Is Hyperloop the future of travel? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#61

Post by fzzzy » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:11 PM UTC

steffan wrote: post #29

Retric wrote: post #11

Earlier 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?”

Sure, but I think it's fair to call a train that is powered with electromagnetic pulses from stationary coils something different than a train that is powered by an onboard engine.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#62

Post by sunstone » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

JDDunn9 wrote: post #45

Related: http://quora.com/Will-Hyperloop-One’s-Hyperloop-product-work... I think the deal breaker is the high speeds, which require a much straighter track and much larger turn radius (410ft for a train, ~4.6 mi. for HL). That means a lot of tunneling through mountains and bulldozing expensive buildings. Land is the biggest expense in these projects. I'm more hopeful of NASA's current work trying to reduce the sonic…

The problem with flights is the time and trouble spent getting to and getting through airports so the flight time has to be long enough to justify the wasted time.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#63

Post by avelis » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

shawabawa3 wrote: post #55

ck2 wrote: post #42

Just imagine the TSA line for the hyperloop. You'll have to arrive days ahead of time.

Why? Wouldn't it be more like a train than a plane? A terrorist would only be able to kill ~28 people at a time (1 pod), compared to >200 for a plane

I agree. A domestic train/pod based travel network doesn't have the same security implications as an airport.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#64

Post by CapitalistCartr » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

iamcreasy wrote: post #46

JDDunn9 wrote: post #45

Related: http://quora.com/Will-Hyperloop-One’s-Hyperloop-product-work... I think the deal breaker is the high speeds, which require a much straighter track and much larger turn radius (410ft for a train, ~4.6 mi. for HL). That means a lot of tunneling through mountains and bulldozing expensive buildings. Land is the biggest expense in these projects. I'm more hopeful of NASA's current work trying to reduce the sonic…

I remember Elon Musk saying, at Hyperloop POD design weekend, Hyperloop is for short distance travel, because in short flights planes spends most of it's time in ascend or descend. And for air travel, I think suborbital flights are definitely the future.

Exactly. HL is for 200-1000 km. distances. Suborbital is for intercontinental. By the way, getting to orbit takes an amount of fuel similar to flying USA to Australia. Once we stop throwing the planes away . . In between those distances is flying.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#65

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #50

I know Elon Musk has a lot of goodwill around here, but is no one else cynical about the notion of a smart, ambitious automobile CEO coming up with some plausible-seeming science-fictional FUD to torpedo a high speed rail project that may very well compete with his interests?

The HL paper wasn't FUD to torpedo the HSR project, as I see it, it was leveraging existing skepticism (and also quite a bit of irrational opposition) with HSR to draw attention to HL. I don't think Musk cares one way or another about HSR, I think he cares about getting people to work on realizing HL so its ready for his Mars colonies, which is the real point of the technology.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#66

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

curun1r wrote: post #44

manigandham wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cheaper != better. It's important to look at the hyperloop in the context in which it was proposed. This is California and environmental aspects need to be taken into account. Airlines are a major source of CO2 and California wants a more environmentally friendly solution. There is a proposed high-speed rail project with a $10B initial estimate that's sure to at least double by the time the project is complete. The h…

> It's important to look at the hyperloop in the context in which it was proposed.

I don't think it really is, because the proposal was a comically unserious one designed to generate interest in the underlying technology. The route proposed in the paper as a supposed alternative to HSR which has termini outside of the immediate area of the population centers which it notionally connects would never be useful and will never get built.

OTOH, the interest the technology has drawn from that splashy initial PR campaign means enough people are working to develop it that that, if anything like it is viable, one or more commercially-viable variants will likely be ready for Musk's Mars colonies.

> On paper, it's better than the high-speed rail in every way. Cheaper, faster and with less pollution.

Its only "cheaper" because the proposal both made unrealistic assumptions about real estate costs and avoided much of the real estate costs by not terminating any place with useful transit access to the population centers at either terminus.

Unlike HSR, which not only terminates near the population centers, but includes as part of the same project improvements in the local connecting transit systems.

The proposed Hyperloop route was the high-tech version of a bridge-to-nowhere.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#67

Post by pi-err » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

There's a palpable excitement around Hyperloop and I can't wait to know if this will reshape our world or not.

One of the largest problem I can see is not technical. The consensus is that a "standard" Hyperloop track (between 2 cities, 300 to 800km apart) would have a ~1,500 passengers/hour max capacity. High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour.

Even if Hyperloop managed to get built at half the price of HSR (which would already be a feat, there's zero chance they'll do it at 10% of HSR price), this makes a very thin passenger flux to deliver reasonable amounts of operational cash.

Where HSR can deliver $7M to $14M daily with $150 ticket price at peak time, Hyperloop would max out at $2M daily with $300 tickets during peak hour. And those prices would probably kill their market anyway.

And that's with an entirely new transport platform to fund with many unknowns such as metal fatigue for pods in near-vacuum at those speeds, passenger tolerance for accelerations and lateral movements etc.

Maybe the business plan for passenger planes and trains was also that hazy back then?

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#68

Post by jacobolus » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

sunstone wrote: post #62

JDDunn9 wrote: post #45

Related: http://quora.com/Will-Hyperloop-One’s-Hyperloop-product-work... I think the deal breaker is the high speeds, which require a much straighter track and much larger turn radius (410ft for a train, ~4.6 mi. for HL). That means a lot of tunneling through mountains and bulldozing expensive buildings. Land is the biggest expense in these projects. I'm more hopeful of NASA's current work trying to reduce the sonic…

The problem with flights is the time and trouble spent getting to and getting through airports so the flight time has to be long enough to justify the wasted time.

The other problem with flights is that it’s incredibly carbon polluting, compared to trains.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#69

Post by dang » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

dimino wrote: post #35

I 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.

> I think you know you've got a winning idea when the esteemed commenters on HN all dismiss it out of hand.

Please don't diss the community as a rhetorical device. There's no substance in that, and since you're also an esteemed commenter on HN, it's false.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#70

Post by dang » Tue, May 17, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

betteridge wrote: post #23

No.

While it's mildly interesting that that account name hadn't already been taken for this very purpose, HN doesn't allow novelty accounts, so we've banned this one.

If there were an easy way to ban mechanical invocations of Betteridge we'd have done that too, about ten thousand of them ago.