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Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#91

Post by drzaiusapelord »

pi-err wrote: post #67

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…

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

Except flying is fast, safe, and cheap. Our problem is airport design and airport security. Fix those so we get on a plane in 20 minutes instead of two hours and everyone will be happy.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#92

Post by tptacek »

jcranmer wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're saying that the HSR project is over budget, you're right, but you're not helping the Hyperloop argument. The point is that if the HSR people can't get something done for $X, it's unlikely that Musk can do something even more ambitious for $X/10.

IIRC, one of the big sources of cheap money is expecting that easements for giant elevated tubes would be available for much less than the land value of the required land underneath.

The analysis I read, back when the Hyperloop proposal was released, took this into account and still found Musks's cost reductions versus HSR were so profound as to suggest major changes for all of civil engineering.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#93

Post by tptacek »

elchief wrote: post #47
tptacek wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're saying that the HSR project is over budget, you're right, but you're not helping the Hyperloop argument. The point is that if the HSR people can't get something done for $X, it's unlikely that Musk can do something even more ambitious for $X/10.

Like how he's lowering the price of rocketry by 90%? His last bid was 40% less than United Launch

Why doesn't my laptop battery last 10X longer? Why doesn't my favorite IPA has 1/10th the calories? Can't Elon Musk fix those things first?

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#94

Post by hengheng »

S4M wrote: post #79
pi-err wrote: post #67

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…

> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30 minutes (looking at the departures from London [0], it seems that there are 32 Eurostar leaving London every day), and I seriously doubt one train can carry 5000 passengers (I would say about 500 passengers), so your approximation is completely off (even taking into acco…

Europe's busiest express train line seems to be LGV Paris-Lyon, with a peak scheduled capacity of 13 TGV trains per hour. Given that a TGV duplex fits 545 passengers, we are above 7000 per hour. Now couple two TGVs together, and you'll be well above.

Weirdly enough, the only source I found was German wikipedia on the train track (LGV Sud-Est[1]). Neither English nor French wikipedia have capacity information, and neither of the respective articles on the train itself have capacity information, even though the TGV duplex was introduced for this very reason.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Sud-Est

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#95

Post by kuschku »

Retric wrote: post #90
kuschku wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that the fan concept, and the hovercraft concept both were cancelled? The new hyperloop concept is just a fan-less capsule hovering on a MagLev track. It’s just VacTrain over again, but more expensive and with lower capacities.

I don't think that qualifies as 'HyperLoop' even if they keep the name. It's like building an airplane except you use it underwater, sorry that's a sub. That said, it suggests that the HyperLoop concept is not viable which is not that surprising IMO. However, it might also just be a case of lower R&D costs.

Well, obviously they want to keep the hype alive. So it’s understandable that they’d refuse to change the name.

Sadly, this also means we have a lot of people think this is something revolutionary, although I guess that’s intentional.

It’s really annoying when you consider how the US refused a proposal from japanese companies a few years ago to build a MagLev system between Boston, NY, Washington, with capacities around 10k people per hour.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#96

Post by kuschku »

hengheng wrote: post #94
S4M wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30 minutes (looking at the departures from London [0], it seems that there are 32 Eurostar leaving London every day), and I seriously doubt one train can carry 5000 passengers (I would say about 500 passengers), so your approximation is completely off (even taking into acco…

Europe's busiest express train line seems to be LGV Paris-Lyon, with a peak scheduled capacity of 13 TGV trains per hour. Given that a TGV duplex fits 545 passengers, we are above 7000 per hour. Now couple two TGVs together, and you'll be well above. Weirdly enough, the only source I found was German wikipedia on the train track (LGV Sud-Est[1]). Neither English nor French wikipedia have capacity information, and nei…

In Germany there are some tracks with higher usages, but those are not the same line – they just share part of the line (imagine on the track A -- B -- C -- D, a train going from A to C, and from B to D, both every half hour – between B and C now you have 15min frequencies).

But the point is the same, regardless of if we use Japan, Germany, France, Spain, etc: 10k people per hour, or more, is easily possible.

Hyperloop transports less people than a single lane of highway. And with the cost you could maintain teslas for rental on a dedicated highway for many decades.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#97

Post by ycitm »

S4M wrote: post #79
pi-err wrote: post #67

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…

> High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour. How is that remotely true? There is one Eurostar approximately every 30 minutes (looking at the departures from London [0], it seems that there are 32 Eurostar leaving London every day), and I seriously doubt one train can carry 5000 passengers (I would say about 500 passengers), so your approximation is completely off (even taking into acco…

Perhaps Tōkaidō Shinkansen would be a better example? 331 trains / day, 391 thousand passengers / day according to: http://english.jr-central.co.jp/company/ir/annualreport/_pdf... (pdf)

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#98

Post by Avshalom »

fit2rule wrote: post #81
tptacek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil engineers have looked at the Hyperloop proposal and declared themselves unable to determine how Musk proposes to reduce the costs of long runs of overpass, or of tunneling. A simpler way to make the same argument: If Musk can actually build a Hyperloop across California at his proposed cost, he's made revolutionary improvements to civil engineering that will be far more impactful than the Hyperloop itself; the…

Rockets = big long tubes. Big long tubes = something robots can make easily?

The tube isn't the problem. Among various problems include: the building access roads to every pylon base, conducting site surveys and environmental impact studies for each site then figuring out what to do when those studies and surveys declare a patch of dirt to be unacceptable. The original route was also going to need something on the order of kilometers of tunnel through mountains.

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#99

Post by JosephRedfern »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #91
pi-err wrote: post #67

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…

>Maybe the business plan for passenger planes and trains was also that hazy back then? Except flying is fast, safe, and cheap. Our problem is airport design and airport security. Fix those so we get on a plane in 20 minutes instead of two hours and everyone will be happy.

What about the massive environmental impact that flying has?

Re: Is Hyperloop the future of travel?

#100

Post by stcredzero »

jerf wrote: post #43
pnut wrote: post #41

My answer to the question, is 'NO'. I love trains, and use them whenever possible. However, with static start and endpoints, and existing low-cost air infrastructure that is dynamically reroutable and equivalently fast, why spend the hundreds of billions of dollars to recreate something so fragile and limited? Municipalities are wisely, generally in a 'wait and see' phase for the next decade, as autonomous personal t…

The autonomous transport you mention in the end is also an issue for Hyperloop directly. Highways are "easy mode" for autonomous cars, so automated services to move you between cities may be available substantially before they can necessarily move you within the city. Sure, they'll be a lot slower than the hyperloop, but they'll probably be a lot cheaper. Perhaps the hyperloop could win the deploy-to-production race…

I wonder how the economics would work out for something the size of a bus, but with much better aerodynamics? (Perhaps with laminar flow boundary devices?)
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