Colorado Taking Steps To Get Its Own Hyperloop (usatoday.com)

According to USA Today, Colorado's transportation department is looking at the possibility of a Rocky Mountain hyperloop to curb traffic woes. You could travel from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, a distance of about 125 miles with Denver in the middle, in less than 20 minutes. From the report: After partnering with Virgin Hyperloop One, one of the companies racing to develop the super-speed technology that essentially would transport vehicles and people pods on electric skates in a big pneumatic tube, Colorado Department of Transportation officials plan to spend the next nine months crunching the numbers to determine what it might take to bring this type of transit to Colorado. Above-ground routes are cheaper to build. But Musk's Boring Co., another company testing the technology, has been focusing on hyperloop transportation in tunnels. The proposed Rocky Mountain hyperloop would be centered at Denver International Airport and stretch about 100 miles north to Cheyenne, Wyo.; about 125 miles south to Pueblo, Colo.; and about 100 miles west to Vail, Colo. It carries a hefty $24 billion price tag. State transportation officials estimated it would need an initial investment of $3 billion just to get the first 40 miles from the airport north to Greeley, Colo., completed. Why a hyperloop? State officials estimate Colorado's population will grow by nearly 50% in the next 20 years.

Comments

Ummm.... No.

[thesupraman]

Exactly! And they will never be able to land rockets on their tail! NASA have proven reusable space flight costs (hundreds of..) billions!!

I am however interested that the aviation industry are worried enough to pay for FUD already...

btw, you need to tune your FUD. The tunnel would recompress, not be explosive, and have little to no effect (except on efficiency of service).
Things inside the tunnel could decompress, although calling what they would do from a small hole like a rifle bullet 'explosive' is overstatement in the least.
Of course the pressure difference between what they would experience and what an airliner at altitude experiences is pretty damn small.

I suggest you are better addressing the boondoggle angle, or more to the point kicking the damn TSA out of your airports, since they are the ones destroying your particular industry.

Just wondering, is boeing or airbus paying your invoices, or are the airlines picking up the tab?

Re:Ummm.... No.

[Immerman]

Those on/off ramps might be a lot more expensive than you're thinking - you need to do all of your acceleration and braking there so that you've matched speed with traffic on the main line before entering. And since the cars aren't self-powered, that means you also need at least one full-length, full-power linear motor - or as many as four if you're getting frequent enough traffic that you can't safely use the same length of tube for both acceleration and braking in both directions.* Plus of course the capacitor bank needed to store and deliver all that power fast enough.

* I'm picturing a single on/off tube running roughly parallel to the main lines, multi-Y-ing at both ends between the main lines and airlocks onto an open-air track loop leading from one end to the other. Plus some mechanism to turn cars around when they need to be sent back the way they came - probably an additional siding loop where at least a couple cars can be parked awaiting passengers.