Elon Musk's Hyperloop super train

It's not an objection really, I was asking for clarification. I realize the odds aren't good for anyone traveling by any mode but air travel during a massive earthquake. I just don't see that this idea will be immune to earthquakes if it's on pylons or whatever. Could be wrong.
 
But that's the issue: as a public works project - it won't work because the US government can't do anything at the moment and California is broke.

California is far from broke.

How can you possibly make a ~1000 km railway cost 100 billion dollars?! That's like 100,000,000 dollars per kilometre of track. What are they going to build it of, gold?

(One has to laugh seeing such numbers on one hand, and people claiming that space exploration is too expensive on the other...)

The proposed rail line would a) run through some of the most densely populated regions in the country, and b) run through some of the most expensive properties in the country. A lot of that cost is in eminent domain and property purchases. The problem with the HSR project is that everybody likes the idea of it, but nobody really wants the thing running through their town.
 
How can you possibly make a ~1000 km railway cost 100 billion dollars?! That's like 100,000,000 dollars per kilometre of track. What are they going to build it of, gold? :rolleyes:

(One has to laugh seeing such numbers on one hand, and people claiming that space exploration is too expensive on the other...)

America is a silly place sometimes. Rail transportation has always been an iffy thing here in North America, especially "innovative" rail.
 
Cripes. It would probably be cheaper to build a submerged tube along the sea floor than buy out all the property.
 
Another source of the cost comes in the form of subsidies. As I recall the state wants to keep the cost of a ticket less than 100 dollars (round trip(?)), so the cost would come from that as well.
 
Which is why I think that this guy needs to set up a shorter line, with his own money, to prove the concept. If it's as awesome as he claims and there are no problems, maybe then would he get public funding for a longer line.

You can do that with a scale model and shuttle mice inside. It's not like anything the proposal includes requires any new technology. Afaik the most innovative thing about this is the battery/electric engine inside the capsules, the rest is dead easy.

Technology is not the reason why this will never be built.
 
You can do that with a scale model and shuttle mice inside. It's not like anything the proposal includes requires any new technology. Afaik the most innovative thing about this is the battery/electric engine inside the capsules, the rest is dead easy.

Technology is not the reason why this will never be built.

I don't think you'll convince tax payers or politicians with mice though.
 
And what if a massive earth quake breaks the tube entirely? Instantaneous deceleration kills man.

Please read the full proposal - it specifically talks about laterally damped vibration isolators in each pylon-tube connection. Also, it primarily runs up the central valley, it only crosses the major faults twice. Those places happen to be close to urban areas, where the capsules aren't at full speed.





Cripes. It would probably be cheaper to build a submerged tube along the sea floor than buy out all the property.
the pylons are not much different in footprint than electrical towers - and much of it can run right up I-5.

This saves billions compared to the proposed high speed rail project.

This is explained in detail in the pdf.



Which is why I think that this guy needs to set up a shorter line, with his own money, to prove the concept. If it's as awesome as he claims and there are no problems, maybe then would he get public funding for a longer line.
This is an open source proposal for a system of expandable public transit infrastructure.







You can do that with a scale model and shuttle mice inside. It's not like anything the proposal includes requires any new technology. Afaik the most innovative thing about this is the battery/electric engine inside the capsules, the rest is dead easy.

Technology is not the reason why this will never be built.
I agree with your last sentence, but I'm not sure about your claim regarding the innovative battery and linear accelerator. It seems to me those are fresh, but still established technologies. I would imagine, perhaps wrongly, that the automated control systems governing the air skis would be more of a challenge. You can't rely on electromagnetism to keep the capsule from scraping the inner wall of the tube, after all. Fine fast control of air jets is required, and in my mind the prevention of periodic oscillating differences in pressure may amplify into a bad feedback if the control system isn't smart enough to handle things.

I'm not writing clearly. I mean that the control system will have to respond to, adapt to, and calculate for, some pretty complex fluid dynamics stuff.

But I really don't know what I'm talking about, so I could be very wrong.
 
I thought Elon Musk was pretty cool with his SpaceX and particularly Tesla motors but now I think he's also a little bit nuts tbh.
 
What, and take away the chance to argue with strangers about stuff I don't know about? :crazyeye:

NEVER!! or else I'd have nothing at all to say in any thread :sad:

The proposal will be too lacking in details got your tastes, I'm sure. It's specifically written for the public. That said, I didn't understand some things. So if you're looking for an engineering level RFQ you'll be frustrated.

And I do think their estimates on some costs are too low - but as others have mentioned, even if the cost goes up an order of magnitude it's *still* worth doing.

And it's scalable! You can add nodes just like with a traditional rail line. New York to LA may not be erotically [autocorrect didn't like ECONOMICALLY] feasible, but NYC to Pitt to Cleveland to Chicago to Omaha to Denver to Las Vegas to LA IS. Or, more realistically, Boston - New Haven - NYC - Philadelphia - Baltimore - D.C. - Richmond - Atlanta, etc.

But please read the full pdf - it's totally worth half an hour.
 
And it's scalable! You can add nodes just like with a traditional rail line. New York to LA may not be erotically feasible, but NYC to Pitt to Cleveland to Chicago to Omaha to Denver to Las Vegas to LA IS. Or, more realistically, Boston - New Haven - NYC - Philadelphia - Baltimore - D.C. - Richmond - Atlanta, etc.

I should probably clarify on that since I was the one who posed the question of NYC to LA. I didn't mean a singular direct route, I meant a route that had stops in several other cities along the way just like you're suggesting.

Assuming tickets end up being something like $50 one way, I could see the leading company taking advantage of cross-continental travel and offering some type of package deal where you can get each ticket at $45 or $40 depending on the distance traveled. Assuming there are 8 city stops between LA and NYC, and let's assume it's $50 a ticket, that would come to around $400, $800 round-trip. This is comparable to prices with air travel in Canada, but if I recall correctly flight is significantly cheaper within the United States so I'm not sure about the feasibility of it. Perhaps it is best as a localized method of transportation.
 
Just to throw this out there. Amtrak LAX to NYP is a 3 day trip and costs $437 if you want to leave in two days. That seems insanely expensive and only worth it for someone wanting to enjoy a cross country train ride. Which hey, that's a totally valid reason to do it, I am not suggesting otherwise. A quick Priceline check gives $319 as the cheapest one-way leaving in two days for air travel.

Do you guys think this loop thing could possibly be cheaper and faster?
 
Just to throw this out there. Amtrak LAX to NYP is a 3 day trip and costs $437 if you want to leave in two days. That seems insanely expensive and only worth it for someone wanting to enjoy a cross country train ride. Which hey, that's a totally valid reason to do it, I am not suggesting otherwise. A quick Priceline check gives $319 as the cheapest one-way leaving in two days for air travel.

Do you guys think this loop thing could possibly be cheaper and faster?

Consider some of the ancillary issues with air travel:
Airports are rarely close to city centers. Why? Because they require an enormous footprint. This system's termical would require something on the scale of a sports arena. much easier to fit into existing property.

When flying from anywhere to anywhere else within the US, you have to add at least 2 hours to the travel time just to cover the airport time, PLUS time to get to and from each airport itself.

This proposal could be better integrated into the existing public transit system of a city so that all that extra non-travel time is reduced.

Let's assume that a one-way trip between SFO and LAX is normally just over an hour. Now add in the front end stuff and you get a travel time around 3 hours - and that's still only between the two airports. Depending on your source and destination, you could easily add another hour onto each end for a total door to door of 5 hours.

OKAY, I just looked at the proposal, and each terminal is comparably distant from the city centers. /meh


EDIT:
Link to the PDF http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf
 
NEVER!! or else I'd have nothing at all to say in any thread :sad:

The proposal will be too lacking in details got your tastes, I'm sure. It's specifically written for the public. That said, I didn't understand some things. So if you're looking for an engineering level RFQ you'll be frustrated.

And I do think their estimates on some costs are too low - but as others have mentioned, even if the cost goes up an order of magnitude it's *still* worth doing.

And it's scalable! You can add nodes just like with a traditional rail line. New York to LA may not be erotically [autocorrect didn't like ECONOMICALLY] feasible, but NYC to Pitt to Cleveland to Chicago to Omaha to Denver to Las Vegas to LA IS. Or, more realistically, Boston - New Haven - NYC - Philadelphia - Baltimore - D.C. - Richmond - Atlanta, etc.

But please read the full pdf - it's totally worth half an hour.
I'll get around reading it eventually, but the bolded sentence above is exactly why myself and others are naturally skeptical.

Elon's extraodinarily good at putting together slick presentations and awesome special effects magic to pitch his ideas. Problem is, he omits almost all of the details, which makes it frustratingly difficulty to tell how feasible all of his awesome ideas really are. Couple the lack of details with characteristically over-optimistic assumptions on price and time lines and you wind up with people who are skeptical of these kinds of proposals.

I'll look at the pdf later - in the lab doing SCIENCE!

(ironically looking at material/manufacturing costs of stuff)
 
OKAY, I just looked at the proposal, and each terminal is comparably distant from the city centers. /meh

Huh. That would seem kind of dumb. I mean, looking at places where railways currently work as a viable alternative to air travel (i.e. relatively densely populated areas such as much of continental Europe), one of the main factors that help with this is that major train stations are typically found right in the middle of cities and not way the hell out in cow territory.
 
Huh. That would seem kind of dumb. I mean, looking at places where railways currently work as a viable alternative to air travel (i.e. relatively densely populated areas such as much of continental Europe), one of the main factors that help with this is that major train stations are typically found right in the middle of cities and not way the hell out in cow territory.

yeah, I completely agree.

But perhaps this proposal wasn't intended to work out the nitty gritty for the inner city.

It doesn't detract at all from the main thrust of the proposal - after all, it's not like this is a polished infrastructure plan.

In their own words:
Hyperloop is considered an open source transportation concept. The authors
encourage all members of the community to contribute to the Hyperloop design
process. Iteration of the design by various individuals and groups can help bring
Hyperloop from an idea to a reality.
The authors recognize the need for additional work, including but not limited
to:
1. More expansion on the control mechanism for Hyperloop capsules,
including attitude thruster or control moment gyros.
2. Detailed station designs with loading and unloading of both passenger
and passenger plus vehicle versions of the Hyperloop capsules.
3. Trades comparing the costs and benefits of Hyperloop with more
conventional magnetic levitation systems.
4. Sub-scale testing based on a further optimized design to demonstrate
the physics of Hyperloop.
Feedback is welcomed on these or any useful aspects of the Hyperloop design.
E-mail feedback to hyperloop@spacex.com or hyperloop@teslamotors.com.
 
anyone remembers the Omni , some magazine from the guy who had Pentsomething ? Am confident that it was first on Omni and later picked up by Turkish magazines that somebody was to dig a tunnel from New York to California to run trains , by gravity to boot , supersonically in such tubes . The originality will be when they actually get it built ; hence no need for any discussion of Federal spending . Am also in some aviation site , where former fully American aviation engineers and stuff are talking of treason whenever any form of trains is mentioned .

and with apologies if necessary ; but ı think where this mistake in post 32 by PeterGrimes might be comin' from , if he is as old as me . Oh no , it's computers which always insist for me to mention World Health Organization , the WHO in almost every sentence ...
 
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