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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

#81

Post by panick21_ »

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).

The original Hyperloop system is designed to not require a vacuum as strong as other vacuum systems of the past.

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperl...

> Another extreme is the approach, advocated by Rand and ET3, of drawing a hard or near hard vacuum in the tube and then using an electromagnetic suspension. The problem with this approach is that it is incredibly hard to maintain a near vacuum in a room, let alone 700 miles (round trip) of large tube with dozens of station gateways and thousands of pods entering and exiting every day.

> All it takes is one leaky seal or a small crack somewhere in the hundreds of miles of tube and the whole system stops working. However, a low pressure (vs. almost no pressure) system set to a level where standard commercial pumps could easily overcome an air leak and the transport pods could handle variable air density would be inherently robust. Unfortunately, this means that there is a non-trivial amount of air in the tube and leads us straight into another problem.

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

#82

Post by eco »

A lot of people seem to be confused. Elon does not have any companies working on a hyperloop. He kicked off the idea and released a white paper with some very early engineering work seemingly put together by a group of engineers working at SpaceX and Tesla[1]. He never had any plans to commercialize it himself and was releasing it as "open source" for anyone else to take up.

Several companies sprang up to pursue the concept[2]. This article is about Richard Branson's Virgin Hyperloop which itself has a very checkered past[3] and has felt pretty scamming since the beginning, long before Branson acquired the company. Not sure if the acquisition by Branson has caused them to clean up their act or what.

The only Hyperloop thing that Elon or his companies seem to do is hold a design competition for students where they compete on a short hyperloop test track at SpaceX's Hawthorn facility. If I had to guess I'd say that this is most likely a recruiting tool for SpaceX.

1. https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperl...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Hyperloop_companies

3. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/former-hyperloop...

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

#83

Post by kjksf »

tsimionescu wrote: post #9
lgrebe wrote: post #3

This is about VIRGIN Hyperloop by Richard Bransons Virgin Brand conglomerate. Not to be confused with Elon Musks Boring Company. FTA: > Virgin Hyperloop was founded as Hyperloop Technologies in 2014, stemming from Tesla CEO Elon Musk's idea of a high-speed passenger pod transport. It changed its name when Richard Branson joined the board of directors in 2017.

Boring company has abandoned any idea of a hyper loop a long time ago, right? Did they ever even associate with it (outside the branding of their Vegas mini tunnel)?

Yes and no.

Yes, because they no longer plan to use the original design proposed by Musk (pods in vacuum in tubes installed on the ground).

No because long term they still plan to do hyper loop but the latest iteration of the idea is electric cars driving really fast in under-pressurized underground tunnel.

See https://www.boringcompany.com/hyperloop

That being said, Boring Company is still in very early stages.

They made significant progress (built Las Vegas tunnel and are in building more of it; created prufrock-1 i.e. v1 of boring machine designed by Boring Company).

The hyperloop is something they want to do and most likely can do. The limiting factor is more permitting and politics (for example: they had a deal to do a long tunnel in Chicago with one mayor and then the next mayor said it's stupid and scrapped it).

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

#84

Post by protomyth »

chucksta wrote: post #20
protomyth wrote: post #5

There are a lot of reasons standard rail in the US is cargo centric. Profit and a much easier customer service case are big ones. Also, sending cargo in a new transportation system is much easier and less lawsuit prone than people. An old story in the US since the post office basically made airplane travel viable via postal contracts.

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

I'm not glossing over anything. If passenger travel was more profitable or even less profitable but easier, than all of the private companies would be in the passenger business.

Here we see a company that will end up building its own infrastructure deciding cargo is a better business opportunity than passenger. I think there was a certain amount of inevitability given the economics.

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

#87

Post by Ekaros »

softwarebeware wrote: post #10
lgrebe wrote: post #3

This is about VIRGIN Hyperloop by Richard Bransons Virgin Brand conglomerate. Not to be confused with Elon Musks Boring Company. FTA: > Virgin Hyperloop was founded as Hyperloop Technologies in 2014, stemming from Tesla CEO Elon Musk's idea of a high-speed passenger pod transport. It changed its name when Richard Branson joined the board of directors in 2017.

Wait, is the Boring Company still pursuing commercial transport via hyperloop?

No, they do low occupancy cars in a tunnel... Combining all of the worst things...

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

#88

Post by Animats »

Large-diameter tube freight has, a history.[1] The USSR built a few sizable TRANSPROGRESS tube systems with diameters in the 1.5 to 2 meter range in the 1970s. Mostly for garbage disposal. There have been proposals on and off for over a century.

Pneumatic garbage disposal is in use in a very few places. Roosevelt Island in New York has had a working system since the 1980s. It works well and is well-liked. Roosevelt Island was supposed to be car-free, and lacks much of a road system, so this was a good fit.

The anti-car crowd should be pushing for this.

[1] https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/autumn-1994/tube-freig...

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

#89

Post by kjksf »

softwarebeware wrote: post #10
lgrebe wrote: post #3

This is about VIRGIN Hyperloop by Richard Bransons Virgin Brand conglomerate. Not to be confused with Elon Musks Boring Company. FTA: > Virgin Hyperloop was founded as Hyperloop Technologies in 2014, stemming from Tesla CEO Elon Musk's idea of a high-speed passenger pod transport. It changed its name when Richard Branson joined the board of directors in 2017.

Wait, is the Boring Company still pursuing commercial transport via hyperloop?

Yes and no.

Yes: https://www.boringcompany.com/hyperloop

No because it's a different system than what Musk originally proposed. Virgin Hyperloop was building Musk's original idea.

What Boring Company calls a hyperloop now is a long-distance tunnel, possibly under partial vacuum, with electric cars driving really fast (600+ miles per hour).

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

#90

Post by protomyth »

jdasdf wrote: post #67
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

The companies that own the railways are in the business of making money, not in the business of screwing Amtrak. I'm sure they would be more than happy to prioritize Amtrak trains over their cargo customers if they are suitably compensated for the trouble. If Amtrak isn't willing or able to compensate them for it... Then clearly it's not that important.

Also, the whole scheduling of cargo trains has big dollar penalties for delays in loading, unloading, and not arriving on time. Its amazing how detailed folks get about trains showing up. Cargo rail has a lot of moving parts that need to coordinate to keep the goods flowing.
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