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Transport Expert Insists 'Don't Dismiss Wacky Hyperloop'
DavidGilbert99 writes "Since Elon Musk announced the details of Hyperloop earlier this week, we've seen a number of experts debunking the technology involved, but at least one is more upbeat about the possibility of 600MPH train travel. Speaking to Alistair Charlton at IBTimes UK, professor Phil Blythe from the Institute of Engineering and Technology said: 'My gut feeling is, don't dismiss it out of hand just because it sounds a bit wacky,' adding 'You're always going to have long distance travel, and if there was something that could replace air travel between cities and hubs, and is low carbon [with] low energy requirements, it make sense to explore it, it really does.'"
Land is going to be what kills this project, before it even gets as far as anything technical. How do you acquire the land for the route as a private entity, without eminent domain?
Every time you buy a parcel of land the neighboring parcels know they're suddenly worth a fortune to you, because you can't just go around them at 800 mph. You have to stay within safe and comfortable G-force maxima for your passengers, which means no more than gentle changes in routing -- and that means you'll have hundreds of hold-out roadblocks in the midst of your route, refusing to sell unless you can provide them with an instant and very comfortable retirement. And if you can't persuade them to sell... well, somehow you have to find a route around them, and buy even more property to make your new route happen.
And then there's the neighbors whose property you aren't buying who will mire you in lawsuits because they don't want an ugly Hyperloop system at the end of their property.
It doesn't matter if they were designed for it or not. They happen to be straight enough anyway, bar a very few locations. This simplifies the land grab issue thousands of fold. Given that this is being proposed as an alternative for a rail link that requires a land grab along its entire route, that's a massively simplified problem.
The actual transit engineer certainly doesn't know how to think outside of the box ... And if you read his credentials, he's not a transit engineer (is there even such a thing?)... He's a civic planner who's been employed in his field for a short 7 years.
He says the headway is essentially restricted by the amount of time it takes for each pod to decelerate to a stop, close an airlock, pressurize the container, open the other airlock, etc ... Then trying to get the old arthritic passenget in/out of the pod in 60 seconds. Even I, a lowly firmware guy, can conceive of a few different ways to handle that. These are not huge obstacles on which to form the basis of analysis and reject the idea.
Never fails. Smart people looking foolish by their own overconfidence. Yes, we know you're way smarter than the average knucklehead around you. And they have lame brained ideas all the time that you can quickly point out how dumb each idea is. It happens to all of us. But it only works with your local knuckleheads.
So just stop it. At the very least phrase your objection in the form of a question. And realize that the more obvious it seems to you the more likely it is that you are the one overlooking something.