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Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

businessinsider.com

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Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#71

Post by avianlyric »

bluGill wrote: post #54
FourHand451 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but how does putting a train in a vacuum tube solve the problems we currently have with passenger rail?

The limit on speed is air resistance.

That would be true if US passenger rail was actually capable of high speeds to start with.

As it stands right now US passenger rail is total joke compared to the rest of the developed world. Slower, less reliable, more expensive. Air resistance in the US is the same as everywhere else, so that isn’t the limit factor.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#72

Post by ghaff »

7735835835 wrote: post #30
chucksta wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glossing over the fact that almost all the railways in the US are privately owned by cargo companies which prioritize their cargo over transport. Huge reason Amtrak struggles so much

There is presumably a reason they are cargo companies and not passager transport companies. Unless Amtrak has a government enforced monopoly?

Because all the US passenger rail companies went out of business. Amtrak was essentially created out of the wreckage to maintain some passenger rail service. (It's a very complicated history.)

Amtrak makes almost all of its money on the Northeast Corridor which it then basically throws away in the rest of the country.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#73

Post by WJW »

bluGill wrote: post #54
FourHand451 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but how does putting a train in a vacuum tube solve the problems we currently have with passenger rail?

The limit on speed is air resistance.

That is just one of the limits. At the speeds hyperloop was proposed to go, you need really wide curves to limit g-forces on the passengers. Not just when going left or right, but also up and down. It would be an absolute nightmare to get all the right-of-way done, and even then you would need immense amounts of earthworks to start curving uphill miles before the hill actually starts.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#74

Post by microtherion »

bluGill wrote: post #31
izzydata wrote: post #4

I find it quite surprising that they only fired half and not all of them. How can this conceptual vacuum tube pod system that has been shown to be incredibly inefficient and prohibitively expensive still have some kind of business model? To be honest I thought this whole idea got scrapped 5+ years ago.

They have got congress interested. It works just well enough to get them interested and funded. That it will always be prohibitively expensive is something they can hide. Congress wants to fund the next big thing and make the US the best in the world. They don't want to hear that train technology is an almost completely solved problem and so we cannot get ahead of the rest of the world - the only thing left is buy an…

Musk's involvement appeared to have had some undercurrent of sabotaging investment in mass transit by generating a constant stream of overhyped futuristic schemes. Promise 'em monorails in the future so you can keep selling 'em Teslas now.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#75

Post by wishinghand »

bluGill wrote: post #54
FourHand451 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but how does putting a train in a vacuum tube solve the problems we currently have with passenger rail?

The limit on speed is air resistance.

Let's walk before we run. Getting Shinkasen-style trains in the USA should be step 1.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#76

Post by Ekaros »

tsimionescu wrote: post #23
sneak wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vastly higher speeds is the reason it would be valuable if it can be made economically feasible.

It can't be made feasible from an engineering POV, not just economically. It's virtually impossible to maintain a relevant vacuum in hundreds of kilometers of tunnel. The temperature stresses alone would cause leaks unless using some very special materials (if any exist).

I suppose relatively bad vacuum is possible with enough energy expenditure that is pumps. What in my mind always made it stupid is throughput. First overall and then getting stuff in and out. Oh and safety... Minor thing being stuck in vacuum capsule middle of some hundred of kilometres long tube. I sure hope there is plenty of spare air...

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#78

Post by jeffbee »

ketzo wrote: post #2

Bummer. Musk-hyped moonshot or not, I thought Hyperloop presented an incredibly exciting vision for the future of mass transit. Even if it was always going to be a long shot, it’s disappointing to be right. Edit: replies saying "this never could have worked" are missing the point to a pretty hysterical degree. You don't know that. No one knows that! Unless you are from the future or are a genius-level mechanical engi…

It wasn't a vision of mass anything, except maybe delusion. The nameplate capacity of hyperloop between SF and LA was 840 passengers per hour, which is basically zero. Whatever hyperloop was, it was never "mass transit".

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#79

Post by trhway »

bluGill wrote: post #58
moffkalast wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. maglev?

Not really helpful. It can go slightly faster, but wind resistance is a problem you can't get around.

You can plasma sheaf the train head. The stability of wheels/rails and other mechanical stuff at say 700km/hour is probably a bigger issue than air resistance.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#80

Post by avianlyric »

bluGill wrote: post #60
tsimionescu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't be made feasible from an engineering POV, not just economically. It's virtually impossible to maintain a relevant vacuum in hundreds of kilometers of tunnel. The temperature stresses alone would cause leaks unless using some very special materials (if any exist).

We can do it in the ISS. Not an easy problem, but it is a solvable problem. The problem is all the solutions will cost a ton of money.

The ISS isn’t kept at a vacuum and isn’t hundreds of kilometres long, and space needs no assistance from us to maintain a vacuum, gravity’s got that covered.
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