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South Korea Developing 'Near-Supersonic' Train Similar To Hyperloop (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
The South Korean government plans to unveil a high-speed train that can travel at near-supersonic speeds capable of cutting a five hour journey to just 30 minutes. It's reminiscent of the Hyperloop, a proposed mode of passenger and freight transportation that propels a pod-like vehicle through a near-vacuum tube at more than airline speed. Huffington Post UK reports: According to the Korea Railroad Research Institute, it plans to unveil a "hyper tube" format train in the "not too distant" future. Speaking to the South China Morning Post, the government-owned organization said: "We hope to create an ultra-fast train, which will travel inside a state-of-the-art low-pressure tube at lightning speeds, in the not-too-distant future. To that end, we will cooperate with associated institutes as well as Hanyang University to check the viability of various related technologies called the hyper-tube format over the next three years." While this sounds very similar to the low-pressure concept designed initially by Tesla founder Elon Musk it seems as though the KRRI wants to go even further and create a system that will leave Hyperloop looking like a Hornby set. By throwing all their resources at the project, South Korea is hoping to skip past maglev, a still-new propulsion system that uses electromagnets to actually levitate trains above the air. While this removes some of the friction that comes with using conventional wheels, it still doesn't remove the brick wall of friction that is air itself. By building a low-pressure tube however and placing the train inside it you can effectively create a train that could travel at eye-watering speeds.
Glorious Leader invent train that go light speed. ALL HAIL GLORIOUS LEADER!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The train could be designed to get some lift from that low-pressure air, taking some of the load off the wheels.
It is surprising the project comes from a nation with a relatively small territory: the benefits are much smaller than if it happened in for instance Russia, China, or USA.
I think it's great that one day we'll live on a planet where we don't have to sit in a plane but instead can sit in a train, although I'm sure TSA will find a way to make it slower and more annoying. However, the original article really quotes some... HYPERBOLE ideas:
"...leave the hyperloop looking like a Hornby set."
Never heard of it. When using a simile try to ensure that the part you're comparing things to is actually known by people. With all due respect to Bruce Hornsby, of whom I have heard. He's got a band, not a set.
"...maglev, a still-new propulsion system..."
Only if still-new is 1972 tech. Seriously... this is almost 50-year old technology. It's not "still new". It has its challenges which is why it's not used everywhere... just like any other form of compromise in transportation, shipping logistics, or life.
E
to do with all those Galaxy Note 7 batteries.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
" . . . the brick wall of friction that is air itself. By building a low-pressure tube . . . could travel at eye-watering speeds."
Funny choice of words, since it's the air itself which causes your eyes to water at high speeds.
it's there because james may is obsessed with them.
anyways.. they're toy trains popular in the UK when toy trains became popular.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You say this as if we're in Korea to protect the South from the North. It's strategic to have the 8th Army stationed there. And to have forces in Japan.
Sure, they could defend themselves, but then they'd control powerful military forces that would be a threat to the American hegemony that enforces American economic priorities. South Korea and Japan could (rather trivially) develop nuclear weapons systems and a military that technically matches our own.
They don't, because American boots are a carrot and stick -- defence is assured since an attack on either state would invite American wrath; compliance is assured since we are already inside their borders.
The pay the US nearly $900 million annually for $28k troops. http://www.politifact.com/trut... They pay something like 95% of what it costs us to have a presence there, and the benefits to the US are numerous.
I'm not sure that cost is the only consideration in whether or not the U.S. should help defend S. Korea. This is even though I have heard that S. Korea pays the U.S. a couple(?) of billion a year in reimbursement; whether or not this is a fair amount I have no idea.
Much more important is the implied alliance between the two nations. If N. Korea attacks S. Korea, inevitably American soldiers will be killed which will bring a much stronger response from the U.S. If N. Korea attacks S. Korea with nukes then they will invite an immediate (and apocalyptic!) nuclear response.
Perhaps more importantly having a U.S. presence in S. Korea TELLS THE CHINESE that the U.S. is a power in their backyard and the U.S. could make life difficult for them in any really serious conflict. (Imagine if China had military bases in Canada). Having U.S. stealth bombers minutes away from Chinese territory must be something that keeps the Chinese strategic planners up at night. The expansion of the THAAD missile defense system to S. Korea allegedly "solely" for the defense of S. Korea and Japan must also make them worry. Could it, indeed, be used to intercept Chinese ICBMs headed for the U.S.? That would mean China would be emasculated in a strategic nuclear conflict (they used to have, like, only 200 warheads that could reach the U.S,; a first strike coupled with a good missile defense system could've rendered them completely useless. That's surely one reason why China is now building subs carrying nuclear weapons, unlike the ICBMS launched from China they can be launched from anywhere and would not have to fly directly over the S. Korean defenses on their way to their targets in the U.S.).
Consider the alternative: the U.S. says "you're on your own" to S. Korea (and Japan). Within a year, the extremely technologically capable S. Koreans and Japanese would likely have their own nuclear weapons (and delivery systems as evidenced by the latest Japanese solid rocket booster). Sounds good no? Except now the Chinese would have to worry about nuclear weapons being delivered onto their soil in minutes by intermediate range ICBMs. They'd have to invest in missile defense and/or more nuclear weapons to ride out an attack. Perhaps India would be spooked and would also follow their "rival" (the Indians like thinking the Chinese are their chief competitor, the Chinese couldn't care less). That could provoke Pakistan to add to their arsenal (at 100+ warheads the fastest growing in the world). Not good since the Pakistanis are probably the country most likely to give (or have stolen from) nuclear weapons for use by radical Islam. Of course with Trump saying the Saudis (who, remember comprised 19 of the 20 hijackers on 9/11) should be allowed to have nukes for use against Iran, maybe there is another pathway for nuclear terrorism.
Anyway, while some of these "dominos" falling is farfetched you can see how inter-country tensions are a lot more complex than a simple "let them pay for their own defense". That's why nuclear non-proliferation treaties (were) a critical part of world diplomacy (until the Bush administration let the Indians be recognized as a DECLARED nuclear power, the first since WWII, with no substantial penalties).
A lot easier target than an airplane. You could be miles away when the bomb goes off.
I'm pretty sure it's just bad journalistic article writing, or that weird kind of "we have superior technology" boosterism. From the description, the thing sounds pretty much the same as hyperloop.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Various Korean rail companies have supplied trains around the world and nobody doubts they make a lot of rolling stock.
But many of the Korean-built mass transit and passenger trains seem to suffer extreme defects and lawsuits. Boston MBTA, Philadelphia SEPTA and California Metrolink are all suing Hyundai Rotem over different issues with their rail vehicles. Rail lines in Australia are also engaged in lawsuits.
Now, problems and disagreements happen with rail. But there is a big pattern of Korean rail suppliers overpromising what they can do, underbidding competitors, and then either failing to deliver on time or delivering equipment with massive faults and defects.
It seems to be mainly a case of trying to bag contracts before Chinese or Japanese suppliers can get them, even if the Korean companies can't really deliver. This is what happens when all these municipal rail systems have very star-eyed visions of what they want and pocket change to pay for it, so they go for the biggest dreamer and low bidder all at once with a very optimistic timetable. And it just can't work that way.
So here is KRRI promising the unproven and yet to be invented faster than anyone else AND for the best price. Yeah goody for you. Somebody will fund it.
Disclaimer: Aside from the US, there is no nation I love more than South Korea. It's in my blood. I proudly own a Korean car and go nuts over Korean pop culture. But there have been just so many rail issues. It really sullies the Korean reputation.
Sig for hire.
we don't have to sit in a plane but instead can sit in a train
So instead of sitting in a sealed container traveling through the air at 500 MPH, you will sit in a sealed container traveling through a tunnel at 500 MPH?
It doesn't seem like there are any benefits over air travel. Though there are many disadvantages. The biggest and most obvious is the lack of flexibility. You have to bore the tunnel and it only goes from one fixed point to another. The cost is enormous and the infrastructure is inflexible (literally and figuratively). Apart from that, tunnels need maintenance, you can't look out the windows, it is expensive to maintain the low pressure. This sort of "tunnel plane" will have all the security drawbacks of a real plane (without the ability to divert to a nearby station in case of an emergency), so we can expect the same degree of security theatre and delays at embarkation.
The only advantage I can see is that this train shouldn't be subject to disruption due to weather (and hopefully, it will be driverless). However, the crushing cost of digging and maintaining the tunnels will ensure that it is only ever going to be travel for the wealthy. The british/french Channel Tunnel - $15Bn at today's prices for 24 miles - should be all the warnings that people considering a project like this, should ever need.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
BTW if you are in Vegas, drive up to the Apex Solar Plant, and you will easily see the Hyperloop One test track.
Why are you under the impression that putting it in a tube makes handling turbing forces, stopping forces and control more difficult? Inside a tube, all motion is perfectly constrained, and you have a tremendous amount of surface area to magnetic brake against.
The turning radii issues are of course real, and are highly addressed in the Hyperloop Alpha document. Likewise for dimensional precision. For smoothness, their solution is a radial polisher which drives down the tube behind the pipelaying crew and smoothing out each orbital weld (and the pipe itself). For straightness, alignment is maintained by the same suspension/alignment system they use to deal with earthquakes.
As for why maglev trains are expensive - trains are expensive for a wide variety of reasons. Land acquisition and permitting is often the most expensive. Tunnels and viaducts are often a very large component as well. Maglev technology itself often tends to have high bills.
Hyperloop (as per Hyperloop Alpha, not the student competition) isn't maglev, it's an air bearing system. Skis, basically. The pipe is built the same as oil pipeline, and the budget is similar to that of oil pipeline budgeting per unit area per unit distance (oil pipelines have harder environmental issues to overcome and much higher loadings, more significant temperature management issues, etc, but lower precision / straightness requirements, so it's probably a wash). Tunnel cost is minimized by minimizing tube size (the budgeted tunnels are standard rates for tunneled pipe in non-urban areas). Viaduct costs are minimized by a key design feature of Hyperloop - minimizing peak loadings by having frequent, small vehicle launches rather than infrequent, large vehicle launches. Viaduct costs tend to track their peak loading.
As for land acquisition, the costs in Hyperloop Alpha are kept down by a combination of design and cheating. As per design, it's designed to be small enough to fit elevated into highway medians, with the low peak loadings, making overhead suspension an affordable option. Such places are state land, and already permitted for far more environmentally harmful activity (road traffic). This of course requires state buy-in to the concept, but states often specifically pursue high speed transport options. Private land acquisition is limited to places needed to maximize turning radii, and in-city for stations. The latter is the other place that they cheat - Hyperloop Alpha avoids cities. LA and San Francisco are served by it, according to the design, like airports on the outskirts of town; people have to get connecting legs into town. But that would be an unpopular decision, and you would expect the state to insist on greater accessibility (airports are only out of town because they have to be, not because that's a desirable location). Likewise it bypasses cities en route, unlike HSR. Basically, it's designed as something halfway in-between HSR and air travel (both in terms of service and throughput), but targeting much lower prices, higher speeds, and a lower energy footprint.
In short, it's budget savings vs. HSR are somewhat of a combination of cheating (cutting out a lot of what HSR does) and design (keeping track loadings down, profile small, build in the same manner as an established industry (pipeline), and moving your hardware (capital expense) through the system as quickly as you can.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
If you think the pressure maintenance figures in the Hyperloop Alpha document are unreasonable, cite the actual numbers you disagree with and explain why.
The main advantages over air travel are that the pressure is much lower, frontal area much lower, allowable spacings far closer (no "air traffic"), no noise pollution, no air pollution, and efficient, direct acceleration of the vehicles, with the tube itself serving as a mounting point for the solar panels that power it.
You clearly have never read the Hyperloop Alpha design document. It does include diversion options. There are regularly spaced emergency exits across the track. Vehicles brake to a stop then roll on wheels to the nearest emergency exit.
As for security: the cars are about the size of monorail cars. So if you're going to assert random things about what security will be like, why not assert it'll be like monorail security?
Yes, the design fundamentally does not work if it's not driverless (you really should read the design document before discussing it).
The costs of tunneling are included in the budgeting in the design document (again, you really should read it). There is no "50km long 7,6m diameter undersea tunnel" leg to it.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
This is what happens to low-pressure tubes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
I'm of the opinion that Hyperloop is a bad idea, but the Chunnel costs, which are relatively reasonable, isn't one of them. The Chunnel was for three tunnels, two of which were designed to accommodate, with plenty of space around them for walking, air flow, etc, two 20' high freight trains with catenaries two feet above them. The tunnels in the Hyperloop case will be a small fraction of this size - uncomfortably small if you follow Musk's proposal, but hopefully at least 12' if created by a company that doesn't think humans are sardines.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Never heard of Hornby? I'm not a toy train fan but I'd be surprised if almost everyone didn't know who Hornby is? I don't play with dolls but I've heard of Barbie. You don't have to play with cars to know who Hotwheels and Matchbox are.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
For, if it is, this will be the hottest product of the year.
Your last line is horseshit. The Nuclear Proliferation Treaty was brought in in 1972 immediately after India tested its own bomb. Its purpose was to keep the club closed to the 5 who had their bombs. India never signed the NPT so there is no question of having penalties for violating it. (Same for PAkistan and ISrael who never signed). WW2 even the US had only 6 bombs (The Japanese surrendered because the soviets attacked). All proliferation happened AFTER WW2.
Incidentally the basic equations which made the Bomb possible came from India - Go look up Bose Einstein Statistics. India was always advanced in nuclear research. If not for the chaos of Independence and 4 wars (3 with pakistan 1948,1965,1971 and one with China 1962 ) progress might have been faster on the bomb. Also the CIA assasinated India's top nuclear scientists by taking down their plane in Switzerland while they were on a conference visit. Else India would defintiely beat France, China and Israel to the Bomb. India and US are friends today but the US has done a lot of shit to India in the past. Which is why Bush did not want to push India anymore. Part of why India and US are friends today is Bush being a better diplomat than Clinton or Obama.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Think of why a maglev train is expensive...
Think of the control problem of vehicle suspension at such high speeds.
Think of the turning forces.
Think of the stopping forces.
Think of the turning radii.
Think of the dimensional precision necessary for a track that handles 300 mph traffic.
Now double the speed and pack it all into a vacuum tube.
Exactly. It's a fantasy project that will never be built. But the hyperloop whores will never admit that the whole thing is an impractical joke with no chance of success. Mark my words, this thing will never, ever go into production.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Near Supersonic? What was wrong with near-sonic?
Paraphrased, this train can travel "almost more than" the speed of sound. So... does it travel at exactly Mach 1, or slightly slower?
While this sounds very similar to the low-pressure concept designed initially by Tesla founder Elon Musk
Some of us know how to read books. This idea wasn't exactly new when Elon Musk was born!
See, for example, The Reefs of Space, Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, 1964.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The best solution is to shrink people down to the size of a small rodent.
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
This is the standard way people complain about Hyperloop.
Step 1) Don't ever bother actually reading the design document, despite the fact that it's not that long and addressess the vast majority of arguments
Step 2) Compare Hyperloop to something not even remotely comparable to it, like the costs of building viaducts for an order of magnitude higher peak loadings, building tunnels with an order of magnitude or more greater cross section, acquiring orders of magnitude more private land, and comparing costs for building through cities with the costs of building through the countryside.
I'd have a lot more respect for its opponents if they'd actually read the design document and actually make comparisons to remotely comparable things. As it stands these threads usually just make me want to hit my head on the wall. At least you recognized the absurdity of the comparison being made.
Train tunnels have to be big. Not only because trains are big to begin with, but because the tunnel walls can't be anywhere the train, or the train will push a big column of air ahead of it, eating energy and slowing it down. Hyperloop tunnels are like aquaduct tunnels - no larger than that of the pipe. Which is sized for capsules, in the non-vehicle version, of two people side by side in First Class-style, semireclined seats.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
... which did not involve anything remotely similar to Hyperloop.
Please learn how Hyperloop actually works before insisting that something else is the same. (hint: google "Hyperloop Alpha" and read the design document; it won't take all day). Hyperloop Alpha is neither maglev nor a vactrain; it's basically an extreme version of a ground-effect aircraft flying through a rarified atmosphere, using a compressor to prevent the buildup of a column of air ahead of it by shunting it to the air bearings and behind it - thus allowing it to operate at far-easier-to-maintain pressures and with much easier construction / lighter vehicle mass than maglev.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
You cannot have people inside the tube at the same time as vehicles are in the tube regardless, so there's no point to conducting maintenance in a vacuum; you would simply repressurize it (aka, open valves at the pumping stations, or the emergency exits). But there's also no point to ever having people inside. There's nothing except for an accident to damage the inside of the tube; the vehicles do not touch the walls, and it's a very rarified atmosphere, so it's not going to rust from the inside. If there's any need from maintenance, it'd be a need from the outside.
There is one thing that I fault the initial design for, which is the proposal of a two-tube system. This means that if one tube has to go down for maintenance, you have to alternate the other tube between directions, and each time you switch it, wait for it to clear. This would be a big throughput loss. With a three-tube system, you can have the third tube follow whichever direction has the highest demand at whatever point in time, and when one tube goes out you can still keep bidirectional traffic going. Maybe have the third tube be a "stop halfway then continue" design so it can offer service to the valley, at lower speeds.
The other thing I fault the initial design for was for setting it up as a competitor to HSR, which was obviously going to invite a lot of anger against them, and while most of it is just by idiots who never bothered to read the design document, some is legitimate - in particular, that Hyperloop doesn't serve as many cities, or city centers (which they really should have done), like HSR does. I feel that they should have proposed LA to Vegas as the initial leg, so as not to stand in competition to HSR, and so there would be few cities in-between. It's also raise the concept of Vegas magnates funding it; the ability of LA residents to hop to Vegas in half an hour for cheap would be hugely beneficial to them.
As for going into cities: I know they wanted to give a very impressive price figure, and going into cities would have raised that, but as it stands, their price figure was so low that a lot of people refused to believe it (without ever looking at why it was low). A higher price figure because of going into cities would have both made people more credulous, as well as being a more useful, likely-to-be-funded system.
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
It's a thin-walled tube. It doesn't do much constraining at the dynamic forces you're talking about.
It's 20 to 25mm of solid steel. "Thin-walled" is very much a relative thing.
You still have to constrain the tube.
That's what the $2.5 billion in steel-reinforced concrete is for. Also the stringers on the outside of the tube (omitted from all the concept art but mentioned in the text).
Land acquisition and permitting is often the most expensive.
Not solved by Hyperloop.
Solved by Hyperloop insofar as the government of the state of California can be convinced to play ball. The majority of the proposed route is on existing public land. I've said before that this is the reason why Hyperloop won't happen, and not any technical reason. The HSR project allows the Right People to get rich from land speculation. The Hyperloop does not.
But to continue...
In order for it to be a suspension, it needs to absorb the lateral deviations in the track/tube to even out the reaction forces, and it needs to do this at all the required frequencies. At higher and higher speeds, those frequencies correspond to longer and longer track/tube wavelengths over which you have to control or attenuate the deviations.
So design a suspension system. And don't forget, you have quite a lot of room to play around in. Per the document, the capsule only occupies 36% of the cross-sectional area of the tube. People have this persistent notion that the Hyperloop capsule is jammed into its tube like the carrier in a bank's pneumatic system. It's not. There's plenty of room for as sophisticated a suspension system as necessary.
Viaduct costs are minimized by a key design feature of Hyperloop - minimizing peak loadings by having frequent, small vehicle launches rather than infrequent, large vehicle launches. Viaduct costs tend to track their peak loading.
Why don't trains already do this?
Because trains haul freight, everywhere in the world. Passengers are an afterthought, and an ill-considered afterthought at that.
As for land acquisition, the costs in Hyperloop Alpha are kept down by a combination of design and cheating. As per design, it's designed to be small enough to fit elevated into highway medians, with the low peak loadings, making overhead suspension an affordable option. Such places are state land, and already permitted for far more environmentally harmful activity (road traffic).
Why don't trains already do this?
Because trains haul freight. It doesn't have to get there quickly, but when it does, there sure is a lot of it.
the Hyperloop Alpha document (at least the one I read on the Space-X website) "highly addresses" precisely nothing. It's envelope calcs and napkin sketches.
Well no, it's more than back-of-the-envelope calculations. Somebody went to the trouble of putting together a solid model of the tube and the pylons and running it through the simulator. But yes, the document is not sufficient for some guy with a hammer to go out and start slapping one up. It's a proposal. It's been sanity-checked fairly well, by people who understand just as much about static and dynamic loads as you do, and it's been mathematically demonstrated to be not insane. No, the capsule suspension system has not been worked out. Nor has the capsule door seal, which must stay air-tight in the face of dozens of unsealings and resealings a day, not to mention foot traffic. Nor has the exact nature of the system that ties the tube to a pylon been worked out.
But none of these things are physical or financial impossibilities. Analogs can be found in existing products and structures.