Slashdot Mirror
New Hyperloop Cargo Company Promises Deliveries at 600 MPH (cnn.com)
Virgin Hyperloop One just announced that they're teaming with the supply-chain firm DP World to build hyperloop-enabled cargo systems.
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Called DP World Cargospeed, the venture claims it will be able to "deliver freight at the speed of flight and close to the cost of trucking..." So far Virgin Hyperloop One's test capsule has reached speeds of 387 kmph (240 mph), but the company predicts it will send cargo at a top speed of 1,000 kmph (621 mph). In a blog post by Virgin Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd, he calculated a four-day truck journey could be cut to 16 hours. While costs are estimated to run 50% higher than truck transit, Cargospeed believes it can be over five-times cheaper than air freight...
In the announcement, time-sensitive goods such as food and medical supplies were highlighted as items that could benefit from hyperloop's speed. Renders released with the announcement suggest there are plans to integrate drone delivery into the supply chain too.
Virgin Hyperloop One also released a slick video about the venture promising that they're "pushing the boundaries of innovation."
The Washington Post reports that company officials "said they hoped to start construction on a test site in India next year."
An anonymous reader quotes CNN: Called DP World Cargospeed, the venture claims it will be able to "deliver freight at the speed of flight and close to the cost of trucking..." So far Virgin Hyperloop One's test capsule has reached speeds of 387 kmph (240 mph), but the company predicts it will send cargo at a top speed of 1,000 kmph (621 mph). In a blog post by Virgin Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd, he calculated a four-day truck journey could be cut to 16 hours. While costs are estimated to run 50% higher than truck transit, Cargospeed believes it can be over five-times cheaper than air freight...
In the announcement, time-sensitive goods such as food and medical supplies were highlighted as items that could benefit from hyperloop's speed. Renders released with the announcement suggest there are plans to integrate drone delivery into the supply chain too.
Virgin Hyperloop One also released a slick video about the venture promising that they're "pushing the boundaries of innovation."
The Washington Post reports that company officials "said they hoped to start construction on a test site in India next year."
You there, what were you jacking off about? Guns? Why guns? Why are you softly moaning to yourself about guns HERE though? What? This is your cover, you're compensating for something? I'm ruining it? Oh.
I'm at a loss to think of any product that would require such immediate transit, except for transplant organs.
I also happen to believe the business case is weak for this but I can see there would clearly be more use for it than that.
* Much of our food travels a long distance before we eat it on slow transport, during which it degrades. You would get better food if most of it could be transported at airline speeds for rail prices.
* There are a lot of advantages for manufacturing for "Just in Time" delivery practices. In Japan many vendors must commit the specific hour of delivery and if they don't make it there is a penalty. There is a reason for that which would be too much to explain here but rest assured there is a strong commercial incentive. A cheap airline-speed service would save a ton of money in logistics for the vendors.
* The video -- which I do not find very convincing -- states that what is a novelty today will be expected tomorrow. Already online retailers led by Amazon are pushing for immediate delivery of almost anything. Next Day -> Same Day -> Same Hour. Consumer gratification is the key to their success. And you can do it much better if you have fewer and more remote distribution points as long as you have high-speed cargo between them.
* Have you seen the scale at which next-day parcel delivery services operate? Fed-Ex, UPS, USPS, DHL all spend fantastic amounts on air cargo operating their own fleets and still use charters and common carriers. (They make money doing it of course so that is why they do.) This proposal if taken at face value would cut their largest cost item to 20% of what it currently is. On this market alone of that is true it makes the business case on a no-brainer basis.
I could go on but there is clearly more to it than boutique business.
You know that subways exist, right? They manage to accelerate without having to mop out gallons of vomit after each trip. External visual references, or "windows with lights in the tube" are solved problems. Even the Gemini capsule had windows while being exposed to much harsher conditions - why couldn't this? Plus, the need probably isn't as dire as you think it is - thousands of people are in middle seats on wide-body airliners every day, nowhere near windows, looking straight ahead and don't turn into gurgling vomit fountains.
Why can't the tube have pressure sensors, that when a segment is seen to have higher pressure than it's supposed to, the oncoming vehicle slows down in order to not hit a wall of air and "obliterate" itself? This thing isn't a total vacuum - it's reduced pressure. That kind of basic design would be included in making something "fail-safe".
The good news is that absolutely nobody working on this is going to read anything you wrote and say "damn, we didn't think of that. Oh well, better give up now instead of trying to create something that could revolutionize high speed travel and logistics."
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
It doesn't take much engineering acumen to understand a Hyperloop requires a lot less energy than a plane.
Especially the motion itself is near frictionless, making the tube vacuum is a one time investment that only requires maintenance.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Maybe the trick is not to extend hyperloop into cities. Locate the terminals in the suburbs or boonies, the way newer airports are. Then buy up all the rail companies so that you have access to all of their existing right of way. Then buy senators/congresscritters/governors so that you can get approval for converting the rail right of way to dual use with hyperloop.