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Hyperloop

spacex.com

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Re: Hyperloop

#791

Post by robomartin »

coldpie wrote: post #768
robomartin wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good article, until I realized he was setting-up to make an argument for software and hardware engineers unionizing. I did enjoy the first part though. To be clear, I am not one to say that unions are not necessary. I think they most definitely are in a number of industries. I am also not saying that union membership is evil in any way. A good deal of union workers are nice hard working people who are only after stab…

> Unions need to learn to be better citizens and to truly understand and partner with businesses. Then, and only then, everyone wins. There's two sides to this coin. Businesses don't have a very good track record of treating their employees well without some outside influence like government or unions. By the way, this comment here reads very differently from and much more reasonably than your "the goal of union lead…

> By the way, this comment here reads very differently from and much more reasonably than your

Yes, it does. I have no love for unions as they stand today. Tis comes both from personal experience at several levels. I was in a union for a few years and saw the innards of the beast first hand. I saw that the rules they put into place allowed lazy, incompetent and almost useless people earn a wage they did not deserve by any possible measure. I saw management poweless when dealing with such employees, wanting to fire them to hire a worthy replacement and not being able to.

Later in life as I launched into entrepreneurship I dealt with the other side of unions. I got to see just how efficiency, productivity and profit-sapping their rules are. I got to see the dehumanizing and almost surreal culture it develops. Example:

Javitz Convention Center, New York. Asked a union guy to hand me a cord so I could, in turn, hand it to the union electrician working on my booth. The guy refused, "not in my union contract" and walked off. The union electrician told me the I could not handle the powe cord. You know, an extension you buy at Home Depot for $30, nothing special. He had to get down from his ladder to get the extension. He also went out of his way to do it as slowly as he could.

I also saw an entire union crew drop everything amd leave this guy hanging and in fear for his exhibit when he dared to plug a cord into the electrical system in his booth. He was a newbie to unionized US trade shiow crews. They were teaching him a lesson, showing him who the alpha dog was. I had a talk with the poor fellow and shared some of my insight. Several hours later they returned, he apologized and they went to work.

I have never experienced anything even remotely similar to this in Europe in over ten years of doing business with their unions in various countries. If anything they've always gone out of their way to help and get the job done quickly and efficiently. In other words, by American standards you would not have guessed that these European workers were unionized.

So, yes, I do think that our unions, as currently realized and run have been damaging our businesses, towns, cities, schools and the entire country for decades. That does not mean I am proposing they be dissolved or that they have no place in our society, not at all.

Re: Hyperloop

#792

Post by jarek »

jarek wrote: post #660
apendleton wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is just back-of-the envelope, admittedly. But the three factors that determine how many people you can move past a given point per unit of time are the frequency of the vehicles, the capacity of the vehicles, and the speed of the vehicles, so if you want to match the throughput of the proposed Hyperloop, but with rail traveling at 164mph, you have to either make the vehicles more frequent or higher-capacity,…

> But the three factors that determine how many people you can move past a given point per unit of time are the frequency of the vehicles, the capacity of the vehicles, and the speed of the vehicles As a matter of fact, only the frequency and the capacity matter. Speed matters to passengers but not to the amount of people you can move. The hyperloop as proposed actually has fairly low throughput; conventional rail sy…

And if someone would like a long-distance example, at its busiest the line between Tokyo and Osaka sees up to thirteen trains per hour each capable of carrying around 1300 people.

Re: Hyperloop

#793

Post by dragonwriter »

VladRussian2 wrote: post #680
jarek wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that their pensions aren't "200-300K/year"?

if you look at the original link ( http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/pensions ), you'll see these "3% @ 60 Formula for Local Miscellaneous Members", "2% @ 55 State and School Miscellaneous" and "3% @ 55 Formula for State Peace Officer/Firefighter or Local Safety Member" - these formulas are mainly from union contracts.

> these formulas are mainly from union contracts.

All defined benefit pensions -- whether set by union contract or not -- use these kind of formulas. But the high pensions are not the product of the formula alone -- even if you work long enough at one of the formulas to get near (or over) 100%, you still aren't going to get 200-300K per year pension unless you have a last/highest/(average of last three)/etc. years salary (which ever is the base for the particular formula you have) high enough to push the pension that high.

Surprisingly enough, almost no rank-and-file workers have that kind of salary. The people with 200K and higher pensions are mostly people that are retiring from executive positions.

Re: Hyperloop

#794

Post by [deleted] »

Anechoic wrote: post #224
goodcanadian wrote: post #188

I am intrigued, but not overwhelmed. Many of his reasons why his hyperloop is superior to high speed rail are not specific to the hyperloop. For example, you can put railway tracks up on pylons, too, with very little impact on the ground. It is common to do this in urban areas, but it is rarely done in rural areas because it is flat out cheaper to put it on the ground. I don't believe that an experimental tube is goi…

I don't believe that an experimental tube is going to be somehow magically cheaper and easier to route and build than train tracks. Do you really think the special interests that are making HSR so difficult and expensive would say, "Oh, do whatever you like with your tube."? These are extremely important issues that advocates seem to be glossing over. Putting the guideway on pylons doesn't magically eliminate land is…

[deleted]

Re: Hyperloop

#795

Post by dragonwriter »

blackjack48 wrote: post #628
abruzzi wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that, at least with the CA high speed rail system, the design is all theoretical at the moment. It may be a brilliant idea, but but moving from the core ideas in the document to actual working, build-able products, can be a slow process. And given the state of where CA is on their project, that may not put them on the same window.

I can assure you that the CA system isn't "theoretical" anymore. Terminals are already being constructed in SF and Anaheim. Right-of-way acquisition has begun and construction is scheduled to begin in the Central Valley this year.

I think that grandparent's "theoretical" was a poorly-phrased reference the problem with the hyperloop in the context of CA HSR, not a problem with CA HSR.

Re: Hyperloop

#796

Post by schiffern »

tlb wrote: post #667
goodcanadian wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elevate rail as easily? The short answer is, "yes." I've ridden on it. The slightly longer answer (as another commenter has pointed out) is that it depends on the weight of the train versus the weight of the hyperloop. I see no fundamental reason to assume that the hyperloop is lighter than the train. It could be so, but then, we could make smaller and lighter trains, too (light rail). Plus you don't get the…

The hyperloop passenger capsule is estimated at 15,000 kg, while a TGV weighs 400,000 kg. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV Edit: I had the wrong numbers before, thanks to Shiffern for the correction.

The actual number for the hyperloop capsule is 15,000 - 26,000 kg. Still much less than the TGV, obviously.

Re: Hyperloop

#797

Post by NamTaf »

krschultz wrote: post #629
sillysaurus wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, is it cool?

It's definitely cool. I left about a year ago to join a startup, but that had more to do with wanting to live in NYC again than the submarine company. Two interesting books: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Waters-Insiders-Account-Undercove... and http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/d...

As a fellow mech eng, what startup environment are you involved in and is it utilising your mech skillset or something else, eg: programming abilities?

Re: Hyperloop

#798

Post by robomartin »

aasarava wrote: post #790
robomartin wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the... It only supports my point. It's 2.2 miles long. Construction started in 2002. It was supposed to open in 2007. It will not open until the end of this year. Total cost is currently at six billion. The Hyperloop is 400 miles long, will be built in seven years and will cost six billion. See my point now?

Yes, and when the new Eastern span of the Bay Bridge was proposed, it too was cheap and fast: less than $1B. The dramatic difference in the actual cost has a lot to do with the mayors of nearby cities pushing for a much fancier and complex design, and to a sudden spike in demand for global steel and concrete. Trying to compare the actual cost of actual projects with the first projected cost of an ideal, untested proj…

> Trying to compare the actual cost of actual projects with the first projected cost of an ideal, untested project is a bit silly, don't you think?

Not really. I would never estimate a six billion dollar cost for anything involving placing massive pylons on the center of the Golden State highway for four hundred miles.

It's the difference between reality and wishful thinking.

Look, I already said that I'd rather spend the sixty billion allocated for the bullshit high speed train on the Hyperloop. In other words, I am not saying we cannot build it. I am saying it will cost far more, take longer and be far more difficult (not technologically but unions, special interest groups and plain politics) than stated in the pdf.

Re: Hyperloop

#799

Post by Anechoic »

TsiCClawOfLight wrote: post #730
jarek wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds vaguely like maglev a couple of decades ago. It too was a neat idea on paper.

Are you guys serious? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#Operational_systems_ser... Linimo, Shanghai, Daejon, and then all the test tracks, e.g. the transrapid in germany... Maglev is reality now . It simply happened to be built in China, Japan and South Korea rather than in the US.

and then all the test tracks, e.g. the transrapid in germany

... which closed a few years ago :(

Re: Hyperloop

#800

Post by dragonwriter »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #689
jarek wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CA HSR replaces/upgrades two metropolitan rail systems (Caltrain/Metrolink) in addition to connecting SF (as opposed to Oakland!) and LA, requires no R&D, is supposed to handle significantly greater ridership, has detailed cost estimates which include things like take into account electrification costs (because it does get cloudy), support facilities (because there is maintenance of these cars), administrative buil…

To be fair, Oakland is a much more sensible location of the initial terminal for any rail system. It's very well-connected to SF, has a complete lack of powerful, moneyed NIMBYs, and it would be easy to punch the line through to SF once it's proven.

> To be fair, Oakland is a much more sensible location of the initial terminal for any rail system. It's very well-connected to SF, has a complete lack of powerful, moneyed NIMBYs, and it would be easy to punch the line through to SF once it's proven.

The East Bay (and even Oakland specifically) does not have a complete lack of moneyed NIMBYs. There are at least as many of those in the East Bay as in SF and the Peninsula.

And its actually a lot easier to "punch a line through" over land than over the Bay, and existing SF-Oakland transit capacity is fairly well saturated and expensive to expand (because, again, of the Bay).

You could maybe find some non-insane argument that extending Caltrain as conventional rail to San Francisco and running HSR to Oakland makes more sense than HSR to San Francisco and existing conventional rail to Oakland, but I doubt there's much case even for that; in any case, any sane strategy for rail is going to involve a fork with lines running up the Peninsula to SF and up into the East Bay separately.

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