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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."
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.
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.
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..."
Methinks you need to actually read about how Hyperloop works - it's not even remotely like an atmospheric railway. Air pressure no more drives Hyperloop than it drives a train going through a tunnel. A key part of the Hyperloop design is about how to avoid pressure buildup. Hyperloop spends most of its time in free coast. Acceleration (and deceleration) is handled by magnetic accelerator segments, like a big coilgun.
And to head you off: no, it's not a vactrain either. It doesn't roll on rails or float on maglev or anything of that nature - it floats as a ground-effect aircraft, and hence needs some air.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Bees? The guns on Mars shoot bees, as I recall.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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.
The partially evacuated pipe is what makes the entire system perhaps better suited to earthquake zones compared to trains.
With a train, there is no way of knowing whether both tracks are still intact short of a visual survey over the entire length of the line. Forcing all trains to stop immediately.
With the hyperloop, any breach of the pipe, will let air into the tube, which increases the atmospheric pressure and forces the pod to slow down. It's a nice passive safety system for everything running in the pipe and is really easy and cheap to monitor centrally because you just need a few pressure sensors dotted along the length of the each pipe section.
It doesn't tell you where the leak might be if there is a leak, but if you can maintain a low pressure you know the pipe is probably still intact.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
"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.
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.