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Hyperloop Firm Eyes Indonesia For Ultra-Fast Transport System (cnbc.com)
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.
...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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I think I'll wait for the transistors version.
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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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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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.
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You jump in first, Elon!
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.
It should really be called an rloop.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."