is no easy formula for magic fast, light, cheap rail transport. Sorry - there is, it's called the Hyperloop :) the greatest thing about it is that all of it's advantages come from it's well thought-out, integrated design, not any one technology we don't have today.

Re: What Will the Federal Government do with Hyperloop?

#40

Post by anigbrowl »

Aloisius wrote: post #38
anigbrowl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be more likely to be approved with only 2 endpoints, since the logical thing then would be to make the route as short as possible. OTOH HSR's route through the Central Valley is partly dictated by the availability of funding from the federal government for development in that part of the state; if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline.

> if it was purely up to CA I think it would just run along the coastline. Actually, the only two cities it connects to in the Central Valley are among the largest population centers in California: Fresno (#5 largest city in CA) and Bakersfield (#9 largest city). By comparison, there aren't any large population centers southwest of San Jose until you're almost to LA with maybe the exception of Salinas. Plus, if you w…

Oh I agree, but so far the people in the Central Valley don't, and think it's some sort of scheme to oppress them: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21582556-can-hug...

Wha tI mean is that most of the popular backing for HSR seems to be in SF, SJ and LA. The interior of CA is like this whole different country.

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