Elon Musk's Hyperloop super train

hobbsyoyo said:
Hehehe the Tsar Bomba is so amazing. It was supposed to be a 100 megaton explosion, but the designer felt so uneasy about the specter of radiation contamination that he dialed it back to 50 on his own.

Oh, I think it was the US that had a nuclear powered bomber. They never hooked up the reactor to a propulsion system, but they did fly an active reactor on a bomber in a few test flights. In the Space Cadet threads VR and I talked about it on one of the first pages.

Very Kerbal indeed.
Click to expand...
In fact, the US projected and near developed a hypersonic nuclear powered cruise missile-unmanned bomber back in the 50-60s under the "Project Pluto". It was called SLAM (Supersonic Low Altitude Missile), and it was powered by a nuclear ramjet . The range of the thing was supposed to be almost unlimited. And it probably had been as destructive simply flying around and leaving a trail of fallout as attacking the target with nuclear warheads. Sometimes i wonder how humanity managed to survive those crazy kerbalian years...
 
Thorgalaeg said:
In fact, the US projected and near developed a hypersonic nuclear powered cruise missile-unmanned bomber back in the 50-60s under the "Project Pluto". It was called SLAM (Supersonic Low Altitude Missile), and it was powered by a nuclear ramjet .
Click to expand...

My favourite piece of Cold War insanity. They got as far as building and testing an engine prototype.
 
On reddit a mechanical engineer offered two suggestions that I think are very smart (and obvious)
1. Instead of one northbound tube and one southbound, build 2 each way for redundancy. Solves the maintenance and rescue issue.
2. Freight first - partner with a major shipper and work out some of the non-scalable testing on a fully operational system that isn't transporting people first.
 
peter grimes said:
On reddit a mechanical engineer offered two suggestions that I think are very smart (and obvious)
1. Instead of one northbound tube and one southbound, build 2 each way for redundancy. Solves the maintenance and rescue issue.
2. Freight first - partner with a major shipper and work out some of the non-scalable testing on a fully operational system that isn't transporting people first.
Click to expand...

Makes me curious just how expansive this project could be. What if there were 3 tubes side by side, each for passengers, but then above/below these three is a singular large tube for freight or mail? The options are pretty wide once it's thoroughly established.
 
warpus said:
When I was there on vacation I took a train from downtown LA to downtown San Jose. Are there no trains running between San Jose and SF?
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Huh. When I was regularly taking trips from SJ to LA I couldn't find any trains running between the two options.
 
Zelig said:
Well if we're imagining that, I'd like them to make it frictionless and suck the air out - at 1G, should be able to get the trip down to 30 minutes or so.
Click to expand...

I actually saw an episode of The Universe or some similar show where they explored this and traveling through the Earth from one spot to any other using only gravity is a flat 45 minutes or something like that. What was really striking is that it's the same travel time regardless of the distance, even from pole to pole through the center will be the same time as it would take to go 500 miles. It's weird, but that's physics.

cardgame said:
Same thing that would happen to a high speed train crash.
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Which is why I clarified that the problem of earthquakes isn't limited to this system. :p
 
Thorgalaeg said:
In fact, the US projected and near developed a hypersonic nuclear powered cruise missile-unmanned bomber back in the 50-60s under the "Project Pluto". It was called SLAM (Supersonic Low Altitude Missile), and it was powered by a nuclear ramjet . The range of the thing was supposed to be almost unlimited. And it probably had been as destructive simply flying around and leaving a trail of fallout as attacking the target with nuclear warheads. Sometimes i wonder how humanity managed to survive those crazy kerbalian years...
Click to expand...

I have a feeling that conclusion is still a bit premature. We may have stopped playing with nuclear toys for the moment, because we have a bigger planet to fry...
 
"Project Pluto" ... was powered by a nuclear ramjet ... And it probably had been as destructive simply flying around and leaving a trail of fallout as attacking the target with nuclear warheads.
Click to expand...

and there were tanks with reactors , possibly the size of houses , which might have quite helpful in destroying your own side of the front .
 
I think what I like best about this scheme is the way it fundamentally changes the approach to traditional transport challenges.

It's not a train, but it connects fixed points. It's easily integrated into larger hub-and-spoke networks, similar to air transit. If done properly, it can reach right into downtown areas with 5 minute frequency - mirroring the convenience of automobiles.

Are there any other recent ideas that are similarly feasible and distinct?
 
peter grimes said:
I think what I like best about this scheme is the way it fundamentally changes the approach to traditional transport challenges.

It's not a train, but it connects fixed points. It's easily integrated into larger hub-and-spoke networks, similar to air transit. If done properly, it can reach right into downtown areas with 5 minute frequency - mirroring the convenience of automobiles.

Are there any other recent ideas that are similarly feasible and distinct?
Click to expand...
Personal air transport, in either the form of flying cars or a vast increase in the number of small planes. There's already tons of runways in the US that are suitable for this and with good automation and air-traffic control (which is undergoing major upgrades in the US that could possibly handle this) you don't have to rely on major corporations and/or the government to put the infrastructure in place.
 
Oh, no way. I do not want the average joe or jane operating anything that lifts off the ground. They're dangerous enough behind the wheel of a car.

Seriously, can you imagine this in an airplane??


Link to video.
 
Well it would require a pilot's license, which is much harder to get than your ordinary driver's license. The option of a drastic increase in plane services, aka Air Taxis, would also be run by professional pilots as well. Then there is the complete-automation route, which would really simplify things all-around. Plus, automation is easier to do in planes (see many fully automated drone systems) than in cars (see basically the one Google car) because you don't have to worry so much about traffic, are free to move in 3 dimensions, and so on.
 
Hobbs, that's a terrible idea. It's like you purposely took all the potential benefits of a hyperloop route and tried to come up with their exact opposite* :crazyeye:

Your scheme involves massive energy expenditure per trip mile, terminals not at all integrated into population or work centers, and a continuation of unsustainable energy use for personal transportation.

*except gorgeous automation. I'm a big fan of it, as I think we're at the point where our computational flexibility is capable of wide scale adoption going forward.
 
Then why did you ask for alternatives?

There's one that's somewhat realistic. Sorry you don't like it.

It's not *my* scheme either.
 
Sorry, man. I was too abrupt.

I had heard of a proposal for tiered short - length landing towers that could be embedded in cities. It was fanciful, though, in that it was proposing filling NYC skies sith a thousand-fold increase in air traffic, when we're already rubbing up against safety margins in the air tourism sector.

No, personal air transport is not very revolutionary, it's basically scaling up an existing inefficient mode.
 
Personal air travel still has a pretty large giggle factor. Unless we find out how to pack micro-fusion reactors or similar magic in something the size of a car trunk, I doubt it will ever happen.
 
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