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SpaceX Is Building a Hyperloop Test Track Near Los Angeles (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechCrunch: SpaceX appears to be hard at work building its Hyperloop test track through Hawthorne, a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California. TechCrunch reports: "SpaceX is hosting a Hyperloop Pod Design Competition for student and engineering teams, and 23 winners were selected earlier this year to build their pod prototypes and race them on the test track, a 1-mile tube capable of achieving 99.8 percent vacuum. Said track was photographed by reddit user 42finder this week (via Electrek). Pod testing would be a big step for Hyperloop technology. The two main companies competing to build the first operational Hyperloop systems, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and Hyperloop One, have yet to create pod tests. HyperloopOne has begun construction on its own test track in the Nevada desert, of course, but the SpaceX project looks considerably further along. Back when SpaceX first announced the competition, the timing of the final round which includes the actual test of final prototype pods was set for Summer 2016, but in July SpaceX announced that would slip to January of next year."
Because it's hard to know what one means when they talk about "Hyperloop" anymore. The original Hyperloop Alpha document spelled out a very explicit concept. Then they held the student Hyperloop pod competition and the winners were absolutely nothing like what was laid out in Hyperloop Alpha.
It comes across to me that the main point of this competition is more to drive student interest in engineering rather than to build a viable transportation alternative. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and Hyperloop One seem more focused on the latter.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
It's a bit depressing the way so many otherwise intelligent people get starry-eyed about this impractical pipe dream. I get that the idea of a vacuum tube travel is awesome to think about, particularly for long distances, but the hyperloop has all kinds of issues that must be overcome so that... what? So that we can travel at a measly 2x faster than existing Maglev trains on a path that's just a few hundred miles long, in a tube that is much more expensive than Maglev track and is much more vulnerable to accidents or terrorist attacks?
Meh. Wake me up when they've figured out how to (economically) build a tube that can convey vehicles at 5,000 MPH all the way to Beijing.
A giant tinfoil bird, built to within a hair breadth of strength requirements, cruising in air too rarefied and cold to breath, tens of thousands of feet above the ocean with a couple of glorified leafblowers for engines.
Thanks but I'll stick to walking to go long distance.
I will only comment on Hyperloop Alpha. The new "Hyperloops" in the competition have nothing in common with it, and I'm not going to bother with them.
Hyperloop is not a vactrain.
No, those are pneumatic tubes, which are neither nor vactubes nor Hyperloop.
Don't you think you should at least know what you're talking about before you start criticizing something?
1) Explain why rail tracks are the best analogy for building a Hyperloop tube, as opposed to, you know, actual long tubes.
2) Explain why Hyperloop should cost anywhere near that much when actual pipeline costs, per unit cross section, are well in line with Hyperloop.
There are of course, differences, but they fall on both sides. For example, comparing to oil pipeline, Hyperloop requires much greater straightness, high wall smoothness, and accelerator segments. An oil pipeline deals with a higher pressure differential, deals with much more challenging environmental/permitting issues, higher power pumps and has thermal management challenges not faced by Hyperloop. I could keep going on both sides, of course.
Rail isn't a pipeline.
If you want to go into some of the reasons for the differences in cost:
1) HSR does more. Hyperloop is a straight shot between two cities. HSR has stops. These stops involve going through towns. This is very expensive. It also means more stations. These too cost money. HSR is also higher capacity (although Hyperloop is in turn higher capacity than LA/SF air traffic, and significantly cheaper per ticket than both rail and air)
2) HSR is hurt by its path. A large portion of HSR's costs are permitting and right of way. Hyperloop minimizes these by using public right of way with elevation, on a premise of government buy-in to the concept (although other options not considered in the Alpha document are possible, such as rail right-of-ways). HSR's need to serve specific cities for political purposes limits where it can go.
3) HSR is limited by its weight. The cost of elevating a structure is directly proportional to its peak loadings. HSR's peak loadings are an order of magnitude higher than Hyperloop's.
Not in the very least. They budget several times the billet price, on the high end of the tonnage price for delivered tube segments. It's really not that much steel - subtract the inner cross section from the outer cross section and multiply the length if you don't believe me.
The word is "rebar". Rebar is irrelevant to this conversation. There is no single type of "rail steel", particularly when one is discussing HSR.
That is not how pipelines are made. Pipelines are made of extruded tubular steel segments, the same as "ribar" and "rail steel".
What do yo
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
Apparently, the test track will be orange with banked curves and an actual loop.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Everything seems unsafe till its proven safe. High speed ground transport is needed. And this would be much more effececit then auto cars once they get the bugs out..
They wouldn't have thought to land a rocket vertically? That's been depicted in science fiction since the 50's. Not to mention, they actually did have a little success with this in mid 90's with the DC-X.