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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.
no, you are missing the point. Hyperloop does not compete with cars. it competes with airplanes.
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.
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.
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.
He's really very... gentle... and fuzzy. We're becoming fast friends.
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.
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.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
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.
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.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
He's really very... gentle... and fuzzy. We're becoming fast friends.
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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.
He's really very... gentle... and fuzzy. We're becoming fast friends.
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.
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.
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".
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
Good luck finding someone who can do that without breaking your budget. ;)
He'll find someone who can do the boring; companies are everywhere.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
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.
Except that they don't. So their peak loadings are higher. So viaducts must be able to support the higher peak loads.
The amount of towers, tunnels, etc is all laid out in Hyperloop Alpha.
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.
That doesn't even make sense.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
He's really very... gentle... and fuzzy. We're becoming fast friends.
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.