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Hyperloop

spacex.com

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Re: Hyperloop

#541

Post by nemo1618 »

bbatsell wrote: post #341
julian37 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the case with planes also? As far as I know, at 35,000 feet altitude you'd die, too, if cabin pressure drops and the plane's life support system fails. And I don't recall ever hearing of an air plane accident that involved suffocation.

There have been a few, but they're quite rare. Two of the more prominent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_South_Dakota_Learjet_cras...

Amazing that there are so many safeguards in place to prevent what happened to HCY 522, and yet the crew managed to miss/ignore them all. I'm sure there have been many thousands of instances where a safeguard prevented such an incident, but in this case I suppose the fates aligned.

Re: Hyperloop

#542

Post by smoorman1024 »

purplelobster wrote: post #311
adventureartist wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so fast to make that declaration. Elon Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX are pretty influential players right now, and I don't think anyone reading this white paper are anything less than wide eyed at the possibility that the future of travel is written right here and we could build it, for cheaper than the current slow expensive system. Influential people and money people and politicians are all going to read th…

I hope you're right, but in reality most people haven't even heard of Elon Musk. I've had to explain to many highly educated people what he has done, what SpaceX is, what Tesla is etc. While he's been rather successful so far, he's not in the clear when it comes to either of his companies right now, he's not exactly at the Gates level of success yet. I'm rooting for him though, he has the potential to be one of the m…

A segment about the Hyperloop was actually on the NBC nightly news. I think Musk is becoming a household name.

Re: Hyperloop

#543

Post by pixelmonkey »

richcollins wrote: post #117

Feedback is welcomed on these or any useful aspects of the Hyperloop design. E-mail feedback to hyperloop@spacex.com or hyperloop@teslamotors.com Better: https://github.com/hyperloop/hyperloop

"Open source" plans in PDF format. "But we published it on github, that makes it open source, right?"

RMS is rolling over in his -- oh wait, he's still alive.

How about a ReST or LaTeX document that generates this PDF?

Re: Hyperloop

#544

Post by jellicle »

gojomo wrote: post #493
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see, fair enough, cheers for pointing that out. I'm in the UK and we're pretty well connected by rail, I wasn't expecting the alternative to be that ridiculous, just normal slower trains.

Density is destiny. Population densities: 407/km² England 256/km² UK 93/km² California 32/km² USA

But this comparison is wrong and meaningless. Certainly no one would build a high-speed, dense train network across, say, Nevada.

But building one across the coastal part of California? Or across the NE United States? Why yes, that does make sense, and why yes, it is warranted by the densities in those areas. The fact that the U.S. also owns Alaska doesn't really matter. No one is arguing Alaska needs a high-speed rail network.

Build fast trains connecting all the red areas:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Californi...

Repeat for suitable other areas across the U.S.

Re: Hyperloop

#545

Post by yk »

I have somewhere read, that large cities are usually the size one can travel in under an hour. So this could have quite interesting effects in effectively joining LA and SF.

Re: Hyperloop

#546

Post by snogglethorpe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #512
snogglethorpe wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and the Tokaido shinkansen carries 1300+ passengers per train, with up to about 15 trains per hour at peak times, so about 20,000 passengers / hour (per direction). At ~850 passengers / hour, Hyperloop seems like it's operating in another realm entirely.... Ironically, at Musk's "projected" low ticket prices (which granted probably aren't anywhere near realistic) and short travel times, one would expect a huge de…

The Tokaido shinkansen serves commuters in a very dense area. Also, Tokyo to Nagoya will run you a hundred bucks last time I rode. Why would anyone want to live in LA and commute to SF, or vice versa? Even if ticket prices are low, property prices on both sides are very high. It would make much more sense to build a hyperloop to nowhere economically, and turn that area into a bedroom community.

People do commute on the Tokaido shinkansen, but that is not the majority of its ridership. The numbers I've seen give about 10% of Tokaido shinkansen ridership as being due to commuter passes (and anybody who doesn't use a pass for that would be completely insane), measured by "trips"; if measuring by "passenger-km", of course, the proportion due to commuters is much much lower, about 2%, because commuters tend to travel much shorter distances.

The bulk of the riders are business people going back and forth for meetings etc, and ordinary people going on holidays and the like. The most insane peak periods are around national holidays, especially long ones like golden-week where the trains are often running at significantly over 100% capacity (I've stood the entire way between Tokyo and Osaka, crammed up against others in the car vestibule...).

You're right that the shinkansen prices are significantly higher, but if anything that demonstrates how great the demand would be for a really cheap service (as Musk seems to be claiming, however dubious that claim may be), and thus how limiting the low projected capacity would be...

Re: Hyperloop

#547

Post by jarek »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #462
jarek wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given ADA, would it be even legal for the California government to build this instead of a classic HSR? It's not even about claustrophobics, people in wheelchairs couldn't be serviced at all and obese people would be trouble too.

I don't see why they couldn't. You could just leave out one or two rows of seats and have plenty of room for a wheelchair, also extra luggage and package (if no wheelchair was onboard). You could have that in maybe one car out of five or ten, given that a new car arrives every thirty seconds.

From the pictures it looks like able-bodied passengers don't sit upright, so a person in a wheelchair wouldn't fit. Perhaps they could be helped into a seat and then helped out, though.

Serious question BTW, I'm not sure what exactly ADA mandates.

Re: Hyperloop

#548

Post by jarek »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #400
jarek wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't mean building the first one should be expected to be easy.

What about the 2nd through the 5000th? All the cost skeptics want to roll all the R&D costs into one line. That wouldn't be the case.

The 5000th doesn't help the person who paid for the first one. That would be the State of California in this case. Unless Mr. Musk would be willing to sign a contract for expected-10th-implementation-cost and not a dollar more?

Re: Hyperloop

#549

Post by danpat »

Someone wrote: post #390
dntrkv wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think (hope?) that when a world changing idea comes along (and if this does work as described, it definitely is world changing), everyone can work together and implement it in a reasonable time frame. I think one of the reasons many projects take so long to complete, like the California HSR, is because the cost to benefit isn't all that great. It has no advantage over flying and little to no advantage over…

When a world changing idea comes along, there are always parties that stand to lose from it (1). If those parties are good capitalists, they will oppose the change. That is what stops many good ideas in their tracks. (1) yes, a change could be an absolute net win for everybody, but it cannot be a relative win for everybody. In many cases, people will prefer to have less, as long as 'the others' have even less.

http://www.pnas.org/content/104/47/18854.long

and the talk about it:

http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_moral...

Re: Hyperloop

#550

Post by dragonwriter »

qohen wrote: post #514
dragonwriter wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article goes on to say that Acela gets 3 million riders in the very dense east coast NY/Washington corridor but in less-dense California they were projecting a ridership around 10x of Acela's (!). And...so? California has dense areas in the north and south and a big (relatively) empty gap between them. California HSR is designed to connect those dense areas. The overall density of the state (or the corridor) is…

I'm not so sure it's a side-issue, in that the northeast corridor train routes don't just allow people in, say, NY to go to Washington, but also people in Philadelphia and Baltimore to go there as well, since those cities are on the Acela route. And, if your city is not on the Acela route, you may well be able, due to the area's density, to take a commuter rail or another train to get to a city that is on the Acela r…

> By contrast, the lack of density in CA would mean that aside from LA - SF (and a bit of traffic to and from Sacramento), you wouldn't likely have that sort of potential passenger-base.

Actually, since California has a large total population, and its mostly concentrated in a few major urban areas, what that means is you have a natural constituency for high speed rail with few stops, spending more time at speed.

LA (and San Diego) to SF (and Sacramento) is a lot.

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