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Richard Branson's Virgin Group Invests in Super-fast Hyperloop One Transport System (cnbc.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Richard Branson's Virgin Group is investing in Hyperloop One, a company developing the super-fast transport system originally conceptualized up by Elon Musk. Hypleroop One is re-branding itself as Virgin Hyperloop One, and Branson is joining the board, the billionaire British investor and entrepreneur announced Thursday on CNBC from London. Virgin Hyperloop One will focus on a passenger and mixed-use cargo service. Last month, Hypleroop One raised $85 million in new funding, and that includes the investment from Virgin. Branson refused to breakout the numbers. Breaking ground on a commercial hyperloop in two to four years is possible if "governments move quickly," Branson said in a "Squawk Box" interview. So far, no government has approved a plan for a hyperloop system. The Virgin founder also said that building a hyperloop tube above or below ground is "cheaper" and "faster" than a traditional rail network. The idea of the transport system -- conceived in 2013 by Musk, the head of both electric automaker Tesla and SpaceX -- works by propelling pods through tubes using magnets reaching speeds akin to those of airplanes.
The Dutch government has concrete plans for a test-and-validation track, near Amsterdam: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/a...
He loses to Scarlett Sims. The FJ answer is "What's A Wonderful Life."
The extreme engineering challenges this technology needs to overcome are many. Extreme challenges cannot be understated. This has left me skeptical just due to the amount of financial backing something like this needs. But I have held that this is the type of situation where if you throw enough money at R&D it just might work out, this is of course not always true. So, the plot thickens. Time will tell.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The system Musk conceived (Hyperloop Alpha) is not a vactrain, and more to the point, would not work in a vacuum. Hyperloop One is based on air bearings for suspension to avoid the need for (expensive) maglev and to avoid the need to maintain a hard vacuum (which requires significant pumping) - simultaneously overcoming two of the largest problems with vactrains. The drag problem for non-hard-vacuum tubes is overcome in Hyperloop Alpha via battery powered compressors, which boost the air bearings.
"Hyperloop" One, however, is a standard maglev vactrain, and an old concept. So are most of the student competitors on the "Hyperloop pod design contest" (otherwise known as "Cleverly disguised talent scouting for SpaceX" ;) )
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Nonsense! Mr Musk tweeted that Mr USA Federal Government had signed off on a NE corridor track.
The US has one man, who sits in a room with a stamp. He has ultimate authority over such things.
> ) is not a vactrain, and more to the point, would not work in a vacuum
Neither did the vactrain. In fact, it used air in the tube as its braking system.
So much excitement over building a maglev train in a depressurized tube, with all the difficulties that entails, and so many claims that it's going to be more cost effective to implement than traditional rail.
I get the excitement, I don't buy the claims. Right of way issues are similar, safety issues are greater.
If you want something revolutionary, just build an elevated half-pipe and run high-speed 3-person pods on non-standard powered rails, and add computerization for per-pod routing, dynamic formation of trains for slip-stream effect, etc.
A fraction of the cost, a fraction of the safety issues, and you can do it now without any revolutionary engineering or tech. So it won't be as fast... if it's easier, less expensive, and more reliable, few will care.
If you're talking about "so little air that the vehicle - without a compressor - only slowly drifts down in velocity", then you're talking about a hard vacuum, and incompatible with Hyperloop Alpha. If you are talking about a mild vacuum, with a compressor shunting the built-up air ahead of the vehicle into air bearings, cite an example of that from before Musk.
And FYI, Hyperloop Alpha only drifts down between accelerator segments; faster deceleration is by deceleration segments and (at lower speeds) physical / magnetic braking.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
I'm waiting for them to ditch this pipe-dream (hah, get it?) and invest in some proven technology: Slip-n-Slides. Imagine traveling from DC to New York with the power of water lubrication? I did some scale modeling in my backyard about 20 years ago and have proven it will work!
Direct service from the real world to Galt's Gulch. But only for those who have been successfully pre-screened.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
My virgin group is going to be doing a little investing of its own, if you know what I'm saying.
Virgin.... Slip-n-slide... water lubrication.... backyard...
I swear, when I was in my teen years, I would instantly have though of a fitting joke. I'm getting old...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hyperloop One is based on air bearings for suspension to avoid the need for (expensive) maglev and to avoid the need to maintain a hard vacuum (which requires significant pumping) - simultaneously overcoming two of the largest problems with vactrains.
That is also an old concept that I saw back in the 60s.
Musk has never had an original idea and his implementations are much to be desired. I don't get this cult of personality about him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The OP's original point is valid: Musk did not originate the notion of his Hyperloop.
Musk is not an inventor, and all of the projects he pursues/promotes are based on generic ideas with tons of prior art. So, Musk has a similar M.O. to that of Steve Jobs -- lots of hot air, but very little innovation despite getting worshiped for it.
As I recall, Musk was originally pushing a vac train. Probably, one of the engineers convinced Musk that air bearings would be more practical.
By the way, air bearings are nothing new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
[Citation needed]
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
So they next new technology will be another 'series of tubes'.
[Citation needed]
You remember wrong.
Seriously? The fact that air bearings already exists makes that prior art to Hyperloop? Nobody was talking about having invented air bearings.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
They were originally pushing for it, but once they started to manufacture test tracks they realized it was somewhat impractical as it required the surface to be much smoother than they could make.
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Uhm... If you disagree, perhaps you should actually cite/link facts yourself, instead of simply saying "[Citation needed]" and "You remember wrong."
On the other hand, are you really naive enough to think that Musk was the first to conceive a train with "air bearings?" Such notions are reminiscent of the fanboys who thought that Steve Jobs invented the computer mouse.
How am I supposed to prove a negative? The person is asserting that there exists an example from before Musk. It is incumbent upon them to present what they're talking about, not to ask me to search the entire Earth for evidence of something that does not exist so that that I can prove my case via exhausting the entire search space. Same with their assertion that Musk was "originally pushing a vac train". I've read everything that's come out of Musk and SpaceX about the topic of Hyperloop, and no such thing occurred. If they think it did, they need to show where it occurred.
Hyperloop has three parts, all of which are integral to the concept, because the concept does not work with any one of them missing:
1) Craft suspended by air bearings
2) Air bearings fed by a battery-powered compressor
3) System sealed inside a a) mostly evacuated, but b) not hard vacuum tube, in order to allow for extreme speed travel.
Without any one of those, Hyperloop Alpha does not exist. Without air bearings, it has to rely on maglev, which is too expensive. Without the compressor, not only would the air bearings not work in the low pressure air, but a "wall" of air would build up ahead of the craft and present too much drag. Without 3a, high speeds cannot be reached. Without 3b, #1 and #2 don't work, and the cost for pumping becomes excessive.
If you're not talking about the integration of #1, #2, and #3, and how they all tie closely together, you're not talking about Hyperloop Alpha.
There is no meaningful invention in our modern age that invents all of its component parts. An invention is how you build off of existing technology to create something that enables new possibilities.
Again: if you, or anyone else, thinks they have prior art to a system combining #1, #2 and #3, present it. Put up or shut up.
(Note: this exact same request has been made on pretty much every single Slashdot thread since the concept came out. Not a single person has ever "put up").
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
You can't buy stock pipe with that precision, but you can polish to that precision with a rotary polisher. Which was part of the Hyperloop Alpha design. Lots of mechanical systems involving pipe (such as hydraulic and pneumatic cylinders) require vastly better (orders of magnitude) engineered tolerances on diameter variation than the air bearings did.
But, perhaps there was some reason that they couldn't pull it off at scale.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Ed: That should read "Hyperloop Alpha is based on...."
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
[Citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_bearing
1) Air bearings weren't invented in the 1960s.
2) "Air bearing != Hyperloop" any more than "Transistor = iPhone"
Come back to me with an actual example of a train inside a partial vacuum tube (rather than hard vacuum, to avoid the need for excessive pumping systems, but not open either, to allow for high rate of travel), floating on air bearings (to avoid the need for maglev), with a battery powered compressor simultaneously feeding the bearings (which can't be fully passively fed due to the low pressure) and preventing the buildup of a wall of air ahead of the vehicle.
Don't give me an argument equivalent to "But steel tube existed before Hyperloop!".
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Ideas are worthless. Implementations are everything. Someone may have come up with this in the 60s, but no one bought the first bag of bolts until Musk started shouting.
How am I supposed to prove a negative?
"Musk did NOT originate the notion of his Hyperloop." -- That is a NEGATIVE.
"Musk DID originate the notion of his Hyperloop." -- That is a POSITIVE, and it is YOUR claim!
Prove your positive claim!
By the way, prior art has already been linked twice in this thread.
I've read everything that's come out of Musk and SpaceX about the topic of Hyperloop, and no such thing occurred
Ahh... so you are a fanboy.
Hyperloop has three parts, all of which are integral to the concept, because the concept does not work with any one of them missing:
1) Craft suspended by air bearings
2) Air bearings fed by a battery-powered compressor
3) System sealed inside a a) mostly evacuated, but b) not hard vacuum tube, in order to allow for extreme speed travel.
There is no meaningful invention in our modern age that invents all of its component parts. An invention is how you build off of existing technology to create something that enables new possibilities.
Again: if you, or anyone else, thinks they have prior art to a system combining #1, #2 and #3, present it. Put up or shut up.
If you think that the obvious combination of those three details is some kind of revolutionary innovation, and if you are suggesting that there is no meaningful invention "in our modern age" without derivative machine components, then you are not an inventor nor an engineer/designer.
By the way, the only one of those details that might qualify as some sort of innovation is the subtlety of #3 with the partially evacuated atmosphere, but even that is obvious, as the "amount" of vacuum is actually a matter of degree and not "hard."
Certainly, application of an idea from one discipline to another can qualify as innovation (in fact, that is most of innovation), but the combination of features that you list is utterly obvious/generic to anyone who is an inventor or engineer.
Hyperloop One is based on air bearings for suspension to avoid the need for (expensive) maglev ...
"Hyperloop" One, however, is a standard maglev vactrain, and an old concept.
You seem to contradict yourself here.
I think you mean Hyperloop Alpha was based on air bearings, while the spin-off, Hyperloop One, uses magnetic levitation. A third option, Hyperloop Cheetah uses wheels, and substitutes low pressure steam for low pressure air within the tunnel.
To be honest I see no benefit to maglev, but could see a combination of steam bearings and a low pressure steam filled tube as having potential. Having said that there are many downsides to the steam option which pretty much balance the reduced pumping costs.
I am also very skeptical of the use of water / steam as a medium for dumping energy within the capsule in Hyperloop Alpha, rather than a salt, and there are huge issues with all of the proposals when it comes to the design of the stations and airlocks. Of course these are not insurmountable but there are a number of obvious (to me) issues that I've not seen anyone address yet.
Finally, while it clearly would be cheaper to build the tunnels above ground, and doing so does allow you to put solar panels on top to supply all the power for the system it is also considerably less safe, no easier when it comes to permitting, and massively exacerbates the issues of thermal expansion - which would vanish almost entirely if the pipes were buried.
It is nice to see interest from potentially serious investors however. It might mean that this goes from a pipe dream to a practical reality within my lifetime, and, if not, it will absolutely prove, without any doubt, that settlement of Mars is currently beyond us, as many of the technical challenges that need to be overcome are essentially the same.
> If you're talking about "so little air that the vehicle - without a compressor
> - only slowly drifts down in velocity",
Have you bothered to read a single article on the topic? Apparently not.
The compressor in this case was a series of movable doors that opened and closed as the train moved through the tunnel. It was only partially evacuated and in the case of braking the doors in front were closed at the station and the buildup of the air in front of the train brought it to a stop.
So, no, it didn't "slowly drift[s] down in velocity", it rather rapidly came to a stop in a wall of air.
> with a compressor shunting the built-up air ahead of the vehicle into
> air bearings, cite an example of that from before Musk
Moving the goalposts, eh? Now it's not "partially vacuum train", it's "air bearing train with compressor". What's your next complaint, it has to have a particular paint scheme?
But that's no problem anyway, because there are so many examples they have their own classification:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hovertrain
These used compressors at the front of the vehicle to run air bearings under (and sometimes on the sides) of the fuselage. In some cases a LIM was used for propulsion. Many of the original proposals have them running in partially evacuated tubes, and one built example runs in tubes that are not evacuated.
As both the hovercraft and the LIM are UK inventions (well, sort of), it should not be surprising that one of the better developed examples is theirs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracked_Hovercraft
Apparently Hyperloop is not receiving any Government funding.
This is good news because it eliminates all manner of stupid requirements and it shows that the investors have confidence.
Specifically, I expect they will not be required to serve some stupid Congress Representative's district even thought that would be uneconomical...ala Amtrak.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Jerry's High Speed Train from nowhere to nowhere, or the Hyperloop?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
What is the LIM? Google is not helping.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
What "this case"? You haven't named a "this case"; "vactrain" is a general concept for a maglev train in a hard vacuum, not a specific implementation.
That would never fly in the real world. Now all that air you let in has to be pumped out down to the level of a hard vacuum.. What moronic design are you reading?
I'm describing the key aspects of Hyperloop. It doesn't work if you leave any of them out.
None of which operate in a partial vacuum, and are thus limited to much lower speeds and much higher energy consumption. And due to the high energy needs they had to have gas turbines onboard. The fastest hovertrain ever moved at just 1/3rd the speed of Hyperloop, at orders of magnitude higher energy consumption.
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
This is degenerating into absurdity. You claimed someone invented it before him. There are two possibilities here.
1) You can tell me who.
2) You can ask me to search for every piece of data that currently exists and ever has existed on Earth to see if any human who has ever lived has ever thought up the concept.
Are you seriously telling me that #2 is the proper route to take?
It most definitely has not.
I'm a person who doesn't write about topics that I haven't taken the time to learn about.
Then point to just one person - One - who has ever proposed it before. If someone had, it's not like it would be obscure. We know of vactrain and pneumatic train proposals going back to the 1700s. Vactrains have been a staple of scifi. Where has this "obvious" solution been?
"If there was an antonym to 'Elon Musk', it would be 'Richard Branson'."
Linear Induction Motor
That would never fly in the real world. Now all that air you let in has to be pumped out down to the level of a hard vacuum.. What moronic design are you reading?
Maybe one of the original designs from the 1800s, operating on the same principles of pneumatic tubes? Just ignore those pumping losses...
Sounds like slang. One virgin hypleroop, for mixed-use service? No sir, MY virgin hypleroop is for single use only.