Slashdot Mirror
Hyperloop Getting Closer To Reality, Groundbreaking Set For 2016
An anonymous reader writes: On Thursday, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) said it would break ground on the futuristic railway in May 2016. The company says it has signed agreements with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and engineering design firm Aecom to work on the project. "It's a validation of the fact that our model works," says Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. "It's the next step."
http://theinfosphere.org/Tube_...
I had to read fairly far through the article to realize it's just a prototype. It will be about 5 miles long, built in central California, along highway 5.
The company that's building it worked on tricky projects before, like the LHC. They seem confident in their ability to build it, they said that the hard part is reducing costs and energy usage to acceptable levels.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So what happens when the capsule springs a leak and you cannot bre . .a..
Ever ridden on an airplane?
So, of the two possible viable corridors for this...BoWash, or SF-LA....which one will have the Environmental Impact Study finished first?
Then which one will be able to navigate the years of cease and desist lawsuits first?
I guess I feel like people felt when the train, car and airplane first came out. The hyperloop (like those earlier inventions) sounds like a wonderful idea, but it's a little dangerous. I want to ride on one eventually, but not on the first few runs. Let them work out any early problems with other, more daring riders.
I can't wait for teleportation prototype to be next or at least hypersonic passenger plane.
Somehow, the same concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... But only the propulsion system is encased in vacuum-like conditions. Very nice idea, embedded safe "devices" for when the system goes down. The hyperloop ideia is not that new, only that now instead of encasing only the propulsion system hyperloop encases the whole vehicle.
It remains to be seen how this will pan out, but having these two companies sign on makes it more likely than ever that the future of transportation may not be autonomous vehicles or supersonic jets, but capsules flying through vacuum tubes.
Hyper loops, autonomous vehicles or supersonic jets and supersonic jets have different uses. If I am commuting to work or going camping I am probably not going to use a hyper loop or a supersonic jet. If I am travelling to an island a fair distance away I am probably not going to use a hyper loop or an autonomous vehicle. All three modes of transport will probably be useful in the future.
It's only a partial vacuum and the surrounding areas is not a vacuum. They can just equalize the pressure locally.
> Ever ridden on an airplane?
That is Republican-style logic. Planes are not in a vacuum. I know you Republicans don't understand that, but planes are in the air. They do not fly in space. I repeat, and I'll try to type slower for you, they do not go into space. There isn't a vacuum around a plane when flying. After all, if it was a vacuum the wings wouldn't make life, but I wouldn't expect you Republicans to understand that. Please just stop posting. Your kind is ruining this site with your anti-science xian garbage.
The question was what happens when there is a leak and you cannot breathe, not what happens if there is a complete loss of cabin pressure/air. I answered the question that was posed. So take your uppity attitude and go for a walk.
The question was what happens when there is a leak and you cannot breathe, not what happens if there is a complete loss of cabin pressure/air. Planes don't fly in a vacuum, but they do fly in substantially less air pressure, which is why we pressurize planes. If the capsule lost all air pressure then yeah, they're going to have a really bad time and air masks are not going to save them, but as another answered they would seal off the segment and provide local atmosphere.
If the cabin air leaks out of a plane at 13,000m, you'll be dead in 6 minutes. If you were in intergalactic space (about as hard a vacuum as you can experience) and the air leaked out of your spaceship, you'd be dead in six minutes. If you were on Mars and your spacesuit was punctured losing all of the air, you'd be dead in six minutes.
They can Hype the HyperLoop with HooperFlies!
I should get advertising royalties from SlashDice for this post.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
> f I am commuting to work or going camping I am probably not going to use a hyper loop
I don't know, an hour commute from LA to SF via hyper loop is less than the time a lot of people spend commuting today, and you don't have to pay attention to the road.
you don't even need the LA-SF to make it a win.
Build a 20-30 mile one that terminates near the Google Campus (a lot of other tech companies are close by) and down south of San Jose and you could cut an hour+ off of a LOT of people's commute
1. Let's say it all together: "Hyperloop Is Not A Vactrain". It's like a super-high-altitude aircraft, at ground level, operating in ground effect. It actually needs the (super thin) air it moves through for lift. The air gets built up in front of the capsule and shunted via a compressor to underneath it (for lift) and behind it, to prevent the buildup of air resistance.
2. The difficulties of providing oxygen through masks are no greater in a hyperloop capsule than in an airplane.
3. A hyperloop capsule is a giant air ram which has to work to move its air to behind the vehicle. If you get a leak in the front, you're ramming air into the capsule. If you get a leak on the back, that's where the compressor is shoving the air into. Significant air is also getting compressed into the tiny areas on the sides.
4. In the event of major emergencies, the tube is designed to repressurize, with the cars settling onto their low speed wheels and cruising to the nearest emergency exit. Repressurization can surely be done far faster than an airplane can descend in altitude.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
So you're saying there's a chance.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Not on your life, my Hindu friend!
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
That five mile section should work nicely until an earthquake.
What about us brain-dead slobs?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
NASA can't have all the (hidden) glory!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Some airplanes are made to appear as if they had gone into space, and filmed the interior of the "ISS" in a narrow tube that fits inside the vomit comet as well.
Airplanes don't go into space, but satellites go into pools.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Bees? The guns on Mars shoot bees, as I recall.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
It's like a super-high-altitude aircraft, at ground level
In other words, moving in air so super-thin and close to a vacuum as makes no difference.
2. The difficulties of providing oxygen through masks are no greater in a hyperloop capsule than in an airplane.
The oxygen mask aboard an airplane is good for ten minutes. The airplane flies in open air not inside a sealed pipeline mounted on pylons and elevated rather high above the ground.
This isn't anything like the Channel Tunnel which has a parallel and built-in escape route.
3. A hyperloop capsule is a giant air ram which has to work to move its air to behind the vehicle
No movement, no compression.
Repressurization can surely be done far faster than an airplane can descend in altitude.
As the bird flies, the distance between San Diego and San Francisco is 450 miles.
No one is certain, but it's thought that a China Airlines 747 might have gone supersonic during an emergency descent in 1985. According to the Wikipedia article, "Altitude decreased 10,000 ft (3,000 m) within only twenty seconds." and "They had descended 30,000 ft (9,100 m) in under two and a half minutes".
How rapidly can a commercial aircraft descend?
speaking of the channel tunnel wouldn't something like that be the logical first use for this thing?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Easy. Masks drop from above you and emergency braking and re-pressurization is started. If braking to a safe velocity (say, 300km/h) is limited to 0.5G then it can be completed in about 40 seconds. Then once everybody have slowed down, emergency vents can open and the tube can be quickly re-pressurized to breathable pressures. You will survive even in the case of immediate complete pressure loss and failure to put on a mask.
Hyperloop Getting Closer To Reality, Groundbreaking Set For 2016
Sounds like a Canadian Indie band who are taking things in a new direction next year.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yeah, just like a private company making supply runs to ISS! Complete nonsense made up by people who don't know anything about the problem and didn't spend two minutes thinking it through! It will never happen! I'm telling ya!
Additionally, are we sure that Elon Musk hasn't try this kind of things before? Are we sure that he is not related to Lyle Lanley? Because their speeches seem quite similar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
Why would you need to get to the destination? Surely you'd be able to close sections of the tube and repressurise it. Or pressurise the whole thing. There's a ready supply of air at standard pressure just outside the loop.
"If the cabin air leaks out of a plane at 13,000m, you'll be dead in 6 minutes."
Err , no. Some people will be dead in 6 minutes. Others won't as plenty of stowaways who survived in the non pressurised wheel compartments of passenger jets have shown.
"and the air leaked out of your spaceship, you'd be dead in six minutes"
Depends how fast. If it was more or less instantanious you'd be dead in seconds from your lungs imploding and other massive internal organ damage and internal bleeding.
You'll be given cushy jobs!
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
The air immediately around the capsule is not as sparse as the bulk air in the tube, due to the compression of the moving capsule.
Versus the matter of seconds it would take to repressurize a tube at maximum rate.
With regularly spaced emergency exits
This is a joke, right? Airplanes operate in the ballpark of 10km altitude. Hyperloop ranges from ground level to a couple dozen meters altitude.
Yes, the design does call for regularly spaced escape routes. Read the damned design document before debating the concept on an open forum.
No movement, no low pressure air. The tube is designed to be repressurized in the event of an incident.
Which is utterly irrelevant to the conversation. Repressurization is not to happen from the endpoints.
Which is again, nothing compared to the potential seconds in which Hyperloop could be repressurized. They wouldn't actually repressurize it that fast - there's no need to and it'd be hard on the tube, craft, and any passengers exposed to the low pressure. But they're effectively unlimited in the potential speed in which they can repressurize the air in the tube - unlike a plane, which has to fly supersonic to be able to repressurize in two and a half minutes.
Judging from this post of yours, you have some serious misconceptions about the Hyperloop concept and you seriously need to read the design document. Since you don't know about the emergency exists, I expect that there's an awful lot of other things that you think about the concept that don't actually match up to what's being proposed.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Indeed. Hyperloop is more the sort of thing you'd use to cross large bays, seas, or oceans, not little channels. But, that adds an additional layer of complexity, so of course early incarnations will be on land.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Were you sent here by the devil?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Hyperloop's biggest problem will never be engineering. It'll be the concerted efforts of the airline industry, the dated train industry, and the trucking industry; all coming down on any attempt to build a real life version connecting any two cities spanning 100s of miles. Even if the most conservative costs of freighting for the hyperloop were to double (from what I've read in the Hyperloop Org's huge PDF), it'd still be faster and cheaper than all the current means of transportation of goods. Nothing like the Hyperloop would get built easily if it stands to destabilize or even destroy these other industries.
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop), it is expected to have an average speed of 962 km/h (and a top one of 1220 km/h), like a plane at the ground level! And it would run across (densely) populated areas! What could possibly go wrong?
Compare that to a jet plane, and then STFU, FUD troll.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, good sir, I'm on the level!
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
The benefit of freight is that there's far less danger and far lower insurance liability. Hyperloop could pull trucks off the roads, from Seattle to San Diego and from NYC to Boston. Think of the greenhouse gases we'll save.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
That would have worked just as well the other direction, that might be a clue to you that you are a partisan moron.
Not with the Democrats in charge.
You will notice that when Obama had the white house, and the Democrats had both houses of congress, nothing much got done either.
In fact, it took them losing the house before even passing the ACA, which they did after the voters had already spoken on what they wanted.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Enough that parachutes work to a certain degree and are used fro probe landings.
Enough that you have to some sort of heat-sheilding on probe entry.
Not enough to breath. Almost all carbon dioxide anyways.
Not enough to block solar radiation. Astronauts would fry in a large solar storm.
Being at near ground level gives some options an aircraft doesn't have.
Plenty of air is centimeters away. The only trick is to get to it. Assuming the capsule is intact, and can come to a rest in the 10 minutes emergency air lasts, you just need a way to open a hole to the outside. Just pump all the air you need until rescue arrives.
If cabin pressure is normal, the easiest would be to have a hollow lance pierce the tube. It would take some work to jab though ~1cm of steel. Might as well use a pair of carbide tip lances (with side holes) jabbing at opposite sides of the tube fr counterpressure. An overcenter system (like a car scissor jack when fully extended) can apply massive force. Pop, pop, you have air in and air out.
If the cabin breached, the entire tube needs to be filled. Time to get out something with high energy. A cutting device (friction wheel, cutting torch, etc) can get the job done, but slowly. Faster and more compact would be some thermite charges. Toss 'em fore and aft. Crude, but effective. Shape charge if you are crazy enough.
Or if you want really fast, and independent of the capsule, put vents on the tube. They can be as simple as butterfly valves or as dramatic as explosive bolt hatches. Butterfly valves have the advantage of using inrushing air to slow or move a capsule. Hatches give a way for people to get in and out of tubes for emergencies or maintenance.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Hyperloop Is Not A Vatican
Hyperloop Is Not A Vacation
Hyperloop Is Not A Vitamin
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Even if the most conservative costs of freighting for the hyperloop were to double ....... it'd still be faster and cheaper than all the current means of transportation of goods.
So a railway plus a 4m diameter vacuum tube on pylons will be cheaper than a railway without a 4m diameter vacuum tube on pylons?
actually, during the first 2 years, O and the dems brought back America's economy and kept us from moving into a depression worse than the Great Depression.
In addition, ACA was done during the first 2 years of O time which is when they had control of CONgress and ACA was considered halfway decent solution. Even now, less than 1/3 want ACA gone (and that is pretty much the GOP), 2/3 want it tweaked or to move to single payer system.
However, I would argue that the dems really have not done anything innovative.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hyperloop is not a railway. You might as well just compare it to a port on pylons or a mall on pylons if you want bad analogies.
The closest thing in terms of construction to Hyperloop is an oil pipeline. It has much more difficult approval aspects due to environmental issues and near universal public dislike, and of course corrosion challenges and such; but its geometry tolerances are much lower. So it's still not a perfect match, but it's at least closer than comparing Hyperloop to rail. And the costs per unit distance for oil pipeline in the US for the same diameter as Hyperloop track are indeed comparable to the Hyperloop cost estimates.
Now, part of the reason for Hyperloop's reduced costs vs. rail - and let's not play this down - are that it does less. It has less total throughput and not as many stops. But it's also much faster and cheaper. Versus air, it's much higher throughput, although not quite as fast (although still much cheaper). It is designed to be a low cost intermediary between rail and air travel.
By not having as many stops, not only does Hyperloop avoid having to build stations, but it also allows them to stay over cheap, easy right-of-way locations like being elevated over interstate medians rather than having to go into a whole bunch of cities. The other key aspect is loading. Train bridges spend most of their time unloaded, but when a train passes over, they face incredible loading until it's moved across. They have to be built very strong to tolerate this. Hyperloop instead uses frequently launched vehicles that are an order of magnitude ligher than a HSR train. This dramatically reduces track loading and thus support weight.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Under the same rules. FedEx is a leach of the national highway system.
Just because someone provides a service to government they are now no longer private? I didn't think the government was that big.
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
I don't mind the Hyperloop as long as they don't make that spooky HYPER CUBE!!!!!!!