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China Plans 600 MPH Train To Rival Elon Musk's Hyperloop (shanghaiist.com)
In addition to relaunching the world's fastest bullet train, China is working on developing technology similar to Elon Musk's Hyperloop, which will allow passengers to travel at speeds up to 4,000 km/h (~2,500 mph). The first stage of the company's plan, however, will be to create a network of these "flying trains" operating at 1,000 km/h (~600 mph). Shanghaiist reports: Earlier today, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), one of the nation's major space contractors, announced that it had begun research and development into a new, futuristic type of transport which would operate via supersonic "near ground flight." The system would presumably be similar to that of the Hyperloop, proposed earlier this decade by Elon Musk, in which capsules would fly at ultrafast speeds down reduced-pressure tubes, dramatically reducing travel times. Of course, the CASIC isn't looking to reach speeds of 4,000 km/h right away. The first stage of the company's plan will be to create an intercity network of these "flying trains" operating at 1,000 km/h. In the second phase, this network would be extended and the max speed of the pods increased to 2,000 km/h. Finally, in the third stage, the speed would be boosted all the way up to 4,000 km/h -- five times the speed of civil aviation aircraft today.
The difference is that China will actually build theirs.
Strictly enforced by physics
Wrong comparison.
I'd rather be in a train going 500MPH than on an airplane going the same speed.
At least until/unless the TSA ruins that, too.
... I've been saying that Hyperloop is either a huge scam, or something else I'm still having a hard time to imagine.
Let's be clear here: The current company that has the most advanced Hyperloop version (Hyperloop One) which is obviously still in very early prototype stages basically stole maglev propulsion system and slapped it into some poorly designed vacuum tunnel to see if it could make whatever Musk scribbled in some napkin. In fact, the first public test Hyperloop One made was just a maglev propulsion system similar to that employed in several other countries that are currently already running actual train test lines (like Japan), or have actual completed train lines (like China and South Korea).
Almost everything one could point out as Hyperloop prototypes being "successful" can be single handedly attributed to maglev tech. There hasn't been a single significant technological contribution that I know of so far coming from Hyperloop companies, and I still didn't hear a proper explanation on how the heck these companies are planning to build entire tunnels over large stretches of land that would make it any more feasible or more economical over regular train tracks or maglev train tracks.
The entire idea of Hyperloop puts a whole ton of disadvantages, extra costs, potential problems, among several other things on top of a maglev train to get some theorical speed advantage that's even further into the future and more infeasible than actually making a single working short route from one city to another. It loses flexibility, you need to spend exponentially more (because of the tunnels operating in near vacuum), you are limited to pods of limited sizes, the entire infrastructure becomes far more succeptible to stuff like earthquakes, terrorist attacks, and just plain wear and tear, it'll be mostly point A to B with no stops for efficiency, plus a ton of other stuff to worry about which maglev trains don't have to deal with in their current operational status.
Yet, for some reason (money laundering, Simpsons monorail style scam, major spec stealing of foreign technology, or who knows what), some European countries plus US and UAE are investing on this. It makes no straight faced sense.
And I've been saying this in all my comments on the matter: maglev trains are still evolving, getting faster, more robust and better overall - as shown by this article. People joke about it being China and whatnot, but overall, maglev trains are plenty secure.
Hyperloop might be theoretically faster because it's basically maglev train cars inside a near vacuum tube, but that's only for the theoretical top speeds, which makes investing on it based only on that as much sense as investing on a F1 car prototype for consumers. Just because it theoretically can reach such speeds doesn't mean that it ever will, or even should.
You wanna see how riding a Hyperloop could potentially be in the future? Go to China, Japan, South Korea or some other country with maglev trains, ride one, but keep seated the entire way and close the blinds. At least if we are to take Musk's designs and Hyperloop One designs seriously. Also imagine being cramped in a far tighter space, and paying a whole lot more for the priviledge - because the costs of building the whole thing up will have to come from somewhere.
The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like Concorde elevated to exponential and surreal levels of unfeasibility.