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Hyperloop One Conducts First Full Systems Test But Only Traveled 70MPH (jalopnik.com)

Thelasko shares a report from Jalopnik about Hyperloop One's first full systems Hyperloop test: In the test, Hyperloop says its vehicle traveled the first portion of a track using magnetic levitation in a vacuum environment, and reached 70 mph. It's a significant leap past the company's test a year ago, which sent a sled down a track for a grand total of two seconds. And while that's not the lighting-fast speed that Hyperloop Ones says its futurist transport system could go, the company says this test -- conducted privately on May 12 -- is only Phase 1. Hyperloop One's in the process of the next phase, now aiming for 250 mph. "By achieving full vacuum, we essentially invented our own sky in a tube, as if you're flying at 200,000 feet in the air," said Shervin Pishevar, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Hyperloop One. "For the first time in over 100 years, a new mode of transportation has been introduced. Hyperloop is real, and it's here now."

235 comments

  1. It's Here Now by omnichad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This must be one of those new definitions of "here now"

    1. Re:It's Here Now by cayenne8 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Hmm...I"m wondering, even with liberal use of "eminent domain", it seems that digging, or above ground install and connection of this type of thing, would be quite difficult to do nationwide in the US....and that's just the private property and existing city problems. The wildly varied and often difficult terrain across the US would pose a lot of problems putting together a system like this, that requires what I'm guessing is pretty complex and massive equipment to put tube, and keep power and vacuum on such a system.

      While it sounds really cool.....I'm wondering of the practicality of it in becoming anywhere near a mass transit system.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    2. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hyperloop would be great instaed of express bus in sicilicon valley where I make 55K + sideline business

      To respond to popular demand cock eggs are going to go on sale soon use affiliate amazon link to preorder on my site.
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    3. Re:It's Here Now by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

      Must be a one of those new definitions of "new form of transportation" too. It's not new to take a technology that's existed for 200 years and upsize it.

      It's neither new, nor here now. It's also got all the ugly problems that Trains have such as defined tracks with massive infrastructure costs. The reason cars won over trains is because of this, in comparison to RR tracks Roadways are ridiculously cheap and I have to believe that this hyperloop track will make a regular RR track look cheap. For comparison a high speed rail line from LA to SanFran is projected to cost $42 billion (I suspect the real number is closer to $200 when you factor in all the other costs like moving utilities). Building a road the same distance would cost 1/100th that. I suspect a hyperloop track for the same distance would be 10x as much as the railroad.

    4. Re:It's Here Now by nukenerd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While it sounds really cool.....I'm wondering of the practicality of it in becoming anywhere near a mass transit system.

      It will never be a mass transit system. If a Hyperloop line is built it will only ever be a novelty attraction, perhaps for tourists going to Las Vegas or some Arab Sheik's toy in the desert. At the speeds they are ultimately aiming for it will need to be built in almost straight lines, so across anything but flat landscapes it will need some spectacular viaducts or tunnels - all costly to build to say nothing of the running costs.

      It could be built. Anything that does not contravine the laws of physics can be built if you throw enough money and ego at it, and Musk has enough of both. But it will not be operated for long once Musk or that Sheik get bored with it.

    5. Re:It's Here Now by Nutria · · Score: 1

      Obligatory xkcd reference: https://xkcd.com/1860/

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    6. Re:It's Here Now by Kjella · · Score: 1

      For comparison a high speed rail line from LA to SanFran is projected to cost $42 billion (I suspect the real number is closer to $200 when you factor in all the other costs like moving utilities). Building a road the same distance would cost 1/100th that. I suspect a hyperloop track for the same distance would be 10x as much as the railroad.

      Musk claimed $6 billion, though that's obviously a very early estimate and most think that's very optimistic. Though you got to think there's a reason he gave this one up instead of creating a company to do it, I'm sure he'd find the investor money to only take a relatively small risk himself. There are a lot of unknowns and unsolved issues and then a non-trivial construction period before this could possibly go into production.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    7. Re: It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a fat retard.

    8. Re:It's Here Now by Martin+Blank · · Score: 1

      He said the reason that he gave it up is that he's running two companies (and had a hand in a third when SolarCity was separate), and he didn't have the time to get involved in a another large-scale company. This isn't hard to believe given the rapid expansion of SpaceX and Tesla. Even Musk only has 24 hours in a day, and even he has to sleep sometimes (though finding out he's taking something like Armodafinil wouldn't surprise me). He's since started two smaller companies (the Boring Company and Neuralink) that have tight focuses and are, by most accounts, being largely handled by other people.

      --
      You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
    9. Re: It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Hyperloop is fucking stupid. Another mega project to make contractors rich. Elon Musk is there monorail salesman from the Simpsons.

    10. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "This must be one of those new definitions of "here now""

      Or as George Bush would say, "Mission accomplished!".

    11. Re:It's Here Now by Dishevel · · Score: 2

      The big problem is when traveling in a near vacuum at 760 Mph and a joint leaks and part of the system gets to normal pressure and a car hits that air at 760 Mph it is going to turn a lot of people into jelly.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    12. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm thinking of Roman aqueducts, for no particular reason. I think you need civil engineering and millions sesterces.

      Nevertheless, it could dump you into airports and train stations. For example, travel to some huge airport hub then take a plane there.

    13. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "seems that digging, or above ground install and connection of this type of thing, would be quite difficult to do nationwide in the US"
      Well lets see. So far we have rail lines, urban subway lines, power utility lines with towers (above and belowground), state and federal highways, oil and gas pipelines (above and belowground), and water pipelines. It doesn't appear that hard to run transportation lanes of any type. And private corporations can not claim eminent domain. The lands needed to create transportation corridors are obtained through out right purchases and leases. And when someone is dead set on not selling or leasing the land the lane is routed around which is not an uncommon practice. And if this technology matures to become a wide spread method of travel the easiest, fastest, and cheapest way to build a hyper-loop is running it parallel to existing highways or rail lines whenever possible. The hyper-loop company would just buy a long term lease from the state or federal government to run parallel to federal and state highways. Leasing space to run parallel to the railway system would mean buying access from the owners of the various railway segments.

      The primary key to successfully implementing a hyper-loop system is getting buy in from the public. The system needs to be easily accessible and the routes need to go where people want to go. It needs a high level of ridership to lower the price and make it economical for the riders.

      The Concorde could get you from NY to London in 3.5 hours but the number of people traveling that route had to pay $6,000 for a ticket.

    14. Re: It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Faggots like you must be exhausted being constantly wrong.

      Are you Franz Reichelt's ghost?

    15. Re:It's Here Now by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Science. Hard stuff for many. Impenetrable for you.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    16. Re:It's Here Now by Enigma2175 · · Score: 1

      The reason cars won over trains is because of this, in comparison to RR tracks Roadways are ridiculously cheap

      Do you have a citation for that? From a quick search, rail costs $1-2 million per mile (source, while a 2 lane road costs $2-3 million per mile in rural areas and $3-5 million per mile in urban areas (source). Certainly doesn't seem "ridiculously cheap" in comparison.

      --

      Enigma

    17. Re:It's Here Now by Cochonou · · Score: 1

      The numbers seem off. The latest high speed line from Paris to Bordeaux cost 8 billions for 300 km. This is in the ballpark of 27 millions per km. Highways cost around 6 millions per km. Of course, both numbers can vary greatly according to the terrain characteristics. But we are certainly not talking about a factor 100 of difference... However, it's true that it's hard to imagine how the hyperloop track could be cheap.

    18. Re: It's Here Now by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      The Hyperloop is fucking stupid. Another mega project to make contractors rich.

      I'm on a hyperloop team so I get a kick out of replies like this.

      --
      No sig today...
    19. Re: It's Here Now by nukenerd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It will never move!
      It will never sail!
      It will never fly!
      It will never break the sound barrier!
      It will never make it to orbit!

      Faggots like you must be exhausted being constantly wrong.. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over.

      Your examples of "It will never .." are all technical attributes. If you actually read my post instead of knee-jerking I actually said "It will never be a mass transit system", which is an economic attribute, and you might also have spotted my words "It could be built". I'll go further and say that a Hyperloop line probably will be built, but only one or two fairly short ones - and soon becoming mere tourists' novelties.

      My point was that it would fail as business proposition, only propped up by Musk's money and that of the fans who invest in him.

      BTW, I don't think you know what a "mass transit system" means. It means something like the New York or London underground systems, or BART, shifting millions of people for short distances. I don't think Musk would want to comapre Hyperloop with any of those anyway.

    20. Re:It's Here Now by nukenerd · · Score: 1

      So far we have rail lines, urban subway lines, power utility lines with towers (above and belowground), state and federal highways, oil and gas pipelines (above and belowground), and water pipelines. It doesn't appear that hard to run transportation lanes of any type.

      Don't know about the USA, but in the UK it took years of public hearing, legal processes, parliamentary debates, safety studies, and economic studies to build about 100 miles of railway from the Channel Tunnel to London. Most of those existing railways and roads you refer to were built at least 100 years ago when you could just drive peasants, rednecks and Red Indians away from the proposed route using men with shotguns.

      And when someone is dead set on not selling or leasing the land the lane is routed around which is not an uncommon practice.

      Not as easy with Hyperloop as with a road or even a conventional railway. Hyperloop will require extremely gentle curvatures if the passengers are not to be subject to intolerably high g forces.

    21. Re:It's Here Now by jandersen · · Score: 1

      This must be one of those new definitions of "here now"

      In the world of quantum mechanics, this makes perfect sense; but on the downside, as soon as you observe it, the wavefunction collapses and the train ends up at a random place and time, which is why we ask our customers to keep their eyes closed while travelling.

    22. Re:It's Here Now by Shoten · · Score: 1

      Hmm...I"m wondering, even with liberal use of "eminent domain", it seems that digging, or above ground install and connection of this type of thing, would be quite difficult to do nationwide in the US....and that's just the private property and existing city problems. The wildly varied and often difficult terrain across the US would pose a lot of problems putting together a system like this, that requires what I'm guessing is pretty complex and massive equipment to put tube, and keep power and vacuum on such a system.

      While it sounds really cool.....I'm wondering of the practicality of it in becoming anywhere near a mass transit system.

      You're missing a piece of the puzzle. As we speak, Musk's tunneling machine...named "Godot," is tunneling in LA. Oh, and the company under which this work is being done? "The Boring Company."

      --

      For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
    23. Re:It's Here Now by r2rknot · · Score: 1

      The sites examples seem to be purposed for building of rail lines to service industrial buildings, delivering raw goods or materials. I'm not as sure those types of rail lines have the same costs as passenger service rail lines.

      --
      "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
    24. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Elon Musk has nothing to do with Hyperloop.

    25. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems obvious that one person can only keep their attention on so many successfully. He wants to keep running Tesla and SpaceX so starting a hyperloop company would've diluted his time.

    26. Re: It's Here Now by apoc.famine · · Score: 3, Interesting

      My major issue with the hyperloop is that it overlaps with planes and trains in all the wrong ways. It requires a fixed path like a train, but that path requires an order magnitude more materials and engineering to construct. Why not just lay rail? It is as fast as a plane, but constrained to its path in the tube. Planes can go to any airport, as needed. And that infrastructure is already built, along with the connection infrastructure to get people to/from the air hub.
       
      It would be far, far cheaper to just lay high speed rail instead of the hyperloop. All the tech is available, well tested, and much closer to mass production. If you can't do HSR/bullet train and turn a profit, I don't see how you do so with the hyperloop. Sure, it's far, far faster, but the design, manufacturing, testing, certification, and implementation cost of what is essentially a giant pipeline with a flying submarine in it vs HSR is so much higher I can't see the ROI making the hyperloop worth it.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    27. Re:It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Private corps cant get eminent domain?

      You realize Keystone XL used eminent domain right? That wasn't even for an American company.

      If you have money you can route it however you want.

    28. Re:It's Here Now by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Sure.
      You design a tube system over terrain exposed to temp differences with a few thousand flexible joints to handle expansion and contraction. Keep the whole thing near a perfect vacuum and send cabs filled with people through it at 760 Mph.
      Engineering. Hard stuff for many. Easy if you do not even think about it.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    29. Re:It's Here Now by Zemran · · Score: 1

      It is also a new definition of new. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
    30. Re: It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot: If a woman travels faster than 15 mph her uterus will fly out of her body!

    31. Re:It's Here Now by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      It won't be a mass transit system in the sense of an urban subway or the like. But it does have the potential to move a lot of people over large distances and displace a lot of air travel. Airplanes are expensive to build and operate, use a lot of expensive fossil fuel, and cause a lot of environmental damages (even worse that their carbon footprint would indicate because a lot of the fuel is being burned in the upper atmosphere where it's close to the important ozone layer).

    32. Re:It's Here Now by Residentcur · · Score: 1

      I'm a 72 year old professional cynic, and I'm pretty excited about all this.

    33. Re:It's Here Now by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      The wildly varied and often difficult terrain across the US would pose a lot of problems putting together a system like this

      You do the same thing in difficult terrain as cart drivers and rail layers have done for millennia : go along a different route.

      To a lesser degree the same applies to dealing with large fault lines. When you can't avoid them, cross at a high angle, with provisions for rapid repair when ground movement does occur. Which is going to be some engineering for a vacuum-tube containing a vehicle several metres in diameter. The sealing doors and control systems are going to be fun engineering too. At hundreds of km/hr, it's not clear which would be worse : running into a steel plate, or running into the pressure wave from a rupture.

      I'm wondering of the practicality of it in becoming anywhere near a mass transit system.

      It's going to run into a squeeze from businesses using VR/ video links as being cheaper and less time consuming than sending people, and holiday makers who find it no more convenient than going by plane. Luggage - searched or in the hold ; weighed nonetheless. Weapons and hazardous goods - no. Identity - verified, repeatedly. Door to door - no ; terminal to terminal.

      About the only workable use case I can see would be for adding capacity between nearby cities : Birmingham- London ; London - Bristol ; Brussels - Antwerp - Amsterdam ; Zurich - Geneva ; Los Angeles and San Francisco are I believe the test case, perhaps Boston - New York would be the second case. Moscow - St Petersburg would be another interesting test case.

      But even so, it's hardly mass transit. The UK examples I mentioned cover about 10% of the population, and for most of them the time for getting to the terminal will be greater than the time in transit between terminals (saying nothing about the check-in, baggage and boarding procedures at the terminal. What the proportion of USian or European or Russian populations are covered by the other lines I suggest, I don't know, but it's not going to be better as a mass transport system.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    34. Re: It's Here Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know someone who makes giant aluminium tubes for profit.

  2. Serious question by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 2

    If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe? I mean, there is air in the capsule but I assume that is finite. So how do they refresh the air and what do they do if there's a rupture?

    1. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Your question is irrelevant because Hyperloop will never carry human passengers because it's inherently an unsafe and infeasible system.

    2. Re:Serious question by magarity · · Score: 2

      That's why the next phase aims for 250MPH. Gotta get there before your air runs out.

    3. Re:Serious question by null+etc. · · Score: 0

      If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe?

      How is this current scenario handled for airplane flights that are 35,000 ft in the sky?

    4. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Air compresses extremely well and you can rebreathe it several times, especially if you're scrubbing the CO2. Think of the moon landings - it's a solved problem, definitely not impossible. They could replenish the tanks at the start/end of the journey and perhaps even at stops in between. As for a rupture you can use multiple bulkheads to make it less likely, and you run similar risks in planes. And you don't instantly die if exposed to vacuum, it's unpleasant but survivable if you're rescued quickly. Perhaps in an emergency they reintroduce atmosphere to the tube. I believe they're also only reducing the air pressure, rather than trying to achieve full vacuum.

    5. Re:Serious question by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe? I mean, there is air in the capsule but I assume that is finite. So how do they refresh the air and what do they do if there's a rupture?

      BYOO OHYB

    6. Re:Serious question by DogDude · · Score: 2

      I would imagine they'd have to have compressed air in the capsules.

      In terms of a rupture, all the pod things would just stop, I would assume. That's kinda' the whole premise of the safety of the design... they just roll through the tube when they're not floating through the vacuum.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    7. Re:Serious question by ls671 · · Score: 1

      It seems feasible enough in space, same risk of dying in a vacuum if something goes wrong. Now, think of submarines with orders of magnitude more pressure involved and it also seems feasible.

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    8. Re:Serious question by Derekloffin · · Score: 2

      The Plane's engines are used to compress surrounding air outside the plan, but this won't work in the hyperloop as their is simply insufficient air to do this with (not to mention the needs of the engine to do such would be HUGE). As someone else has probably already suggested, they are probably going for more of the small submarine route which is to carry compressed air on the sleds which will be refueled at each end of the run.

    9. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe?

      How is this current scenario handled for airplane flights that are 35,000 ft in the sky?

      There's still enough air at that altitude for the wings to work, they just divert some from the first stage of the jet turbines where it's compressed and heated much closer to sea level pressure. 35,000 feet is rarified air but it is far from vacuum.

    10. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, you are aware how much more expensive and dangerous submarine and space travel are than land or air travel, right?

      All these idiots have done is recreate a slow, crappy maglev and put it in a vacuum tube that creates far more problems than it solves.

      Just take high-speed rail. This Hyperloop garbage will never be a cost-effective alternative.

    11. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what do they do if there's a rupture?

      Roll camera...

      Thing has no windows. Definitely sucks. It will turn us into blind moles.

    12. Re:Serious question by mrun4982 · · Score: 1

      Pressurized planes have "air cycle machines", commonly referred to as "packs" in the industry, which take in both ram air from the outside and "bleed air" from the engines, mix/compress/etc to both pressurize the cabin and maintain the desired temperature (there is no refrigerant like you'd find in your home or car's a/c). An outflow valve is used to regulate the cabin pressure. See wikipedia if you really want a good explanation of how they work. Unpressurized planes have oxygen tanks and the pilots wear masks.

    13. Re:Serious question by taustin · · Score: 2

      It isn't infeasible because it's unsafe, it's infeasible because it'll cost more than air travel to operate, and more than even the government will spend to build, and take decades of lawsuits to get the rights.

      Nobody wants a giant implosion bomb running anywhere near their property.

    14. Re:Serious question by Strider- · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, modern airliners are moving away from using bleed air for pressurization and the like. The problem with bleed air is that it's hot, dry, and potentially contains atomized lubricants and other things from the engine. (Also why you occasionally get a whiff of jet exhaust as the engines start up). The equipment to process the bleed air into breathable air for the cabin adds significant weight (and thus inefficiency), and the process itself costs engine performance.

      On the Dreamliner, Boeing has switched to using an electrical pressurization system. It's lighter weight than the bleed air systems, easier to maintain, and more efficient. Airbus is likely doing the same thing on their new airliners.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
    15. Re:Serious question by MattskEE · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Implosion bomb? What makes you think that a vacuum chamber (~14psi) will implode with bomb-like force in the event of an implosion?

      Humans have built plenty of infrastructure operating at much higher pressure differentials (like water, gas, and oil pipelines) than the paltry pressure of a vacuum.

    16. Re:Serious question by jblues · · Score: 1

      At just under half that altitude humans can survive a normal life-span. La Rinconada, Peru is 16,728ft elevation. A visitor would have to fly in to 10,000 feet (~ cabin pressure) and adjust before ascending.

      --
      If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
    17. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      RTFS! They are reaching "full vacuum" - it's in the summary.

      As for the "serious question" - did the poster ever consider the trips to the moon? There's no (OK, very very little) air between the Earth and its moon.

    18. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...Because CRT tubes (you know, televisions?) had implosion protection? What do you know that the engineers back then didn't know? So if you're so confident in your interpretation of reality, I'd like to put a 27 inch 1980s TV next to you and fire a 9mm round into it.

      Game?

    19. Re: Serious question by gumpish · · Score: 2

      In many cases shinkansen travel is more expensive than domestic Japanese flight to the same destinations with longer travel time, but it's still very popular. You don't have to buy tickets in advance, there's no security screening, it's very quiet and comfortable... etc.

    20. Re:Serious question by Immerman · · Score: 2

      Exactly - no big deal for anyone nearby. Plus it's a container never designed to withstand vacuum in the first place. The structural demands to withstand vacuum (inwards pressure) are almost need an entirely different than those to withstand an outward pressure.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    21. Re: Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      9mm indeed, the power of the vacuum is such that if you sat next to a TV while I fired a rocket launcher* at it, you'd be sorry.

      I knocked the necks off many CRT tubes and bashed a few in from the front; less frightening than a balloon popping. I'm guessing you're too young to have been allowed to touch one.

      * Now 2 for 1 at Walmart, only 10 per customer.

    22. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, you are aware how much more expensive and dangerous submarine and space travel are than land or air travel, right?

      All these idiots have done is recreate a slow, crappy maglev and put it in a vacuum tube that creates far more problems than it solves.

      Just take high-speed rail. This Hyperloop garbage will never be a cost-effective alternative.

      By the time America has any decent high-speed rail built we'll have a Hyperloop on Mars

    23. Re: Serious question by bestweasel · · Score: 1

      Side effects may include poisoning the crew.

    24. Re:Serious question by taustin · · Score: 2

      A) PSI means "per square inch." A tube big enough to put a train inside has a lot of square inches.

      B), and more important, it doesn't matter if it really is dangerous to the average nimrod, it sounds scary, and there are those with a vested financial interest in spreading hysteria about it. Hence, the decades of lawsuits. (And given that most judges are nimrods, too, as are most jurors, it's not at all a given that the lawsuits will fail.)

    25. Re: Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So if you're so confident in your interpretation of reality, I'd like to put a 27 inch 1980s TV next to you and fire a 9mm round into it.

      Game?

      Did we learn nothing from the man that died when his girlfriend shot him because they were testing whether a book would stop a bullet?

      But seriously, we've had people with TVs near them for decades. You're more likely to die from one falling over on top of you.

    26. Re:Serious question by Eloking · · Score: 1

      If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe? I mean, there is air in the capsule but I assume that is finite. So how do they refresh the air and what do they do if there's a rupture?

      Yeah....not like airplane doesn't have those problem...or does they?

      --
      Elok
    27. Re:Serious question by willy_me · · Score: 1

      Should one of the passenger modules spring a leak, one just has to vent the tube. Air would rush in and the passenger module could slowly traverse to the next exit point. Then the vacuum would have to be reestablished and everything would be back to normal. This would require pressure sensors within the passenger modules and a method of communicating to the tube that a leak is detected. As long as the passenger modules are tested for leaks before being placed within the main tube, any leaks that develop would be small at first so there would be plenty of time to react and safely handle the problem.

    28. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A) PSI means "per square inch." A tube big enough to put a train inside has a lot of square inches.

      The length doesn't matter as far as the atmospheric pressure, as once the vessel is longer than twice as long as the diameter, the end effects don't matter much in the center where the hoop stress is the dominant effect. I've worked on vessels that had a big enough diameter you could drive your car through them, and there is very little stainless steel actually used for that. We had broken many windows and even ripped up welds from large arcs from the plasma experiments inside the experiment, temperature cycled it from freezing to 200 C when doing vacuum bake outs and the vessel it self never budged.

      Yeah, you'll need thicker walls than a 55 gal drum, but the iron pipes at Home Depot have thicker walls than that giant vessel, so it is not like there is a lot of material there either. The vessels like that are only expensive because of all of the specialized welding needed to attach a bunch of ports, which is mainly applicable to experiments going below a billionth of an atmosphere in pressure.

      I still rather doubt that hyperloop is financially viable for several reasons. But basic vacuum engineering and material costs is decades old, solved, reliable technology, and a rather stupid thing for people to pick on.

    29. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you fucking monkey, you think because you have EE in your name this gives you insight on things outside your field?

      Pot, meet kettle.

      And what experience do you have on actual vacuum systems? Just showing a video of some demonstration with unrelated equipment is like using a paper airplane to demonstrate why airliners will never work.

      I have worked on actual vacuum vessels from very small to very large. I've also been around where there have been failures many times. About three quarters of those failures come from melting part of the metal vessel creating a puncture in a joint. The result of those was a hissing noise comparable to a shop air gun and zero structural effects on the vessel itself. The sound of all of the pneumatic gate valves shutting to protect the turbo and cryo pumps is louder.

      The other quarter of failures come from window failures. Those are much more violent in the sense the vessel fills up in a fraction of a second and the noise can cause hearing damage. But again, the vessel itself, and stuff around it, doesn't budge.

      If you don't make the vessel paper-thin, and do basic math on how much material to use (it isn't much in the end, just more than an unpressurized shipping drum), it is a pretty simple and robust construction. I've hammered on a vessel under vacuum before with a sledge hammer when a cable welded itself to the outside, we regularly heat parts of it up, quite unevenly so there can be temperature gradients of hundreds of C and have multiple people stand on it when trying to position new equipment. The only fragile parts are windows, often because they might be made out of weird materials for transmission properties (sodium chloride is common for some IR work, just don't get it wet, and some even have meter wide thick mylar sheeting that bulges by 20ish cm under vacuum for giant RF windows).

    30. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's a few PSI difference

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

      you fucking monkey, you think because you have EE in your name this gives you insight on things outside your field?

      You mean, on a tanker that it's not meant to have a vacuum inside? You mean, on a tanker they specifically had to dent, because it wouldn't collapse otherwise? Yeah, you're a bright fella... keep telling yourself that.

    31. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. Hyperloop might work or it might not. This, however, is not hyperloop. It does not demonstrate anything about hyperloop. And it certainly is not any sort of systems test for hyperloop. I don't understand what is going on here. Are all the people working there in blind? As far as I can tell they are good engineers. This baffles me.

    32. Re:Serious question by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      "They does". That is why air is bled from the jet engine compressor to the cabin.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    33. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Planes sounded far scarier, but hundreds of thousands of people fly every day. It's just going to take some time to get used to.

    34. Re:Serious question by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      Modern airliners are moving away from bleed air? Seriously? 787 is the only one that uses bleedless engines. Airbus insists that bleed air makes more sense, all the new and upcoming passenger airplanes from UAC, Comac, Embraer and Bombardier will have bleed air and even Boeing will use bleed air on the upcoming 777X. The bleedless 787 was a one-time detour.

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    35. Re:Serious question by jandersen · · Score: 2

      If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe? I mean, there is air in the capsule but I assume that is finite. So how do they refresh the air and what do they do if there's a rupture?

      It is a valid question, but I think that problem is a minor one and we have already solved it for passenger airplanes that fly at altitudes where humans can't breathe. The more serious risk in this system stems from the need to maintain a vacuum at all times - if there were a catastrophic failure of vacuum when the train travels at a very high speed, then it would be like slamming into a wall.

    36. Re:Serious question by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1
      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    37. Re:Serious question by Frederic54 · · Score: 2

      250MPH? so still slower than last century TGVs that are everywhere in Europe?

      --
      "Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
    38. Re:Serious question by kristianbrigman · · Score: 1

      I think you just explained why Hyperloop exists :) it may be a decent transportation system for Earth, it would be a great one for the Moon or Mars where the native atmosphere is lower anyways..

    39. Re:Serious question by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      If there's no air in the tube, how do you breathe? I mean, there is air in the capsule but I assume that is finite. So how do they refresh the air and what do they do if there's a rupture?

      It is a valid question, but I think that problem is a minor one and we have already solved it for passenger airplanes that fly at altitudes where humans can't breathe. The more serious risk in this system stems from the need to maintain a vacuum at all times - if there were a catastrophic failure of vacuum when the train travels at a very high speed, then it would be like slamming into a wall.

      I don't even think that catastrophic failure will be the big deal. It will be designed and tested to be safer than driving on the highway where catastrophic crashes happen all the time. I'm sure that various failure modes are taken into account and there are methods of both slowing down the capsule as well as repressurizing the tube if need be. Most likely the capsule will break, have air masks like planes, and connect to the next emergency exit gate to lrease passangers, and if things are really bad, they'll just normalize pressure in the tube. They'll make sure that such cases are very rare for the main problem with such a vacuum chamber which is how to get it that evacuated and keep it like that. Last time I checked it was still in the range of mechanical pumps but it will still take time to get down to that desired level. I'll bet that the capsules will just travel slower if the air pressure is higher and be scheduled to be run at a slower than max speed at desired vacuum. There will be a certain amount of slack can be handled and anything but a massive failure will just be worked around, and a massive failure will be something that happens less often than a train wreck.

    40. Re:Serious question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmmmm.... how thick is the steel on that tanker?

      I ask because it matters.

    41. Re:Serious question by MattskEE · · Score: 1

      "you fucking monkey" First off, LOL at this!

      Second, while I'm an EE I do deal with vacuum systems in my day job, I do respect them and understand that there are risks, and in any system where energy is stored. I also understand that a tanker which isn't designed to hold that pressure is totally different from a system designed to do a job. There are big vacuum systems all over the world, and big pressurized systems all over the world.

      My point is twofold:
      1) A vacuum with a ~14psi pressure differential is less dangerous than an equivalent pressurized system with a much larger pressure difference.
      2) Although hyperloop would be the largest such vacuum system in the world, the design of systems designed to hold vacuum or positive pressure is very well understood and thus it can be undertaken safely.

    42. Re:Serious question by rpstrong · · Score: 1

      According to Wiki, the scheduled TGV trains regularly push 200 mph, with actual start-to-end averages of under 175.
      But 250 mph isn't the end goal, it is only step 2.

  3. They Better Have Realistic VR figured out by al0ha · · Score: 1

    That ride is going so suck without a realistic VR experience to make it seem a bit more earthly. Speeding through a shiny lit tunnel? Not for me.

    --
    Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
    1. Re:They Better Have Realistic VR figured out by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      > Speeding through a shiny lit tunnel?

      I doubt they'll bother to light the tunnel in production unless its out of service for repair. Why waste the power?

    2. Re:They Better Have Realistic VR figured out by starless · · Score: 1

      That ride is going so suck without a realistic VR experience to make it seem a bit more earthly. Speeding through a shiny lit tunnel? Not for me.

      Would it really seem that different from being in an airplane with the window shades drawn??

    3. Re:They Better Have Realistic VR figured out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There were some early tests of the concept, but rider reviews were ... mixed.

    4. Re:They Better Have Realistic VR figured out by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      The tunnel won't be lit, and there won't be windows in the pod either. It'll have "in-flight" entertainment, just like airlines (which are also pretty boring for 90% of the flight).

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    5. Re:They Better Have Realistic VR figured out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Never been on a subway before?

  4. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One fails and kills everyone in a hard vacuum...

  5. Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hyperpoop five!

  6. For the first time in over 100 years... Segway!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What about the Segway? That massively changed how people take tours of downtown areas.

  7. Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every single tube joint is a potential leak point for the vacuum. How much money will it take to maintain all those seals.

    1. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      About the same as it costs to maintain the welds on pipelines. Not much, they don't generally 'just fail'. Assuming they were good to start, X-rays tell you that.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    2. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by OzPeter · · Score: 1

      About the same as it costs to maintain the welds on pipelines. Not much, they don't generally 'just fail'. Assuming they were good to start, X-rays tell you that.

      But pipelines are easy to segment with valves so you can work on a single section. So unless the hyper loop has an equivalent system they are going to be trying to pump the entire pipeline down at one time - and that ain't going to work well.

      So thats a lot more equipment than just a big pipe.

      And I know that pipes don't generally "just fail", but on the other hand these hyper loop pipes better have the ability to be cut open very easily in order to facilitate the egress of people trapped inside their tin can when *that* fails. (and yes .. they will break down from time to time unless they are massively over engineered).

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    3. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How much time did you spend thinking about these potential failure points?

      Now, how many engineers do you think Hyperloop One have working on this? How many of them do you think spent some time thinking about what could go wrong?

      I'm not saying there's any guarantee it'll be successful, but I'm going to assume that they've considered the low hanging fruit, and either determined the risk is low, or they've mitigated it in some way.

    4. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pipelines are usually underground, where direct sunlight won't force the expansion of the material.

      Pipelines also don't have bullets full of people traveling through them going hundreds of miles an hour.

      This idea is broke and I am surprised it is even being pursued. Might as well just start mining coal again, at least we will get something of non-zero value out of the investment, even though it's a resource nobody really wants to use any more.

    5. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      You don't need to cut into the tube, all you need to do is have access points every so often, and if there's a failure that requires passengers to be rescued, just re-pressurize that section of the tube (any practical design will certainly have sections with some kind of lock that can be opened and closed for repair or in case of vacuum failure in a section).

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    6. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by OzPeter · · Score: 1

      How much time did you spend thinking about these potential failure points?

      Not long because my job requires me to think about man rated safety systems and what I thought up is obvious but not mentioned by the Hyped loop people.

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    7. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But pipelines are easy to segment with valves so you can work on a single section. So unless the hyper loop has an equivalent system they are going to be trying to pump the entire pipeline down at one time - and that ain't going to work well.

      Every vacuum system I've worked on had gate valves for isolating sections. Many of them were pneumatically powered, and in the event of a large leak, could close off before large change in pressure reached other parts of the experiment (would be bad for some pumping equipment, red hot cathodes that would burn up exposed to air, or molten alkali metals that would quickly burst into flame and caustic ash if exposed to air... so yeah, needs to be reliable enough for personnel safety). Some of those valves were more than big enough for a person to climb through. And unlike the hyperloop, they had to hold back air well enough to not ruin a pressure below a trillionth of an atmosphere, including while the vacuum system was being baked, possibly quite unevenly, to 150 C (with more expensive models going to 200+C).

      And the vessels would be easy to cut and reweld as needed (large vessels are just made with rolled stainless steel sheets, not even thick enough to call plates). Unless you're trying to get down to UHV pressures, the welding is easy and can be inspected by leak detectors that are extremely sensitive (using puff of helium with less volume than in a typical balloon on the outside, a leak detector can find leaks on the order of 10^-13 Pa m^3/s, which would be inconsequential to a rough vacuum system). There are a bunch of special vacuum vessel welding techniques, but again, it is meant for UHV stuff where a trapped volume a tiny fraction of a cubic millimeter will stop you from going from much below millionth of atmospheric pressure, but no problem getting 0.1%.

    8. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pipelines are usually underground, where direct sunlight won't force the expansion of the material.

      And yet many are not underground and still work, so that is irrelevant. You should read about the engineering behind the Alaskan pipeline, which was built above ground to avoid ground freezing problems and has a lot of interesting work done to avoid it from melting permafrost and settling too much. And that is quite minor compared to actual vacuum systems that frequently deal with large thermal gradients due to the process of baking them to remove humidity stuck to the walls. Quite often that is done with half-assed placement of heaters, and some sensitive parts not getting heated, so sometimes you have many meters of tubing heating to 200 C, and other times you might have 200 C right next to 30 C (or more extreme for cryogenic experiments or cryopumps). Movable and flexible ultrahigh vacuum joints already exist with much more extreme requirements than hyperloop would need.

      This idea is broke and I am surprised it is even being pursued.

      I am too. I would be surprised if it is economically feasible, which is a whole different, much more complicated problem than naive criticism of basic engineering.

    9. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by stdarg · · Score: 1

      but not mentioned by the Hyped loop people

      It's understandable that they're not talking about catastrophic failures in public, especially before they are even ready to test them outside of a simulation. To assume that means they haven't had internal discussions about these issues is a bit naive.

      You know it's like, the last car commercial I saw did not devote 5 minutes to "okay we're introducing the new 2018 xyz! but before we look at the cool new features, let's think about what happens if you're trapped inside our car and it catches on fire? and what happens if your kids are strapped into car seats in the back and you fall into a river and your windows were down? and what happens if there's a tornado and projectiles break through the windshield and into your spouse's head?" etc

      Should be pretty obvious why.

    10. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Who are you to tell Musk how to spend his money? He can afford to keep a large % in high risk.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    11. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      That's going to be one big, expensive, ball valve.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    12. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, that comment doesn't say anything about how Musk should spend his money. Saying one is surprised at something being funded (via ditto in that case) is not the same as saying it shouldn't be funded. Saying one's intuitive guess at a project being unlikely to work also is quite different from saying whether it should be funded or not.

    13. Re:Cost of keeping the vacuum? by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      'Economic feasibility' is a decision for the people with the money. What the peanut gallery thinks, doesn't matter.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  8. Cue Rei being butthurt about Thunderf00t again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Poor babies can't handle reality. https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

  9. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by ledow · · Score: 2

    Vacuum rarely kills people. I mean, it'll fucking hurt, but you don't go pop like in a Bond movie or something.

    And if it is closed system, you would be able to detect loss of vacuum quite quickly, I imagine, and do something about it (e.g. open a bunch of small emergency valves to flood the tube with natural air quite quickly, also slowly the train in the process).

    That said, it's still a stupid idea that nobody really wants or needs.

  10. How do you breathe on a plane? by Brannon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Quick, let's ground all aircraft before everyone dies.

    1. Re:How do you breathe on a plane? by Derekloffin · · Score: 2

      The airplane method of generating breathable atmosphere in the cabin wouldn't work in the hyperloop. The sled neither have the jet engine needed for the compression, nor even the surround air volume to compress. The hyperloop is in a near total vacuum meaning there is no where near sufficient air in the tube to compress to a breathable level. That said, they could carry compressed air in tanks on the sled and refuel them at each end. Small submarines do this method, so no reason they can't do the same here. Only issue is how much compressed air would be needed.

    2. Re:How do you breathe on a plane? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 0

      Did you ever think if the tube is merely a near vacuum that the passage of the sled itself might compress the remaining air enough for breathing and pressurization purposes? Sort of a self-adjusting system - too much air pressure and the sled slows down as well. It's self-regulating. BTW, you can already experience this on high speed trains like the TGV when it runs through tunnels.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    3. Re:How do you breathe on a plane? by Derekloffin · · Score: 1

      No because it is in a near vacuum. They are aiming for .1% air pressure of sea level which means you need about huge amount of volume of space to get breathable air, not to mention having to cycle the air in the tunnel as well to keep it at safe oxygen and CO2 levels. It makes no sense to do this when you could just carry the air with you.

    4. Re:How do you breathe on a plane? by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

      Exactly - one of the issues they had to solve was that the passage of the pod compresses the air ahead of it *too much*, like a piston. So pods use front fans to push the air ahead of it under the pod, compressed enough to keep it off the floor of the tube.

      I believe pods are sealed with their own air supply, but some could potentially be diverted from the front fans if needed.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    5. Re:How do you breathe on a plane? by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      No because it is in a near vacuum. They are aiming for .1% air pressure of sea level which means you need about huge amount of volume of space to get breathable air, not to mention having to cycle the air in the tunnel as well to keep it at safe oxygen and CO2 levels. It makes no sense to do this when you could just carry the air with you.

      And apparently that's still enough to cause potential sonic shockwaves and require a larger tunnel than previously thought. It's also a lot easier to keep a low pressure atmosphere over a near vacuum, as there should be semi-frequent openings of the tunnel system to atmosphere at destinations. While I imagine a lock system would be in place, it is safer to assume some leakage. It's a cool idea, but will it actually work on a commercial scale?

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  11. how are transitions to non evacuated areas handled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like for loading and unloading? Or is the plan to have the whole Telsa car/cabin a sealed compartment with O2 supplies and some chambers are used to exiting like on the ISS for EVA's?

  12. Questions by labnet · · Score: 1

    How the pods transition from vacuum to normal air?
    If a pod breaks down how is it retrieved?.. eg. Are there access hatches?, Does that mean big valves every km or so for isolation? How long does each section take to air up & re vacuum?

    To be honest, I can't see this economically working for people. Can you imagine being in a coffin in a steel vacuum tube with no inertial reference. Someone breaks down, which then means hundreds of pods have to stop until the problem is fixed.

    This might work for freight... but given energy is likely to get cheaper, I don't see the economic advantage vs planes/trains.

    --
    46137
    1. Re:Questions by Derekloffin · · Score: 1

      For the transition I would assume they are planning that normally they would use an airlock, either an airlock that completely encapsulates the pod, or one that connects to the pod. As to your other questions, who knows. Lots and lots of issues with this hyperloop design right now.

    2. Re:Questions by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      Can you imagine being in a coffin in a steel vacuum tube with no inertial reference.

      You'll be hurling through the loop.

    3. Re:Questions by dak664 · · Score: 1

      ... but given energy is likely to get cheaper, I don't see the economic advantage vs planes/trains.

      Cheaper in what sense? Soylent Green cheapness?

  13. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just like airplanes

  14. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

    One fails and kills everyone in a hard vacuum...

    Hyperloop brings one of the key dangers of high altitude flight down to earth.....and below.

  15. bends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That'll introduce decompression sickness to the passengers

    1. Re:bends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No it wouldn't. For that to happen you'd need to have the passengers using self-contained breathing apparatus while subjected to severe environmental pressure, and then reduce that pressure rapidly while they're still using the breathing apparatus.

      Simply being in a ~1 atm sealed container that just happens to contain some canisters of compressed air for an emergency wouldn't magically cause decompression sickness to occur.

    2. Re:bends by Strider- · · Score: 1

      Actually it could. It's one of the things that Astronauts need to deal with as part of the preparation for a spacewalk. The ISS operates using an earth-normal gas mix and pressure (1 bar, 20% O2, 80% nitrogen). When they're spacewalking, the spacesuit is only pressurized to 1/3 bar (5psi), and runs on 100% O2. That pressure change definitely has the possibility of causing "The Bends" in the astronauts if they were to do it too quickly.

      Instead, they go through a whole protocol prior to the spacewalk of exercising vigorously while breathing pure O2 and/or camping out in the airlock (also breathing pure O2) in order to shed the nitrogen that's otherwise saturated within their systems.

      If the pod were to rupture, the most likely scenario would be to have the capsule come to a stop rapidly, slam bulkheads on either side of it, and vent the section of tube to the atmosphere.

      --
      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
  16. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by skids · · Score: 4, Funny

    Obviously this is just a scheme to trick investors into building a giant cannon from which to launch sharks... with lasers.

  17. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Derekloffin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're right... you'd have about 15 seconds of useful consciousness and death in a minute or two, and you're not going to get rescued in that minute or two, sorry. But don't worry, this isn't a very likely scenario. Far more likely is the vacuum of the tube being compromised, in which case the on rush of air will hit you at approximately mach 1 and you'll likely be dead instantly as it is basically like getting hit by a bomb's shock wave. Worse case you survive long enough to realize you're now the bullet in a very large gun that is capped at either end... and then you die on impact.

  18. This is not a new idea by Topwiz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the 1973 Gene Roddenberry movie 'Genesis II' they have an underground transportation system very much like the hyperloop. This is also the movie where Mariette Hartley famously has two belly buttons. When she appeared on Star Trek the censors wouldn't allow her to show a belly button so Gene decided to give her two as a middle finger to the earlier censors.

    1. Re:This is not a new idea by HyperQuantum · · Score: 1

      Gene decided to give (..) a middle finger

      Did he get his phone call?

      --
      I am not really here right now.
  19. Seismic activity... by sgage · · Score: 1

    One of the routes that ol' Elon has mentioned repeatedly in his promotion of this thing is Bay Area to LA. Assuming you could even build the tunnel, what about the seismic activity of this region? Seems crazy to go undergound in CA.

    I will make a prediction, of which I am very sure: I will never get into one of these contraptions. I'm just not in that much of a hurry ;-)

    1. Re:Seismic activity... by bws111 · · Score: 1

      He doesn't propose putting (most of) it underground. He proposes putting it on pylons along a highway.

    2. Re:Seismic activity... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He doesn't propose putting (most of) it underground. He proposes putting it on pylons along a highway.

      Why do I feel like this will become the equivalent of fast lanes for the wealthy?

      Imagine your boss calling you during morning traffic complaining that you aren't productive enough. You say, "I left at 7:00 this morning and it's 8:30 now, I'll be in on time."

      His reply, "The company wont take care of you unless you take care of the company. I left at 8:10 and am already here. I worked the whole way here. You have not logged in to the server yet. What do I pay you for?"

  20. one of those new definitions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It travels at unlimited fast too.

  21. Scramjet by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If the atmosphere in the tube is the same as at 200,000 feet, that is enough air to operate a scramjet which is an air-breathing supersonic combustion engine. Although it may seem backwards to do this, it may be an option assuming the vehicle can go fast enough for the engine's operational constraints. The evacuated tube should also be of interest to NASA as an alternate means of testing scramjet technology.

    --
    That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
  22. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    Except it's not a hard vacuum. It's somewhat thinner than the air outside an airliner, but we know how to deal with that.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  23. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Segway! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 4, Funny

    What about the Segway? That massively changed how people take tours of downtown areas.

    It also allowed employment of 500-lb men as mall cops.

  24. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Martin+Blank · · Score: 1

    They mention that it's the equivalent pressure to 200,000 feet up, which is .022 kPa. Surface pressure is 101.33 kPa, about 4600 times greater.

    It's not hard vacuum, but it's not far from it for practical purposes.

    --
    You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
  25. Re:how are transitions to non evacuated areas hand by petermgreen · · Score: 1

    From the diagrams I have seen the idea is that the sealed train is docked and the passengers and cargo are wheeled out the end.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  26. Breathing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just wondering, how do passengers breathe inside the train inside a vacuum for more than a few minutes?

    1. Re:Breathing? by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      Just wondering, how are you recovering from the lobotomy?

  27. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Kjella · · Score: 2

    You're right... you'd have about 15 seconds of useful consciousness and death in a minute or two, and you're not going to get rescued in that minute or two, sorry.

    Considering that you should have air for the entire journey in tanks I imagine you'd have oxygen masks dropping down like in airplanes, that should buy a little more time unless the cabin is cracked wide open. And I don't think emergency pressurization is such a big deal, more on that below.

    But don't worry, this isn't a very likely scenario. Far more likely is the vacuum of the tube being compromised, in which case the on rush of air will hit you at approximately mach 1 and you'll likely be dead instantly as it is basically like getting hit by a bomb's shock wave. Worse case you survive long enough to realize you're now the bullet in a very large gun that is capped at either end... and then you die on impact.

    There's a reason most bombs are surrounded by shrapnel, yes air has a weight of 101 kPa = 101 kN/m^2 = 10300 kg/m^2 at 1G. But it's also just air, it'll quickly rush around any obstacle and create a pressure on the other side. I saw the supposed "scientist" that "proved" this was impossible and it was a joke that wouldn't even pass for Mythbuster science. He literally made it like a bullet in a gun barrel.

    The only thing you'd have to do to totally change the outcome of that experiment is to not let the pod fill the whole tube. There's no reason for that and that air rushing past would then have to accelerate many tons of train in the brief period there's a significant pressure differential. After that it'll just become air resistance helping the pod stop. Seriously, I laughed so hard at this "proof"...

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  28. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Segway! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone should tell Creimer!

  29. This will go precisely nowhere by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    it's too expensive. If I could afford it I'd just fly a plane. If I can't afford it then I can't afford it. The only thing this might do is soak up millions (billions?) of taxpayer dollars and maybe some gullible investors.

    I'm not opposed to public transit. I think it's ridiculous that I'm probably going to rent a car in my home city, drive down to where my kid goes to college and then drive back instead of taking a bloody train like a civilized nation. But Hyperloop is not how you do it. Worse, the huge waste of money will be used for generations as an example of why public transit doesn't work. Fuck Hyperloop.

    --
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    1. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They were looking at putting one in Dubai

      http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/08/technology/hyperloop-dubai-abu-dhabi/index.html

      That makes a lot of sense to me. Gulf states with lots of money putting futuristic transport between a big airport and large neighboring cities. I agree that we could do with more ordinary passenger trains and improved bus service in the U.S.

    2. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Rutulian · · Score: 1

      it's too expensive.

      How do you know this? I don't see any estimates of cost in the article. They aren't anywhere near a production model, so how is it that you know it is too expensive?

    3. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Because it's going to be more expensive than standard high-speed trains (rails are cheaper than tubes, existing tech is cheaper than new tech, no pressurization is cheaper than pressure systems that keep people alive.) And high-speed trains are already cost prohibitive.

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    4. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Rutulian · · Score: 1

      You are making a lot of assumptions, for example that the highest costs for building are the costs of materials and equipment. And the GP was referring to the cost of a ticket, which is partially affected by the cost of building, but there are many other factors.

    5. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you ever seen the cost estimates on subway trains? Those will obviously go nowhere either.

    6. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      You are making a lot of assumptions, for example that the highest costs for building are the costs of materials and equipment.

      I never assumed that was the highest cost. I assume that it's cheaper to build two rails than a tube that includes maglev and must be pressurized. But the biggest cost is actually a push -- land and rights of way. I assume that Musk's Boring company is designed to try to make that come out in the hyperloop's favor, but that seems like it's always a push as a train can go anywhere a hyperloop can. Not only that, because of g forces from turning, a train can go places a hyperloop cannot.

      And the GP was referring to the cost of a ticket,

      He talks about the cost of a ticket, and then later that it will soak up billions. Those are obvious R&D / construction costs. I have no idea which he thinks is too expensive, but my guess was both.

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    7. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by Rutulian · · Score: 1

      Maybe. It depends on the grade of the track and the tolerances involved. One of the design features of the hyperloop is to not be carrying around heavy cars pulled by large locomotives. The individual pods are much smaller and lighter. Also, the hyperloop one uses a track, but the original hyperloop proposal did not.

      But the biggest cost is actually a push -- land and rights of way.

      Correct. And this is why the original hyperloop proposal was made to fit in already existing rights of way, following interstate roads.

      He talks about the cost of a ticket, and then later that it will soak up billions.

      Yeah.... Billions is clearly hyperbole. Millions is in the range of what you would expect for an infrastructure project. How much do you think it costs to build a new bridge, or another lane on the highway? Who pays for it is a valid question, but I think there is room for both some taxpayer contribution and some private investment. Amtrak blows because it is both expensive AND it is slow and unreliable. If hyperloop succeeds in its goals, it could conceivably pay for itself eventually.

      I have no idea which he thinks is too expensive, but my guess was both.

      OP complains about needing to drive, but thinks it is too expensive to invest in new infrastructure. Can't have it both ways. Also, gas isn't free.

    8. Re:This will go precisely nowhere by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

      This is the sort of the argument I keep making in California: The state government keeps throwing lots of money at high speed rail, when the current low speed rail is already owned by freight companies and only has one set of rails.
      For a fraction of cost of high speed, you could buy the rails and put a second set next to it, making it bidirectional. But that's not "cool".

  30. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Vacuum rarely kills people.

    Right, because vacuums are used for cleaning carpets currently.

    Think about stupid your statement was.

  31. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    just like airplanes

    Which don't require tubes all over the place and a vacuum.

    Seriously, the hyperloop is an idea that will never get built on any sort of large scale because it is so invasive to the infrastructure.

  32. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Rocket! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What about fucking rockets? Was man flying in rockets back in 1917?

    And if you want to start the semantics war, then the hypeloop is a maglev train in vacuum. So what's new? The vacuum?

  33. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Segway! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's too busy at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

  34. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Baloroth · · Score: 1

    Far more likely is the vacuum of the tube being compromised, in which case the on rush of air will hit you at approximately mach 1 and you'll likely be dead instantly as it is basically like getting hit by a bomb's shock wave. Worse case you survive long enough to realize you're now the bullet in a very large gun that is capped at either end... and then you die on impact.

    No, it won't hit you, it'll hit the train. Which, like any large aerodynamic object traveling at faster than the speed of sound, will very impressively... slow gradually to a stop with the passengers barely even noticing. And you're still going to be traveling down the tunnel even if the vacuum is compromised, so the only thing you're going to be hitting as a bullet is more air. All that really happens if the vacuum fails is you go from a Hyperloop capable of traveling with minimal energy loss, to a regular train capable of traveling like any other train on the planet.

    --
    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
  35. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Segway! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but does it pay more than 50K in the Bay area?

  36. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Segway! by swell · · Score: 1

    My Segway unicycle is an urban assault vehicle. When I lose control at 12MPH, it careens through crowds like bowling pins. LOOK OUT PEOPLE! Most city folk just take it in stride along with the sirens, helicopters and homeless. Chaos is a way of life in a proper city. As it should be.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
  37. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by MSTCrow5429 · · Score: 1
    It's not the vacuum itself that you have to worry about. It's when the Hyperloop implodes due to a leak in the vacuum tube, which is inevitable, especially when you look at how they're claiming to build it.

    https://youtu.be/Z48pSwiDLIM

    --
    Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
  38. I love amateur physicists on Hyperloop threads by Brannon · · Score: 2

    always so convinced that they've found the fundamental flaw that all those smart people actually working on the technology have completely missed.

  39. More amateur physics! Yeah! by Brannon · · Score: 2

    So part of the tube is at near vacuum and part of it is at 1 atm? That's a neat trick, how do you plan to keep the air to stay put so you can create that perfect "air wall"? I'm no big city lawyer, but it seems to me that any leak or rupture would cause a gradual increase in air pressure over a long segment of the tube. The train would encounter this and start gradually slowing down. Also, the pod would be aerodynamic, I'm not sure what makes you think it would be flattened by an increase in external air pressure. Are planes flattened when they descend?

    1. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by DrXym · · Score: 1

      If there were a catastrophic failure of pressure between those two pods then the one in front is going to accelerate and one behind is going to decelerate. Hitting this wall at such speed might well cause the pod to slow so rapidly that it causes injuries. It's hard to say without modelling it. I doubt a smaller pressurization would do any harm.

    2. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by Hodr · · Score: 2

      Catastrophic failure is typically bad for any transport moving at speed.

      Did that tree just fall on the train tracks.....oops.
      Did a sinkhole just open up in the freeway.....oops.
      Did we just hit a flock of seagulls.....And I ran, I ran so far away...Err, I mean crashed and died.

    3. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      True, but with a traditional railroad a break in the tracks will kill one train-ful of people, not everyone traveling along the entire track system. A large-ish break in the tube would cause a shockwave to travel through the tube (an "air wall", in your vernacular) until it hits every vehicle. There are ways to mitigate this - for instance, you can have vents all along the tube that could actuate ahead of the shockwave. A smart system could gradually open the vents furthest from the break and more immediately open the vents closer to the break. The vehicles could emergency brake or even accelerate in the direction of the shock wave to reduce the impact. The system could be designed to "waste" space in the tube for air bypass so that the shockwave could partially bypass the passenger car.

      In any case, this opens up another challenge - does the entire system really become unusable if any one part is damaged?

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    4. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      That pressure is going to move as a fairly thick wave. When the vehicle hits it at 760Mph, the resulting massive increase in drag will cause at the same time a massive deceleration. The car may not be flat, but the people will slam into shit so hard that they no longer have bones.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    5. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      . A large-ish break in the tube would cause a shockwave to travel through the tube (an "air wall", in your vernacular) until it hits every vehicle

      As mentioned in other comments and other versions of this story, it isn't a shockwave. The process of air going into a vacuum causes the air to spread out and separate by velocity. The further you go down the tube from a hole, the more gradual and broad the wave of incoming air gets. Even for a large hole, as opposed to just shearing the whole tube, the gradients would already be spreading out a very short distance away from the hole. This is the opposite of a shockwave process, which involves something that makes gradients get steeper with distance (e.g. extremely loud noises that compress the air enough to heat it and change the speed of sound in a way that causes dispersion to keep all of the waves in a shockwave together).

      In any case, this opens up another challenge - does the entire system really become unusable if any one part is damaged?

      Automatic isolation gate valves (some quite large) already exist on vacuum systems that have to deal with isolating problems that happen only a meter or so away. Isolating sections of longer sections when you don't need ultrahigh levels of vacuum (nor baking, chemical compatibility, or low profiles) would be much easier, from an engineering point.

    6. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by Zemran · · Score: 1

      It cannot be aerodynamic in a tube. Aerodynamic is about pushing the air out of the way easily but in a tube there is nowhere to push the air to. The train would not gradually slow down. It would hit a wall.

      --
      I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
    7. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      The process of air going into a vacuum causes the air to spread out and separate by velocity. The further you go down the tube from a hole, the more gradual and broad the wave of incoming air gets.

      I have to plead ignorance on the exact makeup of this "front" of air. Whether it is a "shockwave" or simply a tremendously rapid change in pressure, a lot of engineering needs to go into planning for this failure mode. It will require valves such as you describe, which will add non-trivially to the cost of the system. Remember that most detractors aren't claiming that the hyperloop is "impossible" - they are claiming that it is not economically viable. The huge vacuum system is just going to be a major engineering nightmare with costs which reflect that. This thing is competing against air travel, where the "tube" is free.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    8. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by rpstrong · · Score: 1

      [...] but in a tube there is nowhere to push the air to.

      There is clearance on all sides (including top and bottom) of the capsule (this is not a variation on pneumatic tubes, which would seal against the tube). Why couldn't it push the air out of the way?

    9. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by Zemran · · Score: 1

      Air does compress but only so much. There is a very good reason why you cannot push all the air out of the way.

      --
      I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
    10. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember that most detractors aren't claiming that the hyperloop is "impossible" - they are claiming that it is not economically viable.

      As the AC you replied to, I would fall into this category of thinking is perfectly doable in a mechanical sense, but I have strong doubts that it is doable on a financially viable budget. Even traditional rail in countries championed as model rail systems struggle, like JR struggling to compete with cheap inter-island flights in Japan.

      But I would disagree with the assement "most detractors" are in this category, at in the context of Slashdot comments. There are a huge number of posts on every story about how the idea can be dismissed because of some unsolvable problem, which had already been solved decades ago. Dismissing experts from armchairs is the official pastime of Slashdotters, but at least it is understandable for topics like quantum mechanics and astrophysics that are dense and poorly written about.

    11. Re:More amateur physics! Yeah! by rpstrong · · Score: 1

      Air does compress but only so much. There is a very good reason why you cannot push all the air out of the way.

      Air not only compresses, it compresses a lot - and you can make the tube large l reason' that you cannot push all the air out of the way? Airliners do it all the time. And that's not to mention wind tunnels.

  40. Cool prediction, Bro. by Brannon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'll put that one right next to: 1. Electric cars will never happen 2. Self driving cars will never happen 3. Solar power will never happen 4. SpaceX will never happen

    1. Re:Cool prediction, Bro. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does your brain work?

      All four of your "predictions" already exist. The thing being refuted as a high-speed nationwide mass transit system has only been able to create a short length and tested at 70mph.

      Maybe your brain doesn't work.

  41. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Rockoon · · Score: 0

    That guy Thunderfoot was saying that the test just conducted was impossible.

    I wonder if he will try to spin things now, or if he will go silent on it. If silent, I think I will barrage all his others videos with mention of his failure at predicting.

    he has actually proven to be quite biased against Elon Musk .. maybe he didnt get that job he wanted.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  42. Why a vacuum? by AlanObject · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't it be a lot easier and more energy efficient to simply circulate the in-system air at the speed you want the pods to go rather than pumping it all out and having to deal with all the related failure conditions?

    1. Re:Why a vacuum? by mr.mctibbs · · Score: 1

      Why would it be more efficient to move air constantly (circulation) than to move it once (vacuum)?

    2. Re:Why a vacuum? by AlanObject · · Score: 1

      Presumably the air mass has inertia such that keeping it moving does not take the same amount of energy that getting it started. An aquarium in a torus does this to simulate ocean currents. The energy would be parasitic drag which could be managed.

      Much of the remarks about the engineering infeasibility of the concept center around the problems associated with maintaining a vacuum in a vessel a thousand KM long. I see no convincing answers except not to do that in the first place.

    3. Re:Why a vacuum? by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      Go back to high school.

  43. too dangerous for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's for adrenaline junkies. When the first ding appears in that metal tube, which is far to thin to be considered safe, it will collapse in a split second and trap/crush anybody inside. Some people enjoy skydiving with those wing suits for the rush. Dangerous, and you may not die this time, but people do die. When the fist accident happens, the illiterati of America will be outraged and surprised. How could anyone know that it isn't safe?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    They should have used a pressure differential system, like the tubes at the bank drive through.

  44. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What nonsenses are you talking about...
    This is not a freaking comic or a marvel movie, Elon Musk is not ironman but a filthy capitalist who hardly knows anything about science.
    You are not going to join his super heroes team so stop imagining things about you or your idols, please.

  45. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh look, people repeating the same mistakes as last time (and the time before, and time before...) If you're picturing this like a shockwave, you're doing it wrong. Shockwaves are based on processes that make gradients sharper, when the re-pressurizing process of a vacuum is one where the gradients smooth out.

    You have a shockwave traveling down the tube at several hundred miles an hour until it encounters an obstacle; i.e., the train

    There is no shockwave, as a shockwave is some discontinuity that requires a nonlinear steepening effect to propagate (e.g. heating from extremely high intensity compression... not decompression). As there is a distribution of different speed atoms and molecules in a gas, they tend to spread out and form a gradient that grows less steep with propagation.

  46. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We're just going in circles again, when this was discussed before, which already had good points like:

    I've frequently used large hammers on vacuum vessels that were under vacuum, and they didn't collapse. When you work on plasma experiments, you can end up with mangled electrical components that take a lot of force to remove, but you don't want to break vacuum to do so (there is a big difference between an easy to reach low friction low vacuum, and ultrahigh vacuum that can be ruined by just a thin layer of water from exposing a surface to humidity). The vessels are often just tubes of stainless, and they can take a beating. The problems you refer to are from unpressurized or light pressure vessels that aren't stiff enough to handle buckling... which is easily solved by making the material a little bit thicker (it stiffens faster than linear with thickness). Making vacuum systems of various qualities is a long since solved problem with a lot of off the shelf parts, although there is some room for economy of scale developments.

    And

    There is another expansion option that is kind of like an expansion loop and already used on vacuum systems: corrugation. There are a lot of vacuum systems that have parts cycling to cryogenic or high temps (sometimes in different parts of the same machine). Ideally you try to isolate that from the vacuum vessels, but it is not perfect, and often you want to heat up the vessel on purpose to remove water (200 C if using metal seals... With sometimes large gradients to parts that don't have metal seals). A variety of flexible bellows, varying by strength and flexibility, can expand and move, but not collapse under vacuum.

    If people are going to claim how impossible vacuum equipment is to build, they should at least be familiar with what has been built and how well it holds up. Vessels much larger in diameter than the hyperloop tube regularly get built with 1/8-1/4" stainless, and it gets climbed on like a jungle gym for equipment installation without fear of it imploding from a foot step or dropped wrench (a quartz window on the other hand... that is much more vulnerable to a dropped wrench).

  47. How can you fly in the air if you are in a vacuum? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And what is full vacuum? Are we sure these people are engineers?

  48. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That guy will admit he was wrong. End of story here.

  49. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You missed the point : it's still a stupid idea, even if they switched to magnetic levitation.
    All we have is a stupid raw cart running in a tube on magnets with an acceleration comparable to a sports car.
    What vacuum was achieved, how much time did it took, how practical is it as far as public transportation is concerned, ...

  50. A quick reference for posterity by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 2

    I have zero interest in participating in certain type of discussion with certain type of people (with certain type of knowledge, expectations, attitude, etc.), but I haven't been able to refrain myself from writing something about this new dishonest PR attempt (one quick joke-for-me-but-kind-of-serious-for-some-people: "We are at 77 and want to reach 255, how should we proceed?" - "Scale it up! Do I have to do all the thinking here or what?". If you don’t get it and/or think that it makes sense, please try to avoid dealing with me).

    Below these lines, I am writing what I expect this whole Hyperloop thing to be now and in the near/far future. I invite any person to quote me on any part of this post at any point. Note that I haven't performed a proper analysis of this whole situation and that delivering long-term guesses under these conditions isn't precisely my style, but I do feel like making an exception here.

    What you will never see:
    - Crazily-high speeds as advertised. Current high-speed trains can be considered as way above the maximum speed that any system on these lines will ever reach.
    - A vacuum-based system on the lines of the one being proposed for big enough sizes and long enough stretches. With big enough, I mean something suitable for comfortable transportation of people (i.e., train-like size); and, with long enough stretches, I mean anything over 200 km even under ideal conditions (e.g., desert) and much less in more difficult scenarios (e.g., mountains).
    - Commercial trips even of much more restricted versions (as described below) transporting people, animals or any other delicate/dangerous/similar stuff.

    Honestly, I don't think that any version of this approach will ever become a commercial reality; but with enough money, contacts and persistence (not precisely of the good kind, understood as motivated by common sense, being the objectively best approach and cheaper/safer/more reliable than other alternatives), a much more restricted version might become a reality at some point.

    That quite-unlikely-to-happen highly restricted version would be defined by the following points:
    - Its operating conditions would be much more limited than the ones being currently advertised: much slower speeds (as said, speed of current trains represents an unreachable upper threshold), much smaller sizes (anything bigger than 1 metre seems already too much), much shorter distances (anything over 100 km seems already too much), etc.
    - It would be focused on the transportation of not-living, resisting, not-dangerous substances/goods. Or, even more likely, it would be some kind of toy or commodity for either rich people or companies eminently using that system as some kind of promotion.
    - Minimising its (huge) construction/risk costs would be a top priority and, consequently, the orography/climate would be extremely relevant. It would most likely run though dessert/plain areas with a quite stable/moderate weather.
    - An approach on these lines is extremely unlikely to ever become profitable. The limited number of income-generation alternatives associated with this system would probably never be in a position to return the required investments (compensating the huge building/maintenance costs, much higher than the ones needed by other transportation systems which usually have an important governmental support).

    --
    Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    1. Re:A quick reference for posterity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A vacuum-based system on the lines of the one being proposed for big enough sizes and long enough stretches. With big enough, I mean something suitable for comfortable transportation of people (i.e., train-like size);

      Thermal expansion and mechanical effects from trains pushing on the tube should be pretty obvious to anyone who's worked on other transportation methods, as it applies to bridges, pipelines, and rail too. Expansion joins already exist on vacuum systems, varying from bellows to loops (not like pipeline loops that redirect the flow around, but the shape you get if you revolved an omega shape around an axis, like a cylindrical symmetric bubble on the outside of the pipe).

      I agree with many other points, as there are still many unsolved problems. But a lot of what people complain about around here are problems that have been already solved in industry.

    2. Re:A quick reference for posterity by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      But a lot of what people complain about around here are problems that have been already solved in industry

      As said, I am not interested in starting a discussion about all this (already did in the recent past and didn't like the outputs) but what you are saying isn't right. You cannot defend that something has been solved when you are currently working on the first version ever! Nobody has ever created anything not even close to what is being proposed here.

      Extrapolating conclusions from other situations (even similar enough; not the case here) isn't a realistic attitude. You cannot take what works at 5 and assume that at 10 you would just need to double everything. This isn't how the world (of engineering) works. The size (and distance) matters a lot and increases the complexity/requirements/risks a lot.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    3. Re:A quick reference for posterity by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      PS: my comment is mostly focused on vacuum and associated issues (e.g., stress due to pressure variations), but it applies to everything else. For example, you are talking about "thermal expansion and mechanical effects" or "trains pushing on the tube", expressions which mean nothing without the right context (= a system as the one being proposed with those dimensions and operative conditions).

      You are blindly extrapolating from not-even-similar situations, by also forgetting about additional effects deriving from the accumulation of all these issues. Going from 5 to 10 rarely requires just doubling everything; but going from two different scenarios with 5 to one scenario including both 5s is also very likely to provoke an uncontrollable increase of complexity.

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    4. Re:A quick reference for posterity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      PS: my comment is mostly focused on vacuum and associated issues

      Yes, as was my previous AC comment.

      You cannot defend that something has been solved when you are currently working on the first version ever!

      While the whole has never been done before and there are many specific yet to be solved problems, there are also many aspects of it that have been solved and are no different from previous cases in this situation.

      ....Extrapolating conclusions from other situations (even similar enough; not the case here) isn't a realistic attitude.

      Not being aware of what has been done before and trying to extrapolate (and double down) on incomplete knowledge is also a far from realistic approach...

      You cannot take what works at 5 and assume that at 10 you would just need to double everything. This isn't how the world (of engineering) works.

      Except this is exactly how engineering works in some cases, especially when involving basic principles that have been tested at many scales. There are many limiting cases in engineering where beyond a certain point before some effects become inconsequential. Tubing is one of those cases, where the effects of the ends only matter up to a couple diameters away, and for a tube longer than several diameters, the length makes no difference to strength and failure modes. Considering vacuum tubes of a more than a meter in diameter and several kilometers long(e.g. LIGO) have already been built and thermally cycled over 100+C swings, and clearly still follow basic engineering principles in terms of managing the hoop stress and flexing, there is no magic needed to making longer tubes.

      Part of how engineering works is knowing where limits are, e.g. there is a big difference between trying to make an engine 10% faster vs. a tube 10% longer. Just claiming that the latter is impossible to extrapolate to isn't an exercise of great engineering prowless, but instead ignorance of what has already been done and realistic difficulties.

      There are a lot of things one could pick on Hyperloop, but sometimes people pick the sillies things to focus on. Also, pointing out how silly it is to focus on the wrong part of a big operation isn't the same as defending the whole operation.

  51. Re:For the first time in over 100 years... Segway! by houghi · · Score: 1

    They should make that in a movie or 2.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  52. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by DrXym · · Score: 1
    Cylinders would spread the load around their circumference, the way Magdeburg hemispheres work. The issue I guess is what happens if something smacks into the cylinder, e.g. a crane. Could the cylinder take the strain even with some deformation? And even if it could, there could be pods whizzing through the tube at 400mph and you don't want things protruding inwards...

    Any hyperloop system would need to have a lot of sensors watching for shock and pressure events and pods capable of hitting the brakes to avoid collisions at high speeds.

  53. it's the MEDIA that keeps bringing up hyperloop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The MEDIA keeps bringing up hyperloop. Journalists are not exactly smart, and in many cases, honest and unbiased. So, the media will keep bringing up hyperloop, until silicon valley gets sick of throwing money at it. I've have to hear about it, just like the Kardashians.

  54. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I liked the Unreal Tournament map called "pressure"... there's a room in it with a rocket launcher or similar where you can press the button from the outside and the people trapped in it explode.

  55. First time? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "For the first time in over 100 years, a new mode of transportation has been introduced. Hyperloop is real, and it's here now."
    Umm...
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit

    1. Re:First time? by OrangeTide · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't a vacuum be the opposite of a pressurized system?

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  56. Re:Is it made of Reardon Metal ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Capitalism is a tilted game, causing money to trickle up to those who already have money.

    The only way to get it back from the billionaires is to tax them, or get them to create 'jobs' that don't need doing. They simply can't spend enough to keep the economy going.

  57. Re:Serious question and answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I first thought that they had to evacuate the whole tube to the end of it like a driven-in bank teller machine that moves your checks etc within a tube and suction.
    However you don't have to evacuate the tube to a vacuum the whole length of he tube. The youtube videos don't show any equipment spaced along the tube at various intervals to vacuum the tube out.

    The ways its done is using an air compressor (not a vacuum compressor). As the transport pod starts moving forward on the Halbach permanent magnets and linear drive motor that is powered by batteries, the compressor on both the front and rear are moving. To reduce friction, you suck the air in front of the transport pod in the tube and eject it out the rear compressor. This acts like a jet engine with the passengers between the turbine blades. As the air gets sucked in, it creates a partial vacum so many feet in front of the transport pod, and the air ejecting out the back contributes compressed air thrust. Thus, you don't have to evacuate the entire tube but only for lets say 50 feet in front of the turbine compressor due to what the (jet engine) air compressor creates. This reduces friction and moves the pod forward too to suck air further down the tube. Just like airlines at altitude, they pressurize the cabin by bleeding air off the turbines and feeding it into airplane and for people to breath, and expel Co2 out the back. To slow down, the linear motor fields are reversed, the air compressor is slowed down (maybe reverse thrust) and the air in front of the transport pod creates friction all under computer control. Energy efficiency is done by reducing forward friction by the compressor, get thrust out the back, using magnetic fields to move forward too, along with levitating to reduce friction. The levitation may be accomplished two different ways working together: 1). the strength of the magnetic field to lift a heavy transport pod, and 2) the forward motion bleeds some air around the transport pod between the tube wall and the pod helping to cushion and center the pod in the tube along with an air cushion being created underneath the pods linear motors and the rails that have the permanent magnets (laminar airflow similar to what is done between a disk drive head and the disk so that the head doesn't crash against the disk).

    There five things that have to be considered.
    1). the integrity of the tube walls don't have cracks or leaks. They double wall the tube like they do for ocean oil tankers, they have electrical fibers or ultrasonic sensors in the wall that constantly measure whether the electrical path is broke or ultrasonically measuring changes in stress in the wall due to leaks.
    2). they videos don't show what happens when the compressor breaks down or if the batteries can last long enough to power the internal lights accessories, the linear motor, and the compressors. I'm not sure if by using linear motor forward motion that the compressors will self rotate enough without battery power, or a propane engine (which may not be done because of air and pollution issues within the tube).
    3). If the pod breaks down, the video of the tube doesn't show emergency exit points. It sure is a long walk thru the tube otherwise. Moreover, the pods don't show a rear or forward hatch because the compressor blades are in the way. What do they due in case of a medical emergency (heart attack, giving birth), a police action due to i.e. robbery etc.
    4). What do they do about air conditioning which comsumes power, unless they use the rotating compressor blades to step down the mechanical speed to drive the air conditioning compressor pumps.
    5). How many individual pod chains( a group of pod cars) can be in the same tube at the same time and what is the separation distance. If two groups of pods are moving in the same direction, their speeds must be controled so that they don't rear end each other. Moreover, that the pod chain following will have enough air to drive the compressors or not get the turbulance of the first pod chain (similar to ai

  58. Re:Serious question and answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To solve the battery problem, they could have local wind turbines or solar array supply power to tube whereby the inner transport pod has a metal finger touching the shell to extract power like an electric train. They could supply the power at various intervals from the outside to where the tubes join together on a concrete pillar. It is at this point that the junction is wrapped with wire and the inside of the transport pod has a wrapped winding at the front and rear of the pod. Thus, the outside and inside (pod) windings are setup to act like a transformer. As the pod moves forward the voltage is stepped up/down as the windings pass each other which can recharge the batteries. By having a winding at the front and rear of the pod, you benefit twice to get the transformer benefits getting power. (note: if the pod has more than two i.e. a middle winding, you can get three times the transformer effect). Thus, the batteries would be used to start up the car, or as emergency power and not used once the pod is in motion since it is getting power via the transformer turns ration of the outside and inside (pod) windings.

    The alternative a mini nuclear powered device for long distance where batteries and outside power can't be supplied i.e. under the ocean (unless one runs voltage down the tube to the various coils in the tubes). A tank of chemicals such as they combine, the produce safe gases such as Co2 or O2 that can be expelled out the back of the pod.

  59. Re:Serious question and answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lastly, instead of outside windings on the tube, they could be permanent magnets such as the transport pods windings pass thru the outside permanent magnets, they create a voltage to recharge the batteries or run the pod.

  60. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by ledow · · Score: 1

    Oh, ffs, people what kind of idiots are you.

    Going from, say, zero atmospheres of pressure to one atmosphere of pressure, is no different from going from two to one.

    One atmosphere = 14.7 psi. That's not even a fucking half-flat car tyre. A bicycle road tyre can have 10 times that. Are cyclists blown into oblivion when their tyre pops? No.

    It would be comparable to me stabbing your car tire that already looked a little flat and half-deflated. Sure.. PFFSFSFFSFSYSFST. Done. No explosion. No horrendous decompression throwing people around like some poor plane disaster B-movie (which is also all bollocks). You probably wouldn't want your ear right next to it, but it'd be like someone spraying a can of air in your ears (in fact, probably a lot better, if there's anything at all in the way of obstacles, like a fucking metal train surrounding you).

    Never done the air-horn thing to people? Sure, it might burst an eardrum, but it ain't going to kill you before you've had a couple of seconds to get your head together, whether you're going from 14psi to 0psi or vice versa.

    In case you don't know, 14psi isn't a lot. Sure, it SOUNDS a lot. It's a lot if you tried to make it (you'd have to balance 14lbs of equipment on a square inch!). But you're sitting in it now and the difference between 28 and 14 is EXACTLY the same as the difference between 14 and 0.

    And as people have said, EXPLOSIVE compression/decompression is incredibly rare and hard to make happen - in might happen in space, where there's literally nothing but billions of square miles of vacuum and nothing of any pressure but the box you're in, but even a train in a vacuumed tunnel isn't going to suck you out into space (Aliens is also bollocks, by the way - the place would have vented of air in seconds and then no force would be acting on you to push you out unless someone was pushing metric tons of industrial-pressure oxygen into the ship from some humongously high pressure store / fan).

    You'd go "Oh fuck", your eyes would pop, you'd feel it, and - so long as you weren't holding your breath deliberately at the time - that would be it and then you'd have to find yourself some oxygen.

  61. This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by Brannon · · Score: 1

    > That pressure is going to move as a fairly thick wave Why? If there's a leak, then the rate the air can enter is limited by size of the hole. The air isn't going to obediently stay in one place so it can pool up and make your massive thick air wall--it's going to *very quickly* diffuse all the way down the tube, leading to a gradual increase in air pressure as the pod travels through. There's just no way that the pod is still moving at 760mph by the time it experiences anything close to 1 atm. And all you have to do to soften the deceleration is make the pod more aero-dynamic and leave sufficient gaps between the pod and the tube for the air to escape around it. Your physics fantasy is based around an absurd set of strawmen, designed specifically to crap on a new technology because you don't like the 'hype' and you think it makes you look smart. It doesn't, it makes you look like a childish luddite.

    1. Re:This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      A leak with those kinds of pressure differentials is going to go from the tiniest beginnings of a leak to a catastrophic failure of that joint in an exceedingly short period of time. You are going to end up with a full failure of the joint in a second. If you are lucky the nearest car is far enough away that they can seal off the section and get the car approaching that section stopped before it gets there. If a car is in that section the people are just dead. If the car is too close to the section you are looking at some injuries all the way too, "Everyone dead."

      Extreme vacuums do not fail gently.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    2. Re: This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      It's not an extreme vacuum. It's not even a complete vacuum.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    3. Re: This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Pressure at sea level 59F. 760mm hg
      Pressure at 150,000 ft 1.1 mm hg
      Pressure at 200,000 ft 0.17 mm hg



      Designed to operate at the equivalent of 160,000 ft

      760 mm hg vs about 1. By any book that is a fairly fucking extreme pressure differential.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    4. Re: This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By any book that is a fairly fucking extreme pressure differential.

      No it's not. As far as mechanical stress, this is quite small compared to systems that have to deal with 100-1000 bar pressure differential.

      And the GP said it is not an extreme vacuum, which is true by pretty much every book... a 0.1 torr means your cheap mechanical pump needs to be serviced because it isn't pumping very well. Getting to a couple mtorr is usually rather trivial unless you fucked something up badly. Getting to 10^-6 torr is pretty straightforward with off the shelf equipment. Getting to 10^-9 torr takes some experience and design considerations. 10^-12 torr is when you need extensive engineering effort and design constraints.

    5. Re: This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      *sighs*

      I'd suggest you search Rei's username and visit their many citations and links. It'll save us both some time.

      Pardon my skepticism that you're more intelligent than all the people behind this project.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    6. Re: This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's one atmosphere. Not extreme in any book.

      The tires on your car have a greater pressure differential with the outside air.

    7. Re: This is hilarious, I can't get enough. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Then go ahead and get a running system using 2400(Low estimate) sliding, expanding vacuum seals and 24000 (Low estimate) connected sections all with a reasonable life expectancy and get it to continue running at a reasonable cost over time.

      You will most likely be replacing 10 of the expansion joints every month and 100 of section joints every month once the system has been run in.

      That is assuming 5 year average life of the expansion joint and 25 years for the regular sections. With 200 foot long sections (I do not think they will be that long and expansion joints every 2000 feet and the system having 2 tubes and only being 400 miles long.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  62. More please. by Brannon · · Score: 1

    > A leak with those kinds of pressure differentials is going to go from the tiniest beginnings of a leak to a catastrophic failure of that joint in an exceedingly short period of time.

    Why? Does the air ignite & explode? Using as much detail as you can, explain to me why a small hole suddenly becomes a big hole--keeping in mind that we're talking about 1 inch steel tubes which can easily handle pressure differentials like this without the hole.

    I know what you're picturing, something like a bullet sized hole which causes a huge blowout with the steel curled back into jagged edges. I know that's what you are picturing because that's how Hollywood does it. But I want you to explain the physics of that--because I find your explanations of physics to be pretty hilarious.

    1. Re:More please. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Failure is not coming from a pinhole. Those expansion joints will not see that type of failure. It will be a stress fracture from constant expansion and contraction of the joint.

      See. These long rigid tubes are going to expand and contract a lot because of temperature changes over the length of the system. You are going to have thousands of joints able to move FEET to accommodate this. They will be under constant stresses. The failure that you will see is a stress fracture. Once this gets large enough to start leaking it is going to grow rapidly. Stress fractures, for the most part have 2 modes. "Nothing to see here unless you look REALLY close" and "Fuck you I have failed."

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    2. Re:More please. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Also maybe a seal failure on the moving part. Also Catastrophic and fast.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    3. Re:More please. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Failure is not coming from a pinhole. Those expansion joints will not see that type of failure. It will be a stress fracture from constant expansion and contraction of the joint. ...Stress fractures, for the most part have 2 modes. "Nothing to see here unless you look REALLY close" and "Fuck you I have failed."

      That is just flat out wrong in general, and especially so for vacuum systems. I've been around for quite a few vacuum system failures, including failures of welded joints. The stresses involved there were far beyond what would be likely in a system like hyperloop, because they involved a couple hundred degree C daily cycling in temperature and large magnetic impulsive force loads over tens of thousands of cycles (think flexing millimeters in a sub-millisecond timescale).

      Cracks started as small leaks, only noticeable because the pressure went from 10*-8 Pa to 10*-7 Pa, and a residual gas analyzer shows it is air leaking in. For many experiments, they can continue until the leak slowly gets bigger after many more cycles until the vacuum gets to a level unacceptable to the desired data. Sometimes the leak can be stopped with some UHV compatible epoxy or differential pumping. In those cases things often continue until the crack becomes macroscopic before vacuum quality becomes unacceptable.

      At no point is there some catastropic failure, just a gradual loss of vacuum quality, with potentially a lot of warning depending on your vacuum requirements. A vacuum system isn't very high amount of stress on the metal (even when many vessels are just 1/8" stainless) and the slow leak doesn't add any stress to the crack unlike say a failing dam. You get stress concentration once a crack does start, but steel is pretty good at managing that.

      You are going to have thousands of joints able to move FEET to accommodate this.

      Movable vacuum joints already exist, including ones with movements larger than the diameter of a tube.

      Difficulty will come down to construction and maintenance costs, not due to lack of already existing solutions to vacuum problems.

    4. Re:More please. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Not diameter. The length of the sections. If you do one expansion joint every 2000ft the steel will expand over 10 inches with just the normal temp differences seen between night and day. That is going to be at 400 miles about 1200 expansion joints for each of the 2 tubes. With the normal stresses of the seal having to deal with the diameter changes it will also have to be able to hold the seal and slide up and down the length constantly, every day, inches.

      Not trivial.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    5. Re:More please. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not diameter. The length of the sections.

      I don't know what you're trying to say.

      With the normal stresses of the seal having to deal with the diameter changes it will also have to be able to hold the seal and slide up and down the length constantly, every day, inches.

      As stated, already existing bellows can already handle movements (as in along the length of the tube, but also flexing) of lengths larger than the diameter of the tube (the main relevant scale of a tube). As in if you take existing joints as already used in a vacuum systems, and apply it to a 2 m diameter vessel, you can easily accommodate movements of 2 m or longer in a single joint. The same style of joint is used for coupling air-side motion into the vacuum vessel (usually far easier and cheaper than making a UHV compatible actuator) with movement of a meter or more on rather small experiments, meaning the joints could be scaled up a lot.

      just the normal temp differences seen between night and day.

      The thermal cycling from weather is far smaller than what typical vacuum vessels see, as they are usually designed to handle cycling from room temperature to 200 C to allow bakeout, which is done daily or more frequently on some setups. Even setups like LIGO which is ~4 km long, 1-2 m dia., have dealt with bakeout temperatures which would cause an expansion of ~8 m.

    6. Re:More please. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      4km is nothing.
      You are talking at least 400 Miles. Minimum number of expansion joints will be 2400.
      There is no way it will be that small. I already in other comments stated that it can be done. What I pointed out is that with conservative estimates on everything. Temp swings, number of expansion joints, life of a joint, and ignoring all other joints and systems the maintenance on a system like this is prohibitive.

      After a few years of running they will be finding and needing to replace a minimum of 40 of these seals a month.

      The truth is that you are going to be looking many more joints than 2400. The average lifetime of these expansion joints is going to be less than 5 years. Then there are going to be the at least 80,000 (200 ft sections) regular connections that must be checked, and replaced at intervals (25 Years you are talking over 250 of these a month being replaced.)

      I am not arguing that there is no way to create a system that can handle large vacuums, as in previous comments I am just pointing out that the system can not be run.

      Be honest. You are not going to run a system that needs 40 expansion joints and 250 section joints replaced every month and run the system with passengers making money. NO FUCKING WAY.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    7. Re:More please. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I pointed out is that with conservative estimates on everything. Temp swings, number of expansion joints, life of a joint, ....

      And yet they completely disagree with real world systems with much more extreme conditions that already have been built... because other than thermal expansion, your estimates of failure rates and how far of a movement is "a lot" were pulled out of your rear.

      It is like watching someone say a neural network with 10^15 node is impossible to build because that would require at least a petabyte of data:"which means at least a thousand 1 TB drives, a LOT for a single drive, and with a 10% monthly failure rate means replacing 100 drives a month." No, there are other reasons that is very difficult, and saying the number are conservative doesn't change that it is BS to say 1 TB drives are prohibitively large or that 10% of them failing a month disagree with reality.

    8. Re:More please. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Exactly what are you arguing?
      I understand that it technically CAN be done.
      It will not be done though.


      You are not going to have a viable system over 400 miles long with 20 sections a day needing to be isolated, pressurized, dismantled, depressurized and put back into service. These are conservative estimates.


      Again. I am not saying we do not have the tech and knowledge to build a system to those specs, but how is that going to run passenger service on a regular basis for less than the cost of a plane ticket?


      Unless you can get the regular sections to be over 200 ft long and last 50 years on average and get the expansion joints to last 20 years on average or more, it is not a viable transportation system.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    9. Re: More please. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Having worked in a storage platform that was ungodly large....

      Systems were evacuated constantly and failures isolated around the clock. The entire system had mechanisms designed to test and identify failure modes.

      That works because components/systems are being checked and removed constantly. In fact; at the time we would begin seeing data loss in about 7 hours on the largest system if diagnostics were shutdown.

      This works because we had capacity available that would account for systems out due to repair. Disks are also super trivial to replace. A technician could repair mundane failures in bulk.

      Point is the damage can be routed around in large distributed systems.

  63. More Power To Him by sycodon · · Score: 1

    I'm rather agnostic on the Hyperloop.

    Being stuck in a tube, underground, in a near vacuum, doesn't really sound all that appealing. But I suppose it's no worse than being stuck in a tube, in a near vacuum, 38k feet above the ground.

    The one thing that I do appreciate about it is that it is a private venture and they are actually DOING something. Too many of these type of projects are done on the government's dime, as a "proof of concept" and go no where. I think more money has been spent studying high speed rail in the U.S. than has been spent on actually implementing it in other countries (ok, exaggeration, you get the point).

    If he does it using his cash, them more power to him and I wish him success.

    And this "...But Only Traveled 70MPH" Bullshit. That why they fucking call it testing you stupid piece of shit.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:More Power To Him by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

      That why they fucking call it testing you stupid piece of shit.

      Well said.

  64. Re: It's Here Now Until ... by rpstrong · · Score: 1

    You haven't read about rogue reconditioned Roombas turning on their masters?

  65. Space suits? by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 1

    Hmm, I wonder why no-one has mentioned the need for space suits. The military, even in time of war, requires U-2 pilots to wear full space suits. One baseball sized hole in the capsule and everybody is soon dead. It doesn't sound economical or practical to outfit each passenger in a full spacesuit. Also, you wanna wear a spacesuit someone just got out of?

  66. Thanks, I'll let the world know... by Brannon · · Score: 1

    that we need to shut down all gas & oil pipelines immediately, and ground all aircraft. Also we should probably evacuate all tall buildings--you know, since having a lot of connected steel makes you subject to catastrophic stress fractures and there's no possible way to guard against that. One day you will ride in a Hyperloop or something similar. When that happens, I hope you'll have the self-awareness necessary to say, "you know what, it turns out the experts were right and the internet pseudo-technical wannabees were wrong; this thing does work. I guess, in hindsight, I'm basically the guy who said that horseless carriages will never work and man will never go to space".

    1. Re:Thanks, I'll let the world know... by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      shut down all gas & oil pipelines immediately, and ground all aircraft. Also we should probably evacuate all tall buildings--you know, since having a lot of connected steel makes you subject to catastrophic stress fractures and there's no possible way to guard against that

      Hmm. Airplanes are smaller, They are checked often and there is a shit ton of data on when they fail. Still. Sometimes they do. When they do, like the plane that landed in Hawaii, with major pressure differentials that failure is really fast.

      The issue with the hyperloop is not a single 200ft long tube that must handle pressure changes over and over again as a routine. The issue is two fold.

      1: 400 - 500 miles of tube and all the connections that must have expansion joints that move with a seal.
      2: The massive pressure differential.


      It of course can be done safely. We can engineer a system to do it. We will not though, because of cost.

      If you could get away with an expansion joint (a really big one) every 2000 ft, (have not done the math, but it will probably have to be less) you are talking at least 1200 of these joints. They are moving every day. Large pieces sliding over each other with large seals to keep the pressure out. Conservatively for steel expansion over 2000ft in length the expansion joint would need to move, if the coldest temp expected is 40f and the hottest is 100f (the range would actually have to be designed higher than this) each joint would have to be able to move a .864 ft or a little over 10 inches of travel.

      Then you have a 13 ft diameter tube that expand and contract a little bit there as well. Pretty insignificant until you realize that what ever seal you use is going to have to keep the seal over that range of diameter. It will experience, when cold, very high stress. So.

      These 1200 (AT LEAST) expansion joints that are expected to move about a foot with seals under high and variable stress while sliding up and down the tube are going to need to be checked often. That is 1200 per tube with you needing one tube for each direction. 2400 Expansion joints.

      These just the special expansion joints. There will be many more, but they will be under much less stress and much less likely to fail.

      So. 5 teams of men, working 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week would need to check 2 joints a day and do nothing but that. They can not depressurize the system to do physical checks, but they can use ultrasound equipment. This is zero checking on any other joints along the system. Those seals under that kind of stress will need to be replaced. This means that they have to depressurize, dismantle, rebuild the joint and pressurize that section for each repair. If a seal like that can stay safe under those conditions, I think we would both be pleasantly surprised if it could be designed to last 5 years.

      Run in the system a few years and you are going to be replacing 40 of these seals and joints a month. So. With zero failures and checking constantly if you only run 12 hours a day and spend the other 12 hours on maintaining the system it would be a major effort to design expansion joints that can average years of life, but with enough money and dedication you can keep a system like that up. I would suggest that you check the joints more often and then check the regular joints once a year. Also 10.3 inches of travel is A LOT. You could do better and reduce stress with 3 or 4 inches. That would mean going from 2400 of these joints to 7000 or 7500. You might want to plan for places that get colder at night than 40f or hotter during summer days than 100f.

      So, 8000 - 9000 of these?

      The science is easy. The implementation of a system like this is more complicated than meets the eye.

      Feel free to attack any of the math you like.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    2. Re:Thanks, I'll let the world know... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      You might want to plan for places that get colder at night than 40f or hotter during summer days than 100f.

      Any heat differential you plan for will be due to friction and generated heat. This should be far enough underground to stay at about 60 degrees F year-round.

    3. Re:Thanks, I'll let the world know... by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      The plans I saw for the Hyperloop have it above ground. Mainly because digging a tunnel for 400 miles is a bitch.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    4. Re:Thanks, I'll let the world know... by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Sorry, I keep thinking they're having The Boring Company help with laying track - because they keep advertising themselves as perfect for the job.

    5. Re:Thanks, I'll let the world know... by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      Yes.
      If they could make boring a 400+ mile long tunnel cost effective, it would reduce the complexity of the problems I laid out by a large chunk.

      Of course minor earthquakes at the wrong place would be unavoidably catastrophic if built underground.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  67. Re:Dumbass by beastofburdon · · Score: 1

    Can you imagine being in a coffin in a steel vacuum tube with no inertial reference

    Why yes, I can very clearly imagine this, since I used to be on a submarine in the navy. You're a moron.

    How the pods transition from vacuum to normal air? If a pod breaks down how is it retrieved?.. eg. Are there access hatches?, Does that mean big valves every km or so for isolation? How long does each section take to air up & re vacuum?

    Airlocks
    It has wheels and an electric motor to take it to the next exit point which will be spaced all along the path
    Yes, there will be access hatches
    No dumbass, there will likely be doors near the access points for isolation
    I guess that depends on how large a pump you put in each area, but I bet there will be a lot of large ones

    Do you have any more questions that are easily answered with the slightest bit of thought?

  68. Use for Freight only by kaatochacha · · Score: 1

    Then, if it goes WHOOOOSH, you just lose a bunch of shoes, or melons, or whatever.

  69. Improbable Numbers by MercTech · · Score: 1

    Let a physicist debunk...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk

    --
    NRRPT/RCT
    1. Re:Improbable Numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's not a physicist, he's a chemist.

  70. The deniers are just amazing by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    While they have many objections, their biggest appears to be that of maintaining a partial pressure over say 1000 miles. Yet, they ignore reality. Haldron collider has a 17 mile long tube with a 10^(-13) atm. OTOH, hyperloop will require a pressure of 10^(-4).
    So, IOW, haldron is doing a pressure that is a billion times less dense which requires a GREAT DEAL MORE WORK than hyperloop, and yet, the deniers are running around saying that it can not happen.
    Amazing.

    This reminds of those ppl that ran around screaming that SpaceX would never get their F1 off the ground. Then it because that F9 would never work. Then it was that they could not land a stage. Then it became that SX would never be able to reuse these used stages.
    Now, it is that 28 engines will not work, or that dragon 2 will not work or that hyperloop will not work, etc. etc. etc.
    Basically, most, if not all, of the deniers are non-engineers and really have no grasp of where issues REALLY are. With all of these projects, none of them are out of physical laws, or our engineering capabilities. IOW, we can build a tunnel with a pressure that is 10^(-13) if we want. Likewise, we can build a rocket with over 100 engines. These are NOT physical or engineering issues.
    Where the REAL issue is, ARE THEY ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE?
    In every single case, Musk has done the calculations and shown that they are economically feasible. Otherwise, he does not pursue them.

    And when it comes to issues about physical vs engineering capabilities vs economical, a good one that he is working on, would be electric flight.
    It is PHYSICALLY possible. Our drones indicate that there is no physical issues with that.
    Now, it is down to engineering and economical issues. He and others are working on it, but at this time, it is not known if the engineering is possible for it.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.