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Pipeline Mass Transit?
pipingguy writes "'Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) is a new kind of transportation system that requires less than two percent of the energy of current transportation methods. It is also much safer, and can be faster. [...] Anyone can visualize 2 tubes (one for each direction) along a travel route. Air is permanently removed from the tubes; so travel takes place without friction. Pressurized passenger capsules (like a 2 - 8 person airplane cabin), travel in the tubes on thin steel wheels or on nearly frictionless Maglev. Airlocks allow access without admitting air to the tubes. Linear motors (as used on new rollercoasters) accelerate the capsules. During most of the trip the capsules coast; using no power. When the capsules slow down, linear generators recover most of the electrical energy used to accelerate the capsules.' Some CG images and drawings here, the FAQ is here." MSNBC had an article on monorails a few days ago. Don't bother making Simpsons jokes, the article has them covered already.
And what would happen should the system happen to malfunction and shutdown locking the passengers inside with a limited supply of air?
Sure, the energy requirements may be a fraction, but consider the cost of installing a complete system in an urban environment that could actually use it? Here in Chicago, it would be extremely difficult to construct a good system without severely screwing up traffic even worse than it is already.
The very first underground train in New York worked exactly like this, pneumatically. Everything old is new again, eh?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
2) maintaining a vaccuum could conceivably be dangerous.
3) most right-of-ways for such a huge undertaking are probably already claimed by other projects in any major metro. Yah, I know eminent domain & all that, but that'll end up in court forever.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Why, you ask? Not because it's not interesting and efective technology, but because we Americans don't like mass transit. We want cars. We have a *right* to cars. Look in the Bill of Rights. It's there. Or if it's not, I think it should be, so it might as well be there right next to my right to own a minigun.
Seriously, though, there are hundreds neat ideas for viable mass-transit available, but I'm stuck riding a 30 year-old, beaurocracy-lader system called BART to work everyday. That has, to put it mildly, soured my viewpoint somewhat. Until we remove the corruption that wil always accompany mass transit, we might as well forget about it.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
We could have had a reliable form of mass transit in the United States in major cities within the 20th century, if:
1) The government never funded the interstate highway project, which was a military-industrial complex endeavor that would provide ways to move troops across the country in case of invasion like the Autobahn did in WWII, but was more to serve the needs of making the automobile the main form of transportation in the US.
2) The auto and oil companies didn't conspire to rip up all the rails so the automobile could take over.
Efficient mass transportation will never happen as long as cuthroat greedy multinational corporations control the world -- and we are going to pay for it dearly when we run out of fossil fuels in 40 years.
When I was a kid there was a store that still used pneumatic tubes to transport invoices from the cash register to the office and back. I always wanted to ride in one.
It won't be the same without giant quarters and nickels along side of me though.
If you got a $100 bill, put your hands up...
...but will we ever see anything like it? I often wonder how many advances in large industries like transportation are blocked by large companies who would lose a lot of money by the loss of maintenance revenue a beneficial technology would cause. Consider the problem of transportation commissions and the constant struggle to maintain their piece of state or city budget. If better technologies emerge requiring less upkeep once built, and some of the money allocated to the department goes away, jobs are lost... I wonder if advances like this actually taking hold aren't just a pipe dream. (err.. pun intended)
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
...or not. Anyone who hasn't seen the Simpson's Episode with the Monorail has yet to live life the the fullest!
The New York train was pulled along by a pressure differance between the front and back of the train with atmospheric pressure in the back. This new train has a vacuum both in front and back of the train and uses linear motors for propulsion.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Now that articles are making pre-emptive Simpsons jokes, if they would just include "OMG FP FP FP!!" and "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of...", we could eliminate half the comments on Slashdot.
> Don't bother making Simpsons jokes, the article has them covered already.
But that's the kind of commentary Slashdot does best!
From their website "For fiscal operation, both corporate and public operation is encouraged by the non-exclusive, low cost licensing plan. The license promotes both cooperation and competition."
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
In Matt Groening's Futurama, this form of transportation is commonplace. Even better, they've been able to do away with the annoying capsule!
:P
I hope that by the 30th century, we too will have mastered the technology required to insert a human being in a vacuum tube without them exploding or asphyxiating
For one, how does removing air remove friction? It means that there is no atmospheric friction, yes, but there is still contact with the walls or ground of the tube.
"During most of the trip the capsules coast; using no power."
Um, no. It either has to be running on wheels or constantly supported by electromagnets the entire time. If the first, there is a constant requirement of energy to continue moving a massive object against ground friction. If the second, well, maglev isn't cheap. Even if, as suggested, "linear generators recover most of the electrical energy used to accelerate the capsules", that is certainly not a lossless process.
Second, how do you maintain a seal on a tube the length of a subway tunnel? That's a huge surface area, and not particularly easy to make either waterproof or airtight, even underground. And what happens if there is a breach in a passenger car? Your passengers will suddenly find themselves in an oxygen-less environment. Even a cabin depressurization on an aircraft at 10 km doesn't subject the passengers to total vacuum.
This proposal doesn't strike me as being fully thought out.
Can anyone say vaporware? This sounds really cool, but look at the language they use: all benefits and no drawbacks. Can anyone trust a viewpoint like that? Plus, the website is really horribly designed, which leads me to believe they have no money and have never built one of these. I like the idea though, a lot. I'm just skeptical of these utopian idealists.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
I belive that this was originally the idea of Tenacious D. You can hear Jack Black sing about it in the song "City Hall".
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
duuuuuuhhh:
1. Create vacuum.
2. ???
3. Violate thermodynamics!
Ele-fucking-mentary, my dear Watson.
They say that the pods (or whatever you call them), will run on thin steel wheels, I suppose because they think that the thinner the wheels, the less friction or something, which shows that they obviously never took general college physics, because if they did, they would know that friction is not dependent on how big the contact area is.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Wow that presents all kinds of scenarios for potential disasters.
... Everything you can think of is impossible and your fears are unreasonable.
Read the FAQ
To change the subject, did you know they've removed gullible from the dictionary?
I can see it now. They'll get Gates to finance this thing (he just loves innovation, and giving money, doesn't he?). Now, he'll make them use Windows boxes for traffic control. Next thing you now, some controller downtown will get a blue flash on his face, and you'll find yourself in a cute little cylindrical coffin stuck in a tube-traffic jam, in vacuum, with 18 minutes of oxygen left and a real urgent need for a bathroom. You can say I'm old fashioned, but I'll stick to my bike for a while, thank you very much.
I think this will be _very_ difficult to establish.... not only for the aforementioned ROW considerations, but for physical reasons. A *perfect* vacuum is almost unattainable on Earth (very small capsules notwithstanding)... the energy required would be enormous to create a vacuum that is sufficient to reduce friction and drag to useful levels.... Besides, what are the occupants going to breathe? The capsules would have to be airtight... all of this seems pretty challenging and time consuming for a marginal benefit... I would like to know how much better this system is compared to straight mag-lev... _C
Bad spellers of the world untie!
the idea of a dozen people in an enclosed capsule breathing recirculated air for hours doesnt sound real pleasant either
You are perhaps familiar with space travel? Seems to work okay.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
Fry: Whoa!! [He sees the tube transport system and gives it a try.]
Man: Radio City Mutant Hall! [The man is sucked up into the tube]
Fry: Um. Cross Town Express? [He is sucked up into the tube] Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! [People look up from the street and stare at him. He is taken across the city, past the Statue of Liberty, underwater and finally out the other end smack into a building.]
Man: Pfft! Tourist!
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Okay, you can say "pneumatic" instead, then.
My deviantArt site
The idea is a lot older than that:
Hugo Gernsback wrote about such a system
(between New York and Brest, France) in
his 1925 novel "Ralph 124C41+".
>;K
>;k
"If you could drive a car between San Francisco and New York in five and a half hours, nobody would ever fly... "
If you can get the police to stay out of my way. I bet I could.
You'll never keep a vaccum with this.
Not with the hundreds of miles of tube.
Not with termal expansion/contraction.
Not in an active city with people building, digging holes, running infrastructure.
Not in an even remotely seismic active area (remember the earthquake in NY?).
While its a cool idea, its just that, an idea. There's no way to overcome the problems and still make it as durable and cost less than existing technology.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Note that for local transportation, the problem isn't speed but coverage. I can't realistically take public transportation to work because it would take me far too long to get to the nearest station and because trains take far too long to get to the destination (because of a lot of stops).
For local transportation, another concept makes more sense to me: Personal Rapid Transit [1], [2]. Personal Rapid Transit consists of small passenger cabins (1-3 people) that you call to the nearest station and take to the station nearest to your destination, almost like a taxi or chauffeur. And unlike evacuated tube transports, they do not require a lot of digging or construction.
And, politically, personal rapid transit seems more promising in the short term: it's something that can be done at the local level.
The idea is a lot older than that, Nostradamus wrote
C1Q3
When the litter is overturned by the whirlwind,
and faces will be covered by their cloaks,
the republic will be vexed by new people,
then whites and reds will judge in contrary ways.
which obviously foretells a terrorist attack by the Chinese on one of these systems.
The litter (to contemporary term for a carriage or capsule) is destroyed when the vacuum is lost and the air rushes in. The Republican president has to deal with the 'reds' aka the Chinese.
Mapquest says it's 2906 miles from SF to New York. That puts your average speed at about 530 MPH. I'm pretty sure the cops wouldn't be able to catch you at that rate, anyhow.
If you decide to try it out, let me know and I'll race ya.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Same story with the jetliners we're flying in. They're pressurized containers flying at altitude. In theory, one can fly longer than the air would last in the cabin... How do they manage to keep enough breathable air in the plane to last for a 10 hour international flight?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Moreover this is not like the pneumatic tubes you might have seen at various places that use differential air pressure to suck or push canisters along. Those are hardly high speed and hardly frictionless.
L. Neil Smith suggested something like this in one of his books, but he wanted to power it with liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen behind the vehicle in the tube.
They must maintain a vacuum however the length of one tube is from city to city, so even one hole along the path destroys the vacuum. I imagine maintenance costs to prevent this and security costs to prevent malicious people putting holes in it would be high.
Another thing is suppose one of the cars gets stuck. These things are going 300-4000mph in an environment that's supposed to be virtually frictionless. How do you stop all the other "cars" behind the broken one in time?
How gradual do the turns have to be? You can't exactly make a quick right turn at 300+mph and still have a comfortable ride. Maybe there will be no turns and it will stop every time it needs to change direction.
And doesn't this kinda remind people of network switches? Computerized management of "people packets" zooming through tubes?
The air at altitude for a jetliner will cause you to black out (hypoxia- look it up...) because there's not enough oxygen present at pressure for you to breathe. People fly all the time with more than a dozen in the cabin and for hours at a time with no problems- they seem to do it all the time these days.
This is not to say I wholly agree with their idea, just that your concerns are largely unfounded.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
they already have something like this with legos, in the big mission to mars series set a few years back you could shoot the aliens around in little capsules inside tubes
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
"So, in closing, mono means one, and rail means rail."
"But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
These guys are running the stupidest scam ever. The third sentence on their homepage tells you how easy it will be to profit off their idea. The company can't be more than a bunch of ignorant tools looking for a good way to make some cash. Their premises are repulsively ridiculous, evacuating a tube does not permit virtually free transport, there are other losses there. And the maglev technology they speak of is hardly economical, feasible, or practical on a large scale. There are only a few maglev trains in the whole world, they've been around for awhile, and are incredibly expensive to operate, much less construct in the first place. These guys are saying they've invented this wonderful panacea to solve all our problems, but they have no idea what technology is required for their system, how much of that technology has never been developed, and how ridiculous it would be to attempt on such a large scale. Why don't they propose a national Disney-esque log ride for a transportation system! Better ideas have come from kindergarteners. My dog is smart enough to know how much this idea blows.
You wouldn't have to waste time to get to an airport - the terminal would be a neat little station a few minutes away.
correct me if i am wrong but... wouldnt that be kind of a pain in the arse to stop every few minutes... I dont know if i quite grasp the concept, but that would add alot of travel time with acceleration and deceleration, and how do these things fit together? do they all connect? do they go to within a few minutes away to anywhere... hmmmm... sounds like a few bugs yet... I would think that there would need to be some sort of connecting transportation to the main system... I would think that these wouldn't be anygood for anything but, what i would call, interstate driving
sig is broken try again tomorrow
I used to think about this a lot, for the following reason:
Imagine if we had a tube at ground level going all the way around the Earth.
If the tubes are vacuums, you can continually accelerate an object within them, since there is no terminal veolicity at constant acceleration the way there is from air. (At least at nonrelativistic speeds.)
Now let's calculate what orbital speeds are at sea level. At sea level, if you start out with zero downward momentum, you fall less than 10 meters in 1 second. If during that time you shoot forward far enough in a straight line that the Earth's curviture lifts you 10 feet, you've achieved orbit. NASA gives the Earth's diameter at the equator as 12,756 KM. Now the following calculation is REALLY easy using a diagram, but a bit tricky to describe. It uses only the pythagorean theorem.
Draw a circle, and two radii, one due west, one appreciably north. Draw a tangent at the circumference where the westerly radius touches (tangents are at right angles with radii). Now extend the second radius until it touches the tangent line. You should have a triangle whose hypotenuse is 12,756 KM + 10 M, of which one leg is 12,756 KM, and the other leg unknown. The other leg (along the tangent line) represents how much we need to move forward in 1 second, and we calculate it by taking the square root of the difference between 12,756.01 squared and 12,756 squared.
This number is 15.972. In other words, by MY calculation (I'm fresh out of high school though, so YMMV), orbiting at sea level requires you to go 15.972 miles in a single second. Compare that with the Space shuttle's "velocity of 27,880 km per hour" (/3600 seconds-per-hour) = 7.744. In other words, at an altitude of 322 KM, it can take nearly twice as long fall the same amount, which is explained by lower value of acceleration-due-to-gravity at that height. (Repeating our calculations above, substituting 12,756+322 for 12,756, we get sqrt( (12756+322+0.01)^2 - (12756+322)^2 ) = 16.172 KM, versus the 15.972 we had at ground level. However, to cover the same 10 feet, it now has a longer time to fall.
ANYWAY, the upshot of all this is that if you can accelerate something to 15.972 KM/s or (57,499.2 KM/h or (x0.62) 35,649 miles per hour, it will coast its way along without needing anything under it, and without consuming further gas.
This could be a really great way to deliver packages.
Draw a circumference at sea level that goes through a lot of interesting places, lay down a vacuum line (it doesn't actually need to support anything!! All it needs to do is be thin plastic that holds its shape at 1 atmosphere crush) all around it, then start this huge, heavy monolithic Delivery Bird sailing around at 35,649 mph, reaching every point along your line every fifteen minutes. I'm not sure how you get packages (including passengers) on and off the thing, but it sure sounds cool.
So, in conclusion, it's too cool to work.
Doesn't this seem like a more technologically advanced version of the Pneumatique, the air driven subway system that operated briefly in NYC a bit over a century ago? Only instead of the air being used to force the cars through the tunnel, it's removed to reduce friction... Still a bit on the nuts side, imagine what would happen in the event of a derailment (explosive decompression, anyone?), and of course maintaining the vacuum in the tunnel itself...
What would be more logical, however, would be to simply evacuate the air on one side of the car, to provide propulsion, making the train almost silent...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
This is a really cool idea. However, although I am sure the technique works, I wonder how feasable it is in Real Life. A number of reservations I have:
1. Cost. How much will it cost to put down those tubes everywhere, keep them vacuum, maintain them, etc? How much does it cost to manufacture a vehicle for this system? Is this all going to be cheaper than driving an automobile (especially in countries with lower fuel prices)?
2. Popularity. Although I don't know the situation in the rest of the world, I know that in Holland people prefer going to work by car over going there by train even if trains are cheaper, faster, more comfortable, safer, better for the environment, don't have parking problems, and allow them to do some work or socialize while traveling. For some, this goes even if the train stops just as close or even closer to work than they could part their cars.
3. Usefulness. A transportation system is only useful if it gets you where you want to go. How precise this needs to be depends on the distance traveled and the frequency of the visits to this destination. The greater the distance, and the lower the frequency, the more willing people are to use additional means of trasnportation to get to their destination. Since it would probably be impossible for this system to achieve anywhere near the granularity of the road infrastructure, it's use is probably for longer distances. There, it competes with cars, trains, and aircraft. This syste will never be able to beat the flexibility of cars, nor the speed of aircraft. Trains are higly impopular with travelers. What niche will this system occupy?
Just some thoughts...
---
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
It's already been done. Well, New York to LA anyway. Next year, they're doing San Francisco to Miami. I hope you have a lot of money, an exotic car, and no fear of tickets or jail time (and have the money to bail yourself out of jail). It takes a little more than 5 hours (more like 5 days), but it's about as close as you're going to get.
If you don't have the balls to participate in person, there's a Gumball 3000 video game on the PS2 (seems to be only in Europe, or at least I couldn't find a US version). It's based on the pre-2002 European Gumball 3000 races, not the latest US races (2002 and upcoming 2003).
Boring holes through the ground is expensive. Laying train track (or vacuum vessels, as it were) is expensive. Purchasing turnstiles, escalators, and elevators is expensive. Paying personnel is *very* expensive. In contrast, the energy needed to run a train (or vacuum "train") is dirt cheap. Therefore, this project is barking up the wrong tree.
Closed loop wind tunnels are massive energy consumers.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
The automobile became the worlds most popular form of transportation for one reason...it goes where you want it to go, when you are ready to go there.
The idea of public transporation is a joke. Busses and trains never really go where you want to go...and if they do, they are late getting there. Most public transporation is very uncomfortable, inconvenient and expensive, which is why 90% of the world doesn't use it.
We should spend more time and energy making private transporation more efficient, environmentally friendly, and enjoyable....not waste time and resources (public and private) on the failed idea of public transporation.
-ted
According to the linked msnbc article, monorails cost around $124 MILLION per mile to build. Now, that's for a one-rail conventional technology contruction type of thing. AFAIK it's basically a bunch of reinforced concrete.
I would imagine the cost for a mile of continous rigid tube strong enough to maintain near-perfect vacuum in the same environment would be fantastically higher than a concrete rail on stilts.
Still, even if such a thing were to be adopted with enough zeal to pay for it, the inherent security risks are incredibly complicated. The number of ways the system could fail due to accidents or hardware failure are numerous. The number of ways the system could be intentionally damaged are huge.
Realize that air travel is inherently insecure, and we generally only have to focus on the entry and exit points (airports) as well as the vehicle itself. Endangering an aircraft in flight from outside the vehicle is relatively expensive and difficult. (Hence most security failures are from within the vehicle.)
The security focus for the ETT system would have to encompass the entire travel environment, unlike air travel. I see no practical way to protect 100% of a length of vacuum tubing on any scale useful for transportation.
If such a system did enter into use on a scale large enough to be more than a novelty, then there is also the risk to public infrastructure in the event of interrupted service. For example, one bomb and not only is every passenger killed instantly as air friction causes rapid deceleration to all cars, but the entire system becomes unavailable for a significant time which forces (hopefully available) alternative transportations methods into use. System reliability can't be any higher than security vulnerabilities allow it to be.
So yes, were an ETT system to exist, the operation costs may well be low enough to be payed for with advertising. But only after development and construction costs were paid for. I would expect those costs to be high enough to take more than one generation to pay for, possibly several. And for all the effort and expense, we'd have something ridiculously easy to damage and destroy for any evil nutball.
Better idea. Try sticking your hand out of a car doing 40 mph. Note the resistance, then withdraw your hand. Now try sticking your hand out of a plane doing 400 mph. Note the resistance, then withdraw your bloody stump. Can you tell the difference?
I write in my journal
This is the third time we have had to put this thing on the ballot so the "leaders" on the city councel would let us build it. This vote will bypass the city councel. One of the best slogans from the last vote was "Re-elect the Monorail!"
The Stranger (pdf file) has a very good editorial on why you should vote yes.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
What about the 4000 mph capsule that goes trans-oceanic
Sounds kinda improbable to me. In order to get from standing start to 4,000 miles per hour, you have to accelerate at one gee for a little over three minutes. (If my math is right. t = v/a, v = 5866.66 feet per second, a = 32 feet per second per second, v/a = 183.33 seconds.) That's a long time to feel like you're lying flat on your back. And slowing down in the real killer. Accelerating at one gee for three minutes in the opposite direction? I hope the seats come equipped with four-point restraints instead of just lap belts, otherwise there are going to be a lot of bloody noses.
I write in my journal
While we're here, check out San Francisco's crackpot candidate for Supervisor. This guy has actually built models of his tunnel and tetrahedron projects. If we act quickly we may be able to get him to adopt the vacuum idea before he gets elected Tuesday.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Since when does no air == no friction?
If you take two sticks into space and rub 'em they're still going to wear against each other. No?
-- El Sacarino tiene gusto de la chocha
The Wright Bros didn't try to traverse the Atlantic to test their first plane, fellas.
I work in two different buildings on the same street. Heck, my whole campus (Boston Univ) is a mile long down a single street...but we'll just concentrate on my two buildings.
They're separated by about 2 city blocks. I would be willing to test a vacuum-based system that could send me from rooftop to rooftop at my desire. I would also be willing to test any Star-Trekkian transporters, maglevs, camels, resynthesizers ala The Fly circa 1986, and any glide-wires.
No trebuchets or catapults, please. I'm lazy...but not crazy.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
I'm not sure if that makes this a "new" idea. In a paper Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, wrote in his freshman year at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he proposed, "in detail a railway line between Boston and New York, in which the cars were run in an evacuated tube and were prevented from metal-to-metal contact with the guide rails by electromagnets." This quote is from a Goddard Biography by Edward Pendray. Goddard estimated a Boston to New York travel time of 10 minutes.
If capsule got air leak somehow passangers will
be suffocated inside.
The idea that this is a new kind of transportation is completely wrong. Such vacuum tubes were in the drawing boards since the 60's. I have seen several pictures of prototypes which were just artistic reproductions of real designs. However, the oil crisis of 73 made these and many other "alternative" transportations go into oblivion.
I wouldn't blame exclusively the Arab magnates for this. The problem looks much more complex and includes the dismissal of Lunar expeditions and the pre-"Star Wars" craze of the 70's. But I consider that for the last 30 years we are seriously stucked in development. We are a shadow of the technocratism of the 70's. We have been developing extensively, and, majorly, we keep sitting on the same ideas and technologies that were created then. Till now, we have not exploited the whole spectrum of inventions and ideas created back then. We have even run backward, as it will take some other 10 years to get back to the Moon. And we see on overold idea, with the same plus and minuses pointed back then, being presented as new.
Sincerly I'm terribly scheptical that this thing will go out of the drawing board. If anyone manages to do it, it will be great. However, I believe that people lost the hand for creativity and risk and go more for the extravaganza of the invention. Much like steam engines were for ancient greeks and egyptians... (Yes, they knew the steam engine...)
If only we described ourselves with our true colours, no-one would bother with 'ol NostrilDams.
:)
The whites would be kinda-pinkish-to-tan, and the reds would be sort-of-olive-to-brown.
While we're at it, there are dozens of republics in the world (including Afghanistan, and about ten or fifteen other Stans)
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Exactly this concept of transportation has been under consideration in Switzerland for a long time under the name Swissmetro. The idea is to link the major population centers together, creating in effect a single country-wide city. The technology is ready to build the demonstration track from Geneva to Lausanne (~30 km), but so far, the government and the Federal Assembly have been unwilling to shell out the CHF 1.5 bio (about /$ 1 bio) required to do it.
Go hither for a cool simulation video or thither for technical details, or even yonder for the math.
On Moonbase Alpha, we call these things, "Travel Tubes".
Man was not meant to
-fly
-go faster than 60 MPH
-go to the moon
It's always easy to shoot things down (for any of you scientists - ever have journal club?), than to see the possible merits of the idea.
OK so L.A., Japan and other seismicaly active areas are probably "out" for placement of these systems.
Any industry chemists, engineers or physicists out there with any experience low pressure systems? Remember this doesn't have to be a "total" vacuum, just low enough to balance the vacuum pump to fuel ratio.
..........FULL STOP.
This concept has been looked in for the last 20 years in Switzerland under the name of "Swissmetro".
A quick summary of it here.
The most complete analysis of the project I've seen here.
Basically, it's probably doable, but the major roadblock is a VERY strong political support (even in a very pro-mass transit country like switzerland), because of the massive costs to validate the faisability of it. In Switzerland, that support has not materialized in the last 20 years.
-- p a n a p i c - panoramas des alpes: Mont-Blanc, Mont-Rose, Cervin, etc...
C'mon....do the math. Total up the world's capacity of public transportation....and then compare it to the number of people in the world who commute....the two figures aren't even close. If the system worked well, and was economical, people would ditch their cars for it. My fiancee commutes to Jersey City, NJ every day. It costs her $400/mo for that privilage and it SUCKS.
I'm a realist...humans are free and independent creatures...they like forms of transporation that are ready when they are. The best implementation of that is the car.
Now, your crack about the middle east is low. I like driving my PERSONAL automobile. It is gas fueled, but it isn't a gas-guzzling SUV....it's a VW golf, and it gets great gas milage. I'd use an ethanol-gasoline mix if I could buy it somewhere near me.
Public transporation is a failure...ask the guys running Amtrak, they'll tell you that EVERY public transporation system in the world is government funded/supported because they can't sustain themselves on their paying riders.
We need to develop fuel efficent PERSONAL transporation and the infrastructure to support it. That's the only model that will work.
As far as the American without a passport comment...my parents are Greek, and i've been to Greece many times (and other places in Europe). Public transport there sucks as well. I'd much rather drive my own car on the autobahn.....
-ted
If this is a new idea, I'm the king of the Ottoman Empire (haven't heard that in a while, have ya?)...
I've been thinking about this for some time. For all the problems you can come up with, I can list the solutions... Think it's terribly hard to maintain a vaccum? Well it doesn't need to be a perfect vaccum... The less air, the better, but you would have to have a prototype to figure out exactly what atmosphereic level is the most effecient to maintain.
Just increasing the temperature in the tube, or the air speed would quickly drop the air pressure to the point that travel in a tube is more economical than in our standard atmosphere.
As far as the tube cracking, it wouldn't need to be one single enclosure... Any number of doors can open as vehicle is going by, and then close to seal that section after. Almost like an air-tight Panama canal.
Want the sceneic route? Materials like plexiglass can be utilized to give the passengers a view of the outside world.
Despite all the arguements, it boils down to one fact... No matter what the technology inside the pipe, or the air pressure, it will be faster than trains, cars, or busses. And it will be, BY FAR, safer than any other mode of transportation.
Even if it doesn't outrun planes (which it will), even if it isn't less expensive than any other mode of travel (which it will be), even if it isn't safer than ony other mode of travel (which it definatly will be), it will still be easy to find a local station, and it will be far less hassle than planes, trains, or automobiles.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
So no, I wouldn't expect to see any tubes erected by ET3. Now or ever. This is just another example of the deep flaws in the patent system.
OK, you're all skeptical. Here's the FAQ from my investment prospectus.
OK, trying to find some references that prove this is not a new idea.
Here's what I've got so far:
---
Title: Abstracts of concepts of high speed ground transportation systems.
Corp Author(s): TRW Systems Group. ; United States.; Office of High-Speed Ground Transportation.
Publication: [Washington, D.C.? : TRW Systems Group],
Year: 1967
Description: 1 v. (various pagings) : ill. 28 cm.
Language: English
Abstract: Includes Carveyor, Metro-Belt, Tex Train, Marco System, Starrcar, Urbmobile, Roller-Road, RRollway, Trans Drive, FOA Tubeflight, Gravity-Vacuum transportation, Tubeway, Airmobile, rolling sliding systems, tracked levitation systems, Metran, Urban transit systems.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: High speed ground transportation.
Note(s): "Prepared under contract no. C-353-66 (Neg) 5 July 1967, for the Office of High Speed Ground Transportation, Department of Transportation."
---
Flat out for trains; ; The Boston Globe; ; ; Jul 01, 1991; ;
Flat out for trains
Can the Swiss lead the way? Maybe so, if they turn out to be the first to exploit emerging transportation technology to slash travel time between major urban centers in their mountainous country. They want to build a train system using magnetic levitation to allow them to achieve speeds of 300 m.p.h. between Geneva and Zurich on one leg and Basel and Bellinzona on the second.
The technology would be enhanced by the construction of tunnels that would be kept under partial vacuum to make passage of the trains easier.
The sacrifice for riders: some of the most spectacular scenery on the tourist circuit. Passengers will get there zip-zip but miss plenty of Alpine views on the way. Can't have everything, it seems.
---
Title: Options for sustainable passenger transport: an assessment of policy choices
Source: Transportation Planning and Technology 19, no.3-4 (1996) p. 221-233
Language: English
Abstract: If the current trends in transport are not changed, a sustainable transport system is not feasible. In order to achieve such a state, new technologies may be an interesting option. In this paper, several success and failure factors for the introduction of new technologies are analyzed. These possibilities are identified in different areas, notably economic, spatial, institutional, social/psychological and technological fields. Within this context the following new options are discussed: the electric car, people movers, subterranean infrastructure, telematics, the high speed train, the high speed maglev train, shuttles in vacuum tunnels and alternative fuels. Finally, some policy choices, which may stimulate future technical developments, are discussed. It is concluded that an active government policy may stimulate the introduction of new technologies, which may make a substantial contribution to achieving a sustainable transport system
---
I commute to work every day on the London underground (the tube). I really can't see this working. We already have "Service today is cancelled due to leaves on the track", "Service today is cancelled due to signal failure" and "service is cancelled this Sunday due to planned engineering work".
You expect this organization to maintain a hard vacuum in the tunnels? They are under constant pressure to keep costs down, and it shown in the reliability problems. It's just too damn easy to break a vacuum seal. It might work for a day, but to succeed it has to work for 100 years (yes, the London underground has been running for longer than that)
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I can't do the math, as I haven't the figures available. I suspect you can't do the math either, as you don't quote any figures. :-) What I can say is that I've been to a number of countries that run very efficient public transportation (I'm especially thinking of the Netherlands, and the Amsterdam trams). India, Japan, northern Europe all have at least adequate public transport systems. You don't say how far Jersey City is from your fiancee, so it's hard to say if the train cost is reasonable or not. The question to ask is how much it would cost her, considering fuel and maintenance to run a car for that same commute each month (and don't forget parking fees, of course).
Now, your crack about the middle east is low. I like driving my PERSONAL automobile. It is gas fueled, but it isn't a gas-guzzling SUV....it's a VW golf, and it gets great gas milage. I'd use an ethanol-gasoline mix if I could buy it somewhere near me.
Nice car, I'm a big fan of the Golf (my advisor runs one). While you have a point that personal transportation is more useful in general than public transport (no schedules, service to everywhere there's a road, etc.), this doesn't preclude public transport at all. Most people put a large chunk (most?) of the miles on their vehicles going to work every day, and this ratio likely increases if one works in a city one can't afford to live in (working in NYC, living in Jersey). Use public transport during the week, drive to your vacation paradise in your gas-electric hybrid on the weekend...
Public transport, when properly executed, doesn't just cut on gas usage, but also smog, noise and traffic. It puts less strain on a city's infrastructure (bridges, tunnels, parking ramps, &cet.) And it also encourages slightly more walking, which is vastly better for the population for other reasons.
Your point about Amtrak is well-taken, but I don't see it as particularly relevant. Do most roads pay for their own maintenance? Isn't that what part of a state's gas tax goes towards? Aren't there Federal highway subsidies? Toll roads may mitigate the cost of upkeep, but I hardly think they are self-sustaining. Why should public transport networks be less worthy of tax dollars? Why a different standard, especially given the health and environmental bonus?
For examples, New York has an adequate public transport network, and Washington D.C.'s is absolutely first-rate. So, it can be done, at least on an intra-city level. Most of America's public transport problems come from attitude, not because the concept is inherently unworkable.
Cheers,
The Mouser
Uhhh, evacuating an 8000 mile long tube (DC - Bejin) borders on the impossible, or at best very costly and impracticle. It is a novel idea and would make for some intersting sci-fi, but I really doubt people are going to want to travel in what amounts to coffins (assuming someone can figure out how to make the whole vacuum thing remotely cost effective).
They would consider building one of these across a fault line like the San Andreas fault? I somehow doubt that a vacum tube would remain one in the event of a shift along the fault line or that the track would remain intact.
I don't see this as really feasible excep in countries with almost no major geological activity, and there you have the problems of funding, plausibility and public fear of an obviously risky concept.
We're sadly in love with our cars, and while we can still instigate wars in the middle east to keep gas prices atrificially low, we'll never give them up.
Seems funny, in the 70's we all drove little tiny Japaneese cars to cling onto our one car one person commuter lifestyle, cars that were barely big enough for one person.
Now, Madison ave. has conned most of America into thinking they need SUVs, and we commute one person, one vehicle, in trucks that easily hold as many people as a subway car. =)
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
These tubes are at least as dangerous as ordinary mass transit because they're moving people at high speed inside heavy machinery.
Then there's all these fun differences to keep in mind:
Safer? Sheesh.
When I saw the headline I visualised _real_ pipeline mass transit: people being pumped through pipes.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Having frictionless acceleration and deceleration would be a perfect carnou machine. Meaning you could use it to travel back in time. In the tube it would be meaningless whether time went forward or backwards.
Everyone's pointed out already that maintaining a vacuum is not going to work out in the long run. However, reducing the pressure of a metro *sounds* doable.
Passenger jet cabin air pressure is, what, 50% of sea level pressure? Less than that? Nobody seems to suffer too much except your feet expand a little after several hours.
So anything fundamentally problematic with reduced air pressure in existing metro systems? Since the air resistance grows exponentially, this should bring quite a bit of savings. Waaay easier to do than vacuum, too.
For TV Series...and I am sure that a look into Golden Age Science Fiction will find this idea, and if not, in the 1960s for sure. It's not a new idea...
ttyl
Farrell
p.s. Do check out Genesis II if it is ever on late night TV...some of the charators had two belly buttons...it would make Brittny & Co jelous!
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Imagine if two of these pressurized cars collide, and their seals break. All their air would escape into the tube, and any passengers that survived the impact would suffocate in a fairly gruesome Total-Recall-like manner.
The safety section of their FAQ doesn't even address this.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
People keep stealing ideas from stories I write, should I sue?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It's interesting how many concrete and hard statements are being made about things like cost and ease of construction, considering nobody's ever built one of these before. I almost feel like I was reading about an upcoming software product that's expected (by the vendor) to revolutionize the world!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Read the thread before you post...
They are talking about the fact that there will be SOME gas in the tube, not much, but it will be there.
Aerospace engineers have been doing this kind of problem in the lab for years, we call them shock tubes, you can also check google.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
That's what people said when the first steam trains started to pick up speed.
The fact is, speed doesn't kill, acceleration kills. Especially sudden deceleration. That's why the Apollo astronauts were able to reach the Moon in just a matter of days. By going very fast.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
They have no intention of building anything, just make money for their shareholders from tha patents. And this encourages innovation? All it does is put a roadblock against someone who really wants to build it.
From their site ("company summary" page)
Our aim is to generate returns for our shareholders by acting now to acquire control of important blocks of intellectual property (patents and trade secrets) in the ETT field. We currently own the patent and trade secret rights to Evacuated Tube Transport, the first practical evacuated tube transport technology. We believe that these ultra efficient and environmentally benign systems, will become key components of numerous future worldwide transport systems. ET3.COM INC. intends to take full advantage of the generic nature of this unique technology by securing the intellectual property rights on the lion's share of all specific applications, new devices, and novel systems issuing from it. Management also believes that we are well positioned to gain control of other major intellectual property by developing new patents and trade secrets through our own internal efforts and by developing patent-exploitation agreements for the patents and trade secrets belonging to others.
"capsules 2 feet in diameter and 8 feet long could be used for one person lying down" (from the faq)
I wonder... who in the world would climb into a capsule lying down to use this transport? Even space capsules of the 1960s had more room!
Horizontal Deformation Velocity Map, Version 2.0, Crustal Deformation Working Group 1, Southern California Earthquake Center, 1998.
Modeling broadscale deformation in Northern California and Nevada from plate motions and elastic strain accumulation, Murray and Segall, 2001.
Frictionless, or nearly frictionless?
If you remove ALL the air, and run it on maglev, there is no friction.
Since when is maglev "nearly frictionless"? Am I missing something?
(i'm referring to the maglev system, not air friction, pretend we are on the moon here)
I think part of the problem is the belief that transportation should drive you right to your door, so you can roll out of your comfy car seat and onto your couch.
A transportation system only has to get you within a few blocks of your destination, as it only takes a few minutes to walk the rest. And to top it all off, it's needed exercise that most people don't get.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
And you might have something semi workable.
Have the capsules fly 18 inches off the surface of the tube using the generated air cushion to keep them up.
N thousand mph are pie in the sky anyway.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Interesting points, but I just have to say that most jetliners cannot truly glide. With all engines out, the average jetliner has all the the flight capacity of a brick.
Jetliners can glide just fine with all their engines out -- sure, the glide ratio stinks (maybe 10:1) but most flights are planned so that an airport is always within the all-engines-out glide distance.
Read about the "Gimli Glider", a Boeing 767 which made a safe landing after both engines flamed out due to fuel exhaustion.
Kiscica
(I'm ignoring your parenthetical statement.)
It's unlikely that they would actually make the pressure very different from atmospheric pressure. This would reqiure extremely strong tunnels, extremely good seals, and a great deal of energy to evacuate the tunnel in the first place; and any damage to the tunnel would be disasterous.
Instead, it makes more sense to fill the tunnel with a very light gas, like helium, at approximately one atmosphere (either higher so that oxygen doesn't contaminate the tunnel, or lower so that people don't get asphyxiated by leaks). There would then be much less friction than with wheels and much less air resistance than with air.
Arguably, drive-thrus and such are a specialized local adaption of the landscape to heavy car use rather than an example of why cars are useful in general. When there is good public transportation, stuff that individuals want clusters together near the stops. This is why I prefer to live in cities: I take the train to the area where I want to be, then I'm just a few minutes' walk from dozens of things I might want. Out in the Sprawl on a weekend, getting from the strip mall that has one thing I want to the strip mall that has the next thing is yet another ten minutes in a cage in stop and go traffic. (I commute by train from a little city to a big one and sleep with someone in the Sprawl, so I get to sample all the flavors of life.)
I'm sure there are a dozen other comments pointing out that this is an old concept... but none seem to have mentioned this particular version. Many years ago (late 50's, I believe) a Rand physicist by the name of Robert Salter came up with something that sounds a whole lot like this supposed "news". He called it the Planetran, and it's popped up in the press and fiction many times. It's even made an appearance in some very strange recent articles about the so-called "shadow government".
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
When I was younger, I had dreamed up a transportation system using this methodology.
Amazingly, my idea was almost identical to this, except I didn't really come up with a good accelleration method such as hte maglev.
Too bad at age 10 I wasn't thinking about patents.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
[drum roll]
Making money from it, not by actually DOING anything, but simply by acquiring intellectual property rights and then licensing the technology.
Or perhaps, finding a bunch of sucke... er, venture capitalists desparate/stupid enough to believe in a crazy scheme like this, right after the dot-com bust.
This executive summary page really says it all. For example, their financial strategy is:
So essentially, they control a few patents and have some trade secrets (as mentioned elsewhere on the page), and they're going to make money by licensing it. They're not actually going to DO any of the work. Somehow, others will magically finance the construction, solve the technical problems, work out all the logistics, operate the system, and maintain it.
They even make an estimate/wish that ETT will "advance" over the next 30 years. Unlikely as that seems, one thing is absolutely certain. Those patents will lapse into the public domain by then, and that would be plenty of time to reverse engineer any ecomonically important trade secrets.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
But the original design-idea dates back to 1934, when Hermann Kemper received a patent on "magnetic levitation of trains". He already envisioned sub-ocean trains in vacuum-tubes, back in the 1930s !
I can't find the text of the patent anywhere, but I read this in a magazine some time ago.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Big deal. I did Seattle to Wash DC in 5 or 6 days in a jetta (filled with stuff, too). Would've been less, but i stopped off at some cool places to take pictures and I only drove 6 hours a day. My grandfather drove DC -> denver in 36 hours.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
New York has an adequate public transport network, and Washington D.C.'s is absolutely first-rate
As a New Yorker living in Washington, all I can say is that the D.C. system really bites the big one, whereas the Subway rocks. People mistakenly think the D.C. Metro is "cool" or "good" because it is so aesthetically pleasing (actually, I find it neo-fascist and distrubing). In reality, the design decisions that were necessary to make the system look the way it does (e.g. large cathedral stations requiring deep tunneling) have also made it one of the least functional systems in the world. The Metro is heavily dependent on expensive, and impossible to maintain escalator systems, it is impossible for them to add new track capacity, since it is not possible to reconfigure stations, the cars are too long, with not enough doors...I could go on. Once the Metro is as old as the subway is now (in about 75 years), I am sure it will be just as grubby and "used" as the subway, only much less functional.
As to the main point of the the thread, and the article: I think mass transit is a major investment we should make. I particularly agree with the sentiment that cars have ruined the urban geography of the U.S. Also, anyone who thinks that cars don't require government funding should come observe some of the elections in the D.C. metro area (both Maryland and Virgina have road transportation issues at the top of their local issue hit list). Personally, I walk to work, and keep my car in an underground garage for when I need to go to Home Depot on the weekends.
In terms of the vacuum tubes: any one looking for prior art should go back to Buck Rogers newspaper strip from around 1929/1930.
automandc
I'm a lawyer with excellent karma. Something's gotta be wrong.
Or atleast I'd consider it if I held U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,954,064; 4,075,948; and 4,148,260 which utilize "a gravity powered system that requires a tunnel several thousand feet into the earth."
If you wish to avoid future legal action, stop publicly defaming my patented inventions immediately!
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You missed the implication. (Or maybe I didn't make it clear enough.) Decelerating at one gee for three minutes with nothing but a lap belt on will make it pretty easy to smack your face on the back of the seat in front of you. Thus the bloody nose.
I write in my journal
If propulsion is lost, you can't get anybody out of the transportation system. If somebody has a heart attack while propulsion is lost, they're dead because you can't get them out. At least not without letting air in, but then you have the expensive process of sucking the air out again. Yes, it offers low cost because of the lack of friction, but non-vacuum maglev with aerodynamic vehicles offers benefits not substantially lower, with much less risk and logistical problems.
Yeah, only an order of magnitude more expensive. Average cost per lane-mile to construct a road: about $500K (rounding up). [Ref] Call it $1 million per mile for a two-line road. Average cost to construct light rail: around $20 MILLION per mile. [Ref]
Sure, these are data sources are not directly comparable and obviously don't include things like maintenance and operating costs (which are probably higher for rail since you have to have paid operators, but that's beside the point). Of course, rail also has much more stringent restrictions as to climb grades, turn radii, and other things that make it far less suitable for many out-of-the-way environments than roads.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Ask yourself: How would you decelerate without friction?
Friction is lost kinetic energy turned into heat. IOW to decelate without friction, you would need a process that turned kinetic energy into another form of energy without raising the entrophy. What I am saying is: That if you can do that both ways. Turn some form of energy into kinetic energy and back without losses; you have the basic requirements of a Carnot cycle and thus the process is a Carnot machine.
Yes, it is silly, but it is silly question.
My CS prof didn't own a car because he felt the US auto industry had a history of sabotaging public transport.
A quick Google search revealed this:
Behind the car is a huge and powerful car industry. In the US from the 1930s to the 1950s General Motors and other automobile manufactures bought 90% of the tram networks in 45 US cities. These were then dismantled and replaced by busses (which were manufactured by the car companies). In 1991 the auto industry in the USA spent 10 million dollars defeating legislation aimed at tougher fuel efficiency standards. The only solution often being offered is to build more roads, it's a solution that benefits industry not people. More roads into the countryside surrounding cities, leads to the growth of suburbs, which leads to more traffic (and calls for more roads). The solution leads to more problems, and it also leads to great wealth for the developers who build the suburbs and those who own the land they are built on.
Lies about crimes
OK, I stand corrected...they don't all suck. I like the Boston T, but then again, I don't travel it every day. As far as public transportation capacity figures go; I studied it in my college engineering classes, and there isn't nearly enough capacity in the world to effectively move everyone around. Maybe the solution is a matter of scale...maybe we just need more capacity and that will make the system better and more enjoyable...I honestly don't know.
As far as dumping money into roads versus public transportation networks.....you can buy a whole hell of alot of roads for the cost of a decent size train or subway line. (Unless you decide to put the road under neath Boston...that jacks up the price a little).
I guess the problem isn't public vs. private transporation, the problem is that there are too many damn people living in a small area, and they all need to get to work. I don't think there is an optimal solution.
-ted
Oh well. At least I can be still the first to say:
This brings a whole new meaning to the term "pipe dream" doesn't it? (heh, heh)
Oh, I slay myself.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
Which in turn was inspired by this even older idea.
Not bad for 1848.Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
Didn't Larry Niven already suggest something like this in "A World Out of Time". I seem to remember continent spanning evacuuated tubes in that book.
Ed Wedig
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