Elon Musk Inspired an Industry of Hyperloop Startups. Now He's Building His Own (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Elon Musk introduced his vision for a futuristic mode of tube-based transportation called the hyperloop in 2013. In an exhaustive white paper, he laid out a body of research conducted with his team at Space Exploration Technologies demonstrating the system's viability and seemingly offered it as a gift to the entrepreneurial community. "I don't have any plan to execute because I must remain focused on SpaceX and Tesla," he said in a conference call at the time. He apparently changed his mind. Last month, the SpaceX and Tesla chief executive officer revealed on Twitter that he'd received "verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop capable of ferrying passengers between New York and Washington, D.C., in 29 minutes. The tweet came as a shock to executives at the various startups racing to develop their own hyperloops based on Musk's specifications. Several of them initially expressed hope that Musk would simply dig the tunnels and perhaps choose one of their startups to create the physical infrastructure, which involves a tube-encased train traveling at speeds faster than an airplane. Nope. A person close to Musk said his plan is to build the entire thing, including the hyperloop system. Musk also holds a trademark for "Hyperloop" through SpaceX, which could be used to prevent other companies from using the term, according to U.S. public records. The billionaire's unexpected entry into the hyperloop business could threaten the ambitions of three startups, which have raised about $200 million combined from venture backers. "There's probably a finite amount of capital willing to bet on this space -- and bet against him," said Jonathan Silver, the former loan programs director at the U.S. Department of Energy. Silver learned not to underestimate Musk after overseeing a 2010 loan of $465 million to Tesla, which the electric carmaker paid back, with interest, nine years ahead of schedule.

Comments

Interesting this is basically a side project...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can imagine a total stranger meeting Elon at a dinner party.

"So tell me a bit about yourself Mr. Musk"
'Well I run two multibillion dollar companies. One sends rockets into space, the other is the world's most successful electric car company.'
'Wow, you must be very busy, I can't imagine you have any time for a life outside work.'
'Well in my free time I like to spend time with my 5 children and invent completely new public transportation rail systems.'
"........ I work at a bank and have an impressive DVD collection."
"That's cool I also 3 dongs and I am inventing a battery powered one"

Re:Interesting this is basically a side project...

[Rei]

You forgot the solar business and energy storage business (both now part of Tesla) and tunnel boring business (Boring Company) ;) And he's involved in OpenAI. And started Neuralink. I wonder when he's going to get around to his electric airplane plans, too.

Re:Interesting this is basically a side project...

[WrongMonkey]

When you have enough money, you just pay other people to do the work and take credit at photo ops.

Re:Interesting this is basically a side project...

[Anonymous Coward]

you just pay other people to do the work

This part turns out to be extremely important.

Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Oswald McWeany]

I doubt he'll hold onto the trademark for Hyperloop very long. It's already used generically by enough people who don't think of it as a company-specific term.

Trying to hold onto the Hyperloop trademark will cause headaches. Perhaps Musk will need some asprin.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

kleenex, tivo. google. are all used generically by enough people who don't think of it as a company-specific term.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Rei]

Part of the problem that will come up is that they never made any indication that its use was trademarked previously, and repeatedly stressed that they're describing an "open source transportation concept". They may have trouble on defense.

Really, I can't imagine how all of these other companies and their backers must feel. It's like they got punk'd by Elon.

Elon: "No, no, I have no interest in doing this myself, all of you go ahead."

Investors: "Good, because we know how hard it would be to compete with you for contracts and further capital because of your name recognition and because you established the concept."

(Much later)

Investors: ".. There we go, now our money is all tied up in these Hyperloop startups. Thank god Elon isn't personally involved in this field."

Elon: "Psych! I'm back in!"

That said... Hyperloop One, the furthest along, has just turned it into some uninteresting maglev-train-in-a-pipe concept. Hyperloop Alpha specifically was designed to avoid maglev because of how expensive it is; it's one of the fundamental design features that sets the concept apart. So I'm more interested in Elon's work here.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

HYPERMUSK

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

Kleenex I'll give you.Tivo I have rarely if ever hear being used to reference anything other than an actual Tivo; maybe people who have owned a Tivo in the past may subsequently use the term to refer to other DVRs, idk. Google is questionable; in the context of search, people may use it to generally mean "search", but then again due to the market dominance of Google's search engine, I'm not sure that they really are using it generically, it may be just that they don't have to consider any other search engine, because Google is the de facto option.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[ShanghaiBill]

Really, I can't imagine how all of these other companies and their backers must feel. It's like they got punk'd by Elon.

Who cares? Revolutionizing transportation is more important than a few VCs making a buck. If they can't handle competition, it is unlikely they would have been successful anyway.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[intellitech]

Nah, he'll probably keep it.

Kleenex, Band-Aid, TiVo, DustBuster, Jell-O, Dumpster, Thermos, Realtor, Port-a-potties, escalator, Tylenol, Tums, Photoshop, etc.

All generic trademarks. However, trademark erosion is a real threat.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[CanEHdian]

Let's try and think of a generic name that are is generic they cannot be trademarked: Vaccuum Tube Transport, VTT or "the tube" (I think they call the subway in London, England the tube). "Are you flying in?" "No, I'm thinking of tubing it". Sounds better than "this afternoon I'll be Hyperlooping to Boston".

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[omnichad]

Styrofoam.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[hattable]

What about: I'm looping into [Station Name] around 1600?

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

60% of the time it works every time!

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Applehu Akbar]

Running a maglev train in a pipe is actually a great idea, aside from the Hyperloop application. You can achieve high speeds without the threat of 'derailing' from a guideway. Pipes can be run underground in densely populated places where land is expensive and over long free spans above ground.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[guruevi]

Yet, since those generally have been defended well enough, you can't just go claiming you sell kleenexes or tivos.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Gr8Apes]

Don't get Looped, though.

Re: Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a feeling that Hyperloop will be allowed to describe only 100% compatible systems. These are not crappy at-grade LRT systems, there will eventually be a need to switch onto regular rails to pull into a rail station or many of these projects are going to be dead from not being convienent. A hyper loop to JFK or to The World Trade Center would make sense, but there is no engineering in the world that would allow tunneling under a skyscraper.

Re:Good Luck keeping the trademark on Hyperloop

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need the pipe to prevent derailing for Maglev trains. The german developed maglev trains simply enclose their tracks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid#/media/File:Transrapid-emsland.jpg

Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did people stop using trains in the mid 20th century? Because cars came about! Why do people like cars better than trains? Because cars don't have a set schedule that must be followed to the minute.

As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it. Nobody wanted to be a slave to the train schedule 100 years ago, and nobody will want to go back to being a slave to the train schedule again, either. Thinking otherwise is a fools errand.

That ignores the whole part about building it. It took 90 years and 4 billion dollars to get an additional 2 miles of subway track added to new york city. Philadelphia has been trying to make their subway 8 city blocks longer for over 50 years now and has gotten absolutely nowhere. But we're supposed to believe that a 400 mile long tube is just gonna magically show up across the I 95 corridor overnight? With that kind of thinking I might as well start going to church again.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I might as well start going to church again.

That would make your mother very happy.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[etash]

no, you are missing the point. Hyperloop does not compete with cars. it competes with airplanes.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[HumanWiki]

Why did people stop using trains in the mid 20th century? Because cars came about! Why do people like cars better than trains? Because cars don't have a set schedule that must be followed to the minute.

As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it. Nobody wanted to be a slave to the train schedule 100 years ago, and nobody will want to go back to being a slave to the train schedule again, either. Thinking otherwise is a fools errand.

That ignores the whole part about building it. It took 90 years and 4 billion dollars to get an additional 2 miles of subway track added to new york city. Philadelphia has been trying to make their subway 8 city blocks longer for over 50 years now and has gotten absolutely nowhere. But we're supposed to believe that a 400 mile long tube is just gonna magically show up across the I 95 corridor overnight? With that kind of thinking I might as well start going to church again.

Nobody?

There are millions of people in Chicago and New York alone that are a "slave to a train/bus" every single day and have been for decades.. Many of them don't even own cars... So, "nobody" is a false assertion by far.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea... I live in NYC and despite the MTAs shortcomings I find that the subway gives me *more* freedom. It doesn't run on a fixed schedule, you just go and wait and eventually a train shows up to take you where you need to go. It's cheap, $2.50 to go anywhere and I don't get harassed by the police looking to bolster their budgets. I can go out to the bars, get shit-faced, and get home without having to worry about where I parked my car or paying for a taxi. I don't have to pay car insurance or maintain a pile of metal and plastic that's slowly decaying.

I dream of NYC banning personal vehicles all together and leave half the local streets to taxis and delivery vehicles and the other half for bikes/parks/walkways.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[fustakrakich]

Yes, airline scheduling is so much better, where the wait in line is twice as long as the trip itself. It seems that people are willing to suffer through a great deal. It's their patriotic duty.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[ShanghaiBill]

As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it

Hyperloop uses many small independent pods rather than a single long train. So on a busy route such as NYC to DC, a pod would launch every minute or so. Rather than a fixed schedule, it would make more sense to just launch each pod as it filled up.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[doctorvo]

Right now, it's not competing with anything.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Trains were used, because they offered something that couldn't be rivalled until cars came along. Hyperloop is not a straight replacement for the outdated train model - it offers a massive speed increase over the current (i.e. car) model.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Many people use trains or buses. Besides, the schedule is not the worst part. It's that you have to get to the station first. But that problem could be solved by autonomous taxis that bridge the gap between walking and riding a bus or train. Individual mobility by individually owned a human operated cars will probably be a thing of the past in a couple of decades, not least because it's a huge waste of precious time that many people would rather spend working of enjoying the view instead of keeping their eyes on the road and operating a metal death trap.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody?

There are millions of people in Chicago and New York alone that are a "slave to a train/bus" every single day and have been for decades.. Many of them don't even own cars... So, "nobody" is a false assertion by far.

He said 'wanted'.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Rei]

I don't think you understand anything about Hyperloop (like 98% of the people who complain about the concept).

  * Hyperloop pods leave every few minutes. There is no "schedule" like with trains.

  * Hyperloop pods in the "large" variant carry cars. And that seems to be the variant that Musk is pursuing.

  * As for cost (and this gets very tedious having to go into this on every thread): the reason for the costs in Hyperloop Alpha being low vs. HSR are.. first, the fundamentals:

1) Hyperloop costs are budgeted at rates similar to (but more expensive than) pipelines, on a "length times cross section" basis. Because it is a pipeline, not a railroad. It has a number of aspects that make it more expensive than a pipeline (greater straightness requirements, interior polishing, higher elevation, human factors, partial-vacuum pumping) and cheaper (low pressure is easier to resist than high, vastly lower pumping energy requirements, no risk of environmental contamination making approval expensive, vastly lower mass loadings, little to no thermal management needs, etc).

2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading. Hyperloop pods are an order of magnitude lighter than HSR trains. The peak loadings are also much more transient, which is much easier to resist.

3) Because the elevation cost is reduced, it lets them build the whole thing elevated over public right-of-ways (assuming the government has buy-in - which for getting a high speed transport system at no cost to them, is not an unrealistic expectation), greatly reducing acquisition costs. This is limited by bending radii.

4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation - is much cheaper than permitting for greenfield development.

Now for the cheats in the Alpha document:

5) Hyperloop serves fewer passenger trips than CA-HSR - it's in-between HSR numbers and air passenger numbers.

6) It stops in fewer locations - it's just a direct LA-SF route.

7) It doesn't go into town. It's far more expensive to build in-town than out of town. The document excuses this on the premise that airports are located out of town - but airports are located there because they often must be, not because people want them there.

8) To get government permission to use right-of-ways, they should be expected to have impositions for more stops (just like HSR had to) and/or in-town terminals (as HSR has to pay for).

A note about the cost: there are small tunneling sections in Hyperloop Alpha; however, none of them are in-town (which is very expensive). They're budgeted at standard tunneling rates per unit length times cross section (the tube is very low cross section compared to road and water tunnels). However, this ignores what Musk is trying to achieve with Boring Company (major reductions in tunneling cost); if Boring Company succeeds, then this portion of Hyperloop Alpha is overbudgeted.

That is all.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

"solves no problems" "people won't use it" "Nobody wanted" "nobody will"

Those are a lot of ignorant, false absolutes.

"Thinking otherwise is a fools errand."

lol
There are lots of wealthy people who are wealthy for pursuing "fools errands" while ignoring folks like you.

"is just gonna magically show up"

Sure, just like how most things man[kind] builds magically show up. Hint: magically_show_up="be a result of time, work, and money"

Will this work? Is it a good idea? I certainly don't know; however, I think neither do you.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[MtHuurne]

People in most countries haven't stopped using trains; the USA is the exception.

A fixed schedule is not a problem as long as trains run frequently enough. The route I use most has a train leaving every 15 minutes, so no matter when I arrive at the station, it's never a long wait. Having trains at 15-minute intervals will only be profitable in densely populated areas, so this is not a solution that can be applied everywhere.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

An airport has so many planes that usually a plane is taking off once every minute or two. See how all that panned out for the traveler?

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[drinkypoo]

As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it.

That depends on the schedule. If there's enough trips, then it will still be useful. If not, then it won't.

we're supposed to believe that a 400 mile long tube is just gonna magically show up across the I 95 corridor overnight?

Yes, overnight. That's exactly what was claimed. You sure did find the fatal flaw in the argument there, Holmes.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[fred6666]

yeah, as long as you don't care about the destination

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, great, it competes with a mode of transportation that requires no construction of infrastructure to connect transportation hubs together (since, you know, it flies...), and it aims to do that by having a system that requires massive construction of infrastructure to connect transportation hubs together, oh, and it just happens to need to cut right through the largest collection of tightwad NIMBYs that exist on the face of the earth.

Real great system. Yeah.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Wraithlyn]

Man, where to even begin?

1) People still take trains (and other fixed-schedule transports, like buses) all the time. Your post acts like public transit isn't a thing (and then proceeds to mention subways...)

2) Trains for long distance travel between cities (and countries!) are still very popular in many places in the world, like Europe. Let me guess, you're American and are only familiar with cities that are designed to be car-centric.

3) Expanding an underground subway line inside a dense city is not at all the same thing as running track above ground along existing transport corridors (that's the whole point of using pylons, the Hyperloop can re-use existing corridors without needing to clear a bunch of new land/dig tunnels)

4) As others have pointed out, this competes with airplanes, not trains. That's how fast it is.

5) I'd argue that people prefer cars not because they hate schedules, but simply because a car will get them from point A to point B faster (in PART because they don't have to stand around waiting at any point). When an airplane gets you from A to B faster, people take airplanes. When the hyperloop gets people from A to B faster, they'll take hyperloops.

It's true that people enjoy the freedom of a car, and they aren't going away. But it's not a binary either/or thing. Public transport thrives when implemented well in an area with demand. Look at the NY Subway or London Underground.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[BasilBrush]

Airplanes to all destinations all queue to use a (usually) single fixed resource of the runway. They have to book slots.

With hyperloop there is no such bottleneck. Each tube is separate. They can literally go as soon as pod is full, or after the first passenger on the pod has waited a certain time. No slots.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I dream of NYC banning personal vehicles all together and leave half the local streets to taxis and delivery vehicles and the other half for bikes/parks/walkways.

I can't wait to see how much parking infrastructure will need to be built on the city limits.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[nukenerd]

I don't think you understand anything about Hyperloop ... Hyperloop pods leave every few minutes. There is no "schedule" like with trains.

Well that will depend on the traffic level. Trains at my nearest station run every 2 hours, but there is no technical reason why they could not run every 2 minutes - the London Underground railway does. They don't only because there are not enough passengers to justify it economically.

1) Hyperloop costs are budgeted at rates similar to .. pipelines, on a "length times cross section" basis. It has a number of aspects that make it more expensive than a pipeline ([such as] greater straightness requirements ... ).

(My bold) You can say that again. The Hyperloop will have to be very straight indeed to avoid unacceptable lateral and vertical accelerations on the passengers. Oil pipelines can hug the contours and abruptly go round obstacles; OTOH Hyperloop will require some spectacular civil engineering in hilly districts and will need steering around obstacles like intermediate towns in very gentle and sub-optimal curves.

... low pressure is easier to resist than high ...

Not if the low pressure is a vacuum. A large vacuum pipe must resist unstable implosion but a pipe with positive internal pressure keeps its shape until bursting point. As a simple example, try how much vacuum a toy balloon will take compared with pressure.

2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading.

You are forgetting wind loads. Some of those Hyperloop viaducts are going to be very high because of the reason I gave above.

The peak loadings are also much more transient, which is much easier to resist.

Nonsense. Transient loadings do not impose less stress than static ones. And you must design for a possible stoppage anyway.

3) Because the elevation cost is reduced, it lets them build the whole thing elevated over public right-of-ways ..., greatly reducing acquisition costs. This is limited by bending radii.

(My bold) You can say that again. You are not going to find much public right-of-way straight enough for Hyperloop

4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation

I have no idea what "something" you are referring to there.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

it might not seem like it, but in fact the NYC subway has a schedule.

did you think the drivers just hopped in the cab whenever they felt like it?

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I lived in Singapore for a few years and had to use public transportation (busses and subway). Personally, I thought it was miserable. The main issue was infectious disease. Everyone was always sick. I got really tired of being coughed and sneezed on by sick people. But there was also the general issue of "personal space" - having some guy lean over and scrape the dandruff out of his hair all over my shoes when it was too crowded to move away. Or having the guy in the seat next to me pick his nose or his acne and then absent-mindedly flick in the gunk in my direction. These days I'm back in the USA and can commute to work in my own car and it's absolute heaven - no sick people sneezing in my face, no one flicking boogers on me, I can even turn on the radio and sing along to my favorite music.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

>Driving sucks. I'd much rather fly, but it's too expensive

I hear that a lot. Personally, I don't get it. Could you elaborate on why you feel this way?

For me, driving doesn't involve TSA (big plus), lets me stop at a restaurant of my choice (big plus), I can bring nearly unlimited cargo (big plus), I can bring drinks (big plus), it is more comfortable (big plus), and I can set the cabin temperature as I like (big plus). Oh, I also get to kick off any passengers I can't stand. All my drives are direct and start anytime I like (big plus). It also costs less if you have a family (big plus).

The only negatives I can think of are: You have to control the vehicle (big minus), it is somewhat slower (big minus), and, unless you are a passenger, no entertainment other than the radio (minus). It can cost more if you are single (big minus). And if you are driving, no alcohol (minus).

Those positives outweigh the minuses for me. Let me know why you think driving sucks more than flying!

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Applehu Akbar]

Automated cars will improve the usability of mass transit, rather than killing it off. You give your driving app a destination and let the server algorithm figure out whether you are in for a local point to point drive in one car, or whether the car will deliver you to a train at a place where one going your way is about to pass through. You will then be directed by the app to get off at a designated station and jump into another car to finish the trip. All handled seamlessly and billed by the month.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Rei]

Well that will depend on the traffic level. Trains at my nearest station run every 2 hours, but there is no technical reason why they could not run every 2 minutes

Except that they don't. So their peak loadings are higher. So viaducts must be able to support the higher peak loads.

OTOH Hyperloop will require some spectacular civil engineering in hilly districts

The amount of towers, tunnels, etc is all laid out in Hyperloop Alpha.

... low pressure is easier to resist than high ...

Not if the low pressure is a vacuum.

1. It's not.
2. That's wrong.

Go talk to anyone who's ever engineered a VDU and start lecturing them about how terrible the engineering is on vacuum systems.

As a simple example, try how much vacuum a toy balloon will take compared with pressure.

That doesn't even make sense.

2) The cost to elevate something (like a rail viaduct) is almost linearly proportional to peak loading.

You are forgetting wind loads.

I'm not "forgetting" anything. Wind loads in normal conditions are almost irrelevant. 3,3 m^2 per m of cross section, a Cd of 1,17 with Cat-5 70m/s winds is 1,225 * 1,17 * 70^2 * 3,3 N/m = 23,2kN/m, roughly the same as a 26 tonne *empty*, 15m long, passengers-plus-3x-vehicles capsule plus the track mass. More to the point, the tube has to maintain alignment with vehicles passing over it; if you eliminate alignment requirements (aka shut it down due to your category 5 hurricane) the ability to bear loads becomes vastly higher.

Transient loadings do not impose less stress than static ones.

You're mixing up terms. They impose the same force, but for a much reduced period of time. Try this. Hold a steel bar between your hands and have someone swing a 2kg hammer at it at 10m/s, with the hammer coming to a stop in 10ms. No problem, right? That was 20kN force. Now instead of hitting the bar with a hammer, park a 2 tonne car on that bar. How are you doing holding that up? Because that's the same amount of force.

Time is absolutely relevant in terms of how hard a load is to bear.

(BTW, before you plan to pivot to "Well, but the deflection from a pod passing over would be too great...", actually run the numbers. It's not.)

(My bold) You can say that again. You are not going to find much public right-of-way straight enough for Hyperloop

Except mapping it out is literally what they did in the Hyperloop Alpha document. That you can be so dismissive of something that's literally already done tickles me.

4) While permitting is still required, building over a public right-of-way - something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation

I have no idea what "something" you are referring to there.

The noun clause ("public right of way") immediately preceding the descriptive clause ("something already permitted for much noisier and more polluting operation)". Do I really need to diagram the sentence for you?

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I might as well start going to church again.

That would make your mother very happy.

So *that's* what she calls it

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen you stupid fucking dumbass. 1/1000th of atmospheric pressure is a vacuum.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how people assume that everyone universally hates driving.

I rather like it as long as the traffic/weather isn't bad.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[roman_mir]

I think people don't understand the issues surrounding running a long metal vacuum pipe over terrain, subjected to heat and cold cycles and other environmental conditions, maintaining the vacuum, having huge objects moving inside it at enormous speeds while not touching the pipe itself ever, having to deal with an emergency inside a vacuum pipe that ruptures and has the 1 atmosphere gushing into it at the speed of sound, hitting objects moving at the speed of sound... I think the energy requirements are not understood, I think the materials are not understood, the safety is not understood. The entire concept is wonderful is a small experiment. Once somebody starts building a real big one then we'll really *have* to understand these issues and I think the end result will be a failure, economic and catastrophic.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[fred6666]

big airports can have more than one runway, just like hyperloops can have multiple boarding tubes

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[BasilBrush]

Hence why I said "(usually)".

Thing is they only get multiple runways when the slots on the existing runway has already been full for years. So the sharing of a bottleneck resource is still the same.

It will never be the same as hyperloop which idoesn't have to share anything between tubes.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[fred6666]

In a complex hyperloop system with multiple destinations (I know, we are being theoretical here), most likely the boarding tubes would be shared for different destinations, just like airports gates or runways can be used by different planes.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Gr8Apes]

Except, it doesn't require nude photos and an intimate groping to board, nor has delays due to a toilet issue, weather, snow, turbulence, etc.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Gr8Apes]

Airports still have many problems, even with multiple runways. No airport in the world currently lands more than 4 planes a minute that I'm aware of, because of the issues surrounding vortexes. Larger planes only make them worse, and reduce the landing frequency, so once a certain size plane is being used, larger planes do not really help with the number of passengers being able to be serviced.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[BasilBrush]

Doubt it. The more complicated you make it, the harder it is to maintain the low pressure.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did people stop using trains in the mid 20th century? Because cars came about! .

And I'm so glad that they invented cars in the 1940s.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Airports still have many problems, even with multiple runways. No airport in the world currently lands more than 4 planes a minute that I'm aware of, because of the issues surrounding vortexes. Larger planes only make them worse, and reduce the landing frequency, so once a certain size plane is being used, larger planes do not really help with the number of passengers being able to be serviced.

Yes, I've actually been on a flight where the pilot aborted landing due to turbulence caused by the plane that was ahead of us.
First time in 40+ years of flying, but it happened. There was no flight landing after us, so the pilot circled and then landed.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Gorobei]

Actually, the MTA subway does run on a fixed schedule. Nobody cares, though, because a 1 minute wait during peak hours and 5 minutes or so during off-peak means we just show up and wait (well, in Manhattan, anyway.)

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Gorobei]

Wish I had mod points - you are explaining reality well.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[fred6666]

You could board in a high pressure area and then some airlock before entering the low pressure tube. The passengers have to get in and out one way or another. Especially in a city mid point, it would be stupid to block the main tube while people get in and out.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

it doesn't require nude photos and an intimate groping to board

Here's hoping it stays that way.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Gorobei]

As a simple example, try how much vacuum a toy balloon will take compared with pressure.

That doesn't even make sense.

It doesn't make sense to you because you don't understand physics and/or math. Positive internal pressure makes shapes want to become more round - like the toy balloon you are confused about. So high pressure hoses, etc, work. Positive external pressure makes round things flatten: the physics works against you, amplifying any departure from roundness. So vacuum hoses need structural reinforcement (i.e. being thick or having internal bracing.)

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

except, it doesn't require nude photos and an intimate groping to board,

Actually this is one of its major drawbacks. If it is ever successful, the first full scale commercial US hyperloops would be major terrorist targets, so they would have to have airline style security checks, which would negate most of any advantages they might have.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

So vacuum hoses need structural reinforcement (i.e. being thick or having internal bracing.)

Well I for one am glad these tubes won't be made out of wet noodles then!

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

so get more frequent bigger trains, fucking asians account for every penny of profit, this is why american capitalism doesnt thrive, it's bunch of immigrants short changing the dream ... goodluck to you all, i've already got my 10 mill in bank, never even had to look for a job, it's just sucks looking around and shits worse then the 90s cuz of peoples greed

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used public transport (trains, busses and trams) every working day in the UK for thirty-plus years. I think I may have picked up a cold a handful of times (maybe three or four) in that time.

But then maybe my immune system is really good due to mixing with all those people for a long time.

Or maybe you were getting a sudden dose of 'foreign germs' due to being a long way from home - no immune response?

And I've *never* in thirty years had nose pickings, acne, dandruff or similar inflicted on me. Maybe people in Singapore are unusually gross?

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Gr8Apes]

Not at all, there's no one to attack, no one to take over, the only thing you can do is blow yourself up. The pods are relatively small, at least last time I looked, holding only 4 or 8 people. So mere explosives screening is sufficient, no need to worry about paperclips or pens.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[KGIII]

... Umm... No, no... They understand math, physics, engineering, and this concept - very well. Read the history of their posts. You could probably just bail on the thread, and nobody will notice. You could also just say sorry and ask them to help you learn.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to control the vehicle

This. You get the bonus of dealing with every idiot on the highway. It might be cold/cramped on the plane and the TSA is a real problem, but I'd happily take a 3 hour flight (including airport BS) over a 8 hour drive any day.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[WindBourne]

Uh no. Ppl quit riding the train because cars were cheaper and faster. With HL, it will not be a train, but small pods/cars which can take off at various times and get 100 miles in 7 minutes (compared to 70-90 minutes for car). If his prices compete against cars, he wins flat out.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the MTA subway does run on a fixed schedule. Nobody cares, though, because a 1 minute wait during peak hours and 5 minutes or so during off-peak means we just show up and wait (well, in Manhattan, anyway.)

Right. I've had the same experience with the Metro in Paris, or Underground in London. Oh, there's a train just at the station as I'm coming down the steps ... I could run and maybe catch it (or maybe trip & fall), but why bother when there will be another along in a minute or 2.

When the public transport reaches this critical mass it's much more desirable than private transport. When it's only partially implemented, not so much.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used public transport (trains, busses and trams) every working day in the UK for thirty-plus years. I think I may have picked up a cold a handful of times (maybe three or four) in that time.

Riding public transportation in Singapore, I was averaging about five upper respiratory infections (colds, flu, etc) per year for the six years that I was there. Now that I'm back in the USA and driving myself to work, I'm down to about two upper respiratory infections per year.

So it's not unreasonable to attribute about two infections per year to public transportation - or about a dozen infections for the six years that I was there. Given that a typical upper respiratory infection lasts a week at a bare minimum, that's about three months of feeling really lousy and sick because of public transportation.

Of course, in a world where 20,000 children a day die of poverty there are worse things than getting a cold or even the flu. But, still, I don't see the point of being sick when it's avoidable (for example, when using public transportation can be avoided).

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[WrongMonkey]

Besides the negatives that you've already brought up, driving is also significantly more dangerous.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

>Driving sucks. I'd much rather fly, but it's too expensive

I hear that a lot. Personally, I don't get it. Could you elaborate on why you feel this way?

Most obviously Jersey and DC Beltway Traffic.

Driving between NY and DC make sense only if a certain set of conditions happen to line up--the right times of day, sources or destinations inconvenient to travel hubs, you need to take lots of things with you, you can spend the time paying attention to the road instead of working or reading, etc...

If you have the time for it, the train is much better, more reliable, and safer. Airplanes are a faster option but are sometimes a much less pleasant experience. (Less comfortable, more expensive, more intrusive, etc...). Buses are almost as comfortable but take more time, can get stuck in traffic, and you have a higher chance of having someone really annoying sharing a bus.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the schedule that is the problem. It is the transfers. E.g. How do I get from Vancouver BC to NYC by train? It is a week long trip and will inevitably be delayed pulling into and out of Chicago because it is the train hub of the US. If I fly, I go through the exact same hubs unless I pay more for a direct flight. The cost differential can be sometimes three fold for economy and 100 fold for business.

In theory the Hyperloop only has 4 viable startups. Vancouver BC to Seattle to Portland, Montreal to Toronto to Detroit, Boston to NYC, DC to NYC. In practice only the North East will even be considered due to it being the most potentially profitable. The west coast would be the best place to build one if you want to put an airline out of business. Even a San Francisco to LA route would put a huge dent in both car and plane travel.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

It is being automated. The maintenance is done without shutting down by using the express rails that don't exist on any other system.

Re: Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[loufoque]

Most people outside of the US take trains regularly.
The fact that trains are shit is a specific problem to the US.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Shirley Marquez]

People fly in airplanes despite the schedule thing, because they are much much faster than cars. In other countries where they have real high speed trains, which the Acela Express is not, people ride trains because they are much much faster than cars. The Hyperloop will also be much much faster than cars, so people will use it.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[apoc.famine]

I suspect that, should a hyperloop actually ever be created, the scheduling would likely be done electronically in a somewhat uber-like fashion. It would be easy to set up an algorithm where the users indicate when they want to leave, and they get scheduled at a time that's convenient for the most users for each pod. Perhaps charging more if nobody else wants to go, and less if you're packing the pod to capacity.

Re:Hyperloop misses the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's hope it kills Musk or a die-hard H.L. advocate before anyone innocent.

To Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what was that all about! More Trumpian B.S.!

Ahahahaha

[NicknameUnavailable]

So he basically tricked a bunch of hacks with money into pursuing his idea instead of their own, then joined it late in the game able to rip off their R&D while holding all the marketing/branding power?

I'm no Musk fan, but as far as Silicon Valley marketing/sales people go he's no all-bad this time around. (his borderline sweatshop of engineers with low pay in constant burn-out mode withstanding)

Re: Ahahahaha

[WindBourne]

Really?what tech will he be ripping off and from whom? Also engineers working for him seem to be much happier than working for places like Ula, GM, Ford, BMW, Daimler, Toyota, Boeing, etc.

Re:Ahahahaha

[BasilBrush]

Not so much that. I think it's more that he's seen Hyperloop One use the name Hyperloop for a different system. Hyperloop One are doing mag-lev in a near vacuum. Musk's Hyperloop idea was air-bearings (like an air hockey table) in a low pressure tube, with the pod collecting rarefied air in a fan at the front and pushing it through holes in the bottom of the capsule.

the ego on this clown

[Hugh Jorgen]

This guy wants to be Steve Jobs so bad it's fucking comical. Steve Jobs was unduly idolized and poor musk wants the same thing so badly. You've nor your company have innovated anything. The US Tax Pay funded both Tesla and SolarShitty. Now you think a train is a technological marvel...

Re:the ego on this clown

[Oswald McWeany]

This guy wants to be Steve Jobs so bad it's fucking comical. Steve Jobs was unduly idolized and poor musk wants the same thing so badly. You've nor your company have innovated anything. The US Tax Pay funded both Tesla and SolarShitty. Now you think a train is a technological marvel...

Well, in all fairness, he's already done more to help mankind so far than Jobs did. Jobs made some great commercial electronics but nothing revolutionary. The iPhone was a well put together piece of equipment and his best contribution, but it's not like there weren't already similar products before, and co-currently being worked on by other teams. His was just better than anything else in the beginning... the smart phone revolution was dawning anyway- he just made it better and maybe sped it up a year or two.

Musk on the other hand has single handedly pulled the world up and made electric cars a reality. It's not the fringe technology we might develop 20 years from now, in perpetuity any more.

His impact is so big, countries are beginning to mandate electric cars in the future His impact with electric cars has also spurred a battery revolution for solar panels- solar panels were coming anyway, so were home batteries- but he's made big impacts there.

He has leapstarted self driving vehicles. Whilst Google has been floundering for a decade- Tesla has gone ahead and done it and made it a reality. Maybe not whole-hog, maybe not even close, but his baby steps towards self-driving has made the technology a reality and other automanufacturers are taking note.

He's also been leading the only really successful team for privatized space. Sure Virgin Galactic, and a few others are looking promising, but he's pretty much spurred a whole second space-age.

If Hyperloop works and doesn't turn into vapour, it promises to be a massive change on how we think about transport. I'm less optimistic for hyperloop than his other ventures, but it could potentially be a big shaker.

So yeah, Jobs had some nice consumer electronics, but Musk has already done more that is useful to mankind. He's not just turning over a profit, he's doing useful stuff that betters man. He long since overshot Jobs.

Re:the ego on this clown

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone else has already echoed this sentiment but I feel I should add my 2 cents too. Jobs was a marketing genius, he was about to take other peoples ideas and to turn them into a very successfully marketable product. He didn't really innovate anything himself. Apply have been near to the front of the pack with pushing some technologies but I can't think of any significant ones that they created themselves. Musk has revolutionised a number of industries in ways which stand to truly make the world a better place, this is something Jobs seemed to aspire to do but was completely unable to achieve. Apple is now one of the worst offenders in throw away technology. I understand many people feel very uncomfortable with the praise which Musk receives but I have not yet heard any well-reasoned argument for that feeling.

Re:the ego on this clown

[Jzanu]

Musk routinely violates the rights of stockholders and investors by combining his personal ventures to reduce his personal risk while increasing that born by all others.

Re:the ego on this clown

[nukenerd]

Musk on the other hand has single handedly pulled the world up and made electric cars a reality. It's not the fringe technology we might develop 20 years from now, in perpetuity any more... His impact is so big, countries are beginning to mandate electric cars in the future.

What a load of BS, unless you are fishing for "Funny" mods. You do know that Tesla existed before Musk's involvement and he just bought into it? The UK, where I am, has begun to mandate electic cars in the future but that is nothing to do with Musk, and people here do not especially think of Musk when they think of electric cars. That seems to be an Americanism

If Musk wanted to be the next Steve Jobs then at least he has succeded in that, which I do not mean as a compliment. Like Jobs, he is primarily a successful salesman, using the device of creating a cult following.

Re:the ego on this clown

[JaredOfEuropa]

You might be mixing up innovating and inventing.

Re:the ego on this clown

[WrongMonkey]

Musk on the other hand has single handedly

That's a big "fuck you" to all the engineers, scientists, investors who have been working on the project, even before Musk ever came along. Or do you think that each Tesla is personally designed and hand-made by Musk himself?

He's also been leading the only really successful team for privatized space.

SpaceX is no more private than ULA . SpaceX has some interesting engineering concepts to improve costs, but the business model isn't any different than any other contractor.

Re:the ego on this clown

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason people idolize leaders like Jobs and Musk so much, because without them it's likely none of the things they set out to do would get done for a very long time. They are doers that brought other doers together to accomplish something great.

Re:the ego on this clown

[quanminoan]

I'm a fan of Musk, but the same reasons you shun Jobs also apply to Musk. Without either person what they had accomplished would have eventually been accomplished by others, which can be said about any human endeavor other than art. What makes both of them visionaries is how they both pushed boundaries ahead of their times, to glimpse a piece of the future and bring it to the present via exemplar leadership abilities. I will agree though that what Musk has accomplished to date greatly exceeds what Jobs has accomplished, although Jobs arguably had at bit of an artist's impact with his design in conjunction with Jonny Ives et. al.

Re:the ego on this clown

[werepants]

Like Jobs, he is primarily a successful salesman, using the device of creating a cult following.

Why the hate? It's an undeniable fact that Musk's companies are revolutionizing industries where many, many others have tried and failed. Self-landing rockets weren't even on anybody's radar until Musk proved it could be done with SpaceX. That's a bigger step towards reusability than any space corporation or national program has been able to pull off in all of history, and that isn't for a lack of trying.

There are legitimate criticisms of Musk to make. He's got a reputation for burning through employees at a furious rate. His schedule projections are almost always wrong. But trying to deny his accomplishments just makes you look ignorant and spiteful.

Re:the ego on this clown

[Anonymous Coward]

France mandated electric cars too and in the street I see mostly non-Tesla EVs.

Re:the ego on this clown

[Anonymous Coward]

you love the kool-aide too much

Not recent news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this presented as if it is something new? Elon's The Boring Company had been around since last year: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company

Re:Not recent news...

[Rei]

This isn't about Boring Company, which has up to this point just ostensibly been about tunnels. This is about Musk building a Hyperloop himself.

Musk's companies are juggernauts, and he raises capital with ease. This is going to be a tough wave for the other startups to weather.

Re:Not recent news...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Boring Company has nothing to do with Hyperloop tunnels. It may be that there is some crossover due to gained tunnelling expertise in the future, but The Boring Company plans to build a network of tunnels that will carry road cars point-to-point on electric sleds; these tunnels will not be depressurised, or carrying trains at HyperLoop speeds. Entirely different project.

Re:Not recent news...

[drinkypoo]

Musk's companies are juggernauts, and he raises capital with ease. This is going to be a tough wave for the other startups to weather.

Musk has competition, sees what the other startups do, does whatever looks best. But he won't be building every meter of the system, so there's still plenty of opportunity around the world, and the startups get to see what he does and improve on it.

Re: Not recent news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you think they wouldn't using Boring tech to dig hyperloop tunnels ?

Re: Not recent news...

[Anonymous Coward]

He might, I even said that, but that's not the point. The Boring Company wasn't founded to build Hyperloop tunnels, it doesn't have Hyperloops anywhere in it's mission statement, so the fact that it has existed for some time does not make Musk's entry into the HyperLoop business "not recent news". Elon's Hyperloop entry into the Hyperloop business is new.

Not invented by Elon Musk

[Wise Raptor]

The idea of a vacuum transport tube has been around before Elon Musk. I remember attending colloquium in college where some inventors were trying to get interest in building evacuated tube transport. http://www.et3.com/

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

Way before, as it turns out. 1799 seems to be the first time someone patented the generic idea.

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[Rei]

Except if you knew anything about Hyperloop and had read the Alpha document you'd realize that not only is it not "a vacuum transport tube", the capsules wouldn't even work in a hard vacuum. It's a linear air bearing, avoiding the need for maglev (which is very expensive), operating akin to an extreme ground-effect aircraft in a very rarified atmosphere - and getting around the air buildup problem via a compressor. No, this concept is not old. No, it does not resemble ET3. It's specifically designed to avoid the problems that have presented ET3-style systems (the cost of maglev).

Note, however, that people have taken to using "Hyperloop" to describe things very different than in the alpha document that unveiled the concept. For example, Hyperloop One is just maglev-in-a-tube like ET3 (a very old concept). So your criticism against them applies perfectly well.

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[doctorvo]

It's also been a staple of Science Fiction since the invention of pneumatic tube transports. I think Arthur C Clarke had it in several of his stories.

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[Rei]

And now we add in the second thing people routinely confuse with Hyperloop (pneumatic tubes). Let's be clear:

Pneumatic train != Maglev-in-a-tube != Hyperloop Alpha

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

god damn you Musk faggots need to get lives - you are fucking pathetic losers

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[doctorvo]

And now we add in the second thing people routinely confuse with Hyperloop (pneumatic tubes). Let's be clear:

I suppose in every crowd there has to be someone as illiterate and slow as you. I thought someone of average intelligence was capable of figuring out that the idea of "air pressured propulsion in a tube" inspired "magnetic levitation propulsion in a vacuum tube". The latter (not the former) is found in many science fiction stories.

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[penandpaper]

if you knew anything about Hyperloop and had read the Alpha document you'd realize that not only is it not "a vacuum transport tube"

I think it's worth quoting the alpha document to get an idea what Musk has in mind.

The approach that I believe would overcome the Kantrowitz limit is to mount an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel. This is like having a pump in the head of the syringe actively relieving pressure.

It would also simultaneously solve another problem, which is how to create a low friction suspension system when traveling at over 700 mph. Wheels don’t work very well at that sort of speed, but a cushion of air does. Air bearings, which use the same basic principle as an air hockey table, have been demonstrated to work at speeds of Mach 1.1 with very low friction. In this case, however, it is the pod that is producing the air cushion, rather than the tube, as it is important to make the tube as low cost and simple as possible.

http://www.spacex.com/sites/sp...

Whether it works and is economically viable... Well, I am not the one with a few successful multi-billion dollar companies that turned the impossible and uneconomical into reality.

Re: Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

it not "a vacuum transport tube"
- What is the pressure exactly?

the capsules wouldn't even work in a hard vacuum.
- what pressure is hard vacuum in your example?

It's a linear air bearinnw
- can you describe what this is?

avoiding the need for maglev (which is very expensive), operating akin to an extreme ground-effect aircraft in a very rarified atmosphere - and getting around the air buildup problem via a compressor.
- can you explain this with more general terms please?

Your comment seems very interesting except that I cant relate it to anything. It would be nice to see sone numbers and maybe some physical examples. I dont want to categorize it in the new car broshure folder because it does sound like there could be something informative in what you're saying.

cheers

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I am not the one with a few successful multi-billion dollar companies.

Neither is Musk. His company lose billions of dollars.

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[JaredOfEuropa]

Musk is not an inventor but an innovator. Invention is coming up with new ideas. Innovation is putting the right ideas together and putting the result into practice. The iPhone didn't really contain anything new, yet it was a game changer. Electric cars have been around for ages, but Musk built the first ones that even petrolheads actually wanted to drive (and didn't look like shit). This transportation system is not a new idea but if he pulls it off, it'll be the first one to go into service.

Sure, there's a weird cult around Musk and a lot of hype around everything he does... but sometimes that's what it takes to get the investors signed up and the right minds on board. It sounds stupid, but sales is an important part of innovation.

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[penandpaper]

Tell that to the stock market.

You're a funny little troll. Aren't you?

Re: Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I understand now from the alpha loop document:
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf
on p.24 a pressure of 0.015 psi (100 Pa, 0.75 torr) is mentioned. This is what we find at about 50 km height above earth. Hard vacuum is what you find in in outer space and in e.g. the CERN LHC rings (10^-4 Pa). https://home.cern/about/engineering/vacuum-empty-interstellar-space
Air Bearings
On p.20 of the alpha loop document the air bearings are discussed.
The pod floats on an air cushion (fed with tube air using a compressor)

Glad I finally found some numbers!

Re:Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

god damn you Musk faggots need to get lives - you are fucking pathetic losers

LOL. And you bother to hang out here & make disparaging remarks. Talk about pathetic!

Really, I LOLed at you for being, as you so nicely put it, a fucking pathetic loser.

Re: Not invented by Elon Musk

[Anonymous Coward]

That's great. Thanks for the numbers.

Right away I can probably say that it won't be monetarily possible to do that large a tube at that psi. There are too many factors such as the materials of the tube that will need to take into account the outside temperature changes and the pressure differential itself. Not a complete vacuum but still an extreme compared to just outside. I wouldn't be surprised if there would be some tweaks to the model to increase the psi 100 fold at least. A bit of googling may uncover other problems but out of the box it sounds like it will be worth its weight in gold.

Don't you need some knee pads?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are constantly down on them in front of Musk, one way or the other.

Aweome!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's almost as fast as an airplane!

Re:Aweome!

[Rei]

Technically, Hyperloop isn't even limited to those speeds. The main limitation is that you can't get too close to the speed of sound, as it causes a lot of problems with the concept. But the speed of sound is not a universal constant. It can be raised either by increasing temperature (which may well happen on its own; rarified atmospheres are terrible heat conductors) or by using light gases in the tube rather than leaked air. The latter means better pumping requirements, but the amount of gases involved (H2, He, H2O, CH4 or NH3) is very small, and too sparse to pose combustion or corrosion/embrittlement risks (with the possible exception of in the compressors/skis)

Micromanagment

[Anonymous Coward]

What would you expect from a workaholic bordering a obsessive-compulsive disorder that is obsessed with micro-managing his employees ?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Passenger rail

[sjbe]

Why did people stop using trains in the mid 20th century?

They didn't in much of the world. Passenger rail is alive and well.

Why do people like cars better than trains? Because cars don't have a set schedule that must be followed to the minute.

Strawman. People don't necessarily like cars better. In many parts of the US they simply don't have a choice. I've lived in cities where passenger rail was an option and it was hugely useful and I generally preferred it to driving in many cases. (traffic jams suck) Whether cars or trains are advantageous is circumstance dependent. It also depends on what infrastructure has been invested in. Trains are economically efficient for a certain set of conditions. They are widely used in Europe and Asia. Honestly I would happily ride a train to work if it were feasible where I live.

As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it.

People all around the world ride trains and airplanes and even boats on fixed schedules. Including in the US. The fact that the schedule is fixed is not necessarily a disadvantage, especially when it is as reliable as the trains in Japan. The primary advantage of cars is that they can go point to point rather than having their start and end points fixed. The lack of a schedule with cars is usually a much more minor advantage in the presence of a well functioning passenger rail system. Go to a city like NYC or Chicago and odds are you'll park the car and ride the light rail system + taxis to get around.

It took 90 years and 4 billion dollars to get an additional 2 miles of subway track added to new york city.

Which is irrelevant regarding whether hyperloop systems would be cost efficient. A subway in one of the most densely populated cities in the world isn't really a good comparison. If you want to make a proper comparison consider the efforts to put in high speed rail in the US. A lot of land will need to be purchased and right of ways obtained. The reason passenger rail struggles in the US is precisely because 1) we didn't invest in obtaining the right of ways years ago when it would have been cheaper and 2) population density in large parts of the country. But in places where the infrastructure exists and the population density is sufficient, like in the Northeast Corridor or in much of Europe and Japan, trains are popular and heavily used for transport.

I have my doubts that a hyperloop system will make economic sense. I suspect it will fail for much the same reason monorails never really caught on. But there may be specific cases where it makes a lot of sense so I'm withholding judgement until there is more data to work with. Worst case is that it's kind of a nifty technology that might have interesting applications down the road.

Re:Passenger rail

[taiwanjohn]

1) we didn't invest in obtaining the right of ways years ago when it would have been cheaper

Actually, we had plenty of rights-of-way back in the day, but we gave them up in the post-war era as cars and interstate highways became ubiquitous. My parents grew up in Sterling, Nebraska in the 30s and 40s (population 1500 back then, more like 700 now), and they had regular, daily passenger rail service. Truman's famous whistle-stop campaign in 1948 would not have been possible otherwise.

In my home town, Cedar Falls, Iowa, there is an extra-wide street (Seerley Blvd.) which seems out of place in its residential neighborhood. Turns out, back in the day, there was a street-level tram which went from Cedar Falls to nearby Waterloo, about 10 miles away to the east. But that rail line was gone long before I was born.

Of course, none of this negates your point that serious passenger rail would require the purchase a lot of very expensive rights-of-way. But fortunately, I think the advent of self-driving cars will make this a moot point. When "Transportation as a Service" (TaaS) becomes available, point-to-point, even in tiny towns like Sterling, NE, the need for passenger rail goes away. Ditto for individual car ownership.

Mania

[Anonymous Coward]

Musk better tone it down. He's bipolar and this sounds like a classic manifestation of the mania phase.

He already has more than he can handle on his plate. I hope there is someone close to him to counsel him and get him the help and meds he needs.

He needs to deliver an actual functional prototype

[Chas]

I'm tired of all the hype about "Hyperloop".
The science behind it is iffy, at best right now.
They haven't even had a successful run of the full test track yet. Even with their proprietary pod.
But he's prancing around as if it were a fully realized product, getting handshake deals for building hyperloops all over the place.
It's looking a lot like ship-and-patch to me.

Which means, with something like this, people are going to have to DIE before someone takes a serious look at it and sees what a boondoggle is could be.
And the way things are progressing, that's EXACTLY what's going to happen.

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead people haven't stopped Musk so far, you must have forgotten he is/was/always will be a psychopath.

Good luck, buddy!

[Gravis Zero]

There's no way he could get enough space to run a giant tube over the land. He'd have to do something crazy like dig giant tunnels everywhere. Good luck finding someone who can do that without breaking your budget. ;)

Re:Good luck, buddy!

[drinkypoo]

Good luck finding someone who can do that without breaking your budget. ;)

He'll find someone who can do the boring; companies are everywhere.

Re:Good luck, buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Among everything else, he already owns a tunnel boring company.

https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/

Re:Good luck, buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Tunnels are crazy expensive. Most subways are built "cut and cover" cheap but hugely distruptive. Tunnels are only used when nothing else is possible.

In any case, a project of this magnitude would be one of the most ambitoius engeneering projects ever attempted. One trillion dollars, easily, and 30 or 40 years from first drawing to finished construction.

Re:Good luck, buddy!

[apoc.famine]

Someone like the Boring Company, perhaps?

Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

Until Elon Musk addresses the elephant in the room, I'm not going within a mile of his hyperloop idea. Car manufacturers conduct crash tests. We see videos of them all the time. Breakdowns of the results are not hard to find. Early ventures into automotive and aeronautical travel were often disasters defined by the uncertainties of their outset.

But here, we know pretty well what happens to a vacuum tube when its integrity is even slightly damaged -- you get a catastrophic failure. Maintaining even a partial vacuum over a large distance is *hard*. As has been said, "Nature abhors a vacuum" and will do anything in its power to fill it.

I've heard numerous news reports about how "all the elements of the hyperloop" have been demonstrated now. That's complete BS. None of the recovery modes of failure have been demonstrated. Not even the mundane details of getting people into and out of a transport pod at a terminal have been shown, let alone sustaining their lives during transport. Or during a breakdown when they're stuck halfway between destinations.

So far, Elon Musk hasn't addressed any of the problems that have kept this idea from being a reality for more than a century.

(LOL -- the captcha for this post is "prevail".)

Re:Elephant in the room

[Rei]

But here, we know pretty well what happens to a vacuum tube when its integrity is even slightly damaged -- you get a catastrophic failure

Right, which is why VDUs and the lines that feed them are constantly catastrophically imploding, right?

Sorry, but engineering for vacuum is no harder than engineering for pressure, and a lot safer in the event of a failure. Let me tell you, given the choice between a problem in a VDU and a hydrocracker, you'd much rather be working on the VDU. Of course you can make an implosion in something not designed for holding vacuum - that's why you hire bloody engineers, to prevent that. Which means some combination of appropriate wall thickness and regularly spaced reinforcing rings.

Or during a breakdown when they're stuck halfway between destinations.

Again, if you'd read the Hyperloop Alpha document, you'd be aware that the design calls for emergency exits at periodic intervals. The pods move on wheels at low speeds.

Now, if your issue is that "they haven't been demonstrated", nobody said that they have, and I'm not sure where you got that idea. It's a new concept, with test facilities just starting to come online.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

Go ahead and sign your posts "Elon Musk, Inc.", because you're either the bastard himself, an ass kissing employee, or have heavily invested in his hysterical fantasies.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh yes confronting facts with insults always wins the conversation.

I find the number of musk haters here hilarious.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Headw1nd]

Rei, I think the salient difference is that nobody works inside a VDU.

There has been relatively little focus on the details of car/capsule design. The design of a capsule able to withstand multiple trips per day in near-space conditions, providing life support while maintaining a near-zero failure rate, would be in my estimation more impressive than evacuating a long pipeline to 0.001 bar. I wish them luck, because the design of the doors alone would be of great benefit for space technology.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Jzanu]

You mean calling out biased invested parties? One can not assume any value inherent in a fan post without disclosures. They are most likely in it for their own financial benefits and at the cost of your own, so they are not only useless but detrimental to everyone.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Whorhay]

The capsules should be relatively easy to design. The pressures we'd be containing are very minimal compared to stuff that is used constantly already in everyday life. At the very highest pressures you're talking about sea level atmospheric numbers plus a little if the weather is nice, so maybe 18psi. Compare that to commercially available pressure vessels that hold contents at over 100psi. The vacuum isn't what makes space difficult, it is the exposure to radiation and extremes of temperature. In a hyperloop system the pod won't be exposed to such extremes of temperature and will be shielded from radiation by virtue of not being in outerspace.

Life support is really the only challenging bit at all and compressed atmosphere combined with something to pull out the carbon the people exhale is about all you'd need. Depending on the length of the trip you might be fine just using whatever atmosphere is trapped in the pod when you close it up.

The door system for placing a pod into the evacuated tube I imagine would be done via an airlock. If the airlock chamber is sized to be just slightly larger than the pod you end up with very little atmosphere to pump out.

It's very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many possible scenes that the Hyperloop can kill passengers:

• crash

• vacuum sucktion

• out of oxygen

• unreached destiny

• etc

Re:It's very dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pah. I've been suffering from "unreached destiny" all my life and it hasn't killed me yet!

Tube-Based Transportation

[Anonymous Coward]

Tube-based transportation has already been invented. It's called the Internet!

I'll see myself out.

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[angel'o'sphere]

The science behind it is iffy, at best right now.
In which way?

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[Anonymous Coward]

musk doesn't care about killing people he does it as a hobby

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[R3d M3rcury]

The science behind it is iffy, at best right now.

Actually, the science is pretty well understood. Even the engineering is pretty well understood. The biggest issues with hyperloop are the scale and the cargo.

There've been pretty impressive systems of "pneumatic tubes" that have been built for sending things around. Of course, those tubes were fairly small and they carried inanimate objects. Now we want to make them travel much further and be much bigger and carry people at high speeds, so there's bunches of issues there that need to be figured out.

Re:Tube-Based Teletransportation.

[Anonymous Coward]

And put the elephants into Hyperloop! Will does it work?

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[Chas]

Sorry, but trying to build a miles-long vacuum chamber out of thin-wall steel tubing, and pushing people through it at high rates of speed?

The science behind his CHOSEN SOLUTION is iffy.

Sure it can be brute-forced to work. But there are several major points of failure that are simply ignored. And actual safety systems haven't even been discussed.

The fact is, this thing is supposed to be carrying people. People generally object to being worse-than-killed on a business commute.

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[MercTech]

Thunderfoot did a good job of debunking the hyperloop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk

Passenger rail died out due to being more expensive and a miserable experience. When you could fly for $120 and be there in a day but a train took almost 3 days and cost $250; people took flights and ignored the passenger rail. (1968 prices for trip from Mississippi to Baltimore.) Remember, this was a day when a meat and two veg lunch ran 25 cents. The cost difference was a budget breaker.

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[angel'o'sphere]

There is no way to "debunk" the hyperloop concept.
If you don't grasp it, you are very bad in physics.

i like the way they say that

[KingBenny]

"willing to bet on" and "bet against him" , makes it sound so wild wild west, professional and totally planned xD ... tsch , the land of Edison ... if it wasnt for the opportunities then what would it be without the military huh ?

Re:He needs to deliver an actual functional protot

[Anonymous Coward]

fucking hell you are stupid