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

hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[rubycodez]

I can already sit in a high speed transportation vehicle that doesn't need evacuated high-tolerance tube, it just needs the pressurized tube that everyone sits inside (with luggage and avionics down below). Just like the Tesla, Musk pushes expensive toys that solve nothing and are inferior solution to existing tech (Telsa car inferior to piston engine running on biofuel)

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

[mozumder]

How much does the battery cost to replace?

Or is the battery non-expendable?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically you're an anti-progress idiot.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

super insightful comment...I can't see any differences between air travel and ground travel. Why do we even bother with cars and trains? Your logic suggests those are silly too.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bobbied]

It doesn't cost much to buy 500 Alkaline D cells... What's that? 50 packages of 10 cells at $12 each.... $600/charge? It's not Duracell but hey...

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[mechtech256]

Comparing a hyperloop to an airplane is apples to oranges. Misk himself says that longer journies (like east to west coast USA) would be more economically feasible by plane. A hyperloop is much more like a maglev train in that it's suited to midrange journies that take hours by car but aren't worth the hassle of an airport. When compared to high speed rail, hyperloops have some very real advantages.

Also, calling EVs Musk's expensive toys when you can clearly see the entire industry introducing their own EVs is disingenuous. Certainly you can see that EVs have some very real advantages over fossil fuel cars.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

Because airplanes (and runways) don't wear out?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Please believe me. Is my child dream to have a real electric car. I know and love the advantages.
But please believe me. I will not buy one until the second hand Tesla will fall under 15.000 US$. I am a cheap ass.
For me the car is a utility. I already pay too much insurance for this garbage.

P.S.
And no I don't want to use bicycle.
And public transport doesn't work between towns.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[gstoddart]

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.

But, a massive expenditure of energy to build this thing and connect it to where you want to go .. which means you spend a LOT of money building it.

And presumably, things like trans-oceanic things require vast bits of infrastructure of a sort we've not built.

Say what you will about aircraft, but if you build an airport with the right size runways, any aircraft with the range can use them.

I question is the hyperloop doesn't become one of those things which only gets you to a few places -- in which you still get on a plane anyway, or if it will really just prove to be a cool sounding idea which isn't really feasible.

Just how expensive is a network of hyperloop tubes to get you to all of these places, and is this in any way economically sane to think will ever happen?

So many of these things futurists tell us will be coming Real Soon Now more or less assume vast sums of money (spent by someone else) to tear down the world and rebuild it to work with your fancy new toy.

You'll excuse me if I'm not looking to invest in anything related to hyperloops. I have yet to be convinced this will ever happen.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[blackomegax]

You know it's an airline shill when their straw-man is THAT easy to destroy.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

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

FYI, the energy needed to *build* the entire infrastructure is what sustains both national and local economies for decades.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Archangel Michael]

I would think a Hyperloop would be best started "Small" scale, like within a City like LosAngeles. or NYC. And then connected to other nearby cities. However, with NYC, you'd piss off Taxi companies.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously a misspelling of "aeroplane". As opposed to "hydroplane".

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Archangel Michael]

HSR is a non-starter for most locations, IMHO. The cost is way too high for it to be functional.

Hyperloop is, from what I understand, way more flexible than HSR, and just as fast (or faster), with less of the overhead. That would make it a good replacement for larger citys like LA or NYC or even in metroplexes like SD-LA and the whole Beltway on the East Coast. It might even work for San Diego - Seattle or Boston-Miami runs.

Which is why I would suggest that if they start building it, start in NYC or LA with Proof of concept. The problem is, that nobody is going to build semi-permanent infrastructure for Proof of concept, as it is really egg-chicken problem.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[gstoddart]

Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.

With a hyperloop ... you need either central hubs to get people to their destinations, or multiple routes to get to multiple destinations. Just like cars and trains do now.

Connecting all of your destinations with lots of routes, that's going to get expensive. Doing them with many hubs and hops from one to the other? One begins to wonder if the whole thing still works as claimed or is even viable, or if it just becomes the same issues we have now.

Or, worse, you hyperloop to an airport and then get on a plane ... and all of your supposed benefits pretty much vanish.

You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and because of the abject stupidity surrounding those tubes it often takes longer to get through all of the theater getting into/out of those tubes than it takes for that tube to travel from its departure point to its destination.. Also those tubes are fairly sensitive to weather conditions, causing widespread transit chaos whenever a decent storm rolls through. (Hopefully) The hyper-loop system would be far less susceptible to both.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[wonkey_monkey]

Damn. All those idiots with their engineering degrees wasting their time when they all had to do was listen to Some Guy On The Internet to realise the error of their ways.

Seems to happen a lot round here.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

A hyperloop within a city makes absolutely no sense at all. At that scale you just have a low-capacity subway. Hyperloop makes sense where the alternative is flying or high-speed rail.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that's a fair assessment.

Has anyone built a prototype "Hyperloop" or is it strictly theoretical?

How would these air compressors work? Does an air compressor powerful enough to move a train even exist? Is it feasible? What happens if some kind of kink happens in the air flow? Does the passenger compartment just careen through the tunnel, indestructible? This whole idea of sending people through a 1920s-style inter-office tube system sounds drug induced to me.

My opinion is that Elon Musk is a good-hearted person with excellent salesmanship skills. A lot of his ideas are stupid though. Sorry. We have maglev trains that can move at high speeds already. We have planes. There is very little to gain with this "hyperloop" thing that doesn't even exist in prototype form three years after it was first proposed.

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

[bws111]

Except nobody has proposed any of that. Hyperloop is not supposed to replace long-distance flying, it is supposed to be an alternative for high-speed intercity rail.

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

[devjoe]

And anyway, that was already thought of in 1869 and completed in 1870.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

You don't know what hyperloop is if you think air compressors are moving the train. Read up on it a bit.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

That may or may not be true -- I'm pretty sure aeroplanes fly at 30,000+ feet because there is less wind resistance. Regardless of that, the bigger problem with all of these high-speed-rail boondoggles is that you have to build a massive infrastructure, and after you've spent all those hundreds of billions of quatloos, all you've got is a transportation system that is slower and more limited than what we already have. The problem of travelling several hundred miles, at 500 miles per hour, was solved 60 years ago.

An aeroplane can go anywhere in the world that has enough flat open space to accommodate the take-off and landing of the aircraft. With any kind of high speed rail, even high tech "hyperloop" thingies, you have to build an entire infrastructure that specifically goes from point A to point B, and you can only go to places that have that infrastructure - and nowhere else.

Why is it that almost nobody travels by train today (other than subways and commuter trains in densely populated areas)? Hint: It isn't because the trains don't go fast enough.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

You good sir have never apparently been privy to a layover. Also trains are the comparison here. There will still be airplanes, specifically for the infrastructure, but most US air travel only goes through a few cities as it is. On top of that ground based travel gives either more economy for scale or more luxury. A tin can can can only get off the ground so easily when it has to carry it's own fuel.Add to that the ability to segment traffic by destination without having them get out and it's worlds faster travel, less layovers, easier security...etc. As long as it's as fast as airplanes today and it costs less overall.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

Um, it is exactly because the trains don't go fast enough. What convoluted reason do you think it is?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Take into account fuel vs electric cost in your overall purchase price. You're anchored to your price because of costs associated with IC vehicles.
2. Why doesn't public transportation work between towns? Do you not have it available or do you just enjoy riding alone?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but if you're comparing paving a few feet thick of concrete over a runway to building an entirely new thing from here to there... I can't help you, and paranoia about "shills" everywhere. I'm sure there's excellent medication for this, but it's not made by Musk.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

My opinion is that Elon Musk is a good-hearted person with excellent salesmanship skills. A lot of his ideas are stupid though. Sorry. We have maglev trains that can move at high speeds already. We have planes. There is very little to gain with this "hyperloop" thing that doesn't even exist in prototype form three years after it was first proposed.

Yep, instead of the fictional Tony Stark people should be comparing him to the late Buckminster Fuller.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[xfade551]

If they just build the first line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas they should make their money back rather quickly (and probably get plenty of casino-based investors to help pay for it). The next legs could be Phoenix to Vegas or a San Diego to Vegas (perhaps with an L.A. connector).

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Public transportation in the US is a total and utter joke. Hyperloops between cities won't work either, not unless the feds and state DOTs get involved, purchase land from private people and build out new infrastructure. Public transportation doesn't work between cities/states because cities and states can't get along with each other. They are just bad neighbors who like to disagree on doing anything the same, even if one does something better the other won't implement it the same way because "it's our town".

For electric cars the quality of Tesla to hit that price point, it's going to be another 2 decades. It'll happen, just not soon and by that time, self driving technology will be taking over too. So if you're just now popping out kids, the likelihood of them even learning to drive is falling, we are now giving birth to the last generation of people born and raised in the US/Europe and other decently developed countries who will know how to drive.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[kaiser423]

Sure, both of them do ... but with airlines you build the infrastructure at the end-points only. The bits which connect those end-points? You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.

You mean other than the entire airspace spanning Air Traffic Control infrastructure that costs ~$7B per year to run? Lots of radar, stations, towers and other stuff to control things other than just the end-points.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[zlives]

considering average purchase of a car in US is 3.5 years... the battery is a moot point when it comes to this replacement issue.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Ichijo]

HSR is a non-starter for most locations, IMHO. The cost is way too high for it to be functional.

If airports were cost-effective, airlines would build them. Airlines don't build airports; therefore, airports are not cost-effective.

If roads were cost-effective, drivers would pay the full cost of them. Drivers pay less than half the cost of the roads. Therefore, roads are not cost-effective.

So what's left? What mode of transportation pays for itself?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

Still ignoring the whole 'airplanes' aspect of it I see. I wonder why that is? Do a sufficient number of airplanes to cover a route just appear out of nowhere for free?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[DRJlaw]

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.

The only way that diesel costs half as much as gasoline on a cost/trip basis is if you treat the whacky CA fuels market as the boundaries of your universe, with $2.60/gal reg and $2.40/gal ULSD.

In most of the US, you're looking at $1.50/gal reg and $2.10/gal ULSD, and then that difference goes away. An engine that has 25% higher energy efficiency running on a fuel that has 10% greater volumetric energy density cannot overcome a fuel that costs 35% more per volume.

In the rest of the universe, you also amortize the cost of the vehicle that gets you there and add it to the energy cost. A vehicle that costs 3-4x as much makes much of that difference go away as well.

BTW: At CA electricity and gas prices you're claiming that a 100% efficient Tesla, consuming only 62MJ of electricity, will make that trip, but a gasoline powered car would require 1180MJ to make the same trip. That is a 5% fuel-to-travel efficiency, not the 14-30% that is known.

All in all, your figures are crap.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

I must ask, where are you getting your electricity? Doing some quick research I pay a little more than $0.12 per kilowatt hour of electricity. For $3.00 I can buy roughly 25 kilowatt hours. Apparently the model S, on the small capacity battery takes 60 kW hours to charge, and is good for driving 208 miles. By those figures, driving 300 miles in a model S will cost me roughly $10.80. And from my understanding, I have pretty damn cheap electricity.

Re: hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like more information about this orbital airline service you mention. Where can I buy a ticket?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes 42 months to buy a car? Damn that is inefficient.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system originally put forward by entrepreneur Elon Musk, incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. (emphasis mine)

https://www.google.com/search?q=hyperloop&oq=hyper&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0l4.1432j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8

It's like one of those 1920s office memo tube systems on a larger scale. It's absolutely a drug-induced fantasy. I like Elon Musk's optimism and all, but he's just not that smart. The Tesla car is a super high-end golf cart. SpaceX is more costly and not as good as NASA. And this thing is pure bunk.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

"when it has to carry it's own fuel"

If you remove the extra apostrophes it can get much lighter: it's means it is.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[mspohr]

Airplanes for free?
I thought that they cost tens of millions of dollars each and hundreds of millions for airports and more for air traffic control systems.
Somebody has to pay for that.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, reading your post got me thinking of a Simpsons episode for some odd reason. The one where the town decides to build a monorail.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously dont live in Ontario, Canada...

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

There used to be a train between LA and Las Vegas, the Desert Wind. It shut down in 1997 due to budget cuts and lack of riders. Then again it wasn't an express train and took nearly 8 hours on average when you can drive quicker than that in good traffic or take a plane in even less time.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you point me to an article that talks about a hyperloop's actual passenger carrying capacity? I saw an old article that was very negative about how many hyperloop pods could actually be running through the tube at once in case of failure, etc.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

No, it is NOTHING like that. Perhaps you should consider reading more than one sentence. In those tubes there is different air pressure ahead of and behind the module. That difference in pressure causes the module to move. In the hyperloop, the air pressure is THE SAME throughout the tube. The pressure is kept low to reduce air resistance, NOT to provide propulsion. And the compressors are used to create the air cushion to keep the pod away from the tube. If the compressors fail, there is this amazing new invention called 'wheels' which contact the tube and allow it to move (at much lower speed). ALL of the propulsion is done by linear induction motors, which are hardly a new invention (ride Rockin Roller Coaster at Disney World if you want to see what they can do).

And there is no 'train', it is single 28-passenger pods.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[HornWumpus]

Are you implying that people in general 'know how to drive' now?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

Uh yeah, that is my point.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bluefoxlucid]

Uh, the Jetta TDI gets 62mpg in practice (someone did a 5,000+-mile trip going counterclockwise, west across the northern U.S. and then east along the southern U.S), while its gasoline counterpart boasts 32mpg on the highway and 27mpg in the city.

In most of the U.S., you need ULSD. Here on the east coast, gasoline costs $1.55 now and diesel is going for $1.75. A 300 mile tank on my Mazda 3S with the 2.4L (averaging a good 25-28mpg) costs $18 now; a few months back it was still around $25, when gas was $1.92. Surprising me with these low fuel prices.

BTW: At CA electricity and gas prices you're claiming that a 100% efficient Tesla, consuming only 62MJ of electricity, will make that trip, but a gasoline powered car would require 1180MJ to make the same trip. That is a 5% fuel-to-travel efficiency, not the 14-30% [fueleconomy.gov] that is known.

Yes but California is a lunatic state. See also: Texas, where some cities have electricity for under 5 cents per kWh.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

A ground-level, rail-mounted tube doesn't expend

Except for the massive amount of energy it's wasting holding the tube at vacuum.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

I can already sit in a high speed transportation vehicle that doesn't need evacuated high-tolerance tube, it just needs the pressurized tube that everyone sits inside (with luggage and avionics down below). Just like the Tesla, Musk pushes expensive toys that solve nothing and are inferior solution to existing tech (Telsa car inferior to piston engine running on biofuel)

I am sure at one point horses were superior to the piston engine technology while running on "green fuel".

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[SoonerPet]

If by average purchase you mean average age of cars on the road, you're very wrong. The average age of a car on the road in the US just surpassed 11 years old. This is exactly why the longevity and long term resale of a car is very important. I know I won't even think about an electric car until they ensure it will last at least 10 years without an expensive overall. I'm currently driving a 14 year old car and have no plans to buy a new one as this one keeps going strong, I have real doubts the same can be said for electrics.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[squiggleslash]

Kinda true, kinda not. The idea was to replace CAHSR, but CAHSR is itself billed as a replacement for flying.

Personally I think the Hyperloop proposal is done in bad faith - the system Musk proposed was supposedly substantially cheaper, but only served two of the four cities joined by CAHSR, was something in the region of a hundred miles away from those two cities, couldn't carry anything like the same number of passengers, and Musk hand waved quite a bit about costs (did he really think the CAHSR people hadn't considered viaducts? And in what world does a viaduct - even for a single pipe stuck up on stilts - cost only a quarter of a million dollars a mile?) suggesting it would probably cost several times the amount Musk proposed.

And, I'll be honest, I think travel in those things will be a nightmare. But I'd expect nothing less from anyone in the car industry - these are people who have never "got" public transportation, largely because they love driving so much they can't imagine anyone else wouldn't.

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.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bondsbw]

You don't need to build anything, because it's just the atmosphere.

You are ignoring costs such as:
- pilot labor (hyperloop will probably be fully automated)
- air traffic control (could be mostly or fully automated as well)
- maintenance (not sure the maintenance requirements of hyperloop but surely not as extensive as aircraft maintenance)
- security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)

You quickly wonder just how many thousands of miles of this stuff you'd need to build, and just how huge of an undertaking that would be.

Same concern with roads and railways, with the same answer: it only matters if the economic advantage isn't high enough.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

I said 'long distance flying'. HL is supposed to replace SHORT distance (few hundred miles) flying. And he says where he gets his cost estimates - from building pipelines, which we do today using the same materials.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[AaronW]

Once the vacuum has been created, the amount of energy required to maintain it is not significant assuming that there are no major leaks. I imagine that at the stations that the pod would enter a chamber where the air is removed before entering the main tube. Since most of the volume would be from the pod the amount of air needing to be removed would not be all that great. It also isn't a high vacuum, so it takes much less energy to obtain.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

WRONG. The pumps need to run 24/7 to maintain the vacuum.

You are a fucking moron.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[superdave80]

The car doesn't disappear in 3.5 years. It gets sold as a used car to someone else. So SOMEBODY has to replace the battery pack when it goes bad. And that will figure into the resale value.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Noble713]

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.

While I'm a huge fan of Tesla, I also greatly enjoy my dinosaur-burning sports cars. So I'm going to argue a few points here. For comparison's sake, consider a Chevy SS, powered by a LS3 6.2L OHV aluminum V8. IMO one of the greatest engines ever invented. Let's also consider a hypothetical engine swap with the torque-monster direct-injected LT1 from the Camaro and Corvette (the LS3's direct successor engine).

1. Performance. While the Tesla has instantaneous torque, the LT1 still delivers 300 lb-ft at ~1000RPM. That's barely above idle. Also, the SS is about 10% lighter than the lightest ~315hp Model S (4,000 vs 4400lbs), so the power to weight ratio is vastly superior. While the P85D probably skews outright power back in favor of Tesla, the damn thing weights nearly 5,000lbs. And the P85D is a 6-figure car. For the extra cost of that package, forced induction can be easily added to the V8 and return the balance of power to the Chevy.

2. Durability/longevity. Jury is still out on this one as I'm waiting to see how barely-maintained 10-year-old Model S's hold up. But pretty much all the kinks have been worked out of the LS engine platform and T56 6-speed manual transmissions. The only engines in the family that aren't utterly bulletproof are the 7.0L LS7 (high-G oil starvation during track use) and the supercharged LT4 (quality control during fabrication).

3. Fuel cost. Starting price on a Model S is ~$30,000 more than a Chevy SS. You would have to drive 400,000 miles to break even via fuel savings.

I'm really curious how you conclude that "power, performance...and cost" don't seem inferior on the electric cars.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[mikael]

The original railways lines in the UK were formed by making lots of small connections at first and then connecting them up later. London's underground started off as a tunnel going underneath the Thames and avoiding the smell and muck on the bridge. Then others started building more tunnels, eventually they kept extending all the tunnels until they started going over land as well.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[cnaumann]

You are comparing the estimated cost of the hyperloop to the actual cost of an airline terminal. If an airline terminal actually costs $2 billion to build, do you really think that $6-$8 billion is a realistic estimate for the hyperloop? How would a hyperloop terminal be any less complex than an airline terminal?

Less land?? Are you forgetting the amount of land that the tube take up?

You could terminate in the center of a city iff you could acquire the right of way to the center of the city. Good luck with that.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Thud457]

Advantage #342 of HyperLoop - unlike High Speed Rail, it doesn't share its infrastructure with overladen freight trains which tear up the rails and lead to lengthy delays and a unsmooth ride.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Drivers pay less than half the cost of the roads.

Is there a less biased source for this claim? Not saying that it is true or untrue, but, looking at other stuff on the site, this org has definite bias.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Gr8Apes]

Drive them until the engine stops or the wheels fall off.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's left? What mode of transportation pays for itself?

Harness slaves to wagons. It'd be almost pure profit minus a few pennies for food scraps and slop to feed each slave and to pay the wages of the slave drivers for feeding and lashing the slaves.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[gatfirls]

Well at least you know where the name came from: It took about as long as an actual 'desert wind' would take to get from LA to Vegas, maybe longer.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[wildsurf]

Presumably every Hyperloop capsule would be instrumented to gather data along its journey to immediately reveal any imperfections or problems. Since the travel surface is a completely controlled environment (no birds pooping on the tracks, etc.), it ought to be far easier to maintain than open highways or exposed railroad tracks. The Hyperloop system will directly generate revenue for its own maintenance and upkeep, whereas bridges really don't. (Toll bridges, maybe.)

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[nukenerd]

Hyperloop is, from what I understand, way more flexible than HSR, and just as fast (or faster), with less of the overhead.

How the heck do you make out that the Hyperloop is more flexible than HSR? Just one example of HSR flexibility : it can run off its high speed lines onto slower legacy lines for the purpose of reaching into an existing city central station; the French TGVs do this for example. That sort of flexibility is lacking with any system that needs a non-standard track.

If the Hyperloop is going to run at the speeds claimed, it is going to need some serious civil engineering because the curvature will need to be very gentle and the rate of change of vertical gradient very slight - or the occupants are going to be tossed around like dried peas in a rattle. That won't be a problem in a flat-ish desert, but in hilly areas it will need a lot of tunnels and high viaducts, not just the cheap 20 ft pillars that some people think are all it will need.

Flexible? - No.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

If roads were cost-effective, drivers would pay the full cost of them. Drivers pay less than half the cost of the roads [uspirg.org]. Therefore, roads are not cost-effective.

Tens of thousands of privately owned roads exist where the owner/drivers have always paid the entire cost of maintenance. And there are nearly 5000 miles of privately owned toll roads in the USA that generate income for their owners. Kind of undermines your argument, eh?

What people do does not follow reason or logic.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the vacuum has been created, the amount of energy required to maintain it is not significant assuming that there are no major leaks.

You are a massive idiot. Lets run the numbers just for a single mile line section 6" in diameter. This is a Volume of 150,000 cubic feet. This pump operates at 706 cubic feet per minute. So this pump will require 4 hours to pump that volume down by it self. It also requires 30kW of power. So for every hour it operates it requires 1.0E8 Joules of energy. It also needs to run 24/7 to maintain that vacuum. 24.0E8 Joules every day per mile.

By contrast a 787 has a max fuel capacity of 126000 liters and a range of 3500 miles. So it has a fuel efficiency (estimates) of ~36 liters per mile. Jet fuel contains about 4.0E7 Joules per liter. That means for a single mile the Jet expends 15.0E8 Joules per mile.

FACT THE JET IS MORE EFFICIENT

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

He said the amount of energy was not significant. He didn't say anything about not having pumps running all the time.

You're a mouthy little gobshite.

Posting anonymously to avoid directing any more attention to you and your stupid post.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

Exactly. That is why every jar of vacuum packed peanuts has a little pump included that is running 24/7. Because it is not possible to maintain a pressure differential otherwise.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Rei]

Or seriplane, hyperplane, or delaplane!

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[serviscope_minor]

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

They run them on normal rails to in the UK. I saw one parked at London bridge station a while back so I chatted to the techs. Impressive equipment on board. They've even got ground penetrating radar off to the side so they can examine platforms for structural issues.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bondsbw]

Sure, but consider that you are talking mostly about the US public infrastructure system. Private infrastructure has different incentives to keep up maintenance. That assumes a reasonable level of competition, of course.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[occasional_dabbler]

security (the potential for terrorist damage is much smaller considering you can't fly one arbitrarily into a building)

I think you have this the wrong way around. The only drawback I can see with Elon's Hyperloop is it's susceptibility to terrorism; you need to keep airport-level vigilance over its entire track length, that's a lot of razor wire, dogs and operatives.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[smooth wombat]

and could terminate in the middle of a city a'la Grand central station.

You almost had it. It is Grand Central Terminal, not station, because that is where the rail lines terminate. The trains do not pass through Grand Central, they stop (excluding the subway).

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[DRJlaw]

Uh, the Jetta TDI gets 62mpg in practice (someone did a 5,000+-mile trip going counterclockwise, west across the northern U.S. and then east along the southern U.S), while its gasoline counterpart boasts 32mpg on the highway and 27mpg in the city.

1. You're citing MPG from a Volkswagon diesel car? Can we turn off most emissions controls on the gasoline engine too, or is that considered cheating?

2. You're comparing someone's hypermileing adventures in a TDI on low roll resistance tires to EPA estimates for a 2.0L normally-aspirated, automatic transmission model. That's not remotely apples-to-apples. The EPA numbers are 45/36/31 for a Jetta TDI automatic, and the 1.8L turbo has better numbers than you're reporting with 20% more HP than the TDI (180 hp; 37/29/25). So, again, the comparison is crap.

3. Texas fuel cost is also almost half that of California's. 5 cent/kWh electricity is the same as $1.80 regular gas on a cost-per-MJ basis.

Why don't you pick one state, one set of roughly equivalent cars, and one style of driving instead of making crazy claims that not only can you halve operating costs by driving a diesel (no, you can't), but drop them by 87% by driving electric (again, no, you can't).

While diesel is more efficient and electric even moreso, the difference is not nearly so large as you claim. In the meantime, diesel has self-evident problems with particulates and particulate emissions controls, and electric has the minor problem that you cannot deliver that much power to that many people over the existing grid. Once penetration hits 5-10%, you're not going to get 5 cent/kHr electricity anymore if only because of the transmission costs increases that you will see for the next several decades. Many places already risk brownouts on extremely hot or cold days, and now you want to add loads that make AC and electric resistive heating look like someone left their lights on in comparison.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a complete fucking moron. That vacuum jar of peanuts is no where near the base pressure needed by the hyped up loop. If it were you would never be able to take the top off you fucking retard.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Gavagai80]

The only way that diesel costs half as much as gasoline on a cost/trip basis is if you treat the whacky CA fuels market as the boundaries of your universe, with $2.60/gal reg and $2.40/gal ULSD.

Regular gas is actually $1.95 in California (source: filled up today). Of course, it could easily be $5 again in a year with the right combination of events. Electricity prices are considerably more stable.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

You dumbfuck. Airlines do build them. Who do you think paid for the million tons of concrete at DIA? Who paid for the new runway at Midway? Who paid for the new airport in Houston. Oh, they were public works projects ... paid for with bonds that the airlines agreed to pay, and are currently paying. The government is involved mostly because the airlines don't get to pull the eminent domain card.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

The bits which connects those points is the plane. And planes cost a hell of a lot more than the hyperloop travel compartments. I get that you are double down on a bad argument, sometimes it is just too hard to let go.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

They're getting paid; they're happy taking your (taxpayer) money to write plans for a notion that won't work.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[WindBourne]

How much does the battery cost to replace?

/quote>
Unknown since it is not known how soon one needs to replace it. With the first round of the batteries in the MS (i.e. 2012 version), it appears that somewhere around 200-250K miles, is when the battery pack will be around 85% level. So most ppl think that it new packs will be needed around 2020-2022. At that point, it might costs 5K for a change.
Of course, with 200-250K miles on an ICE car, you will most likely have to rebuild the engine, along with all of that nasty maintenance.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bws111]

Why do you stick with your idiotic 'it has to keep pumping' idea? Are you really that stupid? After the original evacuation the ONLY thing the pump needs to do is pump out the LEAKAGE. And if the thing is leaking 750 CFM per mile something is very wrong.

Re: hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bondsbw]

Trains are much easier to derail, yet don't have the levels of security that you speak of.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlikely. There are much more effective bad-guy ideas than to try to blow up a tube of inch-thick steel mounted far off the ground on the off-chance you get lucky and injure/kill the tens of people going by at that exact moment. It'd be easier to just attack a regular passenger train, and we know how often that happens (tl;dr: in the US this has happened exactly once, in 1995).

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Citizen of Earth]

"Drivers" and "Taxpayers" aren't exactly non-intersecting sets.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Ichijo]

Oh, they were public works projects ... paid for with bonds that the airlines agreed to pay, and are currently paying.

Do airports pay property taxes? No. Do ticket prices cover the full cost of air traffic control? No. Do ticket prices cover the full cost of TSA screening? Also no.

the airlines don't get to pull the eminent domain card.

Unfortunately, that is also false.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

I like this post.

  But what will really kill Hyperloop, HSR and short flights will be the autonomous car which will probably be electric. Electric cars are cheaper to operate than petrol cars, not OMG its free!, but they are cheaper. Electric cars are reliable enough that its not really an issue.

  Both the model S and the Chevy SS can do easy 200-250kmph. So when they start driving themselves from door to door. LA to San Deigo in ~ 1 hr while you sit in the back seat and use your laptop/make calls and will do it for ~$40 a trip. Who cares?

  There is a reason why the car has become so popular in places like the USA. Europe and Japan are a bit different, not everyone has a car, a 3-4 hr jouney by road is almost thought as an expedition by many.

  You heard it here first, the car will kill train travel!

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps one of the roughly ninety sources listed on pages 34-38 of their report (pdf) will meet your standards for impartiality?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[CanadianMacFan]

I have some doubts that these are equivalent costs. The terminals for the hyperloop won't be need to be as large to handle a large number of planes. How do the number of passengers compare? Also the airport terminal has to have luggage handling facilities that the hyperloop terminal won't.

And if you want to go from the first city to a third city with the hyperloop then it will cost approximately another $6B to $8B (assuming it's about the same distance). By plane you build a new airport at the third city at a cost of bout $2B. Imagine then if there's demand for travel between the second and third cities. With the hyperloop you need to build the track but at least the terminals are already built. The airports are already built so your cost is $0.

I'm not a big fan of airplanes, especially for short haul flights but I don't think hyperloop is the answer.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Witness the simian mongoloid cretin gstoddart attempting to use the english language only to fail like the moronic imbecile he always evidenced himself to be!

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

How much energy would it take to silence the primitive simian sound issuing forth from your hole gstoddart (resident monogoloid cretin of slashdot)? We told you to stfu. Do it simian!

Re: hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

How about comparing it to a car in its class and not apile of shit with a archaic v8

Re: hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you ink a hyper loop travel compartment will be any different then an airplane? It's a pressure hull, propulsion system, guidance system and environmental control system. I suspect that the travel compartment will be much closer to spaceship than airplane if the vacuum tunnel foolishness actually gets built out.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[burtosis]

Exactly. With a subsidized cost of 4000 to 12,000 usd after every 8-10 years you are basically paying the same as gasoline despite the inexpensive charges. Further many people who purchased hybrid and electrics around 2006-2008 are now suffering from replacement anxiety.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[rubycodez]

the batteries aren't even lasting as long as promised, and the total extra cost of the car would buy decades of fuel. the math proves electric car at present more expensive

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor does the hyperloop require a hard vacuum...

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[rubycodez]

airplanes last for decades properly maintained, they don't salt the roads up there

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[rubycodez]

hyperloop isn't a vacuum tube, and it has air compressors to make cushion of air.

vacuum packed food doesn't have hard vacuum, minus five psi is typical.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

that was tried for railroad building. Lazy niggers did 1/3 the work of a paid chinaman and ate twice as much because of their bubble-butts. slavery is bad economics and poor efficiency, and what do you get for a product? something that looks and lasts like it was made by a nigger, that's what.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[ramsun]

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.

But, a massive expenditure of energy to build this thing and connect it to where you want to go .. which means you spend a LOT of money building it.

Massive expenditure of energy to build this thing? What does that remind me of? Something called the New Deal, I think. Where a country built these expensive bits of infrastructure called roads, when how all anyone needed were horse carriages.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's how vacuum pumps work you fucking moron.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

Tesla battery packs do not use regular, non-rechargeable, D cells that you pick up from a store.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

Point of order: Trains have been attacked a hell of a lot in the US. Many more times than just once. Depending on your view, you might even attribute some of those attacks to "terrorism." (History goes back before your date of birth.) If you want to see what that turned into (when not trying to derail them and cause loss of life) then Google for Sherman's Neckties.

However, attacking a "regular passenger train" has a fine history in this country. They've attacked passenger trains, with the loss of regular passenger lives, for everything from political motivations to robbery. In the former case, the attacks were getting to be so frequent that one fort or another actually had a decoy train - which was promptly attacked by the natives. I think that would have been Fort Philip Kearny, if you want to look it up. I'm not sure how it's spelled or anything and I'm kind of lazy this morning so you get to do it on your own.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

The 6 to 8 billion line is utter nonsense on the face of it. If Elon Musk has really figured out how to build this many miles of viaduct across mountains and the San Francisco Bay at this price, he needs to stop right now, present the paper on this technique alone and collect his Nobel Prize for revolutionizing the constructure of all infrastructure around the world. Really. This is nearly the cost to replace a single section of the Bay Bridge. I don't how we can seriously pretend that this 6 to 8 Billion is a real number.

But let's pretend for a moment that the number is right - his proposal has the Hyperloop going to Sylmar, waaaaaay up in the northern extremity of the greater LA metropolitan area, and well over a two hour drive from downtown. This already casts a LOT of doubt on your point of terminating in the middle of the city - especially when those ROWs for the next few miles are going to be much more expensive than the farmland In the Central Valley to build through. Plus you are going to get NIMBY's to death trying to get to downtown.

But that's also assuming that he can get the spacing between pods he thinks he can (he can't), the turnover between pods (also a nope), that people would accept 0.5g forces in their journey (BIG nope - that's roller coaster territory there) and that he could hold the integrity of the vacuum over that distance with pods going in and out of it constantly (nope).

It's not a serious proposal. I don't know why people think it is, apart from the guys in the OP, who are apparently scamming money out of it.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

I really don't know where to thread this but your comment is good enough.

I too don't know if the hyperloop is the answer. What I do know is that it's not going to be exclusionary. It's not like they're just gonna say, "Well, we built this one. Ground the airplanes, boys. The transportation issue is settled!"

We'll still have planes, trains, and automobiles for the foreseeable future. Having options or even just exploring new things is not a bad thing. It's not like we don't have a history littered with bad ideas. What's one more? It's not like this is going to be done to the exclusion of other choices. It's not like this is some mandatory thing that we're gonna be forced to ride in.

And no, I have no vested interest in this project's success or failure.

Re: hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

> Trains are much easier to derail

Trains are notoriously hard to derail when at speed, since they are damn heavy and just want to continue in the general direction of their movement, rails or not. There is a WW2 era US Army sabotage test film on Youtube, they found the both of the rails need to be disrupted at least 3 places, set dozens of paces apart and offset from each other, to reliably get a steam-pulled train off the track and wreck.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

Oh the things I could say... It's tempting but I'm trying to avoid novellas today. (I'm saving up.) Man, this would be a fun one to write. Ah well...

No, people don't know how to drive. In some areas, it's better than others. In all areas, the average driver is an inattentive idiot who's fortunate that the safety devices work as advertised and graced by pure, dumb, luck. People point to the number of deaths on the road and say it is too high. I say it's off my a couple of orders of magnitude from where it should rightfully be.

Some comedian speculated that they should swap the driver's side, steering wheel (yes, that actually has to be specified now), airbag for a big, sharp, steel spike. Sometimes, I'm inclined to agree.

No, most drivers know how to point and some aren't even good at that. They sure as hell don't know how to drive, but you know that. ;-) I point them out, when they're being "special," and I refer to them as the, "Mysteriously Not-Yet-Extinct North American Non-Driving Fuck with a License." I then make comments where I speculate that the reasons they're not extinct include mating habits and preservation activists who continually work to decrease their likelihood of death with engineering instead of education. Sometimes, I go so far as to agree that that's probably the best method as attempting to teach them seems like an exercise in futility.

Sorry folks but you're not in a race. Picture a *regular* glass of water that's full to the point where it's rounded over. Now picture it sitting on your dashboard. That is how you drive in snow. Lower the level a half inch for poor conditions but not snow. Low it a full inch for when the conditions are optimal. Adjust the level of water to suit the conditions. Accidents are almost always caused by driving too fast for the conditions. If you're fortunate enough to get off-road or onto a track, dump the glass out and throw it away, you don't want glass in the passenger compartment. And yes, yes there are some exceptions.

Tempting but no... You already know that the average person can't drive worth a damn and isn't interested in learning. No need to preach to the choir and most everyone else thinks they're a professional and a race car driver.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

Hmm... Lots of the roads, specifically the large interstate highways, were built after the New Deal had ended. They were built under the auspices of Present Eisenhower. He'd seen the military and civilian value in the autobahn and wanted to emulate its successes. (Note: The autobahn was not completed and was smaller then than it is now.)

I believe the story goes a bit like this:

Eisenhower saw a photograph of some Panzers going balls out in a line down the freakin' highway. He looked to his Aide De Camp and said, in his bestest and most Generalist voice, "Shit niggah! We gotta get some of that shizat up in this bitch. Dat be some phat shit dawg. Ya hear me?" His aide said, "Fuck ya, y'all gonna get busy up in there with their cars and shit but we made that shit fo tanks. For tanks! Tanks, bitch-ass-mother-fuckers made for tanks and aint no fuck gonna know that shit. I fucking hear ya, Big D Dizzle-dawg-hower, you feel me?"

And so, in the history books it is written. The laws were passed, the research done, the money spent, and the highways made big enough for tanks but mostly used by cars and trucks.

(General Dwight Eisenhower was also known as "The Big G" but when he became president he usually went for "Super P" and, while it's only a rumor, it's generally believed that the P was for Pimp.)

And, before anyone asks/accuses, I'm actually part black (mostly Amerindian, if you're curious) and currently have three people sharing this house with me who are also black. No Ebonics were harmed in the making of this post. Also, the reasoning for why I have three people sharing the house is long and complicated but it has been fun to have all these extra people around.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were you would never be able to take the top off you fucking retard.

Err... Of course you could? It just depends on the material. Lots of materials will hold that type of vacuum and still be easily punctured. I don't know how many of them are considered to be 'food-safe.'

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

I, too, am an automobile aficionado. I not only race a little bit (we've an pro-am rally circuit in my area with some nice routes) but I drove as a profession, worked in the industry, and now own what can best be called a "stable of cars." (I've actually posted pics of some of the more interesting ones. They are probably not what you'd guess.) I am not home but the car I have with me is a rather up-scale, "sport" edition, rather beefy 6 series BMW. I've even gone so far as to spend a couple of weeks in Germany, taking classes and then hiring a coach and doing laps in rented exotics at Nuburgring. I don't just love driving, I love the automobile. I love the engine, I love the noise, I love every bit about driving and that includes driving in traffic. I own a restored and modified 1982 Volvo 245 specifically because it's RWD and a whole bowl of fun in the snow. Yes, a 245. I also have a 911 ('78 in Targa trim) but that's mentioned to give you a bit of perspective as to where I'm coming from.

So, I think I'm entitled to opine. You are not obligated to agree or even listen.

But, ludicrous mode... Yes, I'm buying a Tesla just for that. The missus can drive it most of the time. I'm buying it for that and for that alone. I've driven one, before that mode was enabled, and it's actually similar to driving a 7-series. It's big but once you get the hang of it, it feels lighter on its feet than it is - the center of gravity is really low. The torque is instant. The ability to throw in some understeer is fantastic - once you realize that it's 2.25 tons.

I'm not just an automobile aficionado. I'm a driving enthusiast. How can I not buy a Tesla? My love is big enough for both an ICE and an EV. My thrill, some 45+ years after I first drove a car, is still the same when I get in it - even if it's to just go to a store. I go out of my way to drive - to this day. I don't even dislike driving in traffic. I have yet to drive one vehicle (and I've driven a whole lot of 'em) that I can't find a redeeming quality for - and I've driven a Lada. If it has wheels, I've driven something like it - where legal. Some of the things I've driven don't even have wheels. Some have as few as a single wheel but that was really riding. I'm happy when I'm driving a golf-cart or an electric wheelchair. I've driven things with a whole slew of wheels - as many as 22 wheels to be exact and not counting spares.

How can I not buy a Tesla? Ownership doesn't preclude my ownership and enjoyment of other things. No, my heart's big enough for all of 'em and it really will be vibrating with joy when I have one of my own to play with. The one I drove belonged to a friend, a trusting friend who told me to drive it like I stole it, but I didn't really get the chance to find all its quirks and fully understand the handling characteristics or find all the limits. I will put myself on the list to buy one once I'm back home and able to take delivery of one.

It doesn't work perfectly (or even work, really) for all of my driving needs. Not even close. My home is in Maine and 24 miles from the nearest village and over 60 miles from a real town. It's full of hills and bad weather that means I need something with more energy storage capacity than a Tesla. However, it fills a niche and will be appreciated - and used to its limits because automobiles are meant to be driven.

Again, how could I not buy one?

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[squiggleslash]

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

Unfortunately the "cost savings" Musk envisaged for the LA-SF version were in part achieved by not going anywhere near the cities it served, sitting tens of miles outside - a situation more extreme than most airports, which at least try to be close to the cities they serve.

You can probably build a pretty cheap airport "serving" LA if you build it fifty miles away too ;-)

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bobbied]

Sarcasm is lost on some I guess...

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bluefoxlucid]

Emissions control on a VW TDi in test mode gets worse performance, lower fuel mileage, but better emissions. So yes, let's turn the emissions control on the TDi into the correct operating mode and get 70mpg instead of 62mpg.

Most of the emissions control systems on gasoline cars actually improve mpg. EGR improves performance *and* fuel efficiency.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bluefoxlucid]

The batteries are warrantied and replaced if they don't last.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[zlives]

actually i meant actual typical ownership, looking at reccent numbers (been out of car business for a while) looks like the economic downturn has changed the figure to around 5.6 years... battery lasts longer than that.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[zlives]

exactly, it will get figured into the resale value, either it is replaced or the cost is removed from the purchase price.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely. Those types always circle jerk right up.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[HornWumpus]

Ticket prices? That has nothing to do with anything.

The usual 'lie with statistics' method to make your point is by showing that landing fees don't cover the cost of airports. Of course that's a big fat lie, it ignores the parking fees the airport also collects from passengers and the profit it makes selling fuel (or leasing the space to a private sector fuel supplier).

All the major airports in the USA operate at a profit for their 'sponsoring' cities. They pay the bonds issued to build them and return money to the local general fund.

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[KGIII]

I probably need batteries for my meter. :/

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[rubycodez]

and Tesla goes out of business if they don't last

Re:hyperloop without the hyper or loop

[bluefoxlucid]

So they have an incentive to provide well-made products and reasonable warranties.

Being paid is not the same as an industry

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be paid and produce nothing. Look at Facebook, or the US Federal Government. That doesn't mean you're an industry.

Re:Being paid is not the same as an industry

[Anonymous Coward]

And just because an organization produces something that doesn't have value to me, doesn't mean they are producing nothing.

Re:Being paid is not the same as an industry

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be paid and produce nothing. Look at Facebook, or the US Federal Government. That doesn't mean you're an industry.

Facebook produces a product, which is user data to governments and advertisers.

Re:Being paid is not the same as an industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk and his sick ambitions can go to hell, he's a perverted transhumanist.

Re:Being paid is not the same as an industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk and his sick ambitions can go to hell, he/she/it/they's a perverted transhumanist.

PC'd.

Re:Being paid is not the same as an industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you born in a hospital? Have you been vaccinated? Teeth have fillings? Wear glasses? Use a phone to communicate further than you can yell?

Um... got some bad news for you: you're also a transhumanist.

The fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut a hole in the top of one in the middle of the night. Pour in some concrete. Wait for first 400 mph fatality.

Re:The fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait for any loss of low pressure in the loop to trigger emergency systems, wait to get arrested.

Re:The fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't feed the trolls.

Re:The fun

[Rei]

If you're dedicated enough to climb onto a well elevated tube, cut a hole large enough to pour concrete in through inch-thick steel - after sabotaging all of the pressure sensors tbrough the whole length of the tube and feeding them false data - and then using a concrete pump with a very tall boom fill in the tube with concrete, in order to kill people.... then why not just fly planes into skyscrapers like most people? I mean, if you're going to go through that much work.
 

Important Stuff (for the discussion)

[Anonymous Coward]

* Please try to keep posts on topic.
* Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
* Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
* Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
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Re:Important Stuff (for the discussion)

[Pseudonymous Powers]

Hmm. I gotta be honest, none of that stuff sounds much like us...

Re:Important Stuff (for the discussion)

[Anonymous Coward]

* Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated.

...also comments that moderators do not agree with, do not understand, or do not fit in with the general left-wing political/anti-western cultural/anti-religious narrative.

Buzzword before business model ...

[gstoddart]

I hardly think this is a new thing ... in 1999 you could say you were a dot-com, and people would be throwing money at you. For a while you could declare an iAnything and people would be all over it. Business to Business caused a lot of hype for a while. Web 2.0 also had this huge amount of companies in the gold rush to get rich, as did Social Media. Internet of Things got all the hype you could imagine, but nobody even knew what it was yet.

Now it's "overhyped hyperloop hype". Once again, tons of people (both sincere but deluded and just hucksters cashing in) are all over this Next Big Thing.

People just go crazy and want to cash in, this isn't a new thing we're seeing. It just seems like in the last 20 years the hype cycle has gotten much shorter .. in a couple of years there will be done of companies left in the wake as the hype machine moved onto something else.

Somewhere, there are people with investment money looking to monetize an investment in something they've never heard of just in case it turns into something huge -- but I suspect an awful lot of wealth gets wiped as all these people just on random bandwagons which sound awesome.

Re:Buzzword before business model ...

[nukenerd]

Mod parent up - got it in a nutshell.

Re:Buzzword before business model ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Witness primitive simian mongoloid gstoddart attempting to play finance magnate, failing as usual in his attempt to emulate human beings (due to his simian howls).

Coming out party

[Anonymous Coward]

I too would like to have a coming out party, I've kept it secret how gay I've become for Elon Musk given all his monumental achievements, most notably his role in founding Paypal.

Re:Coming out party

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too I'd love to inhale his Musk, but this paypal is above my paygrade.

Click bate

[Anonymous Coward]

Tube masturbation.

STOP AND BE QUIET

[Anonymous Coward]

THERE IS A /. STORY THAT IS RELATED TO ELON MUSK THAT ALSO MENTIONS HIS NAME. Let us pause our day to take a moment
  and reflect on his greatness.

Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING ELON MUSK.

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Because idiot rich guy spends money on things that are pointless, but thinks he's being ultraistic? Just realize that this guy is just spending money on things to ease his guilt abut being such a large personal consumer.... Either that or so he can build up his ego among his high brow environmentally conscious friends... I don't care what he spends his money on personally, but he's just a guy with money, which isn't anything special in my book.

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[NEDHead]

I am not quite sure what ultraistic means, but I suspect is has something to do with comparing a very smart man who has had success in at least four different industries, to you.

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[Anonymous Coward]

And we should pay attention to some dimwit that thinks 'ultraistic' is a word?

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[Anonymous Coward]

ultraistic; of or related to the ultraist movement ["a literary movement born in Spain in 1918, with the declared intention of opposing Modernismo, which had dominated Spanish poetry since the end of the 19th century." --Wikipedia]. Or, Google thinks "ultraism" means "the holding of extreme opinions". Somehow I don't think either definition applies here, or is even the same league of literacy as GPP

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[NEDHead]

I'm just guessing here, but poster may have been looking for 'altruistic', but who knows...

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[HornWumpus]

Not the OP. But anybody who only knows one way to spell a word has no emagination.

Re:STOP AND BE QUIET

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I would hardly think so.

I would go with "ultraist" - the Spanish literary movement. I think it's wonderful that Elon Musk apparently thinks he is supporting that movement (after all these years too!) but is somehow mistaken about it.

Fear not for your batteries!

[Okian Warrior]

How much does the battery cost to replace?

Or is the battery non-expendable?

This is what a special-interest framing argument looks like. It puts the question into the reader's mind, and without context (and noting that most readers don't take the time to think about things) it makes it seem like an insurmountable problem.

(Viz: "Ted Cruze's Canadian birth will be a problem for him, I'm just 'sayin".)

Tesla is addressing the battery issue directly, with a buy-back program.

Also note that Lithium batteries have an exponential usage lifetime ('sorta), which means that once you've depleted your battery to 90% of it's capacity, it'll stay at that level for a long time.

Also also note that a battery which is taken out of service will still have 85% of it's charge capacity for a really long time, and there are a lot of uses for such storage. A factory building filled with old Tesla batteries could help smooth out electrical grid demand - supplying power during peak times, and recharging at night.

(Put that building full of batteries next to a wind farm, or inside the industrial area of a large city.)

Again, the batteries will keep 85% of their capacity for a long time, and if the application doesn't care much about space or weight, this makes a good use for older batteries.

Also, no one has even begun thinking about recycling the batteries. Ten years from now we might start thinking about reforming batteries, and making removable/reusable cases with the option to recycle the lithium inside. Like we now do with lead.

And finally, all of this information is just a click away using this neat new service called "Google".

Implanting doubts, uncertainty, and fear in the minds of readers is so much harder nowadays.

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[zlives]

not trying to troll but your link "Tesla is addressing the battery issue directly, with a buy-back program" doesn't "directly" address the battery cost. it does address the resale value like a conventionally leased car.

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[dpidcoe]

Implanting doubts, uncertainty, and fear in the minds of readers is so much harder nowadays.

hahahaha

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[Anonymous Coward]

I appreciate your insightful post, *but*

I'd trust Elon Musk more had he started thinking about recycling
the batteries yesterday, not 10 years into the future.

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[WindBourne]

actually, many things wrong with what you said.
Probably, the biggest is that Tesla HAS been thinking about recycling. In fact, GF is build just for that. Likewise, they will be re-using a number of the cells from a 'spent' pack to run their GF, prior to recycling (which is cool).

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[Citizen of Earth]

What happens to your warranty when Tesla goes bankrupt? Can't help but notice that its Earnings Per Share is -$5.32.

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[radiumsoup]

notice the "Cash on hand" numbers? If you only look at EPS, I really hope for your sake that you're not in finance.

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[KGIII]

I had a few bucks burning a hole in my pocket and I'd seen an early model Tesla. Lots of people were starting to mention them in the comments at various sites. I took a look to see who was doing what and what financial information could be had. I bought 2000 shares in Tesla when they were just a bit over $24 each. I still have them. No, I hope they're not in finances or investing.

Re:Fear not for your batteries!

[AmiMoJo]

Tesla claim to have tested up to 750,000 miles with around 85% capacity remaining. That is about what you would expect, giving that the Panasonic cells they use are rated for 3000 cycles, and each cycle is 300 miles range, so 900,000 miles over their lifetime. Lifetime is defined as >80% remaining capacity.

another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[k6mfw]

USA struggles just to get started in high speed rail systems of what rest of industrialized countries has for years. HSR has face significant resistance in culture and business (sorry the excuse for it costs too much is bankrupted considering how much this country has spent on other stuff with not much to show for it). Now along comes Hyperloop and HSR opponents immediately say we need to go this route because it's done by private industry. Not that there is anything wrong with private industry but I don't see them as implementing it where it needs to go, only where the investment pays off for them. However, as gstoddart pointed out this is a buzzword before business model that may kill HSR in the US and then it will go way of all those dotcom companies leaving nothing behind.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

High speed rail is useless in the USA.

It works great in Japan and Europe where towns are closer together. In the USA, the distances involved are just too far, barring a technological breakthrough. Such as Hyperloop.

Oh yes, and US rail is cripplingly expensive.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[zlives]

i my mind, HL is just an evolved form of HSR. and unfortunately, chances are it will be implemented exactly in the same manner. we can't do HSR because it costs too much but we will do HL because is costs even more?!! yeah i won't hold my breath. heck we don't even have a decent public transport system within cities.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[bws111]

Where are you getting the idea the HL costs more than HSR? The whole point of it is it is supposed to be much cheaper. The initial proposed route of LA-SF is supposed to cost $6B for HL, or $70B for HSR.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

The hyper loop is only cheaper if you completely ignore reality and pull cost estimates out of your ass.

It will never be cheaper than rail roads.

Re: another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this technological breakthrough: A map. Using a map you can discover that the US has densely populated coastal regions. Following this discovery you can then deduce that it would be a good idea to plan for high-speed rail connecting places where people live. This allows you to avoid blunders like building high-speed rail from Butt's Crack, Montana, to Nowhere, Oklahoma.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[eth1]

USA struggles just to get started in high speed rail systems of what rest of industrialized countries has for years.

Expensive HSR just doesn't make sense in the US. Look at a map of Japan, for example - its geography forces the major cities to be more or less lined up, such that rail built between any two major cities will be usable by a lot of traffic not necessarily going to or from those cities. The major cities in the US are all over the place, often with huge distances in between. You'd limit the potential passengers to only the people going between that handful of cities (which is made even worse, since with more major cities, there are more possible destinations to not have HSR yet).

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Zak3056]

It works great in Japan and Europe where towns are closer together.

That makes no sense--with high speed rail, you want fewer stops and longer runs, not stops that are close together. One of the challenges is that every town with rail running through it wants the HSR to stop there. Once it does, it's not "high speed" anymore.

Re: another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about this technological breakthrough: A map. Using a map you can discover that the US has densely populated coastal regions. Following this discovery you can then deduce that it would be a good idea to plan for high-speed rail connecting places where people live. This allows you to avoid blunders like building high-speed rail from Butt's Crack, Montana, to Nowhere, Oklahoma.

Part of the problem is that the densely-populated east coast has a lot of people living in the direct path of where the rails need to go in order to connect all of those cities. Those people tend to object to having their homes bulldozed and those who don't get bulldozed will object to the noise of the train. In Chicagoland, for example, the trains move quite fast when in the suburbs but slow to a painful crawl once inside the city limits where they pass only a stone's throw from existing houses and apartment buildings.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hyperloop is from outside LA to outside SF, High Speed Rail is downtown to downtown. The cost of the land to get in and out of town is going to be most of the difference.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[HornWumpus]

Technically solved problem but a political challenge. The small towns need to suck it.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[k6mfw]

boy oh boy, all these comments comparing US to Japan, Europe, etc. No! I'm not talking HSR across entire country like San Jose CA to Butte Montana. I'm talking about HSR to and from densely populated areas relatively nearby. Look closely at some areas it is much like Japan and Europe. Yes, it's expensive and yes it will be lots of work. What's the alternative? Just let hwy 101 and 5 between northern and southern California become a parking lot? My only take is the culture of this country knows of only two modes of transportation: Airplane and car. Other countries see HSR as a transportation system, US sees it like their grandpa's railroad. But I guess that goes with the territory, the very few cell providers talk of how superior their service is and yet going to just about every 3rd world country much better cellphone service.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[serialband]

Expensive HSR just doesn't make sense in the US. Look at a map of Japan, for example - its geography forces the major cities to be more or less lined up, such that rail built between any two major cities will be usable by a lot of traffic not necessarily going to or from those cities.

California is also long and narrow. A lot of those cities in Japan that are along their HSR were non-existant or very small towns before it was built. If anything, they should build it along an emptier stretch of land than along an already populated city centers. That would make HSR much cheaper. HSR is an investment into a longer term future of population growth.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't high speed rail also be outside LA to outside SF?

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are bullshit numbers and you know it. The tolerances are much tighter, and the land is just as expensive and valuable.

Re: another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely special problems for snowflake america not shared but other countries

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Zak3056]

I agree with this completely. That said, the OP I was responding to claimed that HSR was efficient in Europe because everything is close together. That's simply not true--more distance = more gain with HSR. Less distance = inefficiency.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much... or at least be Ok with a hopscotch scenario A b c d E f g h I > HS Links A-E-I, b-E-h, c-g-h, d-I.
Then you could bounce anywhere to anywhere, but you might need to skip back to get there, so maybe a rail trip no longer makes sense (eg, to go from SFO->Mountain View would require a train change at LAX; maybe drive/bus/BART instead).

Re: another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[luis_a_espinal]

Definitely special problems for snowflake america not shared but other countries

My thoughts exactly. It's like if Tokyo/Yokohama and Osaka didn't have these problems. And in the event that it were impossible to create a rail system within a system, then, the solution would be to have a viable public transport system (like Tokyo has between its subway lines.)

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much on budget have new unproven endeavors been?

I admit I kind of like the idea of HL, but if history is any guide, it won't be nearly as cheap as they say.

Progress happens incrementally. I'd be OK with a limited scale project to demonstrate possibilities.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[HornWumpus]

The OP said it wrong. It's not the distances covered, it's the population density.

Re:another obstacle for HSR in USA?

[HornWumpus]

Unless the cities get their share of the money directly, they won't support it. Making it a non-starter.

It's OK though. They will take their share of the money, not fix shit, then run the HSR from outside SF to outside LA.

Cars & planes were once expensive toys, too.

[Brannon]

Moron.

I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[Rei]

Seriously. I was a big fan of Hyperloop Alpha. But the MIT team that won the "Hyperloop" contest is proposing something nothing like Hyperloop. The test track that SpaceX is building is designed to support a wide range of vehicles, most nothing like that in the Hyperloop Alpha document. So if I say "I like hyperloop", I don't know what exactly it is I'm supporting anymore. What exactly is "Hyperloop" these days?

All I can say is that I really liked the alpha one. The MIT team's maglev thing is Meh^2.

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hyperloop: anything reminiscent of the vacuum chutes used to make bank deposits and distribute mail through large 20th century office buildings, but invented after Elon Musk and making sure to credit him with the idea.

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anytime you see the 'herp derp mail tubes' line you know you are dealing with an idiot without the slightest idea what hyperloop is.

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[Rei]

Indeed. That's one of the few things that one can say has nothing to do with either the original Hyperloop alpha concept or the new college competition entries. Pneumatic tubes mean that they make use of pressure to push things - that's what the word "pneumatic" means. Pressure being the one thing Hyperloop (all permutations) distinctly lacks.

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[q4Fry]

Please correct me if I'm mistaken. I thought the original HL capsule expected to pump (already low pressure) air from in front of the capsule to be (slightly higher pressure) behind it. Was that the mechanism for propulsion, or was there something else besides?

I was frankly surprised to see levitation on the MIT capsule. That implies to me that the tube has electromagnetics to repel against and is no longer "just a tube" with capsule-charging segments every so often.

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[bws111]

The air pressure is lowered (not a hard vacuum) in the tube to reduce air resistance. The compressors are used to provide an 'air cushion' between the tube and the capsule, not to provide propulsion. Acceleration is done with linear induction motors, but most of the time it is just coasting.

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[Rei]

In addition to what bws111 wrote:

Re: the MIT capsule: it's nothing like the Hyperloop Alpha concept (hence my post). SpaceX's test track that they're building is designed to handle a wide variety of vehicles, not just the one laid out in the Hyperloop Alpha concept. IMHO the MIT concept is utterly uninspiring. The drag levels are vastly higher, which are going to ruin pretty much every appealing aspect of the concept.

(but no, the tube has no electromagnets, the MIT design involves induced magnetic fields for propulsion)

Re:I don't even know what "hyperloop" is any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

** lift, not propulsion

A few potential issues

[meerling]

First, let's drop the hype, this idea is ancient for 'new ideas', it was published in an issue of Popular Mechanics older than Elon Musk (40s era issue I believe) .
Now here's a huge issue I haven't seen anyone talking about that gets progressively worse as the track/tube length increases, subsidence and ground movement.
Yes, that's right, all those super tight tolerances needed to keep it air tight and within safe turning range of a high speed capsule are at risk.
No matter how much we like to pretend, the earth isn't 'rock solid steady'.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up soil subsidence, faults, and even earth tide.
Earth tide is an interesting one and it can be around half a meter, depending on location and conditions, but it effects pretty much the entire planet.

The point is, there are serious issues about trying to keep an airtight low pressure tube of extraordinary length intact and functionally safe, especially when you're going to be shooting giant passenger carrying bullets down it. That's one target you better not miss.

Yes, there are probably a ton of other issues I've never thought of, but I'm not an engineer and it's not my job to be intimately familiar with variant thermal expansion rates or whatever else might go wrong with this concept. I still think it makes cool mad science fiction, but I don't see it being a rational expenditure of resources and effort at this time. (By the way, how much material would such a full sized tube use up, and whats the current national production of said materials?)

Re:A few potential issues

[wildsurf]

Now here's a huge issue I haven't seen anyone talking about that gets progressively worse as the track/tube length increases, subsidence and ground movement.

The subsidence / ground movement effect is dwarfed by the simple thermal expansion of the tube over the day/night cycle, which can grow/shrink up to hundreds of meters over the length of the tube. This effect can be compensated for by allowing the tube to slide smoothly across the pylons to achieve tensile equilibrium. (Perhaps with motorized assist to overcome friction.) The "slack" is taken up at the endpoint stations, through a telescoping system. Each pylon can allow for perhaps a meter of lateral flex to account for local ground shifting, and the pylons themselves can be easily repositioned if they start to get close to their tolerances in a local area.

By the way, how much material would such a full sized tube use up, and whats the current national production of said materials?

The complete Alpha-design hyperloop from LA to SF would use about 1 million tons of steel, or about 0.02% of the world's current annual steelmaking output. For scale, this is about 10x more steel than the Birds Nest stadium in Beijing, or about 100 Eiffel Towers' worth.

Re:A few potential issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, right, it's like the dream of transporting oil across Alaska, a land riddled with fault lines and daily earthquakes.

Re:A few potential issues

[Anonymous Coward]

The need for a high grade vacuum, in a tunnel network that presumably will span hundreds (or thousands) of miles, has always seemed wildly impractical to me. It's a neat idea if you could overcome that. However in the real world, how do you maintain your seals? How do the tunnels stay airtight?

And when the evacuated space is so large, it presents a huge surface area for the atmosphere to act upon. The mechanical strength required to resist the weight of the atmosphere is enormous. If fact it's so great that the classic subway 'train leaves tunnel and enters open station' design simply won't work at all. The pressure of the atmosphere would force the train back into the tunnel. In fact I imagine it would hit the nose of the train like a brick wall and cause a crash.

The trains have to transition from 1 atmosphere to vacuum and do so tens of thousands of times. The wear characteristics of gasket materials under these conditions are not favourable, especially with heavy trains, lots of vibration, and the dirt of years of service. And no, you won't be able to maintain a 'sealed, pristine environment because vacuum'.

OK, so you can pump the tunnels continuously. That certainly does help. However this is rather like bailing a leaky ship; it's valuable and preferable to the alternative, but really you would rather your ship didn't leak at all. Bailing buys you time but it doesn't address the core problem of leakage and infiltration.

California?

[bluegutang]

California is a strange place to start the hyperloop project. There are two mountain ranges between LA and San Francisco, and the dominant cost of the high-speed rail project is bridges and tunnels to cross the mountain ranges. Hyperloop is designed to go over twice as fast as high-speed rail, which means the curves have to be much more gradual, meaning longer and more expensive tunnels and bridges.

Musk should really think about starting the project in a flatter area, perhaps between Chicago and Dallas, where it really could be cheaper than rail.

Re:California?

[bws111]

The entirety of hyperloop is built on pylons of varying heights. In effect the whole thing is one big bridge. This is one of its major selling points, and why CA is chosen.

Re:California?

[bluegutang]

Three-meter-high pylons are cheap. But when you're climbing a thousand-meter mountain range, either your pylons have to be hundreds of meters high (and thus VERY expensive), or else you need to navigate curves at lower speed.

Re:California?

[bws111]

Oddly enough, the people at SpaceX managed to think of that! Their calculations show they need 14768 6-meter pylons, 2175 15-meter pylons, and 966 30-meter pylons, for a total cost of $2.5B. There is nothing even close to 'hundreds of meters high'.

Re:California?

[HornWumpus]

CA's central valley is flat and boring. The only reason the current HSR proposal goes all the way into SF is politics. The SF locals had to be paid off.

Sensible plans would put the northern terminal at the southern end off Caltrain or in Sacramento, linking with the AmTrack commuter line. Gets you away from the seriously expensive real estate and many of the real industrial grade crazies.

Similar solutions exist in the south. I'm less familiar, not having ridden them.

Re:California?

[HornWumpus]

I should note: Once SF has finished spending it's budget to _not_ upgrade the CalTrain right of way, HSR will stop at the southern terminal anyhow. They will bitch and moan and demand the feds give them more money to continue not upgrading the right of way.

Re:California?

[gatfirls]

I have a sneaking suspicion that there's some really, really smart people who have considered the day 1 "why this won't work" aspects of the project like terrain.

My guess is that pretty much anywhere has geographical hurdles to cross for that kind of distance. From what I have read the land rights issues are much, much more difficult to overcome so a place that is effectively nothingness between two points makes it much more attractive.

Re:California?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that doesn't include the addition cost of purchasing the land and clearing the right of way. Cost of pumps to maintain the vacuum. Cost of running power lines to power the pumps. Cost to run the pumps 24/7. Leak checking along will be a massive cost.

Re:California?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

There's no reason to believe that those day 1 concerns aren't valid. Some people who have a lot of money are willing to do things inefficiently for their personal convince... like put projects close to their house at thrice the cost.

HSR is a niche technology

[Anonymous Coward]

HSR is a niche technology. You have to have a megacity, like Japan, China, or South Korea to make high speed rail really work. Most of Europe really just uses upgraded passenger rail. Spain is never going to get its money back on its lines, and most of France's new lines are unprofitable (the best city routes were built first).

As for the United States, the governments in the Northeast have big problems. The Northeast United States has some of the highest construction costs in the WORLD. California has mountains with complicated geology, and fault lines, which means very high costs. No where else in the country can support high speed rail.

Airplanes are very efficient, except for energy consumption. Even artificial hydrocarbons made from wind power will be cheaper than high high speed rail.

this is america, so consider the sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

will the sequel be called the ultraloop? ehh, "hyper" seems a bit above "ultra".

throw some german in to sound cool? uberloop?

hyperloop II, brough to you by carls jr?

maybe call it the fermiloop, market the colloquial version as "ride the fermi", then give it a cute mascot geared toward children?

Where's the "vaporware" tag?

[dasgoober]

I want to get into a field where I don't have to show results - but still cleaner than politics.

Gradjuate of teh ACME school of Engineering

[Anonymous Coward]

See, this is why you're not a genius billionaire like Elon Musk.
He's going to save money on expensive high-performance compressors by simply extending the ends of the tubes to space where there's plenty of vacuum to be had for free.

Capitalism is stupid

[bigsexyjoe]

Film at 11.

Hyper Loop is an old idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new about the idea of using pods to move people around in tunnels nor are any of the propulsion technologies anything new.

There is no Hyperloop and until we have robotic labor nobody is going to be able to afford the immense building costs for the relatively small payoff in transport.

In other words.. a train would still move a lot more people around for a lot less money and most nations will want to go with that approach.

Why not just drive a car into the hyper loop pod and make it even easier? These are all old ideas that we've bounced around for decades. Pickup a Popular Science or Scientific American magazine sometime and enjoy the endless ideas out there. Sadly though, few wind up being practical.

Jetsons BS

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Hyperloop Hipsters

[Irate Engineer]

They were in the hyperloop industry before it was cool, or even a thing.

Pro-tip: You might want to let someone prototype and test the concept and see if it actually works before getting carried away about building the infrastructure for the hyperloop economy. Speculation is great until you fuck up and get it wrong and are left with a lot of pissed off investors and a hyperloop seat cushion factory that no one wants.

SkyTran beats Hyperloop

[msc.buff]

Would somebody please tell Mr. Musk about http://skytran.net/

Hyperloop is an interesting concept but it doesn't come anywhere near what we really need right now or even in the near future.