Does Elon Musk's Hyperloop Make More Sense On Mars?

An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk's Hyperloop project has its challenges in places that have air. But in places with little air and no fossil fuels, where you can't fly and there's little drag, it makes a lot more sense. Post-doc researcher Leon Vanstone thinks the Hyperloop may have more of a future on Mars than here on Earth. He says, "Conservative cost estimates for building a single Hyperloop track from Los Angeles to San Francisco come in at US$6 billion. Taking the technology nationwide would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more. When you consider that normal, boring airplanes already travel at about 500-600 mph – about two-thirds as fast as the Hyperloop’s predicted speed – you might begin to wonder if an extra 200 mph is enough of a payoff for those hundreds of billions of dollars. ... Well, Elon Musk is no idiot, and he certainly has the money to hire some of the best and the brightest. ... A high-speed, safe, self-powered transportation system will be vital to connect Martian settlements – likely to be few in number and separated by large distances."

Comments

The cost of a single Airport.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its easy to throw around big numbers to scare away people, US$6 Billion is the average price of an airport.
You have to put things in perspective.
Furthermore, how long is that of Iraq war? A few days? Hours? What's more important, to invest in our infrastructure or to wage illegal wars halfway across the globe?

Re:The cost of a single Airport.

[halltk1983]

Also, a single Boeing 777 is $320 million (source: google it. It's in huge numbers at the top, with a link to this USA today article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/... ).

A small airport hub's actual cost is $5.8 billion and a large one can be as much as $55 billion. Source: http://www.aci-na.org/static/e...

In short, AC is right. We've spent hundreds of billions on airline travel, why would its replacement be significantly cheaper? Why are we more worried about the approximately equivalent financial cost, and less worried about the significant positive impact on the environment that this would have?

Re:The cost of a single Airport.

[Anonymous Coward]

For SFO to LAX we'd probably fly in a 737 not a 777 because it's more optimized for short haul. Published fuel economy for a 737 is 2.31 liters/100 km/passenger or about 102 mpg.

We'll ignore the fact that airplanes are not always 100% full. We'll ignore the fact that an LAX to SFO trip won't realize that fuel economy--need a longer haul flight for that. We'll ignore all the other inefficiencies, like taxiing, routing, traffic, missed approaches, etc. We will also round up the distance from LAX to SFO from 543 km to 550.

At 2.31 l/100 km x 180 pax x 550 km we get a minimum fuel burn of 990 liters for one flight or 267 gallons. While this is certainly better than us all driving there in our SUVs, it's already half the efficiency of us all getting in Prius's and making the trip (fully loaded Prius at 50 MPG/vehicle = 200 mpg with 4 pax).

Hyperloop would almost certainly exceed the efficiency of our fully laden Prius. So if the infrastructure cost is the same, why wouldn't we want to build the more efficient choice? Hyperloop will have the advantage of dispatching in much smaller batches, so the occupancy factor should be higher than air travel. The convenience factor should be higher too. It's easy to imagine hyperloop sending a 'train' every 5 minutes. And since we don't need a massive airport with 2 mile long runways, hyperloop stations could be built in or near downtowns and main streets. Bury the last few miles of each line and you get the convenience of a subway, but it takes you directly to the downtown of another city. It's like European train travel, but better.

Bring the future brother Elon.