The Race To Create a Hyperloop Heats Up (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: When Elon Musk unveiled his idea for the "Hyperloop" transportation system based on capsules zipping through depressurized tubes, much was made about the enormous technical challenges the system would face in development. However, that didn't stop a number of companies and organizations from starting to work on it. Several companies are pushing the development work hard, and it's shaping up like a race to a workable prototype. University teams are only increasing their efforts as well. "The Illinois team enters the SpaceX contest with a strong competitive edge. This is its fourth Hyperloop design project, the first dating to fall 2013, and the Hyperloop is now a part of the MechSE curriculum. The team has assembled an interdisciplinary network of faculty from aeronautical engineering, thermal dynamics, mechanical engineering, electronic engineering and software, and two of the team members have interned at SpaceX."

Comments

Musk's idea?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Niven's book World Out of Time has a "hyperloop" system in it. And I can't help but think other SF writers may have come up with something similar before that.

The notion that Musk came up with this 'idea' is ludicrous.

Re:I wonder if it can aid in space launches.

[Rei]

You plan to have a capsule emerge from a near vacuum at several times the speed of sound straight into atmospheric pressures? That's going to be like hitting a brick wall. "Opening an airlock" will send in a shockwave down the tube to meet the capsule. And then to boot, its lift surfaces, designed for providing lift in a near-vacuum, are suddenly going to be facing huge amounts of air.

It's actually better to have hypersonic (relative to atmospheric air) projectiles moving through vacuums or near vacuums literally break through whatever "airlock" is sealing off the end (this is done in several types of hypersonic guns) - it's better to hit a literal (as thin as possible) wall than to hit the shock of air flooding into a near vacuum.

There is no such thing as a "hyperloop propulsion module". Hyperloop capsules are not self-propelled.

Note that you can't reach "mach anything" greater than 1 in such a tube relative to the internal gases. But you can increase the speed of sound several times over by using sparse hydrogen and/or very hot gases in the tube instead of sparse atmospheric air.