The Hyperloop Industrial Complex

Jason Koebler writes: Two and a half years after Elon Musk pitched the technology, actually traveling on a hyperloop is still theoretical, but its effect on business is not. There is a very real, bonafide industry of people whose job description is, broadly speaking "make the hyperloop into a tangible thing." The SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Design Weekend at Texas A&M University earlier this weekend was the coming out party for people in that industry.

Comments

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bluefoxlucid]

A ground-level, rail-mounted tube doesn't expend energy holding itself against gravity, and faces less wind resistance than an airplane in orbit. That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane.

The Tesla car has higher instantaneous torque and a flat torque curve. The cost for me to drive 300 miles on gasoline is around $25 now; on biofuel, it's around $35; on diesel, it's around $12; on electricity, it's $3. Battery storage loses less energy in conversion than biofuel chemical storage. Electric cars are less complex and require less maintenance than reciprocating piston engines. Superior power, performance, durability, longevity, and cost doesn't seem inferior.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Okian Warrior]

"That means operating the hyperloop would require less total energy expenditure than operating an air plane"

Besides the energy needed to ,you know, *build* the entire infrastructure... Which wears out, as opposed to air.

And why do you call it an "air plane" in two words? Are you posting from the 19th century?

The estimated cost of the hyperloop is between $6 and $8 billion.

The cost to build one terminal in a big city airport is in the neighborhood of $2 billion (terminal 4 at JFK, in today's dollars). And the hyperloop would replace two ends, so double that to $4 billion.

So as a quick estimate you could build the hyperloop and replace the functionality of 2 terminals and it would cost roughly twice as much.

It would also use much less land (no runways needed), and could terminate in the middle of a city a'la Grand central station.

You could move twice as many people, lots more freight, and at the same time spend less on energy, use less land, make less pollution, have less noise pollution, and be safer.

It's not quite as cut-and-dried as your out-of-context note would indicate.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Altus]

My actual concern is our ability to maintain it. A good friend of mine who is a civil engineer specializing in trains has been involved in proposals to build things like mag lev trains in the US. His determination is that we generally do not do a good enough job of maintaining infrastructure for projects that require high tolerances. We like to build it, we like to run it, but maintenance... not so much. Hell even the bullet train in Japan, just a rain system, has a train packed with instruments that runs the tracks regularly looking for imperfections and issues, we can barely keep our bridges standing. What are the odds that we take sufficiently good care of the hyperloop system in order to keep it operating safely.

Perhaps we will develop it and the rest of the world will use it, but if we want to have nice toys like this we need to start dealing with the maintenance of such infrastructure (and maybe our other existing infrastructure while we are at it)

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Zak3056]

First off, you do make some good points (especially with regard to the utility of having the station in the city center, instead of a 30-60 minute drive outside of town), but, that said, you're also oversimplifying things. Probably the most egregious example is to suggest that building the hyperloop replaces the cost of two airline terminals (especially using JFK as a model). JFK serves dozens, if not hundreds, of discrete destinations, while the hyperloop serves two. Worse, the hyperloop destinations are only a few hundred miles apart. JFK has flights to six continents. In other words, unless you are advocating replacing all air travel with hyperloop style transport (something that would cost several orders of magnitude more than the short range test project) you are comparing apples to oranges.

Lastly, you are looking at sunk costs vs new investments. It's not "we can pay for the hyperloop instead of the airport" because the airport already exists.