Hyperloop One Reveals Its Plans For Connecting Europe (engadget.com)

Hyperloop One has revealed its plans for connecting Europe via its Hyperloop transportation system that can move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel. The company is currently considering nine potential routes in Europe, "running from a 90km hop to connect Estonia and Finland, through to a 1,991km pan-German route," reports Engadget. "The UK [...] gets three proposes routes: one to connect its Northern Cities, one to connect the North and South, and one to connect Scotland with Wales." From the report: Several of the routes, including ones between Estonia and Finland, Corsica to Sardinia and Spain -- Morocco, all cross bodies of water. The company has, on several occasions, spoke of its love of tunnels, and plans to use them extensively in construction. Although rather than using tunneling machines, which can be slow, submerged box tunnels or archimedes bridges may be cheaper and faster to build. CNBC notes that the proposals for Europe connect more than 75 million people in 44 cities, spanning 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).

Comments

Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

75 millions people with a transportation method that can do 840 passengers per hour...
Good luck waiting in line to travel.

Re:Wait in line

[PopeRatzo]

75 millions people with a transportation method that can do 840 passengers per hour...

One assumes that all 75 million people aren't traveling from Estonia to Finland at the same time.

Re:Wait in line

[smallfries]

Have you ever been to Estonia? It might not be safe to assume that they won't all leave at once...

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

transportation system that can move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel

Only if you completely ignore:
- many billions in construction cost
- thousands of airports already in existence
- planes can fly to any city in the world (thanks to those thousands of airports that already exist) while your hyperloop scam can only go from one specific point to another.

So, yeah, good luck with that.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Expanding on the parent...

transportation system that can move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel

Only if you completely ignore:
- many billions in construction cost
- thousands of airports already in existence
- planes can fly to any city in the world (thanks to those thousands of airports that already exist) while your hyperloop scam can only go from one specific point to another
-operational costs of running miles of vacuum system.

So, yeah, good luck with that.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple math says that it will take a lot of differents tubes to be able to transport a lot of people. So cost will be high.

If you compare this to the Tkaid Shinkansen is the world's busiest high-speed rail line, with an average of 23,000 passengers per hour in each direction in 1992. On a single rail...

The civil engineering cost of the hyperloop seems to be way underestimated. Once one of the companies working on the hyperloop can demonstrate a test track several miles long working perfectly, and that accidental damage to the structure won't result in an explosive compression inside the tube and possibly death for the passenger, then we can have a real discussion about building a commercial Hyperloop. But until then, it's vaporware. HST is the best choice for now

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

One assumes that if you want a working transportation system for 75 millions people, and even without assuming that they all want to travel at the same times, then you will need a lot of tubes. That is just a fact.
Might not be a cost efficient method of transportation, as you would need to multiply the lines to be able to have the same passengers as a hight speed train (more than 20000 per hour).

Re:Wait in line

[arglebargle_xiv]

They've also got their geography slightly wrong. By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more. Unless they dig a second tunnel to Scotland. And then stop calling Scotland "the UK".

Re:Wait in line

[ShanghaiBill]

The UK has never been part of Schengen, so leaving the EU won't change much.
 

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been to Estonia. Tallinn, specifically. It has become a sizable tech hub, aside from being absolutely beautiful.

Linking Finland and Tallinn is a perfect application for this. There are already fleets of ferry ships linking the two, as it's an exceedingly popular route.

https://www.tallink.com/routes

Re: Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

EU != Europe

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

...except for the visas UK citizens will need to get into the EU after day one of leaving, because they can't negotiate with any of the member countries for visa-free travel until after they have left.

Re:Wait in line

[gl4ss]

just to add.. existing high speed train routes and the routes that would require a tunnel would be served just fine with a regular train and couldn't make a profit with a regular train.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

To add to this, I live in Estonia. It is physically impossible for 75 people to be in the country much less have six orders of magnitude more of people to egress the state simultaneous !

Re: Wait in line

[AvitarX]

That's super low for a train like system, but seems to be about aligned with or slightly better than airports (though I have no idea max capacity between two points, I'm just basing it on five or so flights a day for most domestic cities I go to).

I question the value of a hyperloop vs a traditional train for the short routes suggested too.

Even more concerning is the suggestion of combined never tested but long thought of techs to make it work (the tunnels and the hyperloop itself being decades (fast tube zero friction travel) to over a century (the tunnel).

That doesn't mean it won't work, but it does seem foolhardy to try and do both at once.

Re: Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Visa free travel will be negotiated in a week, if not less.

Re:Wait in line

[gl4ss]

I bet you don't actually live there though? prices of ferries? it's cheap as balls to go over already and when the catamarins run it's just couple of hours.

and if they were to build a tunnel, it would be far cheaper and almost just as fast to just drive it with 200kmh regular trains.

of course musk keeps saying that somehow hyperloop would be cheaper, in which case you could just replace all train routes with them.

tech hub or not, you would still be connecting it with just helsinki - if it were cheap enough it would allow to live in estonia and work in helsinki - this would be the main benefit, if you had to for some reason to commute the route.

you would find much better routes in europe with far more people willing to pay far more to travel between two places. the population of estonia is tiny and the booze-travel between estonia and finland is already around 10-30 euros per people.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

They've also got their geography slightly wrong. By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more.

I didn't realize that the brexiters were hard-core enough to uproot the whole island(s) and tow them to somewhere else.

Re:Wait in line

[gl4ss]

...except for the visas UK citizens will need to get into the EU after day one of leaving, because they can't negotiate with any of the member countries for visa-free travel until after they have left.

they are supposed to negotiate those treaties before they leave.

however, any country might block those treaties - and thanks to schengen while uk can negotiate treaties to let people into uk, they cannot negotiate with individual countries to let brits into schengen, so guess what the result of those negotiations is going to be? exact same as it is now.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more.

Sigh. They may leave the European Union but they will forever be part of the geographical area named "Europe". Unless the United Kingdom actually abandon the British Isles, that is.

Re:Wait in line

[3247]

...except for the visas UK citizens will need to get into the EU after day one of leaving, because they can't negotiate with any of the member countries for visa-free travel until after they have left.

*yawn*

Visa-free travel does not even need to be negotiated. It can be granted unilaterally.

Re:Wait in line

[Kiuas]

Linking Finland and Tallinn is a perfect application for this. There are already fleets of ferry ships linking the two, as it's an exceedingly popular route.

Yes, linking us here in Helsinki to Tallin with a tunnel may be smart. However, using Hyperloop to do it makes no sense to me as a Finn that travels to Estonia several times a year. Why? The travel time on the fastest ferries is already down to below couple hours, and they're currently looking into the option of building a rail tunnel in between the cities. which would cut the travel time down to 45 minutes. Benefits of a rail system over something like the hyperloop at this point are enormous: first off, trains are a technology we have mastered and the project does not require maintaining a near-vacuum, second of all trains have a higher capacity than hyperloop and are very likely cheaper to maintain*.

The Hyperloop test track which was about a mile long is so far the 2nd largest vacuum chamber in the world after NASA's. The Hyperloop tech is probably on the order of decades from being commercially viable. Even the planning of a regular underwater tunnel takes years, the estimated completion time of the rail tunnel is in 2038. Infrastructure projects like this take massive amounts of time and money to plan an execute and the planning needs to be started years in advance so it's near impossible that a technology like Hyperloop in such an early stage of innovation will even be considered for the Helsinki-Tallin route. The upsides are not worth the increased risks.

Even the rail tunnel is not a certainty due to the cost factors involved. At 92 kilometers - nearly twice the English channel tunnel - It'd be the longest rail tunnel in the world and underwater, making it extremely expensive (current estimates are in the ballpark of 13 billion euros). With the ferry traffic being cheap (you can get tickets for less than 10 euros), plentiful and fast it may well be the case that the tunnel is never implemented. Not to mention that the ferry companies are major players in the baltic regional economy, and this wield significant political lobbying power both here and in Estonia. Tallink-Silja is one of the largest companies in the Baltics, coming 2nd or 3rd behind only banks.

So to summarize: would it make sense to establish a faster connection between Helsinki and Tallinn? Possibly, I'll wait for more info before saying that for sure. If it is done, what are the chances of hyperloop being used to do it? Practically zero.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

> I didn't realize that the brexiters were hard-core enough to uproot the whole island(s) and tow them to somewhere else.

But based on observations, I believe quite a few of them to be stupid enough to believe that this is desirable (or even possible!).

(Captcha bot optimistic at the moment: "phoenix")

Re:Wait in line

[Rei]

of course musk keeps saying that somehow hyperloop would be cheaper

You know, you could actually RTFM (in this case, TFM = Hyperloop Alpha) rather than being bewildered as to why.

The short of it: it's basically a pipeline, so you start with base pipeline costs for the given diameter. Compared to a pipeline:

Advantages:
* Far lower mass loadings
* Does not carry things that could "leak" and contaminate the ground (much easier environmental permitting, less NIMBY)
* Simpler thermal management
* Much lower pumping requirements (just to head this off: it's a mild vacuum, not a hard vacuum. The energy required (and pump sizes) to pump fluids through a pipeline is far more than is required to simply maintain a mild vacuum)
* Usually periodic branch points

Disadvantages:
* Far greater straightness requirements
* Requires an internal orbital polisher
* Periodic emergency exits

Both share infrastructure requirements at their endpoints, just of different kinds, both require a leak detection process, both require regular sensors, both require earthquake protection, etc. In general, however, pipeline construction is not very expensive, even at large diameters, relative to rail construction. The ready-made pipe segments are brought to the site and an orbital welder connects them together.

Versus rail, Hyperloop offers far lower peak mass loadings. This is because (and feel free to do the math yourself, I have) in both cases, the "track" - whether continuously-welded steel rails or orbital-welded pipe, is well lighter than the vehicles on them, but Hyperloop vehicles - being small with frequent launches rather than heavy with infrequent launches - provide far lower mass loadings. The cost of elevating a structure is directly proportional to its peak mass loadings, and hence the order of magnitude lower peak mass loadings translates to an order of magnitude lower elevation cost, as well as smaller cross section pylons which are easier to locate in tight spaces.

This in turn enables the practical location of it in road medians (with proper crash barriers as needed), if you have government buy-in to the concept. Hyperloop Alpha assumes that you will. I have to concur, it's hugely to the advantage of the government to do so, as the government has to spend huge amounts of public money building transportation infrastructure regardless. Road medians are already permitted for far more onerous environmental and noise conditions (road traffic) than Hyperloop would provide, which should make permitting much easier; the only new thing you're introducing is visual, which you have to introduce for any transportation system construction.

Due to the straightness requirements, the system cannot just stay within road medians. Varying bend radii depending on the speed planned for the segment require various deviations from medians. This requires private land acquisition - budgeted at typical rail rates for private land acquisition - and various tall pylons and/or short tunnel segments (budgeted at typical pipeline tunneling rates) where the landscape dictates it in order to maximize curve radii. And yes, they are typical rates, I've crosschecked the numbers in the document, and encourage you to as well.

Now as for the rest as to why it's so much cheaper than rail, they do cheat on that. There's three main ways. The first is simple: it doesn't carry as many people as California's HSR (it's roughly halfway between HSR and air travel on a logarithmic scale in terms of passenger capacity). That's not really a cheat on the per-passenger cost, but it is a cheat on th

Re: Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Visa free travel will be negotiated in a week, if not less.

Good joke.

Re: Wait in line

[Rei]

If you're willing to abide by the same free-movement requirements you're currently subjected to, sure.

That'd tick off the UKIPers to no end, mind you. ;)

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

Compared to a pipeline:

Advantages: * Far lower mass loadings * Does not carry things that could "leak" and contaminate the ground (much easier environmental permitting, less NIMBY) * Simpler thermal management * Much lower pumping requirements (just to head this off: it's a mild vacuum, not a hard vacuum. The energy required (and pump sizes) to pump fluids through a pipeline is far more than is required to simply maintain a mild vacuum) * Usually periodic branch points

So, you are basically saying that building a standard piping system to conduct fluids is more difficult than one hosting the very fast transportation of persons except for these points? Even by ignoring diameter/length aspects, I am afraid that such a claim is very far away from being truth.

The points which you are referring aren’t even too relevant IMO:
* Far lower mass loadings -> I guess that you make that assumption by focusing your analysis on eminently theoretical aspects (considering just mass/volume/density inside the pipes) and by completely ignoring more practical ones like what is provoked by the associated momentum (e.g., stress/pressure variations). The resilience requirements of a container dealing with a fluid are far lower than the ones associated with a relatively big/heavy solid moving at high speeds inside that fluid.
* Does not carry things that could "leak" and contaminate the ground -> when dealing with vacuum, leaks are certainly a concern; they might not contaminate the environment, but their consequences might be much more dangerous. Additionally, dealing with human lives is usually seen as a much bigger problem than environmental contamination and, consequently, your "easier environmental permitting" really means "having to comply with the much stricter safety regulations dealing with people transportation".
* Simpler thermal management -> again, dealing with human lives is always orders of magnitude more problematic than doing it with lifeless fluids. With persons, the main problem isn't just the external isolation, but also the internal temperature ranges.
* Much lower pumping requirements -> this might be right theoretically, but not so sure practically. One of the biggest problems of this vacuum-based transportation is people going inside/outside (+ associated pumping out/in). Even by forgetting about emergency situations and by assuming long trips with no stops, the adding/removing vacuum + all the associated actions required to ensure all the passengers to be completely safe during these processes are likely to be much more problematic and expensive than the ones in the version for fluids.
* Usually periodic branch points -> not completely sure what you mean with that, but if it refers to a more discrete structure (understood as formed by more parts/variations) it would be a drawback. A straight plain pipeline will always be much cheaper than a more intrincate one including many joints, different materials, section variations, etc.

Sorry to burst your bubble but the transition from abstract theory to actually-functional complex system, mainly if it deals with something as important as human lives, is way much more complex than what you are trying to suggest. Your initial "so you start with base pipeline costs for the given diameter" is as unrealistic as trying to build a car by starting from "let's just make this toy car bigger". Starting any analysis of a complex system which deals with human lives (also with the extremely important issue of a reasonably big and heavy object running at a huge speed) by mostly caring about what the dealing-with-fluids equivalence does is also extremely naïve and unrealistic.

In any case, I think that your post describes an appealing-to-Hyperloop scenario: build a scaled-down version which emulates existing piping structures and completely ignores the very-problematic-human-lives issue and prove that your ideas work. Design, build and operate this Hyperloop for gods. Prove that

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

transportation system that can move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel

Only if you completely ignore:
- many billions in construction cost
- thousands of airports already in existence
- planes can fly to any city in the world (thanks to those thousands of airports that already exist) while your hyperloop scam can only go from one specific point to another.

So, yeah, good luck with that.

I think they'd also have to consider security and safety costs, for some level of active security measures at some level between what is in place for trains and what is in place for air travel. Shipping people in a pressurized can inside an vacuum tube sounds like a nice terror target which could easily disrupt that line for a long period. Security doesn't only mean financial cost, but also some added traveler inconvenience which needs to be factored into the travel time comparison.

Re:Wait in line

[AmiMoJo]

Their earthquake proofing (and safety in the event of an accident, e.g. a truck going into one of the pylons in a road median) is not nearly good enough. The PDF they put out suggests that they will simply put adjustable dampers in the pylons... But such things react relatively slowly and have a limited range of movement.

The reason that high speed rail is separated from other things by grades, fencing and large, high-mass pillars is so that these kinds of events don't deform the rails enough to derail the train. In a hyperloop, tens of millimetres of offset between two sections of the pipe will cause enormous, injury inducing g-forces on the occupants of the vehicle.

It might be possible to overcome this by making the pipe larger relative to the vehicle, but then the whole thing becomes less efficient. I'm not sure there is any solution that doesn't make the system unattractive for other reasons.

Compare this to the maglev trains developed in Japan. Obviously they are designed to be heavily earthquake proof, and 90% of the track between Tokyo and Nagoya is going to be tunnel. Unfortunately a lot of the information is in Japanese, but basically their plan is to move with the earthquake using the maglev system to keep the train centred on the track. The hyperloop only uses magnetic propulsion, not steering which relies on air and thus if the tube suddenly moves, the vehicle will crash into it.

To be honest, the whole document is a bit... For example, it talks about how a quiet supersonic aircraft would solve all the long distance problems, apparently unaware of the high cost in terms of fuel consumption / pollution and smaller cabins.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

I guess that most of people should know that I wasn't referring to omniscient beings, but just in case I meant "Design, build and operate this Hyperloop for goods".

Re:Wait in line

[ooloorie]

By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more

Ah, the arrogant and silly position that the only way to be a client state of the Greater Franco-German Reich, aka the EU.

I don't think so. The UK is part of Europe and will continue to be so until long after the EU has been relegated to the proverbial dustbins of history, where it belongs.

Re:Wait in line

[gl4ss]

of course musk keeps saying that somehow hyperloop would be cheaper

yes, that paper and other stuff from hyperloop is what i was referring to but they are failing to make a 10 km track. if it is cheaper than rail, they have already a business.

but it isn't and their test tube and the test chariots were laughable.

that bloody paper IS what I referred to, it kind of makes sense(reason for them publishing it) but their actions and the fact that nobody has ever managed to do something like that(themselves included!) is what is against it. the bloody paper doesn't add up. their plans don't add up. strength of steel, the energy required to pump to the "mild" vacuum and all that(elonists like to stick to that it isn't actually an vacuum so it's simple to make.. then the proposed vacuum to have the benefits is anything but what people would consider low).

it would forever and ever be cheaper to put in normal train tunnel and that is too expensive for the proposed route to make profit and this is very, very very unlikely to be cheaper. which is why they are fishing for money from europe and which is why he isn't doing his original plan for it.

just build the damn test track and not toy tracks. and then start mixing the idea up with underwater tunnels that make it even harder to make and add even more pressure to hold.

Re:Wait in line

[Rei]

* Far lower mass loadings -> I guess that you make that assumption by focusing your analysis on eminently theoretical aspects (considering just mass/volume/density inside the pipes) and by completely ignoring more practical ones like what is provoked by the associated momentum (e.g., stress/pressure variations).

A transient (89ms) mass loading (short enough not to allow for any meaningful deflection**) of far lower peak magnitude versus a permanent mass loading of far greater peak magnitude - there is no contest, the latter is much more expensive to build (all else being equal). As for any knock-on effects from variations, the pylons incorporate 3-axis dampers (needed for earthquake protection and maintaining alignment). Note that the pylons are a separate cost line item.

The length of a Hyperloop capsule's worth of a 1g/cc liquid is well over 100 tonnes, vs. 3,1 tonnes for a Hyperloop capsule (plus ~2 tonnes for passengers / luggage). That's a huge difference. And this is ignoring that the bulk of the tube at any given point in time only bears its own weight. A pipeline bears vastly more weight.

** - Re, deflection: even if a pipe segment (nearly an inch thick steel) didn't resist deflection at all, and the segment was essentially in free-fall during the period there was a vehicle moving through it, it would still only deflect by 3,8 centimeters.

Does not carry things that could "leak" and contaminate the ground -> when dealing with vacuum, leaks are certainly a concern; they might not contaminate the environment

Then this isn't a rebuttal at all to this point, now is it? The point was about environmental effects - which most definitely is a major impactor of construction costs. The issue of leaks testing/fixing on costs was addressed in an entirely separate point. And is an issue common to them both. But only one type of leak (fluid pipelines) contaminates its environment.

but their consequences might be much more dangerous

Yes, if you live in a cartoon where an inch thick steel peels back like a banana because of a pinhole. Or in a world where there's absolutely no pressure sensors whatsoever, and air has no viscosity. Also in a world where people don't already work extensively with vacuums in industry and are already well aware of how to handle them. I can promise you, for a refinery with a VDU and with a hydrocracker, workers have a lot more fear of the hydrogen lines than the vacuum lines. Vacuum leaks are an inconvenience, not a threat. An inconvenience that you usually don't even need to deal with immediately, and can postpone until the next maintenance period. They don't spill anything, they don't compromise system integrity, they just mean that you have to run your pumps more than you'd like. VDUs and long vacuum lines use reinforcing rings, generally as the joins between pipe segments. You could shoot one with a cannon and it wouldn't collapse, all you'd do is make a hole in the side.

Preventing collapse in vacuum systems is not magic, it's well-understood engineering. Any engineer worth their salt can readily calculate wall thickness vs. segment length vs. ring diameter in order to make a vacuum system safe against implosion. You may have noticed that Hyperloop One has reinforcing rings. Do you think they just guessed at all of their dimensions? Of course not, they use whatever the engineering specs say makes for a safe vacuum line. You don't make a pipeline by guesswork.

Additionally, dealing with human lives is usually seen as a much bigger problem than environmental contamination

Right, because transporting flammable (

Re:Wait in line

[Zemran]

Basic geography will tell you that unless the tectonic plates separate, the UK will always remain part of Europe. The UK is however leaving the EU. Scotland will likely remain part of the UK because not all Scots are as stupid as that bampot Sturgeon.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

It does seem that you are too willing to have a critical discussion about any of these points, but I am an incurable optimistic so here I go anyway.

A transient (89ms) mass loading (short enough not to allow for any meaningful deflection**) of far lower peak magnitude versus a permanent mass loading of far greater peak magnitude - there is no contest, the latter is much more expensive to build (all else being equal). As for any knock-on effects from variations, the pylons incorporate 3-axis dampers (needed for earthquake protection and maintaining alignment). Note that the pylons are a separate cost line item. The length of a Hyperloop capsule's worth of a 1g/cc liquid is well over 100 tonnes, vs. 3,1 tonnes for a Hyperloop capsule (plus ~2 tonnes for passengers / luggage). That's a huge difference. And this is ignoring that the bulk of the tube at any given point in time only bears its own weight. A pipeline bears vastly more weight.

Are you saying that it is possible to compare the resistance requirements of the container of a fluid vs. the ones of a solid within a fluid by plainly replacing the mass of that solid with an equivalent fluid mass? Are you saying that the stress suffered by the walls of a gun (the part through which the bullet flies, whatever the technical name is) which shoots a bullet is equivalent to the one of a toy guy shooting water (logically, care only about what the bullet momentum provokes in comparison with just water like much higher turbulence)? Even by forgetting about the (extremely relevant issue) of being a very short straight stretch with virtually no lateral movement, do you think that you can accurately assess such a situation by plainly replacing the volume of the bullet with air (or any other low-density fluid)?! You can plainly focus on the masses/weights?! There are other comment-worthy parts in that paragraph, but I think that this reference is more than enough to support my point of your analysis being naively theoretical (in the sense of physics-with-non-deformable-solids-and-under-ideal-conditions theoretical, nothing even close to the required analysis for any real-life machine).

Preventing collapse in vacuum systems is not magic, it's well-understood engineering. Any engineer worth their salt can readily calculate wall thickness vs. segment length vs. ring diameter in order to make a vacuum system safe against implosion

I am not even sure what to say here.

Right, because transporting flammable (if not explosive) fluids doesn't threaten human lives?

You are saying that transporting a flammable fluid which might eventually pass near some humans might be considered even more dangerous (= stricter regulations) than actually transporting a relevant number of people?! Curious approach. Luckily, most of worldwide regulations think different than you do.

What are you even talking about? You do realize that the net heat transfer even in a mild vacuum is almost nil, don't you?

I understand that they are planning to reach a heat-free situation inside the capsule, right? Like in that old joke "neither hot nor cold, zero degrees".

In short, ignoring "things that by their very definition are rare", and assuming exactly what is spelled out in the design document rather than arbitrarily changing it to attack the concept?

Shall I understand that considering emergency alternatives (expressly-although-honestly-not-too-fairly eliminated from the main critic) shouldn't be included in the design document of a vehicle (or any other real-world thing)?

In summary, you seem to stick to your original intention of defending than building a pipe to transport a random fluid can be even more expensive than what Elon is planning?! Do you think that this is a sensible assumption at all?! It also seems that you are taking my words as an attack and/or you are trying to defend what doesn't look as easily defendable, at least not from an objective and technically correct perspective. Either way, if you keep having that attitude, I would not continue participating in this discussion because of not seeing the point.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

I meant "It does not seem that you are too willing"

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

I also meant "a toy gun shooting water".

Yes, I know. I should maximise the previewing options further.

Re:Wait in line

[Hognoxious]

It might be possible to overcome this by making the pipe larger relative to the vehicle, but then the whole thing becomes less efficient.

When I was a kid I was very much into blowpipes. The solution to windage is a wad. I suspect it might take more than one sheet of bogroll in this case though.

Re:Wait in line

[Rei]

I'm bad about proofreading as well :)

Re:Wait in line

[Rei]

Are you saying that it is possible to compare the resistance requirements of the container of a fluid vs. the ones of a solid within a fluid by plainly replacing the mass of that solid with an equivalent fluid mass?

I have no clue what you mean by "resistance requirements". If you mean "mass loading", of course you can. Even the loading distribution is roughly the same - greatest at the bottom, less on the sides, little on top. And the towers are indifferent to where the loadings come from, it's just mass transferred from the dampers.

Are you saying that the stress suffered by the walls of a gun (the part through which the bullet flies, whatever the technical name is) which shoots a bullet is equivalent to the one of a toy guy shooting water

Huh? Do you think mass loadings are about pressurized fluids (aka, ? We're talking the simple mass of the contents of the tube. Mass loadings. A Hyperloop capsule is far less dense than a typical liquid, as most of its volume is air.

I'm bewildered by this argument from you. A gun experiences several hundred megapascals of pressure (several thousand atmospheres). A toy watergun experiences a small fraction of one atmosphere. It has nothing to do with mass loadings, the difference between them is about fluid pressures. What fluid pressures are you picturing here - let alone ones exerted at hundreds of megapascals?

And actually, your gun example illustrates the benefit of transient stresses perfectly. To actually contain hundreds of MPa / thousands of atmosphere with the same internal diameter would require a pressure vessel far larger than a gun barrel. A scuba tank is only rated for around 20MPa; that's also around the pressure that hydraulic cylinders operate at, and typical "high pressure" industrial processes (such as the Haber process). The highest-strength hydrogen tanks on the market are around 70MPa. Hundreds of MPa is crazy pressure to actually contain. But as a transient, it's not a problem.

The same is the case with Hyperloop. Not only are the peak mass loadings far lower than pipelines and HSR, they're also only very brief transients.

I am not even sure what to say here.

Well okay then. Thanks for taking the time to let me know. ;)

You are saying that transporting a flammable fluid which might eventually pass near some humans

Huh? No, we're talking about transporting a flammable fluid that is always passing near humans, and explosions of which can and do kill people.

might be considered even more dangerous (= stricter regulations) than actually transporting a relevant number of people?!

In normal usage, neither kill people. In extreme failure scenarios, both kill people. The number of people at risk in a severe failure is not grossly disproportionate between the two.

Luckily, most of worldwide regulations think different than you do.

Really, you think the pipeline industry isn't covered by a crazy-intensive permitting process that takes years to complete, and one of the large portions of that being safety risks to people?

What are you even talking about? You do realize that the net heat transfer even in a mild vacuum is almost nil, don't you?

I understand that they are planning to reach a heat-free situation inside the capsule, right? "neither hot nor cold, zero degrees"

..... huh?

Where on Earth did you get the concept that part of the design involves chilling the capsules (and thus the passengers) to absolute zero? Not that that would even affect the above point about the capsule existing within a nearly-zero convection environment, but .... what on Earth?

Shall I unders

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

So, you are basically saying that building a standard piping system to conduct fluids is more difficult than one hosting the very fast transportation of persons except for these points? Even by ignoring diameter/length aspects, I am afraid that such a claim is very far away from being truth.
A oil pipeline is under pressure, a gas pipeline is under high pressure.
The outside pressure on an hyper-loop is less than one atmosphere.

Go figure.

Re:Wait in line

[Rei]

First off, thanks for actually reading the document. These discussions are a lot more enjoyable when 90% of responses aren't just "RTFM" ;)

Their earthquake proofing (and safety in the event of an accident, e.g. a truck going into one of the pylons in a road median) is not nearly good enough. The PDF they put out suggests that they will simply put adjustable dampers in the pylons... But such things react relatively slowly and have a limited range of movement.

They actually have calculations of the track response to impulses like earthquakes (figures 15 through 20 illustrate peak deflections, stress, and shear). Dampers responding slowly is exactly the point; they don't move immediately when they face a jolt, but slowly react to it, giving time for the control system to compensate (see hysteric dampers and base isolation dampers). Also note that simply shifting the tube around a couple millimeters one way or the other does not create a meaningful deflection for the vehicles, even at Hyperloop vehicle speeds. Also note that the capsule skis are mounted on a suspension system designed for ~10hz jolts, and that air bearings have a highly nonlinear response to float height changes.

In a hyperloop, tens of millimetres of offset between two sections of the pipe will cause enormous, injury inducing g-forces on the occupants of the vehicle.

This is not true. Let's take the suspension system out of the equation for a minute. Let's say 20 millimeters, sound good? 30 meters per pylon, so at 340m/s that's 89ms. 20mm in 89ms is ~0,22m/s average velocity (in one direction for the first 30m, then reversed for the next 30m). Which means an acceleration of about ~0,45 m/s^2, or 0,046g. An insignificant amount.

I've actually done the calculations before for the complete loss of all support from a tower, how much sag that would impose on a pipe as described, and how much g-forces that would translate to. The short of it: not all that much.

It might be possible to overcome this by making the pipe larger relative to the vehicle, but then the whole thing becomes less efficient.

I think you've misunderstood something. Increasing the pipe diameter makes it more efficient, not less. The skis remain in close proximity to the wall regardless of the size, but you're reducing the ram air effect by having a larger bypass, and thus reducing the compressor load (as well as enabling a longer suspension deflection stroke). The pipe isn't small to make it efficient, it's small to save construction costs.

Compare this to the maglev trains developed in Japan.

It's not really a proper comparison, now is it? Japanese rail tracks aren't damped. If you want to compare to damped systems, damped bridges are your best comparison point.

To be honest, the whole document is a bit... For example, it talks about how a quiet supersonic aircraft would solve all the long distance problems, apparently unaware of the high cost in terms of fuel consumption / pollution and smaller cabins.

It's not the only problem with supersonic travel, but it is the limiting factor for Hyperloop-length journeys (for reasons which are accurately stated in the document): you have to spend so much time flying subsonic to get to altitude that you lose much of the advantage of the high peak cruise speeds. Other issues are addressable. What you refer to in terms of fuel consumption / pollution and cabin size by and large all come down to drag. There is a huge wave drag at transonic speeds, but it drops with increasing speed. Subsonic cruise is fundamentally more efficient than supersonic, but not prohibitively so for supersonic travel. There's lots of other issues that can be added to the list of problems, mind you -

Re:Wait in line

[hey!]

Well, the thing about technology is its capacity to surprise you, both in positive and negative ways.

I still find the capacity of search engines to provide instantaneous response covering millions of data sites to millions of simultaneous users astonishing. It's something that thirty years ago I would have put more like a hundred years in the future, not ten.

And yet, we still don't have a flying car, largely I think because while people think it's something they want, when you put one together it's just not that compelling. Not like a service that allows them to broadcast their thoughts a 140 characters at a time -- people just can't live without that.

It's that combination of astonishing things turning out to be possible with stubborn human capriciousness that makes tech fascinating. On the face of it Hyperloop seems far-fetched, and yet if engineers, working with hard numbers and physics, prove that it is technically feasible, I wouldn't be surprised. And then if people simply decided they didn't want to use it, well that wouldn't surprise me either.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

I have no clue what you mean by "resistance requirements".

Just in case that all these ideas aren't clear to you, note that there is a (mechanical) engineering sub-field called material resistance (by assuming that I am not making a bad translation from Spanish), a closely-related branch is structural mechanics. Unlikely dynamics/kinematics, these branches deal with deformable solids (as your pylons do), with material properties and more realistic conditions what means that a bullet doesn't behave as a stream of water with the same mass. Engineers designing the containers of both objects would bring these analyses into picture to determine the strength requirements (= actual load being exerted on it) of the given structure, what the given material under the given conditions can resist. For your focused-on-masses analysis, a stream of fluid behaves identically to the capsule (= expects a similar container); in reality and for these more-realistic analyses, both scenarios are completely different. That's why your concerns are wrongly focused on the pylons (you only care about the vertical forces from weights) and you think that fluid and solid-in-fluid are basically equivalent situations, because you aren't accounting for all the consequences ignored by more theoretical analyses which become very relevant in a situation like this. That's why my point of not being possible to replace the capsule with an equivalent amount of water in the analysis; it would be OK only for a sub-part of the problem (= weights).

A gun experiences several hundred megapascals of pressure (several thousand atmospheres). A toy watergun experiences a small fraction of one atmosphere

You didn't get that point right. I was trying to give a graphical example about the kind of differences which theoretical analyses ignore. Let me put it in a different way: imagine that you can shoot water at the same speed than a steel bullet, would both of them do the same damage? Logically, they will not. In fact, the water will not even reach the target. But for your theoretical analysis, only caring about masses, both situations would be identical (?!). This was my whole point.

Well okay then. Thanks for taking the time to let me know. ;)

You should already know something about me: I love letting people know about things which they might not care about :)

Where on Earth did you get the concept that part of the design involves chilling the capsules (and thus the passengers) to absolute zero?

It seems that you didn't get the joke (it doesn't really matter, but I think that it was meant for 0C), perhaps it was because of the translation. Please, re-read that part and understand that I didn't suggest anything even close to that.

I'm sorry if you see this as an attack; that is not the intent.

OK. I do deserve this.

Re:Wait in line

[GuB-42]

The short of it: it's basically a pipeline

You mean a tube used to transport large quantities of liquids between two places? A very good comparison.

Re:Wait in line

[TheRaven64]

I don't know, I'd be in favour of moving the UK somewhere a bit closer to the equator and improving the weather. Maybe we could park it just off the coast of Portugal?

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

As explained in different parts of my other comments, you are focusing on a small part of a much bigger problem. Statically (or more theoretically), both types of scenarios might be considered identical, but more realistically the Hyperloop one adds a very relevant problem: a big heavy solid moving very fast inside a fluid, what makes both scenarios completely different and changes the container requirements.

You have a very big momentum which doesn't exist in the case of normal piping. A very big momentum inside a fluid implies a different hydrodynamic regime, lots of potential over-pressures/stresses/forces/problems at many different levels, over-complicates the whole analysis tremendously. It converts the original premise of "just use what we do with normal piping" in virtually useless.

Re:Wait in line

[Rei]

Just in case that all these ideas aren't clear to you, note that there is a (mechanical) engineering sub-field called material resistance (by assuming that I am not making a bad translation from Spanish), a closely-related branch is structural mechanics. Unlikely dynamics/kinematics, these branches deal with deformable solids (as your pylons do)

In English, concerning physics, "resistance" generally means electrical resistance, thermal resistance, or drag (e.g. "air resistance"). How bodies deform under stress is studied via finite element analysis (FEA / FEM).

with material properties and more realistic conditions what means that a bullet doesn't behave as a stream of water with the same mass

And as was pointed out to you, the issue has nothing to do with the bullet or the water, it's that in a gun you're dealing with several thousand atmospheres of pressure. It's like if someone said "this house would collapse if the roof has to bear five meters of snow but not one meter of snow", and you said, "but what if the one meter of snow was moving at a good fraction the speed of light?" It's not at all relevant to the problem at hand.

If you remove the completely-inapplicable-to-Hyperloop thing you're adding to the conversation (the pressure from the exploding gunpowder), then yes, you can directly compare a bullet sitting in a gun vs. water sitting in a water gun, as simple mass loadings.

You didn't get that point right. I was trying to give a graphical example about the kind of differences which theoretical analyses ignore.

Your comparison was different to the point of being ludicrous. :)

Let me put it in a different way: imagine that you can shoot water at the same speed than a steel bullet, would both of them do the same damage?

The same mass of water? Actually the water would do a pretty damned good job. Ever seen what a non-abrasive water jet cutter does? That's what happens when water moves at bullet-speeds, even tiny amounts of water. The faster the object, the more it's just the kinetic energy that matters and the less that the object's structural integrity matters. If you had a bullet's mass worth of water moving at bullet speeds, it'd cut deep into a person, if not right through. High speed liquid jets are how shaped charges pierce through armour. As a matter of fact, water charges are shaped charges that use water as their piercing fluid.

Now, I'm pretty sure that you're in a weird way trying to make some sort of point about how the distribution of loads matters - am I understanding you correctly? Good. Except that as I pointed out, the distribution of loads is similar for a Hyperloop capsule and a fluid - most on the bottom, less on the sides, little on the top. The exact distribution depends on the final choice of ski locations and the ratio of ski pressure vs. compression pressure**, and it is more uneven than carrying a fluid - but nearly an inch of steel will have zero difficulty whatsoever distributing such loads from an object that only weighs a few tonnes. Image how much an arch of inch-thick steel would deform if you drove a loaded pickup onto it. Basically nothing, right? Exactly. The only relevant potential for deformation is linear, along the pipe's length - so it doesn't matter whether the mass is a fluid or a capsule, it just becomes simple mass loadings - and only the amount of mass, not the type, matters.

** - And if you don't think it's even enough? Just add more skis.

The only practical difference is that the Hyperloop loads are transient, while the fluid loads are permanent. But transient loads are generally to a structure's favour. As noted previously, even if the added loads weren't borne at all and the pipe went into free fall every time a capsule passed, it would only drop a couple centimeters.

Back to the beginning: versus a pipeline and HSR, Hyperloop's loads peak loadings are dramatically lower, and they're transient. Elevation costs are directly proportional to mass loadings.

Re: Wait in line

[Gavagai80]

Visa-free travel doesn't mean document-free travel. Passports are a very likely middle ground.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

In English, concerning physics, "resistance" generally means electrical resistance, thermal resistance, or drag (e.g. "air resistance"). How bodies deform under stress is studied via finite element analysis (FEA / FEM).

I meant strength of materials (not too difficult to find after a quick search, what I should have done in my first comment), by bearing in mind that this is just a generic reference to a wide variety of (engineering) sub-specialities dealing with pretty much the same: more accurate approaches for the generic non-deformable-solid physics.

And as was pointed out to you, the issue has nothing to do with the bullet or the water, it's that in a gun you're dealing with several thousand atmospheres of pressure. It's like if someone said "this house would collapse if the roof has to bear five meters of snow but not one meter of snow", and you said, "but what if the one meter of snow was moving at a good fraction the speed of light?" It's not at all relevant to the problem at hand.

You don't seem to still be getting the point. You keep thinking that the same rules (X bar of pressure) are equally applicable regardless of anything else and this is precisely the flaw in your reasoning. If you have a fluid with certain properties and you want to keep it under pressure X, it would cost you Y effort (= cost = reactions which have to be contained by the tube). If now you put a big object inside that fluid at very high speed, the conditions would change completely; what means that your effort would have to be now much higher. Both scenarios (normal piping vs. Hyperloop) are completely different and cannot be assumed equivalent.

Building a pipe to send oil of certain density at certain pressure certain distance has completely different requirements than sending a big/heavy object inside a fluid under the same pressure that same distance. You are trying to make both situations equivalent by replacing that object with an equivalent amount of fluid by focusing on a generic analysis; and its mass is even irrelevant in comparison with what really matters here (= its big mass + velocity = tremendous momentum). It is a completely different ball park, with completely different requirements which you are systematically ignoring by relying on imagine-that-we-have kind of ideas. Your

It's like if someone said "this house would collapse if the roof has to bear five meters of snow but not one meter of snow", and you said, "but what if the one meter of snow was moving at a good fraction the speed of light?"

denotes that misunderstanding because this example doesn't show what I am saying at all. A proper version would be: "this isn't the case because you are assuming that my roof is type-1, but actually my roof is type-2 and it can bear up to 10 meters of snow". You are talking about getting certain results like X pressure without wanting to understand the real implications of actually getting there: the effort/cost/reaction-to-oppose to reach that target in these two scenarios are completely different. "By assuming that we have whatever, let's think what we do next" isn't engineering/physics/science is just wishful thinking or scientific-looking dreams or something like that.

The same mass of water? Actually the water would do a pretty damned good job. Ever seen what a non-abrasive water jet cutter does? That's what happens when water moves at bullet-speeds, even tiny amounts of water. The faster the object, the more it's just the kinetic energy that matters and the less that the object's structural integrity matters. If you had a bullet's mass worth of water moving at bullet speeds, it'd cut deep into a person, if not right through. High speed liquid jets are how shaped charges pierce through armour. As a matter of fact, water charges [youtube.com] are shaped charges that use water as their piercing fluid.

Y

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't make sense. Finns go to Tallinn for cheap drinking, and they start drinking on the ferry, so they don't mind the travel time. How many beers can you finish on a hyperloop?

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

I did not adress your other points because they are nonsense

An oil pipelin has probably 1000 times the weight and definitely a similar if not higher momentum than a hyoer-loop car.

Point is: if engineers plan such a thing you usually can trust hthat they know the math. Otherwise we had no bridges or ordinary railways. The momemntum of a modern train is most certainly far above a single hyper-loop car.

The momentum is only relevant in curves, and those can be tilted and strengthend on the outer side, just like in those 24h car racing arenas.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

I did not adress your other points because they are nonsense

Very sensible introductory statement from what seems a very reasonable and knowledgeable individual (just in case you don't get it, this is sarcasm).

An oil pipelin has probably 1000 times the weight and definitely a similar if not higher momentum than a hyoer-loop car.

You are messing things up here. Firstly, less consider the main vertical component, where you can treat everything identically (= just weights). Now let's move to everything else and analyse the situation a bit more carefully: on one hand, you have a fluid flowing (with mass and momentum) and, on the other hand, you have a fluid flowing (with mass and momentum) + a quite big capsule (with mass and momentum). If we analyse both scenarios from an external point of view (e.g., the end/start points of the pipe), they might even be considered identical under very specific conditions. In any other case (= all what happens when the capsule is moving within the fluid) we would have the additional "little" problem of having to deal with the interactions between the capsule and the surrounding-fluid momenta. In other words, a pipe with just a fluid and a pipe with a fluid + an object inside are different things and, if your theoretical approach tells otherwise, you should better reconsider its accuracy.

if engineers plan such a thing you usually can trust hthat they know the math

As an engineer and a properly-understanding-prone person, I will never endorse ideas on these lines because of basically representing the most anti-scientific, sheep and fanatic behaviour ever. You can either know what you are talking about and make your positive (or even negative) contribution to a conversation or accept your ignorance (and/or unwillingness to adequately understand and/or to participate in that discussion, etc.) and not intervene. Any other behaviour is highly censurable and even deserves a reaction similar to the NYP reference in one of the last articles here (yes, I was waiting for an opportunity to write this one :)): go copulate with yourself! LOL.

The momentum is only relevant in curves

Momentum is a way to measure the impact of a moving object on any other thing, what means that it affects anything anywhere exactly like a force, pressure, etc. To not forget that the "momentum" concept is also a quite big simplification as far as there are different momenta associated with the multiple 3D movements (forwards, backwards, lateral, rotation, etc.).

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

Hyper-loop cars are not moving in a fluid but in very thin air.

Momentum: i = m * v. Give back your engineering badge. In a hyper-loop a 'car' will never impact with anything. The only thinkable thing it could impact with is the destination station.

No idea why you write this nonsense.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

Hyper-loop cars are not moving in a fluid but in very thin air

Can you get the problem with that sentence after reading it again or do you need to do a quick research to get some help?

Momentum: i = m * v. Give back your engineering badge

Are you downgrading your abstract-theory-based understanding to a one-specific-formula-based understanding? I am speechless right now.

The only thinkable thing it could impact with is the destination station

Sure. Because for you, the air (+ its turbulence + the provoked over-pressure + etc.) and the tube walls mean nothing, right? Ah! I understand it now: they aren't part of your formula and that's why you don't recognise their existence. LOL.

Seriously, let's better cut it here and focus on talking to people more compatible with each other's (how to call it?...) perception of the world.

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

Sure. Because for you, the air (+ its turbulence + the provoked over-pressure + etc.) and the tube walls mean nothing, right?
Exactly. It means nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Or look at guns/cannons.
Or grasp that the cars likely are running on a mono rail, or the are accelerated/stabilized by magnets around the tube.

No idea whom you want to impress with your fake knowledge.

Re:Wait in line

[Teancum]

The reason why Elon Musk isn't working on the Hyperloop himself is mainly because his work on other projects is cut out for him. As if building a rocket company sending ever heavier payloads into space isn't enough with several launches per month being regular and a whole new rocket (the Falcon Heavy) ready to debut in a few months, he is also rolling out a new automobile model (the Tesla Model X), putting a major satellite telecommunications constellation for high speed internet service (essentially launching a whole new global ISP).

If Elon Musk feels that he would be overwhelmed with the task of trying to start up the idea of the Hyperloop, I certainly don't blame him at all for saying it would be too much on his plate to properly get it accomplished.

That said, I agree with you that if this is something which would make a huge profit, it would already be done by now. The test tracks that I've seen are incredibly pathetic, with the Hyperloop One track not even being in a vacuum tube at all but instead simply an amusement park ride at best. Indeed I've seen far more innovation from roller coaster designers than what I've seen with these guys. For that matter, installing a Hyperloop into an amusement park would be a fantastic test track that could put actual paying customers into pods and act as a good proof of concept as folks could travel from one end of the park to another like the Disneyland monorail is able to accomplish (another fanciful transportation system that is still mostly confined to amusement parks).

Re:Wait in line

[Areyoukiddingme]

Your understanding of Rei's arguments about a useful model for Hyperloop appear to be severely flawed.

Building a pipe to send oil of certain density at certain pressure certain distance has completely different requirements than sending a big/heavy object inside a fluid under the same pressure that same distance. You are trying to make both situations equivalent by replacing that object with an equivalent amount of fluid by focusing on a generic analysis; and its mass is even irrelevant in comparison with what really matters here (= its big mass + velocity = tremendous momentum).

No, Rei is not trying to say anything like that. The fluid in a Hyperloop is a soft vacuum of gases of roughly the composition of Earth's atmosphere. The amount of mass of that fluid between any two pylons in the system is negligible. As in, the mass of a bird that elects to perch for a moment on top of that segment is greater than the mass of air within the tube beneath it.

As for your concerns about the tremendous momentum of the capsule, you are completely missing the point of the design of Hyperloop. Because the proposal includes a soft vacuum and a capsule designed with air skis, the lateral momentum imparted to the tube by the capsule is very small. It has to be, because the capsule is not under constant acceleration. It's coasting most of the time, and only being boosted at launch, at arrival (in reverse), and a minimal number of times in between to keep it moving. That design calls for the capsule to not be getting pushed the vast majority of the time. As such, if the capsule is transferring some large fraction of its momentum to each pylon as it passes, the design has failed—the capsule will come to a dead stop long before it reaches its goal.

With that in mind, Rei's emphasis on vertical loadings is indeed correct and useful. The transient mass of the capsule as it passes each pylon will be felt by that pylon almost exclusively vertically, except on curves. If the pylons are suffering significant lateral loads, it's because the capsule's suspension has catastrophically failed and it's busy grinding to a halt. The system has to be designed to tolerate that failure without suffering a cascade failure of pylons, but that aspect of the design is only for dealing with a failure mode, not normal operation.

Re:Wait in line

[Anonymous Coward]

Momentum: i = m * v.

Equation not valid for photons.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

Your understanding of Rei's arguments about a useful model for Hyperloop appear to be severely flawed.

I do think that your understanding of my critic is seriously flawed too. For example:

The fluid in a Hyperloop is a soft vacuum of gases of roughly the composition of Earth's atmosphere

From statements like this one you seem to believe that you can plainly ignore the inside air (interactions capsule-air), what denotes how unrealistic your approach is (precisely the whole point of my critic to Rei's ideas). This system is extremely complex and involves extremely complex interactions of a particularly complex/unknown-for-us sub-type (= fluid-dynamics). Under ideal conditions and/or for small enough sizes (-> what seems the start point for believing that most of Hyperloop goals are actually doable), all these aspects might even be deemed irrelevant and the main analysis might be actually focused on more simplistic aspects as you do (= just caring about weights and main vertical component). But when you are talking about a so big object (you don't need even to take into account the numerous problems associated with dealing with human lives. BTW, I re-insist in my advice to Hyperloop's people: if you seriously want anything of this to ever be close to become a reality, you should start focusing on having ready a much smaller version only dealing with goods. Once you are able to prove that this is a viable alternative, you might have a chance of reaching a version of what you want. The chances of any other approach to ever reach anywhere, other than forums, videos and the mouths of promising-a-lot-and-delivering-nothing, gullible, not-too-knowledgeable people are zero) flying free inside a fluid, you are talking about a true nightmare from the calculations perspective; and you can certainly not even dream about assuming that such a scenario is equivalent to just having any random continuous substance flowing through.

See, I am not sure about your exact knowledge, intentions (honestly understanding or blindly defending because of ignorance/other reasons?) and don't want to be disrespectful, but don't want to continue this conversation. My point should be clear to anyone willing to understand it and keep repeating it doesn't seem to make too much sense. If you were the first person to whom I was replying, I might even have extended this discussion a bit further, but look at all my replies yesterday!

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

No idea whom you want to impress with your fake knowledge.

Out of all the weird ideas which you have written so far, this is the one puzzling me the most by far! The first idea coming to your mind about the motivation of a person to do something is that he is trying to impress someone else?! (With fake knowledge?! In internet?! In Slashdot?).

That statement is so tremendously wrong at so many levels that it doesn't even deserve a "what is wrong with you?", but a "where on the hell have you got the crazy idea that someone like you can talk to someone like me from?" Are you sure that we even belong to the same domain? Because I have some serious doubts on this front. Anyway, I will stop replying to your incoherent nonsense.

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

Obviously we are not from the same domain as you either have no clue about physics or have a very badly trained but feeling.

Re:Wait in line

[david_thornley]

a big heavy solid moving very fast inside a fluid

Heavy in relation to what? It's lighter than an equivalent amount of any liquid we'd reasonably send through a long pipeline. It's moving faster, but without actually looking things up I can't tell whether it's more or less momentum than the liquid in a pipeline.

At a certain pressure, air ceases to be much of a fluid for practical purposes. Even if it isn't that thin, it's predictable. It will be transient extra pressure moving through the pipe, and that can be accounted for.

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

no clue about physics

As clearly proven by our conversation, you are way much more knowledgeable than me in physics (also your properly-understanding and having-civilised-conversations skills are waaaaaay better than mine). I will start building a statue to honour you and your relevant contributions to the world (of physics) as soon as I can.

Hopefully, you will soon find a place in your (huge) heart to forgive me and understand my situation: I am a simple mechanical engineer, naively relying on actual knowledge rather than on wise statements like "if engineers plan such a thing you usually can trust that they know the math". BTW, have you finally understood the question in one of my previous comments?

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

Heavy in relation to what?

Heavy enough to be a very relevant element which cannot be plainly ignored via "do the same than you do with normal piping". Sorry, but I don't want to continue a conversation which don't seem to drive anywhere. My intention was trying to reduce the level of abstraction a bit and it seems that I failed. This whole discussion became completely useless to me a while ago (the second time when I had to repeat a very similar version of basically the same idea). As said to the one other commentator above, I am not intending to be rude, but plainly not seeing the point of continuing.

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, you are a simple mechanical engineer, so every bridge you drive over or any bridge for trains you see, with all their momentum (har har har) must be a miracle for you.
I guess you are scared by planes, too?

The questions in your previous comments did not make sense, when I read them the first time. Why do you think I would read them again?

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

Yes, you are a simple mechanical engineer

Do you know what a mechanical engineer is, right? Basically, the making-physics-actually-applicable-to-build-machines kind of engineer. If this Hyperloop thing was ever built (as advertised will certainly never happen), it would be designed by mechanical engineers. There might be a cooperation with other fields like civil engineering for the long stretches (for the bridges which are so interesting to you. You are happy when you think about bridgets, right? How cute!).

I guess you are scared by planes, too?

Planes are also built by mechanical engineers like all the other mechanical machines. There are even more generic names like industrial engineering (actually speaking, I am an industrial engineer specialising in mechanical engineering) which include similar branches like mechanical, electronic, electrical, etc. engineers.

The questions in your previous comments did not make sense, when I read them the first time. Why do you think I would read them again?

You are sooooo dumb. I was referring to the point where you proved you absolute ignorance by expressly saying "Hyper-loop cars are not moving in a fluid but in very thin air", but you know? Air is a fluid :)

You are probably the most ignorant-completely-unaware-of-it-and-additionally-arbitrarily-attacking-others "person" who I have ever met, certainly here in Slashdot. Did you get all the sarcasm in my previous posts or you got completely lost? I was making fun of you and your pathetic attitude, hopefully you got that.

Re:Wait in line

[angel'o'sphere]

Funny that you call me dumb.
It is obviously easy to pull your leg, rofl.

If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer instead of dumb ass you knew how simple a hyperloop actually is.

But as you find continiously some (non existing) engineering problem, I hope you are not involved in engineering stuff that I actually use.

Hint: the air pressure at cruise altitude of a plane is similar to the pressure inside of a hyperloop ... now think again ...

Re:Wait in line

[CustomSolvers2]

If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer instead of dumb ass you knew how simple a hyperloop actually is.

I think that this sentence summarises perfectly all what you can give: arbitrarily doubting/attacking others ("If you were actually a well educated mechanical engineer"?!) + being able to put together the craziest what-if scenarios ever ("you knew how simple") + blindly defending whatever nonsense you get paid to/forced to/tricked into do(ing) ("hyperloop").

I am honestly curious about the reason why a person like you think that can talk to someone like me. Although I do consider everyone identical (something which most likely you don't do; it seems that people like you can only grow among multiple restrictions and prejudices), there are certain personalities so extremely incompatible with me that there is no point in having any kind of interaction with these people. I do have met a relevant number of idiots, fanatics and generic-talking-and-saying-nothing individuals like you, all of them getting angry with me; apparently, my mere existence bothers them, the fact of actually knowing, having (lived, done, given, etc.) and honestly not caring at all about their whole crappy half-world of permanent lies and unmotivated fears. Well, I guess that you are a generation-2 pathetically stupid, invasive, ignorant, fanatic half-person (animal-person-breeding stage already reached?!). Congrats.

the air pressure at cruise altitude of a plane is similar to the pressure inside of a hyperloop

How can anyone be so stupid!! Do you know the meaning, implications and actual applicability of this expression here?! Why do you think that a sentence (not delivered as ideal as a random output of actual knowledge) can solve the problem which a sentence (various ones, actually) created? Why do you keep doing these things?! Don't you understand that you are making a complete fool of yourself, no matter if someone says it to you or not? Usually, people with a bit of knowledge on the given issue hearing the kind of nonsense that you have delivered now (= ignorance + dishonesty + expecting to be taken seriously) wouldn't say you a word and just ignore you. Is so difficult to make an effort to properly knowing/understanding something or plainly not wanting to get involved in that something? What prize are you exactly getting with your attitude? It would have been 1000 times better for you to not have said anything! Less effort! Less CO2! Less being proven as an idiot! Only scenario where you wouldn't have lost is when dealing with other idiots like you, but then why taking any risk for a so irrelevant prize!

OK. This has been funny (quite pathetic actually, although I always look at the bright side), but will better stop it here. I don't think that I will talk to you again, because have already got all what you can offer (= some laughs at your expense).

Sounds great

[grungeman]

Get that San Francisco to LA route working and we can talk.

Re: Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a working prototype. All they have now is hyperware and that isn't worth talking about.

Re:Sounds great

[NotInHere]

Yeah, as much as I like the idea of a hyperloop, and new ways to transport people, I think the main issue of hyperloop is right now that its an unproven technology. There isn't a single track in operation around the globe. No info about how expensive it all is, etc. Of course, operating one track is considerably more expensive per rail km than operating many tracks, due to economics of scale, but you can't just give a company that has nothing but concepts billions of dollars/euros to deploy a technology that hasn't even a working prototype. I mean I'm not saying that hyperloop is a bad idea and that it will never work, but I'm neither sure of hyperloop working so well that it should be deployed.

Re:Sounds great

[ShanghaiBill]

Or just build a 50 mile test track from San Jose to Palo Alto, and then up the Peninsula to SF. That would be enough to test the concept, and if it works, there would be plenty of demand from people that can afford the fare.

Re: Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still LOLing at the Europeans, who are STILL in mourning about Brexit and the inevitable collapse of the European Union. The EU is well on its way to taxing itself to death to pay for enforcing their ridiculously excessive regulations and their incredibly wasteful projects like this hyperloop. There will never be any construction done on this project because the EU will cease to exist as other countries follow the UK out the door. Even if this is funded solely by private investments, which is unlikely, it will never happen. The funds required will soon be worthless as the EU devalues the Euro in response to the mounting debt of it's member states and resulting economic collapse.

The success of Marine Le Pen in France is yet another sign that other nations are seriously considering following the UK out the door. Once France leaves, Germany will be close behind, and that will leave failed states like Greece to wallow in their own debt. The EU is basically dead and the election of Donald Trump is rapidly spiraling the United States into idiocracy. The imminent collapses of the EU and US will allow Canada to take over as the world's dominant superpower.

Re: Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, we're so sad to see those Yank lapdogs dump their privileges and veto right.

Re: Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, most of us didn't want to leave, and if we do, we'd like the option to rejoin in a few years time, with a less mean-spirited government. I'm certain the EU will still be thriving and the wreckers and bigots like Le Pen will never gain control.

Re: Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

found the fidesz shill

Re:Sounds great

[Actually, I do RTFA]

But Europe already has right-of-ways for high speed trains, which could be used for the hyperloop. And Musk is just discovering that those right of ways are the hardest part (which seemed obvious a while ago.).

Now, Europe has those right of ways, because they already have high-speed trains, so they don't need the hyperloops....

Re:Sounds great

[yodleboy]

" but you can't just give a company that has nothing but concepts billions of dollars/euros to deploy a technology that hasn't even a working prototype"

Except this happens all the time in software. Not surprising someone like Musk expects it to happen with every pet hardware project he tries.

Re:Sounds great

[Anonymous Coward]

But Europe already has right-of-ways for high speed trains, which could be used for the hyperloop. And Musk is just discovering that those right of ways are the hardest part (which seemed obvious a while ago.).

IMO the Musk side of that comment is completely unjustified. The original Hyperloop proposal specifically mentioned how the loop being on pylons would help with right of way issues ... which of course are going to be an issue with any ground based transportation.

I seem to recall there being mention too of running hyperloop along/over freeways, so closely related to the high speed train right-of-way aspect of your comment.

You mustn't have RTFAs in question at the time. ;-)

#FakeNews

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is a hyper-wall between the US and Mexico, no matter what the cost! After all, the Mexicans will pay for it.

#maga #covfefe

Good luck in the UK

[hoofie]

I can't see this happening in the UK unfortunately. It's notoriously difficult, time-consuming and mind-bendingly expensive to obtain the land and permissions to build any new transport infrastructure corridors in the UK. The Rail lines High-Speed Route 1 was bad enough and High Speed Route 2 is bogged down in inquiries, corruption and phenomenal cost projections. High Speed Route 2 is 400km and is sitting at a cost of 56 billion pounds which will be well south of the final bill. Whilst hyperloop may be orders of magnitude cheaper per route km the fun and games in getting the land will be the same. And no, you can't put it in the air on pylons as "air rights" belong to the land holders too. Land ownership in the UK is incredibly fragmented so even a short distance means engaging with thousands of land holders. One approach would be to piggy back down the middle of major arterial roads on pylons as most trunk roads are now owned by the Crown although that's not a hard and fast rule - many minor roads sit on land still theoretically owned by someone else.

Re:Good luck in the UK

[nukenerd]

I can't see this happening in the UK fortunately

FTFY

Whilst hyperloop may be orders of magnitude cheaper per route km ...

Lay off the Kool-aid if I were you. Why should a railway in a vacuum tunbe be cheaper to build than a railway not in a vacuum tube? (Yes, yes, I know Musk and his fans don't like it called a "railway". OK, "Guided public transport", whatever).

In fact it will involve far more expensive civil engineering because at its speed the curvature in both horizontal and vertical planes will need to be very very gentle - much more so than with conventional railways. So expect either mostly tunnels, or massive cuttings and viaducts. Those support pylons, that people keep glossing over as if it were a contour-hugging oil pipe, will need to be hundreds of feet high in some places.

Re:Good luck in the UK

[Zemran]

You don't know anything. Troll (add additional expletives for effect). Huge pipes are much cheaper than thin rails to lay. They can even put the massive pipes in the air like elevated railways but you cannot build railways in the air like elevated railways because that would be too expensive. Duh!

Re:Good luck in the UK

[angel'o'sphere]

Obviously the tracks in curves would be tilted.

One Ring To Rule Them All

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes of course the routes chosen are the most traveled by pack Bedouin with pack mule of the modern world.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

progress!

[ooloorie]

Unlike so many previous ripoffs, this one has the "hype" right in the name!

Re:progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if it is a purposeful mislead of the US or similarly located investors. As the proposed projects are far, the laws are different and the related permitting process documents in foreign languages, the potential and current investors can't check the complex realities related to such projects, the conditions, or the progress of the projects very easily.

Re:progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which? Because it seems like Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity are producing real, desirable products.

Re:progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then they are very good at hiding those from the public.

Re:progress!

[freudigst]

Uh, where to begin in answering such a stupid, lazy question?

Solar Roadways? Hoverboards? Thorium-powered cars? Self-filling water bottles? Plastic from the air? Artificial gills?

I guess it all depends on your very own personal level of stubbornness and stupidity...

Hypeloop

[Anonymous Coward]

Is so far from having something even remotely workable and yet are trying to push external markets?
I want what Elon is smokin'

Re:Hypeloop

[nukenerd]

He does not seem to know much about the UK either. A Hyperloop between Wales and Scotland? Very little traffic there. I live in one of the more populated areas of Wales and I've never come across anyone around here who travels to Scotland on any regular basis. It would be even less so if Scotland gets independence.

Re:Hypeloop

[Coisiche]

I bet that they looked at transport data around the weekend of the 6 nations rugby game between the two and said "Holy shit! Look at those numbers.", completely failing to recognize that there is probably close to zero demand for the rest of the year.

Re:Hypeloop

[AmiMoJo]

While I agree that Wales to Scotland probably isn't where you would start, you are missing the real opportunity. New high speed links can create traffic, not merely serve existing travellers.

Re:Hypeloop

[nukenerd]

In fact I've just checked and as I suspected there is no direct train between the Welsh and Scottish capitals, despite both places having loads of direct train services to other destinations. How about Musk sponsoring a direct high speed train service on this route to assess the demand before he throws billions on a Hyperlink (in his dreams anyway)?

Is it really practical

[labnet]

As an Engineer, I see always see the problems....

- Thousands of sliding expansion joints that need to remain vacuum tight.
- The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)
- The problem of escaping people from a vacuum tube when something breaks. This would probably require uuuuge isolation valves every few km, and escape points closer than this, with emergency air infiltration systems, which then has to emergency break other pods who are then stuck in long queues with limited air, in battery powered coffins.
- Long term maintenance: esp of underground parts requiring building a tunnel in a tunnel.
- High capital cost of a complex pod requiring compressors, life support (aircon and air), batteries, recharging systems.
- Being not much faster than a bullet train of much higher capacity, and slower than an aircraft.
- Energy is becoming cheaper, so the main advantage of hyperloop is somewhat dulled.

I'm sure other can add more

Re:Is it really practical

[thinkwaitfast]

As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

As a physicist that has worked with vacuum systems in the past including, changing oil on a rough pump, regening a cryopump, cleaning a vacuum chamber from a diffusion pump back streaming, rebuilding a gate valve, so i known what I'm talking about.

As an Engineer, I see always see the problems....

- Thousands of sliding expansion joints that need to remain vacuum tight.

Absolutely correct. The bellows for a two foot travel is on the order of one $1000.

- The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)
- The problem of escaping people from a vacuum tube when something breaks. This would probably require uuuuge isolation valves every few km, and escape points closer than this, with emergency air infiltration systems, which then has to emergency break other pods who are then stuck in long queues with limited air, in battery powered coffins.

When something breaks there is a significant just maintaining the vacuum system.

- Long term maintenance: esp of underground parts requiring building a tunnel in a tunnel.
- High capital cost of a complex pod requiring compressors, life support (aircon and air), batteries, recharging systems.

As a person that has worked on vacuum systems for my PhD, I agree here. You could just the maintenance cost of changing the oil on the thousands of rough pumps they will need.

- Being not much faster than a bullet train of much higher capacity, and slower than an aircraft.

No these morons are too stupid tp learn the mistakes of the concord. just because you're faster doesn't make you I economical.

Energy is becoming cheaper, so the fictional advantage of hyperloop is somewhat nonexistant.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems.

As a physicist, I know engineers are not smart enough realize how stupid they are.
The hyper loop will never be cheaper than air travel or rail.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Solutions make things possible, not necessarily practical. You can solve problems all day long but at this point hyperloop is about as practical as flying cars.

Re:Is it really practical

[labnet]

As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.

Sure, I solve problems all day: but before I take on a project, I like to know the risk/reward ratio and for Hyperloop it doesn't look like a great ratio.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Look for Thunderf00t an hyperloop on Youtube.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting a post with a falacious argument (authority argument) does not bode well for the remaining of the post. I'm not saying that what follows is wrong (I tend to agree to what I understand when I fix the typos), just that it weakens your position.

'there is a significant' ... what ? I assume it's about 'cost'.

The price of a functionning hyperloop is insane. People see the typical vaacum tubes and seem to forget that scale matters.

Re:Is it really practical

[StevenMaurer]

You missed one:

• If anything goes even slightly wrong, you kill all the passengers and likely destroy much of the entire system.

This has already been discussed rather extensively.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

Semiconductor industry said end of Moore's law for last 40 years. Every time there was a "realistic" threat. Which turns out to be solvable.

Re:Is it really practical

[tehcyder]

As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.

So let's see your plans for a free-as-in-beer time machine then.

Oh no, wait, not everything is possible, either technically or economically.

Re:Is it really practical

[nukenerd]

As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.

As an engineer I also see solutions to problems, but I also see their costs. All options have problems, but it is part of an engineers job to rule out those options with costs outweighing the advantages. Hyperloop is one of those, but as long as a billionaire nutter is paying engineers to work on it come-what-may, they will do so.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

It has all the costs and dangers of space travel with none of the benefits.

Failing to see why it's better than planes that don't need a specialized tube aside the short one to house the people in while flying.

Re:Is it really practical

[hackertourist]

The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)

This is an issue in ships and aircraft, which can move around violently depending on weather. In a high-speed train, by contrast, you hardly notice anything. In a TGV, 300 km/h feels like standing still, the only lurching about is when the train approaches a station at low speed and runs over old tracks. Hyperloop won't have points or crossings, and won't encounter trains running in the opposite direction, so should be a very smooth ride.

Re:Is it really practical

[freudigst]

So this is the result of a "no man left behind" school system?

Re:Is it really practical

[nukenerd]

The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)

In a high-speed train, by contrast, you hardly notice anything. In a TGV, 300 km/h feels like standing still Hyperloop .... should be a very smooth ride.

Unless the Hyperloop is dead straight there will be lateral and vertical accelerations as it takes curves* and changes of gradient. At such high speed, the builders will need to push these to near the limit of average human tolerance, for example to skirt round geographical features (villages, cities, hills), minimise tunnelling and viaducts, or, when underground, avoid geological difficulties.

I have never ridden the TGV myself, but those who have tell me there is quite a bit of "hump-back-bridge" sensation as it tops rises or bottoms dips. Indivuduals vary, but if I ever ride on Hyperloop I shall book a seat at the rear of the pod to avoid the worst of the projection vomit.

* Yes, yes, curves can be countered by banking, but that turns the lateral acceleration into vertical acceleration for the passenger instead.

Re:Is it really practical

[angel'o'sphere]

Everyone can make pointless videos like that.

Re:Is it really practical

[squiggleslash]

True, but some are fairly insightful. This video presents a counter argument, arguing that the Hyperloop is something we should never give up.

Re:Is it really practical

[GuB-42]

Oh, that Thunderf00t video...
It raises very good points but the catastrophic failure argument doesn't hold. Ironically, a good demonstration is in one of his later video on the subject, the one with the imploding tank.
First thing, yes, people may die, crashing at supersonic speeds tends to do that. It will be expensive, rescuing trapped people will be difficult, etc... Definitely not fun.
However, what he misses is that the tube will be more than 100000 times longer than it is wide. The wall of air traveling at the speed of sound destroying everything in its wake will gradually slow down over some distance.
Furthermore, as shown in the imploding tank video, in case of damage, the pipe will likely collapse and partially seal itself, limiting further damage. The tank in the video is just the size of a railroad car and only half of it collapsed.

I don't believe in the Hyperloop but the risk of catastrophic failure is not the reason.

Re:Is it really practical

[Anonymous Coward]

As an Engineer, I see always see the problems...

As an English major...

Re:Is it really practical

[by (1706743)]

While I don't disagree with your main points (and I think the hyperloop idea is great for Star Trek, not so much for Real Life), there's a huge difference between high vacuum/UHV systems and the level of vacuum required for a hyperloop-style setup.

Yes, bellows for instance are expensive, but you're probably talking about scientific-grade, relatively non-magnetic, bakeable, CF bellows with high quality knife-edges, which are good well into the UHV range.

For contrast, the pressure in my vacuum system (grad student) is about 10 billion times lower than their target pressure of 100 Pa. And this is not anything remarkable, this is just a standard room temperature UHV setup -- my point is, apples and oranges.

That said, I still don't think it's a great idea...

Re:Is it really practical

[angel'o'sphere]

Unfortunately not available in my country.

I thought

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe already had public transportation. Isn't hyperloop only relevant as a fantasy in the US where efficient public transportation is forbidden by law?

Next up... hyperloop replaces Japanese bullet train.

Re:I thought

[freudigst]

Exactly. Leave the fantasizing where it belongs. In La La Land. As long as the water supply allows.

Nothing happens in Europe

[Max_W]

It is still impossible to go from say Vienna to Kharkov by train easily. Not even possible to buy a train ticket Vienna-Kharkov easily, - just as it was twenty years ago. A lot of talk about "European Integration", but nothing really changes on the ground.

I do not believe that the Hyperloop One is feasible with this generation of quaint leadership in Europe. They can just talk big and well about climate change, integration, etc.

Still in the 19th century there was the St. Petersburg-Wien-Nizza-Cannes-Express regular train https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , there were no visas, and not even passports were necessary for travel. WW1 destroyed it all and we are still stuck there.

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Ukraine is neither a member of the EU or EFTA, nor a part of the Schengen area. The country also happens to be in a state of war with a foreign invader (who also doesn't belong to EU/EFTA/Schengen).
Try another example?

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[dunkelfalke]

Talking about cherry-picking your examples. Ukraine is only geographically in Europe. It uses a different gauge and its railway tracks probably weren't maintained since the 1980ies. Even their fastest train (Hyindai Intercity) runs about as fast as German commuter trains stop every two minutes. If you want to go to Kharkov, use an airplane from Kiev. It is an old B737, but at least it is fast. Trust me, I speak from experience. Besides, the only reason to go to Kharkov in first place would be for using it as a time machine - it still feels very much like USSR - but if you want that particular experience, Tiraspol would probably be more authentic.

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not feasible, the way it's presented, with the current rules of physics, period.

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[freudigst]

Does nothing happen indeed? I could've sworn that one of the major countries staked their economic future on renewable energy.

One way or the other, they are basing their decisions on technological reality. Of course, it helps when the engineers have a true technical education as opposed to the La La variety.

I should know - I have the American version.

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[bill_mcgonigle]

WW1 destroyed it all and we are still stuck there.

The illusion is that "WW1" is over - there have been lulls and diversions, but right now the US military is trying to keep together the partitioning of the Middle East that the British imposed in the early days of the World War.

Wilson and House's vision for a Pax Americana is just as wrong after a hundred years as it was then, and no amount of bombing the world for democracy can ever work. The premise and the goals of "WW1" are still playing out. Only once that strategy is abandoned can we be said to have given up the mantle of war.

Truly, here in America, we are born into an "we've always been at war" mindset and people believe it to be the normal.

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[nukenerd]

I do not believe that the Hyperloop One is feasible with this generation of quaint leadership in Europe.

You could have stopped writing after the word "feasable".

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[thegarbz]

A lot of talk about "European Integration", but nothing really changes on the ground.

And what does European Integration have to do with non-EU countries?

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[estestvoispytatel]

That experience seems dated, the current transport authorities are quite active in setting railway links into neighbour countries (UZ's Intercity already zips to Polish city I can't immediately recall). Oh, and Intercity from Kiev to Kharkov is much more sensible solution than airplane, that's for sure. It takes about the same time but I'd rather prefer wi-fi, espresso, bigger chair and similar amenities on board of a train.

Re:Nothing happens in Europe

[dunkelfalke]

The intercity still takes 4 hours 38 minutes, the flight only one hour plus one hour - worst case - for going through the airport security, boarding and so on. How is that even close to "about the same time"? My experience is exactly two years old and it looks like nothing has changed. The only thing that is about the same would be the price of a first class IC ticket and a second class airplane ticket. Ukraine would need to install railroad like this to make your wishful thinking come true - that kind of railroad supports speeds over 300 kph but costs almost a million EUR per km.

No windows? No way!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanna see outside!

Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a train in a tunnel but with air sucked out of it. So the difference between a high speed train tunnel and this is the air suckage.

So its put all the energy into keeping the air sucked out, instead of pushing the train against the air.

But the air is a known problem, in the Channel Tunnels it's handled with vents connecting the two direction tunnels, they open and close so the pressure wave from the front of one train pushed the train in the other direction from behind. Chunnel is not watertight let alone air tight.

So if you consider the costs of the Channel Tunnel GBP 9.5 billion for 31 miles of track, and the price.... the Chunnel competes with boats that are slow and expensive, a normal train has to compete with cars, coach, normal rail and flights.

So say low interest 3% government loan, so that 31 miles of track needs to return GBP 285 million profit. Eurotunnel makes only about 51 million, and that's competing only against ferries.

So hyperloop is basically hype. They cannot deliver on any of these ideas and their costings are comedically bad.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[RotateLeftByte]

The fast trains between London and Paris (2hours city centre to city centre) has cut the number of flights dramatically between london and paris. More people are travelling between them now than ever before.
The tunnel (road traffic) competes against the ferries. The Passenger tail service from London to Paris, Brussels etc competes against the airlines.
I took the train from London to Avignon last year (a through service). Very much more civilised way of travelling than by air. Yes it took a bit longer but was far less stressful.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[AmiMoJo]

A better model would be Japanese high speed rail. For a start, a lot of the profit comes form the stations which are basically big shopping centres. The station is a destination in itself, with shops, supermarkets, restaurants, daycare and more. The revenue from that subsidises the trains, which bring people to the shops.

As for land, the new maglev track is over 90% tunnel. Through hard rock and difficult terrain. 800km/h, rising to well over 1000km/h. Hyperloop is 1500km/h but the cars are much smaller and more cramped, Shinkansen trains are roomy and pleasant to be in with nice bathrooms and plenty of luggage space.

By the way, the magline line is 280km long and will cost £65bn, so actually cheaper per kilometre than the UK's rather slow new HS2.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[Malc]

Let's not downplay the cost of the Chunnel. £9.5 billion in 1994 is probably more like £18 billion once adjusted for inflation.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[thegarbz]

Not to mention the continued expansion of the Eurostar to Rotterdam and more importantly Amsterdam (European travel hub).

Once that's done I'm not flying to our head office again. I can spend the extra hour doing work on the train rather than standing in a line to take my shoes and belt off.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[Zemran]

Most chunnel journeys are faster than flying if you take the whole event into account rather than just the flying time. Travel to Heathrow, check in two hours before flight and wait, flight, wait for luggage and immigration, travel to European city...

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[angel'o'sphere]

The jap. MagLev trains have a speed of about 600km/h, far away from 1000km/h.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[RotateLeftByte]

That's why the train has taken more than 50% of the market between London and Paris.
Taking the train is no big deal here in Europe unlike the USA. I don't even think about taking my car into Central London. 45 minutes on the train and the ticket includes Busses and tube. Simple really.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[Solandri]

The Channel tunnel works better than ferries because it allows continuous traffic flow. Ferries have to transport vehicles in discrete chunks, with time taken to onload and offload them. With a tunnel, the vehicles can go straight through (as traffic allows) without having to stop. Same reason turbine engines (continuous fuel reaction) eventually replaced piston engines (fuel combusted in discrete chunks) for any applications needing high power generation.

Hyperloop requires loading vehicles into a train sitting in an evacuated loop. That means there needs to be some sort of airlock. As of yet, nobody has invented a graduated airlock which allows contents to pass through at speed. Transport must come to a halt, the edges sealed to be airtight, then the compartments opened for offloading and onloading. So Hyperloop needs to transport vehicles in discrete chunks, meaning it will function much like the ferry does. Not like the Channel tunnel does; despite the fact that it travels through a tunnel. Hyperloop will only become rail-like when it's extensive enough to allow point-to-point transport from origin to destination. That maximizes the speed increase you gain for suffering through the zero speed of the onload/offload cycle.

I took the train from London to Avignon last year (a through service). Very much more civilised way of travelling than by air. Yes it took a bit longer but was far less stressful.

Like Concorde, I suspect that will be Hyperloop's undoing. Everyone wants to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco, or London to Paris more quickly. But how much more are they willing to pay for it? I suspect the vast majority of people will simply choose to ride a regular train for an hour or two more rather than pay extra to ride Hyperloop for slightly less time. Hyperloop makes more sense in the U.S. because we lack a high speed rail system. There's a nearly factor of 10 travel time gap between air and rail/highway. But Europe already has fast trains that will get you there in roughly 1/3 to 1/4 the time of a plane.

Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel

[RotateLeftByte]

Please show me the channel tunnel where you can travel through without stopping. I'd love to use it.
The current tunnel is RAIL only. That means cars/trucks/busses etc are loaded onto er Trains and you go through the tunnel.
Granted that if you are in a car, you don't need to get out of the car for the whole thing. Perhaps that is what you meant.

trains are fast enough in the UK

[bugs2squash]

They can always run the existing trains faster, they just don't like the wear on the tracks.

If people want the hyperloop experience they can always just make one of the cars a lot smaller and take the window out.

Come to think of it, if the train cars rode closer to the rails and were half the height they could probably just run the whole train 50% faster

Fishing for investors

[Kazoo the Clown]

Just like any other snake-oil salesman.

Going nowhere very fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

The hyperloop cannot possibly work.
It has been debunked already.

omg "planet of the apps" is so cringey

[Anonymous Coward]

makes me embarrassed to be a mobile dev. should have been an accountant or something. no one makes ridiculous tv shows about accountants.

have to be cheap as pie to make it.

[gl4ss]

they will have to be cheap as pie between finland and estonia.

I seriously hope that finnish government doesn't put a dime towards this though. it's still unproven as fuck. they don't have a prototype. giving money towards a tunnel would be shady as fuck. furthermore, estonia - finland route is so fucking short that regular train going 200kmh would do just fine, just fine, if there was a tunnel.

and they have to be cheaper than 20 euros for a trip. which is basically cheaper than a comparable train route in finland. why? boats between finland and estonia are pretty darn cheap and will get you there in couple of hours anyways(!).

Re:have to be cheap as pie to make it.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's still unproven as fuck.

Fuck is more proven than you might think. It's been keeping homo sapiens around for 7500 generations now.

Re:have to be cheap as pie to make it.

[thegarbz]

I seriously hope that finnish government doesn't put a dime towards this though. it's still unproven as fuck.

I know right! Why would a government ever put a cent towards something that isn't 100% proven. No government would be stupid enough to spend money on research, trials, pilots or any of that garbage. All of these *biggest things ever* or *newest things ever* should be funded 100% out of private pockets. That's the best way to ensure that costs to the people are kept low and the people remain best served.

Historical perspective

[Okian Warrior]

As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems.

As a physicist, I know engineers are not smart enough realize how stupid they are.
The hyper loop will never be cheaper than air travel or rail.

I was watching some of the original Mission Impossible episodes recently, and recalling my thoughts on watching them when they were first aired.

Some of them required tiny TV cameras hidden in (for example) a brooch worn by the female lead, and I remember thinking at the time how preposterous that was. The technological problems of getting a videcon that small, the lenses necessary, the power supply to generate the HV necessary for the tube, all the tube or transistor amplifiers, and the dry-cell battery needed to power it for several hours - complete fantasy!

And of course nowadays these devices are on eBay for $10.

You may not see the solutions to the problems today, but you really can't predict what will be possible tomorrow.

There's a difference between physically impossible and technologically impossible.

Re:Historical perspective

[tehcyder]

There's a difference between physically impossible and technologically impossible.

There is also a continuum from "we can build this now for pennies" to "we could theoretically build this in a few years' time at a cost of half the whole planet's GDP".

Re:Historical perspective

[houghi]

The issue here is not that we think it is impossible, but that it isn't cheaper. While the prices might seriously go down, the price of the rest will go down as well.

We know we can make planes that fly a lot faster than what they do now. Does not mean it is something we should do.

Sorry Hype-loop guys

[Anonymous Coward]

But the patents on pneumatic tube delivery systems are still in force and are essential to your product. Prepare to pay through the nose just to build your demo Hype-loop.

Scam...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this scam still going on ?

Correction for BS summary...

[lindseyp]

Hyperloop One has revealed its plans for connecting Europe via its Hyperloop transportation system that can* move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel.

*cannot

Re:Correction for BS summary...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop posting.

Corsica to Sardinia? Seriusly? LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

I've lived in north Sardinia and still visit there once a year. There maybe few tens of passengers a day in winter, say few hundred if you want to be optimistic and maybe a thousand a day during summer.

Does these number justify this project? LOL

Let alone the very strong currents in the "bocche di bonifacio", the channel that separate the two islands...

Knowing that territory VERY well, this is ridiculous at best!

it's mostly materials.

[gl4ss]

There's a difference between physically impossible and technologically impossible.

there's a long disconnect what physically makes sense to build and what hyperloop is proposing.

mostly materials. you see. if hyperloop could develop the materials they need, they would be better off selling them for other uses than their tube.

they don't have what their idea needs.

their idea itself is 100+ years old. seriously, the idea is as old as balls and they don't have the technology to make it as of now.

conceptually it's the same as having a flying car company that depends on some sound dampening and battery technology that doesn't yet exist and never might.

and uh tell me a little bit, but they did have transistors already invented when they made mission impossible?

Re:it's mostly materials.

[by (1706743)]

and uh tell me a little bit, but they did have transistors already invented when they made mission impossible?

Yeah but it looks like the CCD was invented while the show was running, so a video camera tube would be required (and it wasn't used for image capture until after the show).

Political != Geographical

[Roger W Moore]

They've also got their geography slightly wrong. By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more.

Unless you expect hyperloop construction to take place on a geological timescale they have the geography just fine. Geographically the UK will remain part of Europe regardless of what the idiots in Westminster decide to do politically.

Re:Political != Geographical

[AmiMoJo]

The business opportunity will be severely downgraded if people need visas to travel in/out of the UK though. May seems to be hoping that it goes wrong so she can blame the EU and avoid negotiating a deal that will inevitably be criticised, which means visas required to visit the EU or enter the UK.

Re:Political != Geographical

[Rei]

Unless you expect hyperloop construction to take place on a geological timescale they have the geography just fine.

Speak for yourself - I lost a ton of money on the Doggerland Hyperloop project when it went under.

Another PR stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

And now everybody is furiously discussing if a route from Finland to Estonia makes sense.

Re:queue the hyper morons

[Hognoxious]

What we learned is that it's incredibly stupid to fly it on a route that goes near a bunch of fat bastards who sulk and sabotage it because they didn't invent it.

FTFY

Classic scam, do it far away

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

Hyperloop One is really trying to hire engineers

[CustomSolvers2]

I saw one of their job offerings and applied for it (as an external contractor). In principle, just for fun, but I would certainly want to work with them in case that my proposal was accepted; basically, I said that I would deliver objective and honest assessments expected to be exclusively constrained by best engineering practices, physics and other intrinsic limitations (e.g., budget). In my application, I expressly highlighted my almost-intuitive scepticism regarding anything of this ever working as advertised.

Clarification: although I do have a BEng in mechanical engineer and some experience in the field, most of my professional career has been focused on programming and numerical analysis. On the other hand, I applied for a work mostly consisting in numerically/theoretically assessing the actual applicability of the their intentions, an aspect where I am reasonably experienced. In any case, I honestly think that they can rightfully reject my application for various reasons other than my perhaps-too-honest intentions.

15 years to build 100km of TGV tracks in Holland

[thesjaakspoiler]

And investors are lining up to throw their money at Hyperloop because they say they can build a network across Europe?

Start with one

[houghi]

They should start with one. In one country and if possible one legal district. First you need to get acceptance of each local political entity. That mean city, province and state. And in each one you win, it must be connected to the next one and that all the way from start to finish.

At the same time you need to compete with the fast trains that already exist all over Europe and are backed by public money.

If they could start with just one and pull it off, that would be great. If you want to invest in money, see what lawyer company they use and try to buy shares there, because they will be making a shitload.

Despite this Eurotunnel profits 51 million

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that even relevent?

Eurotunnels costs were largely written off by the government of France and UK, it has limited competition, and yet makes only 51 million in profit. FAR TOO LITTLE to service the debt of making it, even if governments gave them super low interest loans.

If its so attractive, how come it was never commercially viable? If it was faster, e.g. 1 hour instead of 2 hours, would that make it suddenly attract and be able to carry twenty times the passengers? Or would it make them be able to charge 20 times the price and keep all the existing passengers?

Hyperloops claims don't really live in the real world here. They have a short length of pipe in the desert and a brand name and a lot of press releases, nothing more.

Except that...

[DrYak]

so guess what the result of those negotiations is going to be? exact same as it is now.

Except that now UK isn't part of the EU and doesn't have anything to say anymore about its politics.

UK went from a full blown EU member, to probably the same status as Switzerland and Norway, two countries who were never members of the EU to begin with, and just sign treaties to be able to participate anyway.

Basically, UK just lost its voice at the EU table - its share of sovereignty.

Which sounds ironic, when a good chunk of the campaign's argument was something along the lines of "we want to be in charge of our own".

--

Or, UK could decide to go bonkers, completely sever ties with EU, and apply a request to be accepted as the 51st state of the USA.
Airstrip One. :-)

Re:Except that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, UK could decide to go bonkers, completely sever ties with EU, and apply a request to be accepted as the 51st state of the USA.
Airstrip One. :-)

It's a damn pity we can't tow the wretched island right down to Chesapeake Bay. Let the yanks have it.

Re:Except that...

[Ash-Fox]

Basically, UK just lost its voice at the EU table - its share of sovereignty.

Basically, you're wrong.

1) The UK has not left the EU yet, even though article 58 has been triggered.
2) The 'voice' the UK and other countries have are only opinions relating to topics that the EU parliament have decided to discuss and have ultimate authority to decide even with opposition of all countries.
3) Any changes that require a modification to a treaty needs to be ratified by all countries unanimously, which rarely happens.
4) A citizen has no proper recourse in the EU parliamentary system to remove a bad power (voting or otherwise). They are separated to the point that EU citizens have no powers and there is a lack of sufficient checks and balances.

In summary, the EU in it's current state is no democratic and as far as voice goes, it doesn't really do much as can has been seen by the EU parliament video streams repeatedly.

Which sounds ironic, when a good chunk of the campaign's argument was something along the lines of "we want to be in charge of our own".

In comparison Switzerland and Norway do not receive EU mandates in their directives for laws to be implemented in their country... Taking the above scenario into account, the process is technically undemocratic. They are only requirements for trade and compatible relations. Trying to twist that into saying that the UK would have less sovereign control over it's own laws is ludicrous.

What source did you even use to get this information? You've displayed such terrible insight, it astounds me.

Re:Except that...

[AmiMoJo]

The fantasy they voted for was that the EU "needs us more than we need them" and so decided to kiss the collective arse for access to the lucrative UK market...

In reality the EU is more worried about America at the moment and is looking to renew itself without any reliance on the UK or US. The UK will be offered a fair deal, but the EU won't compromise its most basic principals like free trade also requiring freedom of movement.

I think the Conservative plan is to wait for the talks to break down and blame it on the EU, before falling back to WTO rules and turning the UK into a bargain basement tax haven, a kind of rival to India and China but geographically close to Europe. Hopefully they won't win the election on Thursday.

Re:Except that...

[ooloorie]

Basically, UK just lost its voice at the EU table - its share of sovereignty.

That is wonderful Orwellian doublespeak; an EU bureaucrat couldn't have done better.

In fact, the UK decided that its "voice at the EU table" wasn't worth it; not surprising, given what a lousy deal the UK was getting from the EU.

UK went from a full blown EU member, to probably the same status as Switzerland and Norway, two countries who were never members of the EU to begin with, and just sign treaties to be able to participate anyway.

Norway and Switzerland are two of the wealthiest countries on the planet, and they stay out of the EU by choice. If the UK just went to "the same status" as those countries, that definitely is a step up from being just a run of the mill EU member.

Re:Except that...

[ooloorie]

like free trade also requiring freedom of movement

"You can trade with our cartel in return for billions of contributions and accepting millions of people we don't know what to do with" is not principled free trade, it is an embrace of the mercantilism and protectionism. It is Orwellian doublespeak to characterrize EU trade policy as "free trade".

but the EU won't compromise its most basic principals

The EU never compromises its principals or its principles: both are rooted in greed, selfishness, and illiberal government.

Re:Except that...

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't get your 4)
The EU parliament works like any parliament.
The MoPs are voted in by citizens.

Re:Except that...

[Ash-Fox]

The EU parliament works like any parliament.
The MoPs are voted in by citizens.

There is a separation of powers between the executive and legislative in the European Parliament. The 'MoP' do not get final say on issues outside of treaty issues as originally described.

To understand the democratic situation a bit more, consider that the President of the European Commission is nominated by the European Council and they are not required to nominate a candidate that has received majority votes either and is selected through a 'secret' voting that is not visible to general public. It should be noted that the European Commission is what holds the legislative power, not the European Parliament.

Re:Except that...

[angel'o'sphere]

Neither is any Minister or Secretary of State voted in by the citizens, somwhat is your point?
The parliament has full authority about every EU law, no idea what you want to dispute there.
The european council is build from delegated of the governments of the member countries and hence by proxy voted for by the citizens that voted for those reective governments.

The EU works more or less like federated Germany works, or im a lesser degree like Spain or the UK work: it is as close as democratic as you can make such a big organization without removing the governments of the memeber states.

Re:Except that...

[Ash-Fox]

The parliament has full authority about every EU law

It doesn't and I'm done explaining.

Re:Except that...

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, then so be it :)
Every EU law is voted in by the EU parliament, and then later transformed into national laws by the national parliaments.
I'm done with explaining, too.

Re:Except that...

[Teancum]

The EU parliament works like any parliament.

Except it isn't like any real parliament except perhaps a weaker version of the UK House of Lords. The EU Parliament can't initiate any legislation at all, only vote on stuff that has already been submitted by unelected bureaucrats that can't even be modified through amendments. Even if the EU Parliament votes a resounding "No" on some legislation, it can still pass into law and impact the lives of European citizens.

MEPs are there for show, not for substance. They really don't matter other than to make headlines and dramatic speeches that have no substance because it is really nothing more than a debate club. If anything, individual citizens have far more political clout at the United Nations and the resolutions that get passed in New York... and damn little even there that matters worth anything.

If the EU Parliament had some teeth, could propose new legislation and have it mean something, and if it could really be a governing body over the bureaucracy of the EU, you might have a point. Decisions governing the EU simply don't happen in that body at all.

Re:Except that...

[Ash-Fox]

1) Directives aren't law.
2) The votes aren't binding outside of treaty changes.

Re:Except that...

[angel'o'sphere]

The EU Parliament can't initiate any legislation at all, only vote on stuff that has already been submitted by unelected bureaucrats that can't even be modified through amendments.
No difference to the German parliament.
Do you know a parliament where "the parliament" can initiate/propose a law?
I don't.

Re:Except that...

[angel'o'sphere]

Obviously.
As I pointed out: every nation has to pass a similar law to implement the EU laws.

Re:Except that...

[Teancum]

Every legislative body that I've been involved with, including even as a delegate at a political convention, has had the ability to initiate and propose a law. For crying out loud, Parliament (aka the "English Parliament") House of Commons can definitely initiate legislation and members routinely do so. With the U.S. Congress, it is expected that literally every member of Congress initiate and propose new laws of almost every sort. They might consult with lawyers or special parliamentarians to get the wording into legalese and consult with lobbyists or others with interest in the legislation to get it crafted, but it is that legislator who initiates the law themself and not some nameless bureaucrat. Then again, I suppose "Congress" isn't a parliament, so there might be some fine distinction I'm not aware of directly.

For crying out loud, I've personally initiated legislative concepts. Then again, I've even personally forced my state legislature (I'm an American BTW) into a special legislative session because of a legislative petition that I helped co-sponsor. That was merely as an ordinary citizen who found a weak and very unpopular law and got it changed. I even have the ability as a mere citizen to initiate new laws, assuming that I can get the support of my fellow citizens in approving a referendum where I live.

The idea that a parliament can be formed where members of that body can't initiate legislation is utterly weird to me. It makes them at best an advisory body, and certainly makes them as a legislative body a real joke. I wonder why people even bother running as an MEP if what they do is to simply rubber stamp stuff some other non-elected body has come up with?

Re:Except that...

[Ash-Fox]

You missed the most important part that the votes themselves are not binding. They do not reflect the out come. If voted "no" for a particular directive, the order to implement a directive can still take place regardless.

It's important to further distinguish the difference between directives and law because how directives are implemented and treated are different between each country. Countries that are brutally 'correct' end up taking on the negatives while other countries decide to ignore bits when it's convenient. You will find certain things such as the European Arrest Warrant's abuse issues are not an issue in Germany due to ignoring implementing the directive in whole for example.

If you're going to promote or hate the EU, regardless of which side, do it for the real reasons; not made up ones.

Re:Except that...

[Anonymous Coward]

UK has clearly lost it's influence over EU (which it was affecting quite a bit, slowing down integration processes fearing "federalization")

2) The 'voice' the UK and other countries have are only opinions relating to topics that the EU parliament have decided to discuss and have ultimate authority to decide even with opposition of all countries.

Wrong. Actually even FUD:

The EU’s standard decision-making procedure is known as 'Ordinary Legislative Procedure’ (ex "codecision"). This means that the directly elected European Parliament has to approve EU legislation together with the Council (the governments of the 28 EU countries).
https://europa.eu/european-union/eu-law/decision-making/procedures_en

Trying to twist that into saying that the UK would have less sovereign control over it's own laws is ludicrous.

UK would have less control over EU. There will be next to no change over its control over own laws.

Re:Except that...

[Ash-Fox]

Wrong. Actually even FUD:

The EU's standard decision-making procedure is known as 'Ordinary Legislative Procedure' (ex "codecision"). This means that the directly elected European Parliament has to approve EU legislation together with the Council (the governments of the 28 EU countries).

While you are correct as some of these powers were brought about with the Lisbon treaty, you then you forgot THE SPECIAL LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURES. Which can override decisions made regardless using the EC which has been used in great (sarcasm) decision making relating to the Eurozone, Greece and managing internal market competition law.

Saying it's fine because having the final say the vast majority of relatively unimportant legislation goes through the EP like whether we should have mobile phone tariffs across the EU isn't really giving the EP any power to really solve anything.

UK would have less control over EU.

Oh no, less control than before! Like how the UK MEPs were lobbying the Common Fisheries Policy group for 70 years continuously to fix problems that Greenland left over and during the course of 70 years lead to over-fishing and destruction of the environment that original British legislation had protected? With more and more countries coming into the pool further, the influence any single country has becomes further distilled.

Gee, the UK sure had a lot of influence for things that mattered!

Poor Greenland, they're really missing out on the trending opportunities the EU has to offer. If only they had a seat at the European table like they originally had 70 years ago!

There will be next to no change over its control over own laws.

Are you really going to ignore what happened with the European Arrest Warrant with a straight face and say there is "no change" over the UK's control on it's own laws? What happened to David Birkinshaw and Matthew Neale would never have happened if directives weren't binding that end up having to be implemented despite being violations of the UK's concepts of human rights and judicial system.

Play Ferengi in Eastern Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

You should be able to corner the transportation market for a while in Eastern Europe if you build your transportation network there. Assuming capitalism continues to hold. 1 bar of gold-pressed latinum each way is probably a fair price to ask and there are plenty of people able and willing to pay it if it gets them to their domains fast enough.

Scotland and Wales?

[Ash-Fox]

...and one to connect Scotland with Wales.

I have nothing against Scotland and Wales; however, I've never heard of the demand being that great for people in either country to get to the other and with the lack of available opportunities in both countries, I'm not really understanding the purpose of this...

Since it's been proposed, perhaps someone could enlighten me as to what they intend to accomplish? I feel like I am missing something.

Hyperloop is all Hype and nothing else

[idji]

Go and look at their youtube channel. There is no content from engineering or production, it is all marketing and sales hype.

Re:Hyperloop is all Hype and nothing else

[Anonymous Coward]

Go and look at their youtube channel. There is no content from engineering or production, it is all marketing and sales hype.

Of course we're in the era of Transportation 3.0
It's all about scamming the public purse (along with some stupid private investors).

Re:Hyperloop is all Hype and nothing else

[Anonymous Coward]

no see they are having a design competition!

some community college kids are going to do the engineering and whatnot! thats easy stuff! especially with so many more girls getting STEM degrees!

Maybe they should actually build one first

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should actually build one first

Re:queue the hyper morons

[Rei]

by Rei_is_a_dumbass ( 4902687 )

Wow, I have a tribute band. Cool! :)

Building costs?

[petes_PoV]

move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel

Only if you don't include the cost of building the infrastructure. Once you total up the cost of building an airtight tunnel for hundreds of miles, and of designing, proving and building the trains, carriages and stations to deal with near-vaccum travel, the cost of a ticket will far exceed the cost of a flight. We have had airports for decades and most of them are already paid-for, from past use.

Connecting nowhere

[stealth_finger]

Shouldn't they worry about making one connection anywhere before planning world domination. Seriously, we'll have the flying car before we get this piece of shit that's never going to work.

Monorail!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't be the only one who was humming the monorail song while I read this, right?

The Tunnel

[Anonymous Coward]

There are very good reasons to build the tunnel, and one is, that the Baltic Sea still has lots of mines dating back to WWII. The Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel would reduce that risk. OTOH, the tunnel itself is not likely to happen yet, because the Rail Baltic project to build a high-speed rail line that would connect all Baltic states through to Poland and Germany, is in active planning stages. Once Rail Baltic is finalized, then building the Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel can commence. At least that has been the idea in my mind, but priorities can change, if the situation changes. During the construction and after the finalization of Rail Baltic (probably even before), plenty of resources will also go towards ensuring the reliability of the line across country borders.

Until the Tallinn-Helsinki line is created, the ferry operators (esp Tallink) can still reap great benefits, and that is to last for about 21+ years from now. The ferry operators across the English Channel also operate, and I don't think they're complaining all that much.

btw, Tallinn is spelled with two letters n.

The UK is not a part of Schengen,

[Anonymous Coward]

...but an EU member about to leave the EU.

Actually, Marine Le Pen lost and Europe won...

[Anonymous Coward]

...with Emmanuel Macron.

Meant as a reply to grandparent post

[Anonymous Coward]

(no text)

Hypetrain to nowhere

[rkordmaa]

There are serious technical feasibility problems and no answers to most of them so far. Lets not even talk about economic feasibility that is way more questionable. Make one operational track, any length, any place, then its possible to start analyzing feasibility in location X. Right now they are playing games with rulers and maps and it's not getting them any closer to making a real installation of their very rough idea.

FFS, WHY?

[Rick Schumann]

Europe already has a well-developed, mature rail system. Sure, it's not as fast as this 'hyperloop' alleges it'll be, but are you really in that much of a hurry? I thought Europeans liked their rail system which is why it's been around so long and is as extensive as it is. Why do they need 'hyperloop'? I don't think they do.

Re:queue the hyper morons

[angel'o'sphere]

There is another one without underscores, I believe.

Okay, let's cut the damn hype already?

[Chas]

Hyperloop currently has a quarter-mile test track that takes forever to pump the atmosphere out of.
They have yet to have even ONE experimental passenger carrier make it to the other end of the test track.

So talking about plans for Europe?
They haven't built an American Hyperloop yet.
They haven't had a successful test of a functional, full-sized system carrying real people.
They haven't had a successful unmanned test on their test track!
Their marketing wonks are so far ahead of their actual deliverables that they've gone plaid and Musk's brains have been crushed down into his feet.

HyperLoop Will Not Work

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how great Elon Musk's sales hype is, the fact of the matter is people will not ride it. Hyperloop will not work.

People require a sense of control over themselves and their travel. This need can be solved with something as simple as a window on a plane or on a train, but without at least windows, people will not ride Hyperloop out of fear. Musk is simply asking them to give up too much control. Getting into a car that will travel at 700+ MPH is a scary thing when you cannot even see where you are and watch the scenery zoom by.

We most certainly need to move to a new technology and leave trains, an invention of the 19th century, behind. However, this isn't it. The MagLev system finalized by the Germans and installed in Shanghai, along with a competing system the Japanese are working to finalize, are both good contenders because the wear and tear of such a system will drop to nearly zero because the trains and guideways never touch. However, that's not a big enough change.

The biggest complaint about most urban subway systems and ground level buses are that everyone must stop at every station along the way. The best leap forward we can take is a maglev-based system where the individual pods (not trains) travel at extreme speeds but stop only at the riders' destinations.

Personally, I hate riding BART and watching the cars on the freeway driving faster than the train I'm on. If you really want people to stop driving and switch to public transit, give them a system that's much faster and much cheaper than driving cars. You'll never succeed by trying to "guilt" them into riding transit.

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.

[westlake]

Mission Impossible wasn't civil engineering. Excepting some small-scale physical illusions. The Hyperloop is about making something like a high speed vacuum tube railway commercially viable and safe for human transport. The webcam simply requires microscopic photocells and the logic to scan them --- an interesting technical challenge to be sure, but rather more fault-tolerant.

Re:queue the hyper morons

[Hognoxious]

/|\ P.S. s/queue/cue/