Hyperloop One Technology Tested Successfully In Nevada Desert

Dave Knott quotes a report from CBC.ca: Hyperloop One (formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies) conducted a successful test of its high speed transportation technology Wednesday in the desert outside Las Vegas. The seconds-long, outdoor demonstration featured what appeared to be a blip of metal gliding across a small track before disappearing into a cloud against the desert landscape. A fully operational hyperloop would whisk passengers and cargo in pods through a low pressure tube at speeds of up to 1,207 kph (750 mph). Maglev technology would levitate the pods to reduce friction in the city-to-city system, which would be fully autonomous and electric powered. A day earlier, the company had announced the closing of $80 million in financing and said it plans to conduct a full system test before the end of the year.

Comments

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

that is all

possibly a great idea...

[Black Parrot]

but it troubles me that the name of the company and the technology both start with "hype".

Obligatory...

[RyanFenton]

LInk to the classic Simpsons musical, Monorail

Monorail, Monorail, MONORAIL!

I mean, HYPERLOOP!

Seriously though, train systems of all sorts are an important part of an overall transportation network - it's just too appropriate not to post.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Obligatory...

[RyanFenton]

Actual link

Teach me not to preview!

Looking in the wrong place for emissions cuts

[Dorianny]

If you are looking to cut emissions expanding Freight Rail is a much better investment then Sexy Hyperloops or Bullet trains.

Re:Looking in the wrong place for emissions cuts

[Michael Woodhams]

So ideally for a freight rail system we want high throughput, short delivery times, cheap, and running to/from convenient nearby locations.

Breaking this down further, it suggests we want
* Small trains (lowers latency - less time to wait for a train going to your destination. Removes/reduces need for transferring cargo between trains by allowing point-to-point service, so long as the 'point's are train stations.)
* Autonomous (required by 'small trains' and 'cheap')
* Handles congestion well (for high throughput with lots of small trains)
* Fast
* Moderately priced infrastructure.
* High density of train stations around the country
I.e. something like an internet for shipping containers.

Hyperloop gives us 'fast', but fails on infrastructure price, fails at least initially on density of stations, and congestion may be problematic. Starting with the existing rail network and moving to more automation and smaller trains and solving some congestion problems (perhaps the hardest bit) gives everything but 'fast', but for many purposes is 'fast enough'.

It still needs to be competitive compared to autonomous trucks.

TL;DR: I agree.

Re:Looking in the wrong place for emissions cuts

[Ramze]

That sounds like a solution looking for a problem. My uncle and grandfather work(ed) for the railroad. For freight, you're never going to make a dent with this plan. Freight is all about momentum, not speed. Starting and stopping cargo are the hardest parts. You need a powerful engine just to move 1 fully loaded car, but that same engine can pull lots of cars -- it just hast to pick up speed over time. You're never going to pick up serious speed before you get to a populated area where you have to slow down -- because railways cross roadways. Stopping even a single car quickly requires a bag of sand to be dropped on the steel railing and makes enough friction to ruin the wheels. You're not going to get cars carrying tons of cargo to go faster than the current system. Worse -- breaking up a single locomotive train w/ tens of cars into lots of smaller cars means lots and lots of wasteful engines that have to pull those smaller cars. They'd also have to have a much larger space between each car to be able to reasonably slow down in time should one have a problem. You'd need to increase the number of tracks to make up for the wasted space to push the same amount of cargo over time. In short, there's reasons why they do things the way they do them now... mostly physics and logistics reasons.

Assuming you could update the patchwork of decades old systems properly, it wouldn't give you much savings as humans will likely be required for safety reasons well into the future - just like pilots still fly passenger planes even though autopilot does most of the work between take-offs and landings... even subway trains have conductors. We're talking about miles of track that cross public roadways with children on bikes -- not going to go fully automatic anytime soon.

Even if you re-designed the entire system to be above-ground mag-lev freight with novel breaking systems to achieve this insane acceleration/deceleration, you'd have such massive construction and power issues, it would be super-expensive. The average weight for a freight rail car is around 130 tons fully loaded. A fully loaded passenger maglev car is between 50 and 70 tons. It's not impossible... and one could often just split the cargo between multiple cars if needed. It'd be expensive, though. You'd still need to use trucks to get from the train station to the final destination.

The hyperloop is for extremely fast passenger travel to replace airlines. It has lightweight cargo (people and maybe luggage), and can be built on railways above ground with cheaper construction than the support needed for heavy freight. Above-ground tubing can be safe enough to be an automated system. It's horribly expensive because of the land purchase, construction, maintenance, safety, etc... but, once it's built, it could offer transportation faster and safer than air travel. Should eventually be cheaper, too -- and no need to worry about hijackers as it's on a track... and there's no explosive fuel to blow up a building with even if it went off-track.

Basically, the hyperloop is the replacement for air travel over land. It could also carry cargo/freight in addition to passengers if the weight and space constraints allow. A hyperloop or maglev train system might solve other problems with the freight industry as well.

Re:Looking in the wrong place for emissions cuts

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not entirely convinced by the Hyperloop idea. It's not that much faster than the maglev is expected to be (the main limitations at the moment are the length of the test track and an abundance of caution) and carries many fewer passengers.

That could be a big issue in the US, because people there are not as disciplined as the Japanese when boarding trains. Bullet train doors open for 30 seconds exactly. People line up and board in an orderly fashion. Thus stops are short and turn-around fast (the cleaning staff do the whole train in 10 minutes, while technicians do an examination from a trench below the platform.)

Maybe there is a clever solution to this, but otherwise the small number of passengers and the relatively slow boarding times could end up making it slower. Plus you have to worry about the TSA ruining it.

The new Japanese maglev is projected to cost around $80bn, and is 90% tunnels. Final length will be around 300 miles. It will start off at around 500km/hour, but is expected to reach 900km/hour eventually. Local governments at the Osaka end of the line, which will be built last, are trying to get additional funding to speed the process up.

For freight there is already a fairly extensive network of lines. A lot of freight moves at night on lines that are fully utilized by commuter trains during the day. The high speed bullet trains mostly have their own dedicated tracks.

Re:Looking in the wrong place for emissions cuts

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be curious to know(I'm not doing doubt-in-the-form-of-a-question, I honestly don't know) how much freight goes by truck rather than by rail because of deficiencies in the rail network;

I've been a supply chain and logistics guy for most of my career. The answer is not much but it depends on what you want to do.

First of all, you can never get rid of the truck. The problem with trains, ships and the Hyperloop is they're lines to single points, but the freight is only useful at the point where it needs to go IE a store or warehouse or factory. You will never have a Hyperloop station at every store or warehouse or factory, so you always need a truck to deliver from the station to the destination point; this is referred to as drayage.

AIr freight is not an option. It's 100 times more expensive per lb than any other method and it's used only for specialty stuff. 98% of the worlds' goods move via containers and no plane can handle a container at all. So we'll just take the plane out.

Truck across country is beneficial because you can move a whole container fast; a truck driving from the East Coast to the west coast with a 2 man team (where one sleeps while the other drives) can move across the country in 24 to 36 hours. This is expensive, it costs around $6,000 to $10,000 per container and only used in "rush" jobs.

Rail has time constraints because you have to stick to the train schedules, adn the trains may make several stops. If time is not a factor this is ideal, as it costs around $1,500 to move a container via rail and can take about 1 to 2 weeks depending on when you can get rail booked.

Ship is best. If you're in the Midwest and shipping to the East coast, you're near the Mississippi River system and you can put a container on a barge and float it all the way to Maine if you want. It takes about 2 weeks but the cost is about $300. This is not really an option for West Coast to East Coast or back shipping because Central America is in the way, and the Panama Canal is expensive unless it's on a ship that can handle 2,000 to 5,000 containers.

The cheapest is by water, always. It's around 10% of the cost of any other form of freight, adn the bigger the ship, the lower the cost. The Panama Canal is mainly used for international freight, goods from Asia being sold in the US, but you can only get a 5,000 container ship through the Canal whereas the biggest ships are 18,000, so some freight is offloaded on the West coast and sent via rail East. All that is changing with the Canal expansion which can now take 12,000 container ships, so there is going to be a reduction in freight moving via land already.

But the truck will never go away. Rail, water, or Hyperloop, freight has to go to a station, and then it has to get from the station to it's destination. That requires a truck, period. Hyperloop will not deliver to every store or every warehouse in the world. This is called drayage and it's expensive, drayage runs around $300 to $500 per truck depending on size and what you're carrying. So Hyperloop for moving freight is actually competing iwth water transport via the canal and still has the trucks for the final point delivery, and quite frankly I don't see how they get there at all.

Re:Looking in the wrong place for emissions cuts

[luis_a_espinal]

Bullet train doors open for 30 seconds exactly. People line up and board in an orderly fashion.

You mean they don't hold the door open when the time runs out? Wow, you'd never get that discipline here.

The door closes, that's it. That's why they have helpers that, well, help passengers get in, and pack them up nicely and safely before the bell sounds that it is time to close the door. No limbs or noses will protrude from closed doors.

Plus, the typical Japanese passenger will not try to force his/her way once it's time to close the doors. That system works because the Japanese people make it work. It is something that it is almost impossible to grasp until you experience it (btw, being packed like a sardine sucks.)

That would never work here. You'll get a riot with assholes pushing themselves through the doors. I can only imagine: "Yo! Hold on, I'm still here, what is this closing of doors in 30 seconds. This is bullshit, this America! Huuur huuur! Get out of my way!" followed by someone pulling a gun and shooting as part of a new phenomenon: train rage.

I mean, people trample and beat the shit out of each other for some cheap shit on Black Friday, like if we were in a post-zombie apocalypse famine and everyone is fighting for the last burrito on the face of the Earth. We are that much of savage and dumb.

Maglev,,,, really?

[TechnoCore]

I thought tve whole point of hyperloop systems were that they did not use maglev, but floating on a cusion of air insude a tunnel instead. To radically reduce cost.

Re: Maglev,,,, really?

[jsm300]

Maglev is becoming a viable technology for long distance rail. The low pressure tunnel allows for more efficient low drag travel, perhaps even supersonic travel. How do you propose that the train "float" on a cushion of air in a low pressure environment? What form of propulsion are you proposing that is going to work in this low pressure environment, assuming you have a solution for the "floating" problem that doesn't involve maglev?

Re: Maglev,,,, really?

[Firethorn]

The low pressure tunnel allows for more efficient low drag travel, perhaps even supersonic travel. How do you propose that the train "float" on a cushion of air in a low pressure environment?

The same way a plane 'floats' at high altitude - a large amount of speed gives you access to all the air you need.

Re: Maglev,,,, really?

[Firethorn]

You don't need superconducting magnets for maglev trains. There are a surprising number of options. At least one uses an induced current into wires to create a temporary magnetic field so the only power source needed is in the train. You can work this in reverse as well, so the train doesn't need to supply any power.

Most are still expensive, of course.

Re:Maglev,,,, really?

[Rei]

It was. I don't even know what "Hyperloop" is supposed to mean anymore, as SpaceX held an official Hyperloop competition and selected as winners craft that were absolutely nothing like in the Hyperloop Alpha design. Their test track is designed to allow for all kinds of vehicles, maglev or not... but most of the teams were focused on maglev. No compressors, either, meaning that they can't shunt air from in front to behind, meaning either high drag or requiring a hard vacuum for operation.

I personally find the deviations from the Hyperloop Alpha design to basically ruin the entire concept.

Re:Maglev,,,, really?

[Rei]

No harder than a high pressure tube that's hundreds of miles long (pipeline), and we do that all the time. The cost of the steel for the proposed route isn't much over $1B, if I recall the numbers correctly.

Re:Maglev,,,, really?

[Rei]

Firstly, if you use air within the tunnel that 1) increases drag and 2) the compression of the air will heat the air causing issues. Secondly, maglev provides the propulsion as well as lifting the vehicle to reduce friction.

As per Hyperloop Alpha, air bearings produce significantly less drag than maglev for the given application. As for the bulk air, in Hyperloop Alpha, the compressor shunts air ahead of the vehicle to behind it (it's exceedingly sparse). Lastly, in Hyperloop Alpha, total drag was so low that propulsion segments were only needed rarely, very spaced out along the track.

Of course, the new competitors are so different from Hyperloop Alpha as to render the term "Hyperloop" meaningless.

Though the Hyperloop air bearings provided a solution that's cheap per unit distance and very low drag, they were not without flaws. Foremost was the very narrow gap (0,5-1,3mm) between the bearings and the walls (needed for high lift at low pressures/drag). That said, those gaps are positively gargantuan compared to some air bearing applications - hard drive air bearings float at heights often no more than a couple nanometers over the surface. But that still means close tolerances. Hyperloop Alpha's solution for construction was a polishing robot that drives down the tunnel with a circular polisher, grinding off any unevenness in the welds or the bulk pipe. Achieving 0,1-0,5mm tolerances with such a system isn't particularly far fetched.

Re:Maglev,,,, really?

[Rei]

Earthquakes make surfaces rough? That's news to me.

I assume you actually mean "out of alignment". Wherein, you need to read the Hyperloop Alpha document, they spend a good bit of time talking about isolation, maintaining alignment, and earthquake resistance.

So amatuerish

[Powerbear]

I couldn't believe how crude their contraption is. Everything they did is 20+ years old. There are theme park rides a hell of a lot more advanced than that thing and they will brake automatically and carry passengers.

Why aren't they concentrating on a 1/10 scale proof of concept that will be a hell of a lot cheaper to make and can advance the technology?

Re:So amatuerish

[nyctopterus]

Yeah, I'm sure they're all idiots and you have the complete engineering context for this test.

Re:Pressure suits and air supply

[jsm300]

This is already partially solved in a way similar to passenger jets, which have to deal with a similar problem. You need enough oxygen for each passenger to last long enough until the problem can be addressed. For a passenger jet, that means 12-15 minutes while the pilot dives to low altitude. For a low pressure tunnel emergency that means slowing the train down and then letting normal air pressure into the tunnel in a controlled fashion. As far as air resistance is concerned, I think you are thinking about lower speeds than are planned for a hyperloop solution. Hyperloop designs are considering speeds that approach or possibly exceed mach 1. Drag goes up exponentially (velocity squared), so the air density becomes a much greater issue at those speeds. Besides drag, you also have to take into account the heating of the train due to drag.

A station wagon full of SD cards

[goombah99]

this is just the old bandwidth comparison between a staionwagon full of mag tapes versus the internet. yes the station wagon wins on carry more with less effort. but it loses on latency. Hyperloop is for people, freight trains are for freight.

Re:100 miles per hour per second

[just another AC]

is 4.5g forces. That's the lower bound on how many g's it pulled in the test. if you accelerated that fact to 750 miles per hour that's 7 seconds. You would pass out unless you were in a g-suite, and maybe even then.

Where do you get that idea?

It is reasonable to say that some people might pass out, but the tolerance to g forces is highly individualistic. Also passing out is highly dependent on direction. Hence you can black out with downward g, or red out with upward g. being pushed into the seat is the most friendly of these, and at only 4.5 should be tolerated by most people, albeit not that comfortably.

Re: Yeah right

[c.s.carlson6]

Unless people love it. What if it's super convenient?

Re:100 miles per hour per second

[Rei]

On a test track, the G forces are irrelevant.

Re:Yeah right

[Rei]

Note: everything I write below pertains only to Hyperloop Alpha. As for whatever else passes as "Hyperloop" these days, I have no comment.

What, a bunch of gravel, some concrete, and two thick beams of steel on the ground.

Made of segments with two welds, polished, versus a single orbital weld, polished.

We make long cylindrical pressure vessels all the time. They're called pipelines. No, they don't cost a fortune (relative to the cost of HSR). Their cost/(cross section * length) ratio is similar to that proposed for Hyperloop. Of the differences, they're mixed pros and cons. For example, hyperloop doesn't carry toxic chemicals - permitting / environmental review (a major cost) should be far easier. But Hyperloop requires much straighter segments and requires internal polishing. Hyperloop doesn't deal with elevated temperatures and doesn't have to pump fluids. But it still has to have accelerator segments. It doesn't have liquid terminals, but it does have capsule terminals. Etc.

I ran the calculations on the volume of steel described in the Hyperloop Alpha proposal and compared them to current billet steel costs. The cost was a small fraction of what the proposal budgeted. For manufactured segments, delivered, they're probably right on.

You can make elevated regular high speed rail to reduce land acquisition costs.

The cost of elevating a track is almost directly proportional to its peak loading. The peak loading of Hyperloop is an order of magnitude less than that of HSR.

I think hyperloop will just be too expensive to build

Cost estimates are not based on "feelings".

Re:100 miles per hour per second

[Apostalypse]

They need to accelerate quickly because of the shortness of the test track, otherwise they'd never get it up to a significant speed.

Re:Pressure suits and air supply

[Anonymous Coward]

Constant in exponent is called polynomial (and does not grow exponentially). Both your examples have time in the exponent (not the base) and does grow exponentially. Almost everything you wrote is wrong.