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Hyperloop Firm Eyes Indonesia For Ultra-Fast Transport System (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the moving-forward dept.

An anonymous reader shares a CNBC report: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), one of the companies developing the futuristic transport service dreamed up by billionaire Elon Musk, said it was exploring Indonesia as a potential site to put one of its tracks. The so-called "feasibility study" contract is worth $2.5 million and will look into whether a hyperloop system would work initially in the capital Jakarta, and then connecting Java and Sumatra. A hyperloop would work by propelling pods through a large tube at speeds of 750 mph using magnets. It is seen as a solution to long distance travel, but also alleviating congestion in many cities. Jakarta is the world's third-worst city for traffic, according to a study by navigation from TomTom released earlier this year.

58 comments

  1. Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where do I send my bill for 2.5 million?

    This will never be heard from again, just like the Japanese Space Hotel of 1997. Or Solaren's 2016 space-based solar power plant... etc...

    1. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Hyperloop sounds cool. It will probably never work. If they do get it to 'work' it will be in a very controlled environment that is 100% impractical and costs a fortune to run.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      They talk of 'from san diego to sacramento in 40 mins'. We *HAVE* that now. It is called an airplane. The prob is the front and back security. Which would have to be applied to hyperloop too.

    2. Re:Um, no. by gnick · · Score: 1

      The prob is the front and back security. Which would have to be applied to hyperloop too.

      I'm confused. "Back security"? Even in aircraft, we only check on the front side - Do we need to re-check people after they've reached their destination? Also, why would this need more security than buses or trains? It's not like one's going to get hijacked and rammed into a building.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    3. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They talk of 'from san diego to sacramento in 40 mins'. We *HAVE* that now. It is called an airplane.

      That's the part I don't understand about all this talk about "high speed rail" and it's various incarnations.

      You can already fly from one place to another at 500 mph. It already exists, there's no need to spend billions of dollars building something new. And that new multi-billion dollar thing you build only goes from Point A to Point B, while airplanes can go anywhere there's an airport (and there are hundreds of them)

      This particular article mentions "alleviating congestion in many cities. Jakarta is the world's third-worst city for traffic" That's even more stupid. All of that traffic is people traveling short distances in a densely populated city. Not a reasonable candidate for 750mph tubes.

    4. Re:Um, no. by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      It's mostly about losing less time getting from and to the airport, losing less time getting through security, less time checking in and boarding, not having to show up crazy early just in case any of the previous processes delay you past your departure time, more comfort once on board, and often a more generous policy to refund or rebook unused tickets. Existing high speed rail already has those advantages, and Hyperloop offers an important additional advantage: there's no reason to build loads of stations along the way. Individual pods can simply be shunted off and stop at any 2 horse town, whereas regular high speed trains only make sense if the stops are spaced widely apart.

      Riding those trains is sometimes fairly expensive though; unless Hyperloop can be built for less than regular high speed track, it'll be hard to offer rides at competitive prices.

      I do share your scepticism about this doing anothing about congestion.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    5. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "and it's various incarnations."

      Have you heard of the apostrophe and its various incarnations? it's means it is. Hmm, not that varied after all!

    6. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes there is security on the other end.

      Try walking into a terminal at an airport through one of the exits. See how far you get. That is put in place to keep you out. You then must go through approved lanes to be searched. This costs you time. As maybe one exit could be better than another but they force you through a particular exit to control flow and the amount of security needed.

      You usually do not notice it because it is basically 'invisible'. Whereas the entry is fairly in your face.

      Also watch those videos. He spends a good amount of time going over it. You will quickly see why they would need security. A 100 mile long depressurized tube would constitute a fairly large safety hazard for those in it as well as those who live near it.

      The thing may work in the end. But they have a huge technical and security problem in front of them.

    7. Re: Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the part I don't understand about all this talk about "high speed rail" and it's various incarnations.

      Here, try asking how much fuel it costs to fly a passenger on a plane from place to place, then compare it to a passenger on a train.

      You can already fly from one place to another at 500 mph. It already exists, there's no need to spend billions of dollars building something new. And that new multi-billion dollar thing you build only goes from Point A to Point B, while airplanes can go anywhere there's an airport (and there are hundreds of them)

      Then you realize there is an upper limit on the airport capacity, the airplane capacity, and the effort involved means it can cost a lot too.

      This particular article mentions "alleviating congestion in many cities. Jakarta is the world's third-worst city for traffic" That's even more stupid. All of that traffic is people traveling short distances in a densely populated city. Not a reasonable candidate for 750mph tubes.

      So they only go 260 mph and still a gain.

    8. Re:Um, no. by gnick · · Score: 1

      When I referred to back-end security, I meant in the sense of delays. I realize that's not what I said. Can't watch the videos 'cuz I'm at work, but I'll take it on faith that they explain why a vacuum tube with a bullet loaded with passengers would be THAT much more hazardous than a "normal" train wreck. That wasn't sarcasm. It seems to me that security would be largely pointless unless we secured the whole line to some degree - It would be easy (easier?) to attack the tube/car without even visiting the station. I apologize if I'm missing points covered in the videos.

      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    9. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      have you heard that a random comment on slashdot is not an email to your boss or professional journal? guess what you antisocial loser - normal people don't bother proofreading comments, and are usually doing something else, like talking or watching a movie, while typing shit with their thumb w/o looking at the screen. then we hit send. because we have a fucking life. you, the godly representation of ugly and loser, you may think people should follow proper grammar rules here, but no one gives a fuck what you think - you are only here for us to laugh at. different grammar rules for different places. this place - as long as we get what is being sad its fine. go cum in a dirty sock you fucking loser.

    10. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But normal people respond with giant paragraphs to a simple comment?

      " guess what you antisocial loser"

      " go cum in a dirty sock you fucking loser."

      "normal people don't bother"

      You dunce.

    11. Re: Um, no. by guruevi · · Score: 1

      They need a vacuum a significant multiplier larger than the LHC. And they will need to pressurize and depressurize the entire thing any time someone wants to get in or out.

      Not just hard, nearly impossible, the LHC turbo vacuums took 12 weeks. Even if you don't need that large of a vacuum, how many hours/days will you need to wait AFTER you get in the vehicle and BEFORE you get out?

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    12. Re: Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's called compartmental pressurization. Once the pod is in the exit area you close off that exit area from the rest of the tube, pressurize that one significantly smaller area, then depressurize it to tube levels once the next load is made before opening that are back up to the rest of the tube.

      Your suggestion that they need to depressurize and repressurize the entire track is akin to saying that we need to change the pressure in earths atmosphere in the flight levels to be able to support human flight, instead of just changing the pressure in the aircraft itself.

    13. Re: Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How would you suggest you pressurize only sections? Should each section have a door? What if that door fails to open?

    14. Re:Um, no. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      article mentions "alleviating congestion in many cities. Jakarta is the world's third-worst city for traffic" That's even more stupid. All of that traffic is people traveling short distances in a densely populated city. Not a reasonable candidate for 750mph tubes.

      I think they're just shopping around the world for stupid/ignorant people to give them money.

  2. I hope it works... by TWX · · Score: 1

    ...but one of the principal reasons why transport in just about every form that we now see it is due to cost. It's a lot cheaper to build the least expensive road/path/tunnel/track possible, even if that means that the vehicles that travel those paths must be more expensive in order to self-propel. For this to be otherwise the usage must be very high. To a more pedestrian example (ha!), moving sidewalks are not terribly common. They're found only where extremely high volumes of foot traffic are present and all heading in basically the same direction, like in airports where they're used to connect sections of terminals. Just about anywhere else they're unsuited, either people need to make too many intermediate stops, or not enough people would use it, or there are no clear flows to take advantage of them.

    For transport like rail, conventional steel track is relatively inexpensive, and even tunnels with conventional steel track have low costs once they're built in most cases. By contrast, commercial maglev has basically been stillborn as the cost to build and operate an active track is really high, and the benefits of the speeds that maglev should provide do not yet outweigh the costs.

    Hyperloop is cool, especially if you're a fan of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's science fiction works, but it has all of the downsides of maglev combined with all of the downsides of building subways, so the ridership would have to be massive to make it cost effective.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:I hope it works... by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      Cheaper to build, cheaper to run is PRT, whether this takes the form of cooperative autonomous vehicles on roads (or paths), or an elevated system like http://www.skytran.com/ depends on who gets a working system deployed first. SkyTran hasn't shown a working mesh network. How does the system scale to NYC levels, replacing all the roads and trains with a single integrated PRT system with billions of trips a day?

      Then, once you have NYC done and DC done, and Phily and Baltimore between, you can have a quiet 100 mph trip between NYC and DC with no stops, about 2 hours from start to destination, beating trains, and planes (unless you fly a private plane with no security and fly a helicopter to the airport to avoid the drive to an airport). And the cost should be less than any of the other options.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    2. Re:I hope it works... by TWX · · Score: 1

      That's all dependent on the system being designed properly or revised properly as demands change though. If demand for corridors outstrips carrying capacity it'll still result in traffic jams. The idea of cooperative systems isn't bad, but the passengers are probably only going to put up with a small amount of delay before finding the system unacceptable. It also breaks-down where the density drops too far. This could even be a problem in a city like New York, the density is high in Manhattan, but starts to drop considerably in Queens and Brooklyn as one gets further from Manhattan. For a system that uses conventional roads or is at least capable of using conventional roads in lower-density areas but has access to grade-separate routes in high-density areas this could work, but that might preclude the skytran idea entirely.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:I hope it works... by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Hyperloop is cool, especially if you're a fan of William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson's science fiction works, but it has all of the downsides of maglev combined with all of the downsides of building subways, so the ridership would have to be massive to make it cost effective.

      But there already are routes where this is the case - high volume routes with lots of people heading one way or another. LA to San Francisco is one, but there are many more where there are many flights per day between two destinations.

      Hell, Japan would be a good spot to test it. Boeing has to write a special manual for their 747's because a LOT of them are used simply for short haul flights. Just a lot of people.

      A hyperloop wouldn't be for your milk run commuters - they'd be for the longer hauls.

  3. Earthquakes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I Wonder how Hyperloop will behave during earthquakes

    1. Re:Earthquakes by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 1

      If you are riding on hyperloop during an earthquake it will feel just like an earthquake. If you are traveling towards the epicenter, the earthquake will feel stronger and will be shorter. If you are traveling away from the epicenter, the earthquake will feel milder but will last longer.

      --
      That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
    2. Re: Earthquakes by guruevi · · Score: 1

      Not even earthquakes, how will it behave in summer, the temperature differential between the top and bottom of the tubes and also along the entire length of the thing and all those seals need to not just conform ANY failure causes catastrophic failure of the entire system.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    3. Re:Earthquakes by OolimPhon · · Score: 1

      Idiot.

      Just how long do you think the vacuum in the tube will last once an earthquake breaks the tube?

      Depending where the break is, the car could either stop abruptly, reverse abruptly or even speed up depending where the break is in relation to the car. If the occupants are very lucky, they could just be left somewhere random inside a powerless tube. If not lucky, they could be mashed flat or even plough into the break at 700 mph.

  4. Bastard! by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

    You might be quicker, but I'll say "no" for 2.4 million. Round it down for cash.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Bastard! by polar+red · · Score: 0

      Next time you pay taxes, remember you're paying for your roads.

      --
      Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
    2. Re:Bastard! by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      Who said anything about taxes, smartcock?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:Bastard! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your car and it's infrastructure is not as cheap as you think

    4. Re:Bastard! by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      Who said anything about taxes, Mr. Cannotpunctuate?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Jakarta? Really? Best of luck... by bobbied · · Score: 1

    I get the traffic issue, but I don't think the economics of the area will be very helpful. Maybe if you need a government that's not afraid of taking property by force to get your track built, that has loosey goosey liability laws and can be easily bribed this is a good choice. I'm inclined to think it's a bad choice, but hey, hope that works out for you.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  6. After Sweden-Finland, Dubai-Abu Dhabi now Jakarta by grungeman · · Score: 1

    Man, that sounds like a massive success-story. But first let's do the Mars colonization real quick to free resources for building those vacuum tubes.

    --

    Signature deleted by lameness filter.
  7. More Vaporware by prefec2 · · Score: 2

    As long as they do not have the concept worked out all those stories are pure fiction. It might be feasible it might be stupid. However, you cannot say, as the specs are not out. Yes I know there are some specs on the tech and some issues with the solution. However, this is not a solid concept, as there are so many missing pieces. Therefore, they should not come up with ideas where to build it, but with a general solution.

    1. Re:More Vaporware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SpaceX was unbelievable, untenable vaporware when they started. Same with Tesla. Same with SolarCity.

    2. Re:More Vaporware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Other companies have been building rockets, electric cars, and solar panels for decades.

      Hyperloops? Not so much.

      Do you understand the difference?

    3. Re:More Vaporware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. They're all incremental improvements on something else that already worked.

    4. Re:More Vaporware by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      SpaceX = Shuttle++. Tesla = Milk float#. No idea what SolarCity is but I'm sure it boils down to SomethingOld.Net

      Hipster space nutter much?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re: More Vaporware by guruevi · · Score: 2

      We had electric cars and rockets around the beginning of the last century. The only small scale (compared to hyperloop) vacuum chamber is LHC.

      Propelling a train-like Maglev thing in a tube at any speed isn't hard. The vacuum chamber associated is. And if you're going to ignore the vacuum chamber, why put it in tubes to begin with?

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  8. Density matters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Large densely populated areas are the clear obvious first choice, so Indonesia, Japan, even China would be obvious places to go.

  9. Well, I suppose it is better than by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a rickshaw. Musk is scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one.

  10. Re:After Sweden-Finland, Dubai-Abu Dhabi now Jakar by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    I think I'll wait for the transistors version.

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  11. Hyperloop is a scam by bluegutang · · Score: 1

    See this takedown.

    Musk hasn't gotten any Western country to bite and invest money. Maybe in a third world country with less education and a restricted media, he'll find takers.

    1. Re:Hyperloop is a scam by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      Thunderf00t has the best evisceration of this lunacy. Beyond the severe cost and implausible engineering problems, any tiny breach anywhere in the tube, intentional or accidental, will kill everyone using it with a wall of air that moving at the speed of sound.

  12. If there weren't terrorists.. by ITRambo · · Score: 1

    If there weren't terrorists this would be a superb idea, well worth the investment. Just imagine how vulnerable hundreds of miles of a sealed transit system will be to terrorists, or even hormone crazed adolescents. The idea is sound. Modern human nature is not going to let it happen in the real world.

    1. Re:If there weren't terrorists.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet we have lots of train tunnels now.
      And bridges.
      Hell we are STILL BUILDING SKYSCRAPERS.
      Because its worth the calculated risk.

      But you are right.. because of "modern human nature(?)" we should .. um... hide in our beds and not make anything of value.
      Then we will 'win'.

      Any civilization that can't survive its own "hormone crazed adolescents" has its own evolutionary challenges. Any one that doesn't even try as you suggest deserves replacement by mine.

    2. Re:If there weren't terrorists.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      slash dot quote agrees

      "Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming. -- J. P. McEvoy"

    3. Re:If there weren't terrorists.. by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      actually, I heard terrorists like to bomb standard trains too. and bus stops. and they hijack planes. maybe we shouldn't have ordinary rail and bus service.

    4. Re:If there weren't terrorists.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Train tunnels, or rather just plain old train tracks, run for very long distances. If you damage train track at location X, it means when a train gets to that location, it'll get derailed, but until it gets to location X, it won't suffer any harm.

      That's not the same as a series of tubes that need to either be at a vacuum, or at a high pressure. Damage at location X, will immediately spread through the entire network, damaging or stopping all contents transiting the network. And unlike a train track, since the whole system is a series of enclosed tubes, it's going to be hard to salvage your goods (or trapped people) if they're in the middle of the network somewhere.

      Unless you then put in emergency bulkheads or other stop-gap measures. Now you've just created more technology that can fail when it's needed in an emergency (fancy a headline for "hyperloop tube kills 500 people after safety malfunction"?) and increased the cost of the already-extremely-expensive solution.

    5. Re: If there weren't terrorists.. by guruevi · · Score: 1

      And yet we avoid building tunnels and bridges as much as we can, there are massive redundancies and engineering going into oversizing it and we don't attach anything with the potential energy of an atom bomb to it which goes off as soon as any part of it fails. You can take a shotgun to a bridge, even a stick of TNT will do minimal damage in most cases.

      Tracks and holes are easy to make, they are really hard to break and if they do break, losses are minimal to 1 train at best. This system when it breaks destroys all the trains on the track and the entire track.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    6. Re:If there weren't terrorists.. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Financial vulnerable, yes. Blow up a part of the pipe and the trains stop for weeks.
      In terms of human life: absolutely not vulnerable, unless you can blow up the pipe when a train passes. Seems exactly the same thing like blowing up a train on a regularly rail to me.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    7. Re:If there weren't terrorists.. by freudigst · · Score: 1

      No, it still wouldn't be a good idea:
      https://youtu.be/QXF2qcu-tFw

  13. too soon? by Thud457 · · Score: 1

    Nobody's ever flown a train into a building.

    Well, except for this guy...

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

    1. Re:too soon? by tsqr · · Score: 1

      Nobody's ever flown a train into a building.

      True. Also true: if a plane explodes in flight, the airspace it was flying through doesn't need expensive repairs before it can be used again.

  14. an airline by roman_mir · · Score: 1

    or they could use the money to build an airline if they need fast commute, the technology is here, it works, it's proven, it can be measured in terms of costs and profits upfront, it doesn't require a weird infrastructure setup that is the Achilles heel of hyperloop - a very long thin steel vacuum tube. A thin steel tube will expand and contract due to temperature fluctuations, flexible joints will have to maintain vacuum somehow? Anybody with a tiny amount of explosives (or even with a rifle) will be able to kill everybody in the tube by de-pressurising it and the coming air will derail every car inside the tube, crashing one into the next, etc. Getting the car into the tube without losing vacuum, handling the atmospheric pressure over the entire tube, handling security, handling temperature changes...

    How will they handle any single mishap of any single car inside the tube? How deadly is any one single mishap to all the passengers inside one car and to all cars in the tube?

    All this while trying to be competitive to an airliner or to a bullet train??????

    --
    You can't handle the truth.
  15. Re:After Sweden-Finland, Dubai-Abu Dhabi now Jakar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Man, that sounds like a massive success-story. But first let's do the Mars colonization real quick to free resources for building those vacuum tubes.

    Mars is not really a good place to farm vacuum. Get it from the moon: better vacuum and much closer and therefore cheaper.

  16. And the Japanese by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At least 54 people were killed and more than 400 injured when ">a packed commuter train left the tracks and crashed into an apartment complex in western Japan today.

  17. Proper Link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/25/japan

  18. The do realise Indonesia is a third world country? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...and also full of moslems.....

    Recipe for disaster.

    If anything actually does get built there to an acceptable quality in the next 100 years, it'll be instantly bombed into oblivion upon opening.

  19. Guinea Pig by freudigst · · Score: 1

    You jump in first, Elon!

  20. A more accurate name by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    It should really be called an rloop.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."