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Ask Slashdot: What Would Happen If a Hyperloop Train Failed?
dryriver writes: I've been following Elon Musk's Hyperloop initiative with great interest. The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary. I'm glad that somebody is trying to innovate in the area of land travel. My question though: When conventional trains going at much slower speeds derail or crash, the result is often serious injuries or deaths. What happens if something goes wrong with a 700 MPH Hyperloop train/pod or with part of the track? Would a Hyperloop accident at that speed even be survivable?
This is the 21st century you white cisgendered Trumpist-pig.
There's no such thing as "failure" and the HyperLoop would simply get a participation trophy and be placed in the protected trans-functional class where you can't criticize it.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
you will die. really no ifs ands or buts about it.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
They tend to stop very quickly when they hit something.
I should think a hose and shovel should do the job nicely.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Is this even survivable? Are you fucking kidding me? What the shit is this on Slashdot for? If you have to ask if a 700MPH vehicle accident is survivable, you are clearly a total fucking moron.
No it would not
My biggest fear is earthquakes. The hyperloop car would run into the side of the tunnel, and you'd have a rapid unplanned disassembly. Everyone would die.
The only way that Hyperloop could possibly fail would be if it didn't generate spectacular returns for investors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk
Thunderfoot has done a series of videos on this topic. Even if you assume you could make a HUGE 99% perfect vaccuum with that volume of air; any failure causes its occupants to get exploded out the end somewhere. Lots and lots of energy in that system.
Musk didn't invent the concept of the "hyperloop." The idea appeared in Popular Science/Mechanics in the 1980s, with the train moving through an airless tube at 14,000mph.
Because even if it derails it has enough momentum to still reach its destination. Granted it might bring a long a few unintended payload items, such as some cars and city buses.
Similarly, what if the vacuum failed and the pod stopped in a low pressure section pipe in the middle of nowhere. The only way out if to wait for someone to figure out the exact location of the pod and cut you out. I've yet to see an estimate for how many hours (days?) you might be stuck in there in pitch blackness, likely getting cooked inside a metal tube sitting in the sun.
Ok since Hyperloop is presurised ( no air in the tube ) if there's a leak its easy to detect pressure will drop rapidly so the train or pod will be forced to stop or at least decelerate since with air in the tube it wont be able to maintain its 700 MPH speed. So the tiniest leak should be pretty easy to know. Then its easy to stop the pod before something fatal happens. If the failure is mecanical well then it all depend on how they designed the thing to do. I suspect that there will be redudancy on all key systems and parts that are vitals. ( second sets of wheel in case primary fail and so on ) im pretty confident it will be safer than a train can be. Don't forget the environment is crutial for hyperloop so it will be monitored much closely This is not the case with a train. At the same time tho I dont think youll be spared anything you have in an airport. I mean an explosion would be as much devastating in a hyperloop than in a airplaine... can you imagine an explosion at 700 MPH how far would the debris goes!
Obvious points of failure have been discussed, solutions presented, and those solutions examined for obvious points of failure. Assuming the engineers are creative enough to foresee enough quirks and oddities, there will be safety factors for at least 99.999% of all possible failure cases.
The next step is investment. A perfect solution does no good if no one will pay for it.
We can argue about specifics of how a 700mph train in a vacuum interacts with 2 mph clouds of 10psi air from a leak in the seal, but we won't be the first to debate it.
It doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be better. This is pure speculation, but given a Hyperloop vehicle's more limited range of motion, and new infrastructure it should be more reliable.
Tell me a vehicle that hits something at 700mph closure speed that doesn't result in death???
In the words of the great Ron White, "Hit something hard, I don't want to limp away from this thing."
Only failure will result from a vacuum leak which would be quickly detected. The likelyhood of a vacuum leak happening at the exact time and location of the actual vehicle is less than winning the lottery twice in a row. The entire system is enclosed. The moment there's a breach, they'll know and safety steps will be followed.
If the ground shifts above ground, you get a derailment. If you are in a hyperloop, seems like it would be full-stop - 600 to 0 in a millisecond.
If it is survivable depends on how it fails. Like in aircraft, some accidents are survivable.
They will never be built. Anywhere, at any time. Ever.
Trains derail because of a century-old standard makes them very badly attached to its rail. If you run into a tube, even if the tube cracks a bit, there is a good chance you still continue in the same direction the same way I can run peas in a straw with crack. I don't think catastrophic can't occur. I just think it's inherently more secure to run in a 360 degrees boundary tube than 2 littles track with no grip else than your own weight.
IF the system started to have a slow leak the pod would have time to slow, air resistance would do it naturally if nothing else.
Also it's not like it cannot have basically "landing gear" that would be able to slow the pod from 700 MPH in the perfectly smooth sealed tube in the case that a real breach presented itself - but you do all realize that a pressure breach would not be instantaneous across the enter length of the tube, right? Then we are back to the case where pressure changes can be reacted to and the system brought to a gradual halt.
I sweat Slashdot has become a bastion of luddite nut-jobs, who seem to purposefully ignore physics. Shameful to see such a virulent example of this on the home page.
You all sound like the people who wouldn't get into the first automobiles... or modern day Amish who still will not, but at least the Amish people are generally useful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously? Ask a group of kindergartners how to prove the Riemann hypothesis.
We don't know what will happen because it hasn't been engineered and built yet. Determining how it handles various types of failures will certainly be part of the engineering process. Worst case scenario is everyone dies, which isn't much different than a plane crash. But just like with a plane, plenty of fail safes will be there to allow for managed failures. Most catastrophic failures will probably just cause the train to come to a gradual halt.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The Hyperloop is more like a really fast elevator than a standard train. The Hyperloop car is much more attached to the rail system and there are guides to the sides and top as well as the bottom. In the event that the car has to stop quickly, it can do so very quickly and effectively without the problem of jumping the tracks. The track is also enclosed, there is much less likelyhood of a stray rock or other debris finding its way onto the track so the fear of random debris causing it to jump off is essentially eliminated.
The only real failure factor is if the tunnel is seriously compromised, like a bomb blowing a hole in it. In that case, I would surmise the system is still safer than a train because it incorporates considerably more sensors which would hopefully detect the fault and stop any trains before they reach it. Of course, if a fault occurred right in front of the train, well at 700mph the passengers would be more or less mush.
Just wow...
What if something goes wrong? Like what? One LED light fails? Probably not much. But if something big goes wrong, like someone finds out their wife made the wrong kind of sandwich? There'd be hell to pay that's what.
The only way out if to wait for someone to figure out the exact location of the pod
So you don't think they will know this every second why again???
Even if they didn't have sensors lining the tube (which is obvious) they would know the departure time and velocity until system failure.
I've yet to see an estimate for how many hours (days?)
How long does it take a car to drive from one endpoint of the hyper loop to the other? Hint: in all the proposed routes I've seen that's like 4-6 hours - from the ENDPOINTS.
All they would have to do is simply deploy a normal electric vehicle to drive down the tube and bail everyone out. Which, by the way, the pod itself would probably be ANYWAY so it would simply complete the journey at a slower pace.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know that the /. crowd has moved to twitter length replies these days, but how about a real discussion?
There are plenty of failure modes that would be completely survivable, in fact with little or no chance of injury. Tube loses vacuum? Unit slows down and stops. Loss of mains power? Same. Capsule loses pressure integrity? Masks from the ceiling time.
Yes, a catastrophic failure of the tube structure could result in deaths, but I can see the emergency shutdown being engaged system wide in such a case, resulting in only a few affected capsules/trains. Mind you, there are advantages to the many capsules/fewer passengers per capsule. A single failure is unlikely to approach aviation disaster numbers. Wiki Aviation Accidents.
Most of the risks are similar to high speed rail, and those seem to have been well mitigated by current operators in Europe and Japan. Now, the chances of the system getting built at all? I don't see it surviving contact with investors, incumbent system operators or property owners.
It's not just resting on a rail, it's enclosed in a tube. There is no interaction with other modes of travel, no RR crossings in which to hit cars, busses Trucks etc. Similarly no Slow moving Cargo trains sharing the track (at least at this point, if successful I could see that changing.)
Not sure of the mode of propulsion, if maglev, and it loses power it lowers onto wheels on the tracks and rolls to a stop. If just floating due to the vacuum pressure in the tube it will still have wheels to drop onto when not traveling at speed.
And it should be fairly straight forward to insert a pusher car to get it to the next station or just open emergency ports on the tube letting in air for the occupants and providing a route to exit the system. I'm sure there will be some risk but the question reads like it's trying to put the risks of standard trains onto this very different system.
Actually it would be quite safe.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
The share price would go down.
That's ok, I'm game to start one. First we need to define the hyperloop as a system.
Next, we imagine, and list all of the possible failure modes for each one.
Rapid depressurization
Rapid depressurization
Thermal event
Explosive event
Then we discuss the effect of each failure mode, and steps that can be taken to mitigate it... Completing an FMEA usually takes hours in meetings with large numbers of engineers brainstorming all of the possibilities.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Bunch of people die or get hurt. Lawsuit, lawyers get rich. Life goes on.
- Gradual vacuum failure: Increased drag/resistance, system sensing and ordered shutdown, survivable but recovery will require process and equipment.
- Instantaneous vacuum failure: caused by or accompanied by tube failure/deconstruction - collision and rapid dissection of the capsule, probably not survivable for all passengers.
- Instantaneous maglev failure, loss of suspension: Probable contact with tube, friction or impact force causing tube or capsule failure, probably not survivable for all passengers.
- Gradual maglev failure, loss of suspension: Possible loss of propulsion, slowing, probable contact with tube, friction or impact force causing tube or capsule failure, probably not survivable for all passengers depending on speed.
- Maglev malfunction, loss of speed only: Survivable, unless suspension is dependent on same system as propulsion.
It's actually not very promising to me. the speed does make survival unlikely, but there are several failure regimes. Some are catastrophic, some not, but in practice all may be catastrophic, and that's not good.
Imagine, California, the most difficult state regulatory environment, being host to this?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It would make Hypergoop.
The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary.
You'll still need to suffer through the Hyperloop terminal and security similar to airports. There's no way TSA will allow people to just walk onto a system like this without screening. Even a fairly small bomb would kill everyone onboard.
probably about the same as what happens when a plane fails.
2cents
j
Ask a Medical Doctor in 1820 what would happen if a steam locomotive crashed... all manner of mayhem, injury and likely death - that's what the experts all said. Falling off a running horse is bad enough, but the speeds that are possible with rail transportation are far worse.
Each individual hyperloop pod has far fewer people in it than a train, so the most important consideration is to limit damage to one pod. I guess in an emergency you can brake a pod at maybe 2g which means you'd want them at least 2500m apart. Probably round up to 2 miles. You can get braking either from ablative skids on the bottom of the pod (I saw this design in an other context) or by releasing the vacuum and air-braking.
So compared to a train crash, there may be more damage, but to fewer people.
As to what happens to an individual pod, it depends what the problem is. Non-explosive loss of vacuum, or loss of magnetic levitation should result in the pod braking to a stop -- might be bumpy, but shouldn't be fatal. The pod coming apart in some way, or getting spun around so it "wedges" against the tube would be pretty ugly, as would any large foreign object managing to arrive in the tube or anything that knocks the tube seriously off straight just before a pod arrives, but these don't seem too likely.
For like, a week. All the top execs would profit off of knowing this.
Worst case scenario is everyone dies, which isn't much different than a plane crash.
Evidently you aren't aware that 95.7% of surviving an accident in a plane. The vast majority of people actually do survive. When the National Transportation Safety Board studied accidents between 1983 and 2000 involving 53,487 passengers, they found that 51,207 survived.
It's unclear what the statistics might be for hyperloop but assuming instant fiery death is probably not going to be correct for the majority of failure modes.
If you wanted to cause some economic/real terror you just shoot a piece of aircraft cable diagonally through the tunnel. The car arrives in the station sliced in half. The same thing happens to your investment in hyperloop.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
do the math
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
Hyperloop is nothing more than FUD from a car manufacturer that wants to delay, or sabotage entirely, public high speed rail transport projects.
It is not a real proposal. The company hasn't even engineered a prototype much less built one. Nor are they interested in investing the engineering resources to do it, that's why they have all these amateur "competitions."
The idea that this thing can be built and operated with costs and throughput even approaching conventional high speed rail is just absurd. They are so far from overcoming this that nobody promoting this thing can be taken seriously.
I came across this Reddit discussion for their entry in the hyperloop competition. It includes a spreadsheet and comments about various failure modes and mitigations. page 1, page 2.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
yeah 700mph, you are not recovering from that.
What happens at 700 MPH if something goes wrong with _______ vehicle?
Short answer, it depends upon the mode of failure.
For a longer answer, lets look at some modes of failure:
1. Electrical failure with the vacuum pumps.
Response: Backup power kicks in so the vehicles can complete their trip at high speed.
1a. What if the backup power for the vacuum pumps fails? ... pods slow down due to air friction, and either complete the trip at low(er) speed, or move at low speed to the nearest evacuation point.
Response: Every compressor has it's own power source, but if it happened regardless
2. What if the tube springs a leak?
Response: The vacuum pumps kick in.
2a. What if the vacuum pumps can't overcome to leak?
Response: Pods slow down due to air friction, and either complete the trip at low(er) speed, or move at low speed to the nearest evacuation point.
3. What if a tube gets torn apart?
Response: Vehicles brake to avoid the rupture. This is greatly assisted by the rapid in-rush of air from the rupture itself. Vehicles then proceed at low speed to the nearest available evacuation point.
3a. What if there isn't enough room to stop?
Response: Emergency first-responders are dispatched, and people probably die.
Note: This situation is about as-common as a properly maintained oil pipeline rupturing.
4. What if the track fails?
Response: Elon Musk's Hyperloop design uses the tube as the track, so there aren't any tracks in the railroad sense to fail.
4a. What if the cab supports experience structural failure?
Response: Either a vehicle shutdown, or a rough ride until the vehicle comes to a stop. The rough ride could result in occupants experiencing the vehicle being tossed around the tube in a harmful manor.
Note: Designing skis and ski supports which don't fail is a simple engineering task, so the failure rate should be as low as the failure rate for properly maintained car, truck, or train axles.
5. What if a pod experiences sudden decompression?
Response 1: Same as an airplane, emergency oxygen is deployed.
Response 2: Tube is emergency represurized, which can typically occur in less time than an aircraft can be reduced in altitude to below 10,000 ft.
6. What if a pod experiences structural failure?
Response: The same as an aircraft or train experiencing structural failure. People die.
Note: This would be expected to occur less-often than with aircraft, as pods can neither hit things like trains or aircraft, and they don't need to be light enough to fly.
Hyperloop train/pod or with part of the track
Just keep watching the market. As soon as all the big investors short the market, you can expect a big wreck.
All it would take would be an object sitting in the tunnel in front of the train.
"We can't even keep pressurized OIL pipelines from leaking. How the hell do you VACUUM pressurize (way harder because air has no viscosity compared to thick oil) MILES of much ... We can't even keep our car tires from rupturing."
A hard vacuum is on the order of 15 PSI/100 kPa - atmospheric pressure). Tires usually have at least twice that, and are also exposed to mechanical shock and other hazards during normal operation. Oil pipelines can operate at hundreds of PSI ("708 psig is considered "moderate" for oil transmission lines. Some pipelines can run at slightly above 1400 psig...")
There is no real comparison between that and maintaining a vacuum.
"super-high-speed machines, in a pure vacuum" Oh, you're just ignorant of the technology. Hyperloop will operate at very low pressures, not in a hard vacuum - it's part of the design, since the trains will be supported by air bearings.
But, who in their right mind would replace a horse and buggy with a mechanical machine which is propelled by explosions and can go so fast that it will suck the air out of people's lungs?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
The original article makes mention of not having to deal with the hassle of the airport. I'm sure within the first month of the hyperloop's operation a member of the Religion of Peace (Islam) will be testing the safety systems. Then we can all take our shoes and belts off to get in line for the hyperloop. Making it no different at all from air travel.
Want to fix the inconvenience at the airports? Fix the problem: Muslims blowing up planes. Whatever alternative transportation there is will simply be another target until there is no more jihad.
If yes, then your answers have some merit that may be worth reading.
If no, then everybody in this thread is just talking out their ass about undesigned technology that hasn't even been fully designed yet, and their opinions and speculation can safely be ignored.
Given all the objections people have about the length of vacume sealed tube, what about building a wind tunnel instead?
Even if one could "only" get a 100 km/h wind tunnel, that would be a fairly massive reduction in air resistance for the vehicle moving through it.
Likewise, what about using a reduced pressure environment instead of vacume? Say, half an atmosphere or something. Combine lower air density with a wind tunnel, and There would be significantly fewer risks than a total vaccume system. Also has the built in safety factor that if something manages to block the tunnel, that stops the air flow, which starts slowing down the vehicle.
Also, in terms of security, build the whole thing underground. And by that I mean a good 50m+ underground. Probably not great in earthquake areas, but for the rest of the world, it would prevent all sorts of security and accidental type problems.
Also, in terms of safety: It isn't traveling on an old fashioned railways. Those things have horrible attachment between the train and the tracks. Little more than gravity and a couple cm of steel edging. North American railways were built to standards designed around 19th century technology. There are a lot of places in the world (such as Japan) that show what can be done with trains when one upgrades the track to something a bit more modern than steam engines. Much, much safer.
And at the end of the day, no matter how dangerous it is, it will still be safer than driving a car.
Until our robotic overlords show up and remove "driving" from the list of activities that us humans are allowed to do, anyway.
Z
The biggest failure will be when somebody has to shit and there is no restroom onboard and they have a accident.
This is as much a terror-target as an airplane and may even be more vulnerable. Expect 3 hours or more for security-theater when using the Hyperloop.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Air fills the vacuum at the speed of sound.
Yes, exactly. Sound is not all that fast (six seconds to travel just a mile), mostly the pod would be so remote from the source of the leak it would have plenty of time to slow down to a reasonable speed before substantial pressure reached it. Also if we are talking about small leak its not like it would INSTANTLY be a huge volume of air in front of the pod, it would be a gradual loss of vacuum and therefore simply not the "wall of air" you are scare-mongering about.
And of course, the leak would have to occur in front of a moving pod instead of behind it to even be that much of a potential danger...
A wall of air hitting you at that speed would likely kill you.
Not at 70MPH instead of 700MPH, you blithering retard.
Also I've not seen any arguments for why emergency vacuum pumps placed along the tube would help eliminate the danger from common leaks? But you didn't even think that far you were just like YABBER YABBER YABBER FLOOM DOOM!! *throws hands in air and waves frantically like muppet on acid*
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In order of most likely
1) Extremely sudden stop but no blockage/hit (emergency brake deploys) = injuries but no death. I expect this to happen at least once every 10 years.
2) Something breaks the loop but doesn't touch the pod, brakes slow it down = no deaths, minimal damage, minor injuries. This might happen every 50 years.
3) Slow down and reserve oxygen fails = all die, no physical damage. This should never happen without really bad maintenance.
4) Something hits the pod at speed = all death. This would probably require a terrorist act. Unlikely, but not impossible
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Trains are hundreds of tons and carry immense amounts of momentum and energy. A hyperloop pod would be very light, possibly weighing much less than the cargo it carries. Even airplanes are not a great comparison as they are orders of magnitude bigger and heavier than a pod. Some other fundamental differences, the pilot is not on board in a pod, a pod does not carry it's fuel. Pods will be MUCH safer for the area around the crash, and MUCH more dangerous for the passenger/s. Of course an accident could be survivable, and highly dependent on the type of accident: slow depressurization of the tube, you will slow down and be fine. blockage in the tube or fast depressurization, you will explode.
One word - earthquake.
It's how fast you stop not how fast you are going that matters in accidents. You just have to have a longer amount of time to come to a complete stop. Slow deceleration = walk away. Fast deceleration = ketchup
Trains
Increased weight so a panic stop would require a mile or two of open track.
Multiple cars so effects like oscillations and jackknifing are an issue
Track open to sky so debris and weather are a factor
Tracks run both ways and there is also passing of priority trains using sidings.
Hyperloop
Low weight but high speed so a panic stop would still require a mile or two of open track
One car at a time so more individual trains to account for at a single time
Closed system that needs to be maintained to achieve the low pressure
Dedicated one way tracks make routing easier
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Nothing is perfect and like a jet airliner your chances of surviving a crash are slim to none. The reality is nothing can prevent to serious forces applied to a human body at those speeds suddenly being thrust about like rag dolls in a cloth drier. Its probably more important to focus on mechanical inspections to prevent such accidents then try and come up with solutions to survive them.
At that speed any big problem will mean death.... but... same as electric cars and self driving / automated transportation, the probability should be less than standard trains.
Remember those fiery race-car crashes from INDY, or Formula 1?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcwIIGwX4Ck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvBda9CGlrU
Those folks are driving 200+ miles an hour and have an engine behind them, a concrete wall in front of them, and a barrel full of gasoline. They live. Most of them get up and walk away.
Good engineering and large budget makes it happen.
Modern cars could be built with enough safety that nobody dies, even from very serious crashes. The drivers there include engineered planned obsolescence after 5 years using "crush" paradigm, substantially lower cost invested in the car, and the market demand for a "new model" every year. There is too much profit in todays model.
The hyperloop paradigm, like the train paradigm, is substantially different than the automobile paradigm. Hyperloop is closer to indy-car than conventional car. Its cost model is substantially different from both. It is computer controlled, and is going to take a fair bit of those pesky humans out of the loop. They cause the vast majority of train-related incidents. Must, who also leads Tesla, knows about safety and liability. He is going to engineer the crap out of hyperloop vehicles. He is going to account for upstream accidents in the control. He is going to build it to resist terrorism. There is a decent chance he is going to combine it with boring, and he is going to have excursion detection and tamper detection in the DNA of the system.
Perhaps a more salient question is sabotage.
Explosive charges attached to the tube that detonated five seconds before the arrival of a pod would likely kill everyone on board.
The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary.
The idea that you won't have to suffer through the same "security" theater at the hyper-loop port as at the airport is naive. There may even be more as the train routes are, by their nature, fixed so any on-train incidents could be timed to inflict specific ground targets. In addition, unlike destroying a plane, destroying a hyper-loop train would also affect the actual infrastructure. So, enjoy your cavity search.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I have seen video of many 200+ mph (300 kph for everyone in the modern world) crashes where the driver or occupants survived.
What was the speed of Richard Hammond's biggest crash?
Any object traveling at 700+ MPH with hundreds of people on it is always going to be a target of terrorists or mentally unbalanced people.
The TSA would be here in spades.
I firmly believe we could do away with all security if we simply made everyone strip and fly naked or perhaps in the paper gowns the doctors office uses.
We could even remove all security and just use some money to develop a bunch of single use paper jumpsuits
Problem solved
Jump Sim. jump!
"...without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary"
A hyperloop train will be a nice target for any type of terrorism, which means that security would need to be quite similar to plane travel. This also means you might not be allowed to take your luggage onboard, you might have to be screened and fully identified before entering. So the advantage could be that the plan doesn't need to taxi to the runway and you start and end the trip in the center of the city, but most of the other hassle will be the same. It means some part of the revolution will be lost.
The space station's pressure, such as ISS, is kept at sea level (kind of surprised, but...). That means that you have 101 kPa of pressure differential, on THIN ALUMINUM.
Seriously, all of the space stations have had leaks. Most were caused by micrometeorites that hit them. How many have blown apart because of that? NONE.
For those that are claiming that hyperloop will blow up, note that the tubes will actually be STRONGER than any of the stations.
And for those claiming that physicists are saying otherwise, I would suggest that they are NOT working in the field since they are too stupid to know.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
only 10% - passengers and cargo. It is a different story with a vehicle in a tube. The tube is kind of a part of the vehicle.
What would happen if a jet were to fail? A hundred people die in the crash. A few people will never fly out of fear. The majority will say, "Meh, it's still safer than an automobile".
I am not a number - I am a free man!
The hyper-loop is basically just a conventional mag-lev train in an evacuated tube. ... it's hard to imagine how that could happen without a damaged track or a collision with something (tough to do in a sealed tube). ... you slow down quickly but not catastrophically.
I've never heard of a maglev train derailing
Blow a hole in the tube(anywhere the train isn't ) and the train slows down(since the vacuum required for the very high speed is lost quickly, but not immediately in the form of a sudden wind.) pressure sensors notify the train controller who slows or stops the train if necessary (ie: if the breach is ahead of the train). This would be like running a car at high speed down a slope into water
Realistically it would take well timed deliberate action, or a freakishly unlucky circumstances to cause a "crash" ... eg: significantly damage the tube structure close enough to an oncoming train to prevent the automated safety systems from reacting. In such a case people in the proximate and trailing cars are likely to die.
Pretty much the same result as if your airplane would fail.
space stations prove that you do not know what you are talking about.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Thinking about possible means of failure reminds me of Heinlein's The Roads Must Roll. Can't forget politics as a possible failure point.
Energy = 1/2 mass x speed^2.
700km/h ^ 2 = 0.000 chance of surviving.
Yeah, dude. Once again you've outsmarted all the top engineers who designed this thing but were too stupid to account for these really obvious potentialities. The world truly owes you a debt of gratitude.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
" The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary. "
IF the Hyperloop ever became operational ( not in our lifetime ) it would most certainly suffer from the same security theater that plagues airlines today.
The same lines, the same screening and silly restrictions / rituals, all the same fun will be applied in order to keep us " safe ".
Thus, while the mechanism to move us from point A to B will differ, all the shit we loathe about the current system will most certainly be there for our continued enjoyment.
The airlines themselves will push for it because " fairness ".
It will quickly become just as horrible an experience as flying is today.
There are probably scenarios in which the pods will need to be brought to a controlled stop in the tube; much as airliners are held on the ground, or (less common today) put into a holding pattern. I'm thinking that automatic detection of some parameter (tube vibration, air pressure, temperature, who knows) being out of spec will be pretty common; less commonly some catastrophic failure far ahead of you which you can survive if you stop where you are.
What I didn't get from any of the pod diagrams I've seen is any kind of emergency egress from the pods, if the pod is stopped at an arbitrary place in the tube. At the front the entire diameter is occupied by the compressor fans, the rear is entirely occupied by mechanicals. Possibly the latter has enough design flexibility to allow an emergency escape into the (re-pressurized) tube.
And how long would it take for rescue personnel to arrive on some kind of transport? Today people freak way out when their 737 parks on the taxiway for more than a couple of hours--and that's under conditions where you can walk up and down the aisle, use a bathroom and look out the window, and where there are uniformed staff to provide some semblance of of service and (psychologically important) nominal authority. In a pod you're stuck in your seat, with random strangers, maybe in the dark, as the heat builds from the sun on the tube and the now-unfanned mechanicals.
One of the things that always raises a red flag for me is when someone asks a what-if for a particular scenario and the answer that comes back is about the low risk of that scenario developing. This means to me that there is no contingency for the scenario, and, worse, that this fact is being avoided. Admittedly I have not been following the details of hyperloop design, but in the first big hype, I remember a lot of "this is how we made failure really unlikely" and the plan that in the worst case, a pod would just glide slowly, in a fully re-pressurized tube, to the nearest emergency station, where the tube wall could be opened. So there was an explicit denial that a pod could ever become stuck, stationary, within the tube.
Let's hope that by the time these things are built there's enough left of the regulatory agencies to put some critical thinking on it.
S.
I think the question is better framed to consider what happens when a vessel traveling in a vacuum suddenly hits normal atmosphere?
I'm not physics buff, but I imagine a lot of heat, akin to re-entry, all at once.
Also, what happens when they detect an error somewhere down the tube and then hit the e-brake? How much distance does it need to stop? Can it even do that?
Hi I agree there is a risk in traveling in a "hyperloop", just as there is in flying or walking across the street. I think this topic is a great point. I think that if there is a crash with many fatalities, all the hyperloop's in the world will be shut down for a while, and a certain percentage of people will be afraid to travel in them. Of course, thousands of people die in U.S. freeway crashes each year, but we don't shut them down and most people accept the slight risk of traveling on a freeway. Tom
We could perhaps use hyperloop for perishable fruits or same day packages. Removing humans would remove a lot of the logistical and safety concerns.
Same as pretty much any other mode of transport suffering a catastrophic failure.
Space stations are not a HUNDRED MILES LONG. And they cost BILLIONS for the relatively tiny machines they are to ensure they don't leak and kill the HIGHLY TRAINED crews--as opposed to a bunch of fat families going to Disney Land.
Is everyone left on this site a complete retard? Does anyone have professional engineering experience on their belt?
It's not an issue of SMARTS. It's an issue of PHYSICS. You can't outsmart physics. You can't make a car get 200 MPG and have it weigh 3,000 and shaped like a normal car. No matter how many people and billions you spend. The hyperloop is technologically COMPLEX multiplied by HUGE LENGTH. Those are two factors that DO NOT MESH.
The above comment has been rated -1 Too Truthful for Slashdot.
Screw my active professional experience as an engineer. WE WANT THIS SILLY THING TO WORK. Fundamental physics don't exist. We can send rockets into space for a $1, if we only have more smart people on it.
If you think this practicing engineer is stupid, and you're ACTUALLY an unbiased, open-minded person. I dare you to simply Google "hyperloop won't work / busted" and watch some videos on YouTube.
What's next, Slashdot pretending solar roads are possible--completely ignoring the scientists and engineers screaming "it won't work!" (Google eevblog solar road.)
All involved most likely will die. That is no different from airplane crash. One downside is that such crash would also render track closed for many days if not weeks and would disrupt travel plans for many. Another big issue would be hyperloop infrastructure vulnerability to terrorist attack. Unless the track would be underground (unlikely due to cost) the whole length of the track would have to be guarded in a very detailed way 24/7. Very costly and difficult task. Even small bomb would be lethal when exploded just before the incoming train.
without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz
Keep dreaming. There will be a 2 hour security check with a mandatory naked x-ray and ball grouping. You will nostalgically recall the good times where you could go to an airport and not need to strip naked to board one.
"The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary..."
Since you're quick to dismiss the suffering, care to tell me how Elon's solution would get rid of the TSA and all other forms of pain-in-the-ass security screening that "jazz" up airports today?
I missed have missed the part where terrorist risks and unending government waste were magically eradicated from this form of travel...
It is not a crash at all....
Just an 'rapid unscheduled disassembly'
Imagine liver sausage on a mass scale. That's what.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
That would be an impressive trick given that the tunnel is a vacuum. If the vacuum was breached for any number of reasons that would increase the friction of the carriage and it would slow down and presumably stop. How it would handle a sudden vacuum lost of the type that a semi just ran into it is a bit of an unknown at this point and it definitely needs time to decelerate.
See subject
Liquefaction.
There are no windows, it's not going to be a natural experience traveling inside the vacuum tube. Not that jet travel or flying is a natural experience but our ability to look outside helps us "ground" ourselves. It's going to be more like submarine travel. You may not even know if you've stopped moving. Oh, and why would you think this is going to be any less wretched than flying? A bit off topic, I know.
Honestly, the epic accidents aren't that interesting. You die. The end. What's more interesting to me is the question of the basic regular failures. Let's say a section of track shuts down causing the tube to jam. The people don't die right away, as the vehicle just slows to an abrupt stop. But then what? With a train, at worst, everyone exits and loads up onto buses and taken to the next station. Even in a train tunnel there is ample room for emergency exits. The Hyper Loop thing is in a tube, and there is no way to get the people out. Do you cut a hole in the tube to remove people? That would shut the entire system down for months (potentially) for repairs.
We know from submarines that small, or large leaks will not just cause the tube to implode.
We also know from multiple particle accelerator small, medium and catastrophic failures that the tubes won't implode.
Kind of like explosive decompression on airplanes in movies, this is based on fiction, not already proved scientific facts.
As for the train/pods, most of the air flooding in would go around the train. In Hyperloop 1's design the use a Maglev system. You are talking about the mass of wind vs the mass of the train and the force of the Maglev. The wind is not winning there. Even if you are talking about Elon's original proposal, the air pods would probably have enough compressed air to gently put down the train.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Any failure at that speed with the train going off the "track" would definitely result in the deaths of all on board. It is not survivable.
Things that could cause failure (off the top of my head):
1. earthquakes that cause slight track deviation / misalignments
2. moisture build up / humidity that does the same
3. any moving parts will suffer wear and tear and likely fail (see above for results)
4. any parts that involve significant heat build up will eventually fail
I'm sure there are others.
The short but honest answer is "It will depend"...
The longer and slightly more complicated answer is to observe that there are all sorts of different ways that the Hyperloop design, as explained, could fail. Examples include things like gradual pressure increase within the conveyance tube [loss of vacuum], collisions [between a moving capsule and a stationary one], contact-leading-to-damage [for example between a capsule and the conveyance tube], and so on.
A complete and thorough answer to your [entirely valid] question would require far more time and space than slashdot typically affords us. Suffice to say that there are some excellent engineering disciplines and practices that have been developed to answer precisely the question you have asked. It is highly unlikely that us mere mortals would ever get visibility of the results of that analysis, but it is entirely to be expected that the relevant Federal/Government regulator will do so. A common framework [but by no means the only one used today] is FMEA - Failure Mode and Effect Analysis.
Readers may be interested to note that in the aviation industry, for example, each airline prepares and publishes their own Operating Procedures, Safety Manuals/Training and ensures the relevant level of awareness among employees, contractors and clients [passengers]. I do not know for certain, but suspect that this model is done from a liability perspective - if an airline followed government-mandated safety procedures [or aircraft manufacturer supplied procedures] to the letter, but an accident occurred, then in any subsequent investigation or challenge regarding legal liability, the airline would try and argue that they met every requirement made of them. Instead, by making the airline responsible for developing and following their own practices, the regulator carefully avoids ultimate authority for any failure of process design... Given the highly litigious nature of the modern world, it is likely that the safety procedures and operating practices of any commercial Hyperloop solution will be designed and implemented by the Operator, ideally with some form of Federal or governmental oversight.
While it might be more efficient to use a vacuum in the tube, it sounds like Apollo 11 "hey, let's fill the capsule with oxygen" level stupid to me.
Airplanes fly at roughly that speed with a lower pressure, but not vacuum environment, so why not do sometting like that in the hyperloop?
Growlor
You poor soul.
What makes you think you are doing to avoid the TSA taking the hyperloop train?
The only reason the TSA isn't patting down passengers on trains or searching your baggage is they are not big targets. If the hyperloop thing gets popular enough, they (the TSA) will show up and slow the process down..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
And you are stupid for worrying about it.
you need to worry about. It's an IED-type device placed on the side of the track wall, designed to blow it inwards just before the train arrives
Come on. How are they going to know when the train is close? And are they going to dig down a hundred feet to plant the IED, since most hyper loop designs are buried? And you need to have an IED powerful enough to puncture the tube, no mean feat...
If your worry were well-founded, why are we not worried about EVERY TRAIN TODAY which are far more easily harmed by such magically timed explosives?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The idea that you won't have to suffer through the same "security" theater at the hyper-loop port as at the airport is naive.
The idea that you WILL have to in a system controlled by Musk is far more naive.
Not to mention the security would be far more like a bus station than an airport. You can't hurt anyone in a pod any worse than you could hurt people in a bus if you wanted to. Have you BEEN to a greyhound station? Of course you have not.
Heck, you can even potentially drive a bus into other people or buildings, Can't really do anything with a Hyperloop pod except kill the people inside, and you could have killed a LOT more people outside with less effort.
The whole fantasy of terrorists attacking hyper loop pods reveals Slashdot luddites at their absolute unthinking ignorant worst.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ol' Muksy would tweet about it, regurgitating a report from the actual engineers as if he understood it, while promising to fix it in the future as if he did any fucking work on it, regardless of what company it happened to or whether or not he was involved in the project.
'nuff said
They would fail to get more funding.
All this thing is designed to do is to suck money out of public grants.
Money that could go to fix our crumbling infrastructure. A single hyperloop route from LA to Chicago couple probably build regular light rail infrastructure for a dozen cities.
Of course the rich politicans that fund these things would never be caught dead on public transportation.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Explosive charges attached to the tube that detonated five seconds before the arrival of a pod would likely kill everyone on board.
You could say something similar to that about every form of transportation including trains. Yes it's possible to intentionally kill someone. News at 11...
I think that about sums up what happens if the loop failed.
It would handle it explosively. Although not a complete vacuum, the pressure differential would be enough to release a hell of a lot of energy. Passengers could be somewhat protected in the pressurized cabins.
It's like building a house out of dynamite. Perfectly safe so long as nobody sets it alight.
Craig Breedlove crashed at 675 mph in Oct 1996.
And survived.
So the answer is "it depends".
When I grew up in the 70's every youth sport I played in gave participation trophies. Why do people talk as if it's a new thing?
... fail?
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
You can't seriously think that the TSA is going to let you board the HyperLoop without a full gropedown.
This will just be another excuse to expand their security theatre, and make travelers as miserable as possible.
Safer than a modern commercial elevator
And Musk would call it an "unplanned stop."
It depends on the kind of failure. I am sure that the designers will make every effort to make the more likely failures (power loss, reasonable or minor track damage, etc.) survivable. You won't ever have many of the risks associated with conventional trains (inattentive conductors, cars or other obstructions on the track, excessive speed for the track, etc.) That said, if a terrorist blows up the track just short of the train in motion (less than stopping distance) you are very likely going to be red paste in the wreckage.
Compare the risk of death in an airplane:
loss of power - very likely everyone dies unless there is a runway nearby
any failure that causes loss of control - everyone dies
etc.
The main problem I see with the hyperloop is that in this era of terrorism, it is virtually impossible to secure hundreds of miles of tracks, whereas airports are fairly well secured, and planes are immune to terrorist attack from outside while in flight (so far terrorists haven't managed to design and build stinger missiles, fighter jets or SAM missile batteries.)
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary.
Not to mention naive - with criminals blowing up people on the London Underground from time to time, it seems likely that we will end up going through the same sort of security checks in a high-profile mass transport system like the Hyperloop.
Was this in California? Because it wasn't something we bothered with where I grew up. California is 20 years ahead of "fly over" states like mine when it comes to the liberal agenda.
DID NOBODY WATCH SEAQUEST? There was an episode about this!
It has happened...
Siemens High Speed driverless train.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/23/germany.topstories3
dead iron, dead meat... big pile.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Rather than figure this out, let's just rename it to the "Vorpal Train of Swiftness"
They would not build something unless they have run it through a couple million computer simuations first.
So... it would get a participation trophy statue at a park in a southern state then?
We had participation trophies in Kansas and South Dakota in the early 70's.
You will be just woken up from your Hyperloop dream... Dreams, so far, is the only place where "Hyperloop" can exist...
We didn't, Kansas/Missouri.
There were loser 'certs' in some rare cases. e.g. This certification confirms you took the president's physical fitness challenge and _failed_.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's How Fast You Stop.
The "wall of air" people have a point, but if the pod is close enough to hit that before safety systems engage it's also close enough to hit the tube wreckage which will stop it a lot faster than hitting the air. Everybody in that pod becomes goo. If the safety systems work, the following pods should slow down or stop before hitting anything, unless they're running at capacity a few feet apart (in which case we have an historic chain-reaction wreck).
The issue is much the same with high speed rail. As long as it stays on the rails, EGBOK even with major failure, since it's unlikely to hit anything (or bring down a bridge) while stopping. Derailment (leading to hitting something hard) would cause major death and destruction, though, much as an airplane hitting the ground at a good speed and/or out of control does.
Since there isn't a "track" in the conventional sense, but a tunnel or tube, there's little to no chance of derailment. The only thing I can think of that could cause a crash is a destruction of part of the tunnel or tube. If a section of tube fails, the vacuum is lost, air rushes in and the pod slows down. My biggest engineering concern is life support. To achieve these high speeds, it will be necessary to evacuate most of the air from the tunnel. A moving platform in a near vacuum will require on board life support. In the event of life support failure, I hope they have evacuation hatches at regular intervals throughput the tunnel.
Why is it that all of you folks keep bringing up high pressure lines? You know that this is negative pressure, right? Why don't you talk about submarines instead of pipelines, as that is far more similar? As far as I can tell, the best we've done in subs is a safe operating pressure of 7000 psi. The problem is, as anybody familiar with pressure knows, the bigger the tube, the harder it is to hold back pressure. Also, subs have a support structure though out it helping hold the walls out. Hyperloop by definition can't have this. It can only use support rings. And anybody familiar with structural engineering knows that the problem with support rings is, they only maintain their strength if they remain perfectly shaped. If they become deformed at all or experience unequal pressure, they crush. So basically hyperloop is trying to make a 400 mile long sub that can't have an internal support structure that pits the force from one side of the tube against the other, and must only use support rings, and though it's only dealing with 15ish psi, the whole problem where volume scales at a cube while material strength scales linearly, and the increased length is thousands of times longer than any submarine, and you've got a system that basically if a breeze blows, it's going to collapse. SIZE MATTERS PEOPLE!!!! Quit comparing it to tiny little tubes that are positively pressured, compare it to big tubes that are negatively pressured.
Quote: The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary.
Yeah. It would be. Except that's not going to happen. Idiots try to blow up subways already in the UK. What kind of attraction would a set of 700 mph pods have on terrorists? Hyperloop is going to protect their name by making sure nobody even tries to blow them up. Meaning: you do get all that jazz.
A lot of people didn't get that this wasn't satire.
Everybody got a trophy in Arizona pop-warner football in the 70's
Just about as conservative place as you can imagine, this is just another false narrative by the asshats of the world
Why ever would you presuppose it will be less annoying than the airport?
The public's perception of its safety will guarantee political meddling to look like they are "doing something" about hyperloop safety.
Here's the breakdown:
1) News media will figure out that they can sell more eyeballs if they sensationalize the perceived dangers.
2) Populace will demand to feel safer with hyperloops.
3) Politicians realize it doesn't politically cost them anything to hype rhetorical hyperloop insecurity.
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
The problem is that they are ONLY giving participation trophies. They do not give winner trophies because they don't want to make the people that suck feel bad for not being good at it.
WE WANT THIS SILLY THING TO WORK.
No, it's Musk fanboy'ism is all.
We in the auto industry know exactly what it takes to make an electric car, infrastructure, batteries, how many to make and what it takes and everything else. We have over a century of experience - we have data from since our companies were created.
Elon's statements and the hype around Tesla has us saying in a collective response, "Good luck with that." while we are working on our own versions.
'Serendipity' is the word Musk fanboys need to learn. Battery tech is finally here to make electric cars feasible.
But yet, Tesla's stock is over $300 and the company is bleeding cash. And the reason that is given is that he's "ramping up".
You may be an engineering guy; but I'm a finance guy (engineering undergrad) and the analogy to your argument is perfect.
Nothing will happen.
Public money that may have been invested will be lost.
Irresponsible politicians will deflect the damage on someone else.
People will not learn to ignore unwarranted hype.
And what do you exactly mean by "failed".
With my supernatural powers, I predict it will fail to setup a working supersonic (maglev) train running in a vacuum tube between any two (major) cities in the world.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
you won't feel a thing
What do you think will happen? Smushed! And why do you think it would be easier to get on a fragile hyperloop train with miles of fragile infrastructure than it is to get on an equally fragile aircraft? It may be theoretically possible to build a very safe system, but nobody has done that yet with anything inherently risky (cars, pipelines, nuclear plants, cities, credit bureaus ...) because the impacts to cost and/or schedule are intolerable to investors.
That's your story and you're sticking to it...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It ALWAYS got you to your final destination very quickly.
Sorry, we didn't have that crap in NY in the 70s or 80s. You lost the softball/kickball/baseball game, you didn't get any fucking ice cream, let alone a trophy.
I don't blame them - after Brexit and Trump it is now sometimes hard to tell the difference between a joke and reality.
Just do move people with this thing. Just make if for cargo.
If the failure is with the vehicle, and there was no damage to the pressure vessel, it would just skid to a stop eventually. There aren't anything like other cars, trees, buildings, or telephone poles to hit. If there was a puncture to the tube that was small enough not to impact the travel of the vehicle the tube would gradually lose its vacuum. Speeds of the vehicles would need to be reduced, but would still function. Only catastrophic damage to the tube where two sections would be offset would any type of an impact occur to the vehicle.
In an old Heinlein teen story -- Starman Jones, I think, there is a description of a transportation system that sounds much like the Hyperloop but without the tube. I think the maglev part is cool... a vacuum gun barrel hundreds of miles long, not so sure. Besides, I think the Cern collider is the biggest vacuum built so far and its not a five minute job to pump it down. And I doubt this would be powered by wind turbines...
Tubes delivering well done baked potato like packages full of cooked passengers after some minor fire sucks out the O2 and suppression system suffocate the breathers.
It's not going to be a problem. Most countries have standards that people carriers have to abide by, like having emergency exits. Trains, buses, planes, and probably Hyperloop. It's going to be real hard for those capsules to have emergency exit doors as they're running within a few mm of the tunnel walls, and the ends are busy taking in and pushing out air. I suppose they could have prima-cord running around the outside to blast the capsule apart but that's going to be awfully noisy, and now you're between two flaming sections of the capsule and inside a concrete tube. Super.
This passes for humor? Concern trolling?
First off, I'd suggest there would be just as much security as at a current airport given the climate of terrorism today. Secondly there are possibilities of failure of the various systems as already well highlighted, but there are simple ways to minimise any issues, such as running a pig (in pipeline terms) ahead of any passenger unit, and dead man's handle philosophy on sensors - ie no positive confirmation of system health and you stop - something you cannot do in an aeroplane. In that regard many people die in air crashes due to subsequent effects of fire, something that would not likely happen in this case - you're not carrying tonnes of fuel in the unit. There has been talk of running them underground - safer in one sense, but how do you rescue people trapped in a stuck or damaged unit?
Oh my womyn's study major ? Tell you what put extra cinnamon in my latte and there's an extra quarter in it for you.
With little information I spew forth dramatic speculation from my word hole!
If the vacuum is breached behind the train, it might accelerate first then crash and stop.
Because air pressure behind and less pressure in front, for a while.
To prevent this, you might want an automated emergency system to vent in front of a train (increase pressure there) if pressure is increasing at back of it.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I'm thinking the big problem with a 700 mph vehicle encountering rapidly rising air pressure would be turbulence and vehicle oscillation leading to dynmic loads and vehicle destruction. Some good wind tunnel modelling is needed. Maybe there's a pod shape that can avoid that.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
>"The idea of getting from one city to another at 700 MPH without having to suffer through an airport and all that jazz is revolutionary"
And you REALLY think that if hyperloop takes off and gets big that their ports won't be exactly like airports? Dream on. Security Theater will be there just as much, complete with nonsense measures, nude scanning, baggage limitations, prohibited items, etc, etc. Dealing with expensive parking. Dealing with "secure vs. non-secure zones." Dealing with lost/damaged baggage and pickups. Why would that not happen with hyperloop?
But, who in their right mind would replace a horse and buggy with a mechanical machine which is propelled by explosions and can go so fast that it will suck the air out of people's lungs?
Better question - who in their right mind would replace the relatively unlimited flexibility of surface/air transportation with a long metal tube?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... a train car withstanding force of vacuum = a sub under10 ft of water? not close
the tube will be pushing out an enormous force, and when it fails it will crush down almost instantly on whatever is inside. A car moving 700mph would be stopped rapidly and the people inside would be smashed into the front of the car or given a weakly built car, they would be smushed inside the car
Submarines are full of air so they pressure difference is not the same as a container holding vacuum. Subs also pressurize to help keep the pressure differential small.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
vacuum implosion is no joke. I don't want to be inside. They should give up on the vacuum idea and use positive pressure behind the train to keep a wind moving along with it.
The news will blab on about how nobody saw it coming after the first train accident ends in a mangled mess of bloody passengers. Science is easy to ignore in the US
The reality is you won't be avoiding the hassle of an airport as they will need to enforce the same strict rules and security for boarding a hyperloop as it would be just as susceptible to attack and loss of life and when/if something did go wrong you are basically fucked and the system will be out for weeks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQXqeWKY2Fc Hypermadness ...
also search youtube.com hyperloop thunderfoot
Well. I suspect it'll looks something like this: https://youtu.be/0N17tEW_WEU?t...
Who? I very much doubt a single person took that seriously.
Getting a bit bored this sort of thing. If it were funny, it would be one thing, but this just sounds bitter.
And it's kind of a dumb premise. In my life I've never met a women's studies major. I've met people who took a women's studies class, sure, but that's it.
This is a classic "What if"...I wonder if it is anything like the result of throwing a baseball at the speed of light?
The main I would think that is very important is the seating arrangement. You can make a lot of high speed travel a hell of a lot safer if the seats face backwards. Don't have to worry so much about brace positions and the such if everybody has their body, from head to toe, firmly secured against a properly designed chair.
Also, as pointed out earlier "planes are much safer". Yes, they are, because they generally meet a higher level of standards than other modes of transport. If we do ever see a Hyper loop, it's engineering and safety standards should leave air travel far behind.
This mode of transport could be a very pivotal moment in history as there are materials and technologies that we still have to invent to get this off the ground and quite frankly, since the Apollo program, we've being doing jack shit in terms of advancing anything!
I can tell your not an engineer working for Elon, because if you were, showing that sort on dissension would get fired pretty quick.
I watched his first video. He's been spending too much time with creationists because his criticisms are that bad.
All of the problems he cites are not only solvable by first year mechanical engineering students, they're used as homework exercises in mechanical engineering classes. Literally thousands of people have crunched the numbers (like all those hyperloop startups and the various student teams competing to make pods), and nobody has said much because Elon got the numbers basically right in the first place.
If there were a major engineering problem, then that would be the homework problem. Lots of people are arguing about the economic feasibility, but only crackpots seriously question the basic engineering feasibility.
Thunderf00t goes on forever about expansion joints and how impossible it is to provide enough. Pressurized pipes needing expansion joints to deal with temperature changes have been a thing since the development of steam engines in the eighteenth century, and the solutions have been in standard textbooks since the nineteenth century.
He seems to think it needs sliding expansion joints. It doesn't. If you're carrying a fluid that can turn corners, you place a U-bend in the pipe, like all oil pipelines everywhere, but hyperloop trains can't, so you use "omega joints" instead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Because they have a smaller radius of curvature, they can be made thinner, thin enough to be flexible, while still holding pressure. It's not like one atmosphere of pressure is a big problem.
He also rants about pounds per square inch times a zillion square inches makes for unreasonable strength requirements. No it doesn't. Stress in a cylindrical pressure vessel is proportional to the pressure times the diameter and not the length, and designing such a vessel is the most boring matter of plugging numbers into standard equations and tables imaginable.
Hyperloop is larger in diameter than LIGO's beam pipes, so will require thicker walls. It's much smaller in diameter than NASA's Space Power Facility vacuum chamber, so doesn't need multiple feet of concrete. The ratio of the enclosed volumes is utterly irrelevant.
None of this shit is remotely new or obscure; any Civil War era locomotive boiler engineer knew the necessary math. Please go look it up yourself.
What if it springs a leak? Answer: the train slows down. If you catastrophically severed the pipe, then yes that Would Be Bad, but as others have pointed out, for deliberate sabotage just denting the pipe so the train hits the walls is about the worst thing you can do. (This is not a new threat; denting a train track in the middle of a bridge will kill as many people even more easily.)
If you have a more plausible-sized hole, like one you could stick your leg into, then do the numbers: I have an infinite reservoir of 1 bar atmosphere on one side of the hole, and before the hyperloop pipe fills up, I have an effectively infinite vacuum reservoir on the other. What will be the pressure on the inside of the hole? Answer: It's the ratio of the cross-sectional areas, the area of the hole to atmospheric pressure vs. the cross-sectional area of the pipe to vacuum. (Times two, because the air escapes in both directions.) It would take a heck of a big hole to create even 1% of atmospheric pressure, which is enough to slow down and stop the train, but not enough to do it so fast passengers would be injured.
Then there's some complaining about the "makes more energy than it uses" claim which doesn't remotely address what Elon actually said: the hyperloop has so much roof area (mostly in rural areas with no competition for a view of the sky) that solar panels on top of a small fraction of it would provide all the power it needs. Oh no, what about night time? Elon doesn't know anything about electric power storage, does he?
To get an insight of how things can go bad at high speed, look at french TGV accidents
The most serious accident was acheived by derailing on a bridge because of excessive speed during a test run. Other accidents with deaths involved level crossings. Obviously none of these two case can happen with hyperloop.
Every answer here is WILD speculation.
They are still working on tech prototypes, so most aspects of it the design could change. That means different failure modes with different possible problems and solutions. Also what designs and/or solutions that are possible may not be what is practical and cost effective.
About the only area that might be reasonable to discuss but still VERY premature to do so is exiting a stranded train or loss of train internal air pressure. Low speed emergency propulsion to an emergency exit lock and air masks like an airline possibly solve both of those.
You seem mainly concerned about the large speed number and a crash. Bullet trains and airlines both have high speeds. Proper engineering and safety considerations have made those safe enough for any reasonable person.
Not just soft, but absorbent.
Illinois in the mid 80s, whether you were the first place park district soccer team or the last, you got a pizza party and a 75 cent plastic trophy.
It didn't ruin me. I have a job and everything.
I worked with a woman who had a degree in philosophy with a major in women's studies. Moody as hell. We said she was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get!
Pod levitation fails = Skids to a stop / might have landing or crash gear Pod compressor fails = Pod slowed by cushion of air. Pod depressurize = Oxygen masks deploy Oxygen masks fail = Same as plane Tube fails = Pod slowed by cushion of air. Tube fails behind moving pod destined to dead end of tube and breaks fail = pod accelerated into wall by in rush of air. Solution = Make the tube a continuous loop or have long narrow and ending sections that restrict by-pass air, overwhelming the compressor and, creating an air cushion to form ahead of the pod, forcing deceleration. The tube vacuum could also be used to clear our European-style gas attacks in a matter of seconds, in both the pod cabins and stations. Pretty good deal.
Better than being locked on "loser" mode like you.
I got that. What I didn't get is precisely what it was satirising, an SJW or an altcuck who thinks that's what a SJW sounds like.
you will continue to move 700 MPH in the specific direction, until you hit something. really no ifs ands or buts about it.
ftfy.
I think you need to consider the catastrophic effect of an unstable and non-harmonic vibration inside an enclosed space at high speed. If the train hits an object inside the tunnel, it would wobble slightly, but if it then bumps the inside walls, that could translate into a series of reinforcing unstable vibrations that could very quickly destabilize and destroy the vehicle.
I'm not a materials or mechanical engineer, but think of a stable spinning top. Now give it a light tap and observe the chaotic spirals that eventuate...
I don't think anyone has ever bragged about a participation trophy. I don't think anyone needs to worry that a kid who receives one feels great about himself, as if it's a problem if he does. As if people feeling good about themselves is something we have too much of in the world, and it's not a struggle for everyone. Give me a break
awww.. why don't you go to mommy now and get your little icycreamy... whosagoodboy...
A breach isn't the worst. A shift in the tunnel would cause the train to produce a jerk movement which would cause people to be ripped in half...like hitting a 1 foot hole with about 3" of suspension going 700mph...imagine a car doing that.
700 mi/h = 1127 km/h
The various failure modes of the hyperloop system were described in some detail in the initial paper released by Elon Musk's team. In essence, the only catastrophic failure mode is if someone blows up the part of the tube that your pod is about to enter so that it cannot slow down in time to avoid crashing into the breach. Every other failure mode is fairly easy to deal with and the main drawback is that the failure of one pod or one tube section will slow down the entire system until they can get it handled.
The hyperloop system depends on being at very low pressure and most of the failure modes involve an increase in air pressure up towards outside pressure - either as a consequence of the failure itself or as a response to the failure. This slows down the pods safely, everything comes to a stop, and there will be some work to evacuate the passengers.
sigs are hazardous to your health
I can tell nobody cares if AC thinks you're an engineer or not.
I have a brother in another city whom I don't visit all that often, but he has four girls. Many years ago I was in town when his youngest was turning 5, so I stopped by for the party.
I brought a stuffed animal for the littlest one, and I figured I'd get some stickers for the 7-year-old so she wouldn't feel left out. She was showing them off to friends, saying "look what I got!"
Fast-forward ten years. The girl is now old enough to drive and she's a spoiled brat, sulking when all the attention isn't on her. Now I feel like I contributed to that in a small way, but even before that I could see the 'conditioning' in progress.
Are you invalidating my experience?
What would I know anyway, since I'm just a "rapist," i.e. a straight male who experiences sexual desire.
Best answer above.
Realistic answer: Modern train tunnel construction standards require escape hatches every mile. All it needs is an escape hatch in the front or back of the train, and passengers can just walk along the tube to the next escape hatch.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
You all know Mr Glass is only causing catastrophic failure to the hyperloop to find me.
Imagine a elevator failure, falling in a 50 story building. If there were no safeguards in place everyone inside will die. But there are systems that will slow down the fall, and will come to a complete stop at a reasonable speed.
That is what I believe it will happen.
I participated in Little League baseball as a kid in the late 50s. I was so poor at the sport that they'd hardly allow me to play in practice! But I persevered, and attended every practice, and sat on the bench in my perfectly clean uniform during every game.
My team won first place honors, and every member of the team received a first-place trophy.
I never had any delusions of being a good athlete, but I tried out for Babe Ruth league later on, and I actually got to play in two half innings! That team was also a first-place team.
As they say every so often in the military, "They also serve, who only stand and wait."
Go figure.
PlaynBass
Energy is proportional to the square of the velocity. 700mph is a lot different than 70mph. Catarstrophic failure is more likely as tolerances (for error) would be lower.
I still think autonomous smaller point to point pods like skytran are a better idea. Hyperloop still sticks to the old method of thinking, converge a mass of people in one location and take the to another location, instead of going point to point.
Distributed vs centralized transportation modes. Committing an act of terror against skytran will result in 2 to 4 dead (1 or 2 pods) Doing the same to a Hyperloop could result in hundreds.
Of course, you are the only person with "active professional experience as an engineer" to have considered the feasibility of hyperloop. Test tracks have been built and early prototypes run without anybody considering known physics limitations, let alone practical matters.
Next thing you know we'll be telling you that bumblebees can actually fly.
Total protonic reversal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I believe the design includes venting through the car if there is a large pressure difference between front and rear. So not only would the tube have to be breached, this would also have to fail.
Fast-forward ten years. The girl is now old enough to drive and she's a spoiled brat, sulking when all the attention isn't on her. Now I feel like I contributed to that in a small way, but even before that I could see the 'conditioning' in progress.
Wow, a self-absorbed (from the point of view of a largely absent uncle) middle-child teenager! I've never heard of such a thing. It must have been the stickers.
As they say every so often in the military, "They also serve, who only stand and wait."
As long as we're bringing up the military, might as well point out that most of the medals that most soldiers get are "participation trophies" of one kind or another.
What the fuck happened to Slashdot? A bunch of right wing whiners are flooding the whole god damn comments sections.
Trump shat out a million mutant clones.
I much prefer your mom screaming for my cream.
Because the start of participation trophies in the 1970s marks the first wave of dumbing down of public education so everyone can graduate with a diploma that is meaningless.
I graduated high school in 1975 . I remember 74 when they trotted out participation trophies in a tournament and the nasty reaction when all the competing students blatantly dropped them in the trash after being handed them.
NRRPT/RCT