Slashdot Mirror
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."
This must be one of those new definitions of "here now"
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?
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
What about the Segway? That massively changed how people take tours of downtown areas.
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.
Quick, let's ground all aircraft before everyone dies.
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'
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
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.
Obviously this is just a scheme to trick investors into building a giant cannon from which to launch sharks... with lasers.
Someone had to do it.
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.
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.
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?
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 ;-)
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.
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"?
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.
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...
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.
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
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
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.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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
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
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?
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...
https://youtu.be/Z48pSwiDLIM
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
always so convinced that they've found the fundamental flaw that all those smart people actually working on the technology have completely missed.
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?
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
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?
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.
They should make that in a movie or 2.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
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.
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.
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'
> 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.
> 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.
Wouldn't a vacuum be the opposite of a pressurized system?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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.
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'
You haven't read about rogue reconditioned Roombas turning on their masters?
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?
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".
Why yes, I can very clearly imagine this, since I used to be on a submarine in the navy. You're a moron.
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?
Just wondering, how are you recovering from the lobotomy?
Then, if it goes WHOOOOSH, you just lose a bunch of shoes, or melons, or whatever.
Let a physicist debunk...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk
NRRPT/RCT
'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'
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.