Hyperloop

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Aug 13, 2013, 1:13 AM UTC

snogglethorpe wrote: post #546

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Aug 13, 2013, 1:18 AM UTC

wavesounds wrote: post #501

btilly wrote: post #386

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Not alongside. On top of. And all of it needs to be approved for safety in earthquakes. If you're traveling at 600 mph, you do not want to have that tunnel unexpectedly move even a foot sideways during an earthquake.

Not to be nitpicky but if you haven't driven the I-5 theres substantial room between each direction of the freeway so I don't think it will actually be above traffic if that's your concern.

Post by bobbydavid » Tue, Aug 13, 2013, 1:21 AM UTC

VladRussian2 wrote: post #522

9999 wrote: post #370

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Jerry Brown's political career is coming to an end, so there are no long term political consequences for him. He's also traditionally been an opponent of government waste. I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that he would choose an unproven but promising technology over our existing useless high speed rail project. The assembly is another matter. If you think hyperloop is interesting, write and call your state…

>He's also traditionally been an opponent of government waste. he is in bed with gov employees unions (the unions are primary driving force behind 200-300K/year gov employees pensions ( http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/pensions ) with retirement age of 55, CA is something like $200B deep in that hole), and especially with prison guard union - of course huge prison population resulting from "toughness on crime" may…

Post by newbie12 » Tue, Aug 13, 2013, 1:24 AM UTC

purplelobster wrote: post #311

adventureartist wrote: post #218

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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…

Post by krschultz » Tue, Aug 13, 2013, 1:25 AM UTC

sillysaurus wrote: post #528

krschultz wrote: post #459

This is very serious first proposal. As a professional mechanical engineer I have worked on high quality steel tubes (nuclear submarines) before. The immediate thing that sticks out to me in this proposal are the tight mechanical tolerances that have to be maintained. Talking about tens of thousandths of an inch tolerances on a 10' diameter tube is not to be dismissed lightly. That is going to be tough to maintain -…

Offtopic, but please consider writing some blog posts or articles about your experiences working on nuclear submarines. That just sounds so cool, and while the work is probably dull, I'd nonetheless be fascinated to read some detailed stories.