University Students Made a Working Model Hyperloop

derekmead writes: Elon Musk's Hyperloop gets people excited. Promise the ability to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than an hour, and you're going to get people salivating. But for as much as we've heard about it, we've had scarcely little to see—until a team of students at the University of Illinois decided to build their very own miniature hyperloop.

Mechanical engineering students at the university built a functioning 1:24 scale model of the Hyperloop, a "fourth mode of transportation" that sends pods through a partially pressurized tube at very high speeds, as part of a senior design project. It was designed to test some of the key components of Musk's design, which was outlined in a much-read, open source whitepaper (PDF) published in August of 2013. That said, there are several key differences, which keep this from truly being a proof-of-concept as to whether or not the Hyperloop will ultimately work.

Comments

Vacuum tubes

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure my bank has one of these. How is this news?

And how do they deal with the G-Forces?

[NicBenjamin]

When the damn thing turns. Maglev trains for people are actually slower then the ones for freight because the freight trains don't have to worry about grandma surviving the trip. If they were going straight the whole way that wouldn't be a problem, altho there's some time for slower acceleration and deceleration they the hyperloopies don't seem to add in. But to get from LA to San Fran you can't go straight, you have to go up and down hills, around mountains, over rivers, etc.

A big part of the reason for Hyperloops cost advantage on rail is that Musk insists that a Hyperloop track can be cheaper. He says it would be more analogous to a oil pipeline then a rail track, and have cheaper construction, more abrupt bends, etc., which leads to higher G-Forces; this is a an even bigger problem problem for actual implementation of the idea then it would be for alternatives.

Mark my words: every trial of this will be successful until they put people in it. By the time they've smoothed out the turns, upped construction standards to virtually eliminate accidents, and reduced speed to something grandma can survive it will probably cost more then rail. It's brand-new technology and first generation check is never cheaper then the stuff it's replacing. I suspect there will be significant energy savings, and possibly some speed advantage, due to the fact that a hyperloop operates in a vacuam and there's no wind resistance, but the price advantage ain't gonna last.

Re:And how do they deal with the G-Forces?

[NicBenjamin]

In every press release anyone has ever written on why Hyperloop is better they all say it's cheaper, and they base those cost estimates on the construction costs of gas pipelines. Pipelines are incredibly cheap partly because you can make the damn things do corkscrews if you want. If there's a random hill in the middle of your route you can just go around it, or above it, or use those corkscrews to get to the top of the hill, build a flat piece till you get past the peak, and then corkscrew downward. You don;t need bridges very often, you laugh at the very concept of a "viaduct," and tunnels are things that happen to those silly Civil Engineers.

Rail, OTOH, is incredibly expensive partly because you either have to take a very long way around the hill, go through it, or build a viaduct to make the grade manageable.

One of the reasons the train project that sparked his little Hyperloop brainstorm has costs that keep going up is that the original costs were projected from a map much like the one in the white paper, but when they send their engineers out to survey the route they find all kinds of hills/streams/valleys/dips/etc. that will require those tunnels/viaducts/bridges.

Hyperloop is going over the same terrain at Mach I. So it will require more of that shit because a grade that a train could manage a fraction of it's speed will kill the whole damn train at Mach I. And none of that is in the budget projection.

Re:Sure ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good lord a correction that didn't descend into mudslinging on the internet. It really *must* be a new era.

I have seen designs from the 1950s

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Hyperloop" concept - putting a capsule with seats in a tube and having it speed between cities - has been around for decades. I have seen concepts for it in old engineering books from the 1950s. Somehow, this becomes "new" and Musk gets his name on it.

I really don't get this cult of personality around Musk. He must have a god for a publicist.

US Passenger Rail makes no freakin' sense

[sirwired]

Outside of the Northeast Corridor, passenger rail in the US makes no sense whatsoever. The distance between viable markets, even with high-speed trains, is simply far too large to make the extensive capital costs worth it.