I don't know any of the details of what they're alleging here concerning Snowden. But Abu Hamza wasn't "rendered". He underwent an 8 year extradition process involving tons of appeals, ultimately his case to block extradition failed (after receiving binding pledges from the US as to the maximum sentence that would be sought and in what sort of conditions he'd be kept in), and he was extradited to the US to be tried on terrorism charges. Last year he was sentenced to life in prison for them.
The fact that they're playing fast and loose with the terminology on the stuff that's easy to double check here makes me question this report. There might be something to it, but it's not a good start. Extraordinary rendition is a very serious charge to levy. And Abu Hamza wasn't rendered, it was an entirely above-board, fully within normal legal processes extradition.
For example, just the other day when someone posted a story talking about pollutants from 3d printers, and there was a huge round of confusion in the comments because the pollution levels were listed in grams rather than micrograms, because Slashdot ate the micron?
To be fair, I wasn't actually proposing it, just responding that it was fine by me if they choose it. The person I was responding to proposed it. I'm indifferent.
More: a lot of the Slashdot crowd is hardcore on privacy issues. So you should make it a policy to not retain any more information than is necessary to operate the site - for example, no IP logs or anything like that (except to the point needed for spam fighting). As for data gathering for advertising purposes, that's going to be a controversial one - as an ad company, you probably have interest in that, but a lot of Slashdotters are going to be uncomfortable with that. If you do plan to pursue that route, may I suggest a middle ground? Make it optional, enable it by default if you must, but make it easy for those who care to shut it off.
(I'm not among those who care, but I know there are plenty of people here who do)
Indeed. A higher moderation cap is fine, and better backend tools to block persistent spam-trolls would be nice. And obviously we want unicode. But let's not go too far and end up with a WSYWIG interface or whatnot.;) If I post a piece of C++ code or whatnot in a conversation about C++, it should post without complaining. The "basic nature" of the comment system is fine, it just has long-overdue "maintenance" to conduct.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of the profile design of "modern" Slashdot. First off, it's archaic, with blanks for things like AIM handles and the like. The boxes on the right display information but don't have easy links to change it, you have to browse through an overly elaborate profile menu. And on smartphones it prioritizes a bunch of silly "awards" taking up the whole profile space, rather than one one generally most wants to see, their comment history so that they can keep up with discussions that they've been involved in. Remember, the key design feature people want in mobile versions is they behave like the normal website, just to display properly. The last thing people want is functionality-limited, strange-behaving interfaces. And if the user wants the full version, it should be easy to click over to it, and it should remember the user's choice.
As for stories, the biggest complaints people have are 1) the story is inappropriate (not something Slashdotters are generally interested in, something that seems like shameless advertising disguised as a story, etc); 2) the source is unpopular (such as Forbes); and 3) it's a duplicate. Rather than having people complain about this in the comments, it'd be nice if you had a simple way people could report stories that could lead to timely corrections. Story removal should be done in analogous to removing a symlink - the story's webpage should still exist, with all of the comments, but it shouldn't appear linked from the front page.
There are some squabbles that you're just not going to win at. For example, people who yell at each other as being "SJWs" or "MRAs" and blame all of the world's evils on the other group. Stopping that sort of thing isn't really your job. But stopping people like the APK spammer - people who nobody want around - yeah, feel free to do that.:)
As for your core business, advertising - people generally are fine with it so long as you "play by the rules". That is, stop the malware, don't allow anything that relies on deception, anything offensive, popover ads, etc. A button over the ad to block further from a certain source that the user doesn't like would be nice. And of course you should allow people to subscribe to an ad-free service by paying a small regular fee. Another example of "not playing by the rules" that you should avoid would be secretly inserting sponsored stories and disguising them as news. People really don't like that sort of thing. But legitimate advertising, even targeted advertising... hey, you have a business to run and sites cost money, we understand.
It's time for another example of "Slashdot Totally Misunderstands Trademarks".
Trademarks (in this context, word marks) are not "universal exclusive rights to a word". They're exclusive rights within a certain context. For any given common word, there's generally a dozen or two different companies with trademarks on it in different contexts. There's already 342 trademarks for the word "React", 139 of which are currently active. Indian Industries has it for "paddles used in ball games", while Horizon Hobby has it for "remote controlled hobby vehicles", while Fine Brothers Properties has it for webisodes, while Dekka Technologies, LLC has it for weapons simulators... and so forth. There are no restrictions on anyone using the same word in a different context. You can even trademark the word for your usage of it in a different context.
I wouldn't make a big deal of this, but it seems like not just slashdot but literally 99,99% of the general population seems to think that a trademark is a context-free concept, that if, say, a cell phone manufacturer trademarks the word "jump" then that means that you can't use the word "jump" anymore in regular conversations, or something like that. What it actually means is that you can't make a cell phone called "jump", or anything other cell phone name that would be readily confused for it, or something in the same category as cell phones called "jump". But you can still make a car called jump or a refrigerator called jump or whatnot.
You're typing on a device that stores trillions of pieces of data and makes billions of computations per second with the ability to grab data on almost anything from around the world in milliseconds, using electricity transmitted from hundreds of kilometers through wires on towers dozens of meters tall connected to megastructures that do things like burn coal as fast as entire trains can pull into the yard, or spin in the wind with blades the size of jumbo jets, or the like, which were delivered to their location by vehicles with computer-timed engines burning a fuel that was pumped up halfway around the world from up to half a dozen kilometers underground and locked into complex strata (through wells drilled by diamond-lined bores that can be remote-control steered as they go), shipped around the world in tankers with volumes the size of large city blocks and the height of apartment complexes, run through complex chemical processes in unimaginable quantities, distributed nationwide and sold to you at a corner store for $1.80 a gallon, which you then pay for with a little piece of microchipped plastic, if not a smartphone, which does all of the aforementioned computer stuff but in a box the size of your hand that tolerates getting beaten up in your pocket all day.
Overall I just find this winner very disappointing compared to the (rather innovative) Hyperloop Alpha proposal. 14:1 LD ratio, no obvious signs of shunting the piled-up air (looking at all of the boxes... there's no compressor, no battery packs, no cooling, none of what would be required for it)... they're talking about a vehicle with vastly higher drag. Which throws off the whole Hyperloop concept, which was built around brief accelerator segments and the vehicle coasting between them with almost no accumulated air drag and a 2000:1 LD ratio from the air bearings. Would they build vastly more accelerator segments, even continuous, to keep the thing moving? How is this scaleable?
Looking into it some more, I found this document, thanks to the Badgerloop team. It most definitely includes a monorail (???). Their logic is:
The test track is designed to be flexible and to allow competitors to implement, at a minimum, the following three types of levitation/suspension:
1. Wheels: The concrete (and aluminum) flat sections along the outside allow for a good wheel surface and aluminum rail(s) allow for horizontally oriented wheels, as implemented on certain roller coasters.
2. Air bearings: The aluminum plate allows for a much smoother and flatter surface than the steel tube itself. The rail(s) can be used for lateral control, either through side-mounted bearings or wheels.
3. Magnetic levitation: Several forms of magnetic levitation require a conductive non-magnetic surface (e.g. copper or aluminum). The sub-track allows for magnetic levitation and the rail(s) allow for lateral control
So from the sound of it...
1) They don't plan to have the system set up for polishing the walls for the test track, so even for air bearings they'd have to use the aluminum plate to get the requisite level of smoothness
2) They're designing the track to allow any conceivable type of vehicle to operate there, not just the air bearing-based one that they proposed.
So now 22 teams, each with their own different proposals for lift (including no levitation at all) can move on to build and test their proposals at the track.
Weird... I may stand corrected. The Hyperloop Alpha document (the original design proposal)was built around specifically avoiding maglev - yet the winner here appears to be using it. Given that then I'm not sure what the point to having any atmosphere in the tube at all is. Yet the pod description talks several times about drag (such as the nose shell being designed to keep it at a minimum), so they're expecting it to go through an atmosphere, not hard vacuum. Yet I see nowhere on their design the compressors that the Hyperloop Alpha document spent so much time going on about. Which raises the issue, how are they planning to shunt the air behind them (the whole point of the design document's compressors)?
Wait a minute, what the heck? "The pod’s lateral control will utilize passive magnets and active electromagnetic damping to maintain lateral stability and keep the pod centered on the rail." What rail? Looking over their pictures, they're drawing riding a bloody monorail. Is the test track going to be a monorail? Are they now planning to have the final design be a monorail?
Looking over it yet again... they're drawing the "permanent magnets" on the bottom... downward-facing permanent magnets causing levitation? The only system I'm aware of that causes that is something like Inductrack. Has Hyperloop now morphed into Inductrack?
This design raises vastly more questions than it answers. I have no idea what they're thinking now.
CA HSR is a $70B project. Hyperloop is a $6B project. Re: throughput: Hyperloop pods launch every 2 minutes during off-peak (30 seconds during peak) with 28 passengers, aka minimum of 20k per day, up to 80k per day depending on demand. HSR trains leave every 5-10 minutes with 450 passengers; they're ultimately hoping for 110k daily ridership, but it's expected to begin at well less than that (and critics think they're overestimating ridership by as much as 70%, but that's neither here nor there)
In short, HSR is higher throughput (it's designed to service a larger area), but not by the sort of margin that justifies the order-of-magnitude budget difference. It's also significantly slower, significantly more energy consuming, and significantly more cost per ride. Now, you can doubt Hyperloop numbers - that's fine. But that's not what this conversation is about: this conversation is about what the point of Hyperloop is: far better throughput per dollar at far better passenger cost, energy consumption, and trip time. That's the point. Whether they can pull it off, that's something they have yet to prove.
Honestly, I personally don't like how Hyperloop was set up as a competitor to HSR. Because it's really something new, something in-between high speed rail and air travel. I think they would have made far fewer "enemies" had they presented their initial pilot route as LA to Las Vegas. Probably could have gotten a lot of investment money from casino operators that way, too.
The cost for pipeline construction is... well, the cost of pipeline construction. We already make giant elevated pipelines thousands of kilometers long. The costs aren't prohibitive, and are far less than rail. Compared to a big oil pipeline project, Hyperloop has some advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
* Significantly less column loading
* No fire risk
* No spill risk
* Easier thermal management
* Easier permitting (one of the biggest costs)
* Less NIMBY opposition
* Lower pumping loads/power consumption
Disadvantages:
* Much greater need for internal precision (requires an internal polisher)
* Must be maintained highly straight, even during thermal expansion
* Human lives directly involved, not just indirectly.
* Larger diameter than most pipelines; comparable to the size of the worlds' largest pipelines
* New technology
Neutral/shared:
* Both require regular monitoring equipment, although different types
* Both need to meet stringent standards again natural or manmade disasters, such as earthquakes or car accidents
* Oil requires valves/tees/access points; Hyperloop requires periodic emergency exits
* Fairly similar wall thicknesses, though an oil pipeline of this diameter would have slightly higher walls due to the higher loading
I see no reason to expect the costs (for a given diameter) to be off from each other by orders of magnitude. And the cost of the steel itself is almost irrelevant compared to the total costs (see the calculations above).
And no, you could not "build a lot of new track for passenger and freight service" for $6B. California's HSR project for example is $70B. Part of the main impetus of Hyperloop was to be significantly cheaper than HSR while providing higher transit speeds (although to be fair to HSR, Hyperloop is not designed as a direct replacement; it's only point-to-point, no intermediary stops, and lower net throughput - more of an cross between rail and air travel). The main way in which it's cheaper (in addition to not having all of the stops, aka having to go through towns, and instead largely sticking to rural highways where right-of-way and permitting is much cheaper and easier) is that by dividing the load out into numerous smaller vehicles, the peak "track" loadings are far less with Hyperloop. Loadings are strongly correlated with cost.
Oh wait, its not tech and its not green.
That's a bizarre claim, given that its energy per passenger mile is far less than any other current form of transportation and it's designed to generate its own power via solar.
The train has to be sealed as well; it carries its own air supply. And yeah, it's a more challenging engineering project than the tube (hence the reason for the current challenge and the test track). Really, the main engineering challenges with the tube itself have nothing to do with the pressure - they're 1) withstanding thermal expansion while still keeping the track highly straight, and 2) maintaining a very precise surface on the inner walls. They have proposals for these things, but they need to prove them (again, it's an issue for the test track).
I live in Iceland and I'm wondering if I'm going to be affected; I think our channels are based on yours (at the very least, the commercials on them are in Norwegian).
I like to use some of those channels as "background noise" while I'm working on a project. Nothing so interesting as to draw too much of my attention, nothing so annoying as to make me angry at it (describes most of the stuff on History these days), but also nothing so tediously mundane as to not give me the benefit of "background". Discovery Science commonly suits the bill, sometimes NatGeo, sometimes BBC, etc.
This is for making a test capsule, not actual hyperloop pods. Hyperloop is not to the stage of full-scale implementation. A small scale test track has to be produced and validated first.
You may have also noticed that the test pod only travels at 110 m/s (far below the baseline Hyperloop speed), is only 250kg, and *ahem* has no seats.
Huh? Pneumatic vehicles are by definition vehicles propelled by pressure. That's what "pneumatic" means. In what manner do you think that is even remotely similar to Hyperloop, which operates in a low-vacuum (aka, pressure devoid) environment and has to be propelled by multiple coilgun segments?
Being borne by the mass of nearly 100 Eiffel towers, in a form naturally resistant to pressure (a cylinder).
Seriously, we deal with far more extreme pressure differentials in pipelines all the time. There's absolutely nothing exotic about the proposed pipeline. It's fairly large, but with nearly inch-thick steel (20-23mm), buckling isn't even close to a risk; the thickness of steel required for a 2,23m cylindrical shell to not buckle is a small fraction of that. The thickness of the tube is more governed by the issues of loading between columns than by the internal pressure.
Dealing with air resistance:
* Pneumatic: Frequent stations that have to move a lot of air
* Vactrain: Hard vacuum, effectively no air resistance
* Hyperloop: Compressors shunt bypass air
Right, because inch-thick steel (hyperloop) just collapses like a can.
Seriously, have you run the numbers on how much force it takes to bend inch-thick steel? Even in the event of a bomb-induced rupture it wouldn't collapse like that, it'd simply give just enough to let air in.
Maintaining a vacuum is easier than maintaining high pressures, and we make and use long high pressure pipes all the time.
Steel is less likely to crack (some degree of cracking is considered normal with concrete) and more importantly has greater smoothness. Concrete can be polished smooth but not as smooth as steel, and the air bearing concept requires very tight tolerances. Furthermore, the cost of the steel is almost a footnote in comparison to the total project costs (see above).
As for the "screwed together" comment... there are no joints. The pipe segments are joined together with an orbital welder, making a continuous piece of pipe. The insides are then polished smooth by a rotary polisher.
It's "20-23mm". Basically, "nearly an inch", for Americans. And not only that, it's reinforced with stringers.
Steel is cheap. Seriously, run the numbers - it's only a small fraction of the total cost. 3.14159*((2,23m/2 + 0,0215)^2 - (2,23m/2)^2) * 579800m = 88173 cubic meters of steel = 687753 tonnes of steel = ~$138m of steel. Insignificant compared to the total project costs. Now, of course, that's not the cost to build the tube - pipe costs more than raw steel, and the cost to build is well more than the raw materials. But as for the concept of "Oh my god, that's a crazy amount of steel, it'd be way to expensive!"? No. No, it's not.
Anyway, the low air pressure isn't even the main load on the tube, it's the weight of the capsule + tubes between columns.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know any of the details of what they're alleging here concerning Snowden. But Abu Hamza wasn't "rendered". He underwent an 8 year extradition process involving tons of appeals, ultimately his case to block extradition failed (after receiving binding pledges from the US as to the maximum sentence that would be sought and in what sort of conditions he'd be kept in), and he was extradited to the US to be tried on terrorism charges. Last year he was sentenced to life in prison for them.
The fact that they're playing fast and loose with the terminology on the stuff that's easy to double check here makes me question this report. There might be something to it, but it's not a good start. Extraordinary rendition is a very serious charge to levy. And Abu Hamza wasn't rendered, it was an entirely above-board, fully within normal legal processes extradition.
For example, just the other day when someone posted a story talking about pollutants from 3d printers, and there was a huge round of confusion in the comments because the pollution levels were listed in grams rather than micrograms, because Slashdot ate the micron?
Yes, clearly labeled slashvertisements are fine by me too. But no ads disguised as regular stories.
To be fair, I wasn't actually proposing it, just responding that it was fine by me if they choose it. The person I was responding to proposed it. I'm indifferent.
More: a lot of the Slashdot crowd is hardcore on privacy issues. So you should make it a policy to not retain any more information than is necessary to operate the site - for example, no IP logs or anything like that (except to the point needed for spam fighting). As for data gathering for advertising purposes, that's going to be a controversial one - as an ad company, you probably have interest in that, but a lot of Slashdotters are going to be uncomfortable with that. If you do plan to pursue that route, may I suggest a middle ground? Make it optional, enable it by default if you must, but make it easy for those who care to shut it off.
(I'm not among those who care, but I know there are plenty of people here who do)
Indeed. A higher moderation cap is fine, and better backend tools to block persistent spam-trolls would be nice. And obviously we want unicode. But let's not go too far and end up with a WSYWIG interface or whatnot. ;) If I post a piece of C++ code or whatnot in a conversation about C++, it should post without complaining. The "basic nature" of the comment system is fine, it just has long-overdue "maintenance" to conduct.
On the other hand, I'm not a fan of the profile design of "modern" Slashdot. First off, it's archaic, with blanks for things like AIM handles and the like. The boxes on the right display information but don't have easy links to change it, you have to browse through an overly elaborate profile menu. And on smartphones it prioritizes a bunch of silly "awards" taking up the whole profile space, rather than one one generally most wants to see, their comment history so that they can keep up with discussions that they've been involved in. Remember, the key design feature people want in mobile versions is they behave like the normal website, just to display properly. The last thing people want is functionality-limited, strange-behaving interfaces. And if the user wants the full version, it should be easy to click over to it, and it should remember the user's choice.
As for stories, the biggest complaints people have are 1) the story is inappropriate (not something Slashdotters are generally interested in, something that seems like shameless advertising disguised as a story, etc); 2) the source is unpopular (such as Forbes); and 3) it's a duplicate. Rather than having people complain about this in the comments, it'd be nice if you had a simple way people could report stories that could lead to timely corrections. Story removal should be done in analogous to removing a symlink - the story's webpage should still exist, with all of the comments, but it shouldn't appear linked from the front page.
There are some squabbles that you're just not going to win at. For example, people who yell at each other as being "SJWs" or "MRAs" and blame all of the world's evils on the other group. Stopping that sort of thing isn't really your job. But stopping people like the APK spammer - people who nobody want around - yeah, feel free to do that. :)
As for your core business, advertising - people generally are fine with it so long as you "play by the rules". That is, stop the malware, don't allow anything that relies on deception, anything offensive, popover ads, etc. A button over the ad to block further from a certain source that the user doesn't like would be nice. And of course you should allow people to subscribe to an ad-free service by paying a small regular fee. Another example of "not playing by the rules" that you should avoid would be secretly inserting sponsored stories and disguising them as news. People really don't like that sort of thing. But legitimate advertising, even targeted advertising... hey, you have a business to run and sites cost money, we understand.
Be good to us, we'll be good to you. :)
It's time for another example of "Slashdot Totally Misunderstands Trademarks".
Trademarks (in this context, word marks) are not "universal exclusive rights to a word". They're exclusive rights within a certain context. For any given common word, there's generally a dozen or two different companies with trademarks on it in different contexts. There's already 342 trademarks for the word "React", 139 of which are currently active. Indian Industries has it for "paddles used in ball games", while Horizon Hobby has it for "remote controlled hobby vehicles", while Fine Brothers Properties has it for webisodes, while Dekka Technologies, LLC has it for weapons simulators... and so forth. There are no restrictions on anyone using the same word in a different context. You can even trademark the word for your usage of it in a different context.
I wouldn't make a big deal of this, but it seems like not just slashdot but literally 99,99% of the general population seems to think that a trademark is a context-free concept, that if, say, a cell phone manufacturer trademarks the word "jump" then that means that you can't use the word "jump" anymore in regular conversations, or something like that. What it actually means is that you can't make a cell phone called "jump", or anything other cell phone name that would be readily confused for it, or something in the same category as cell phones called "jump". But you can still make a car called jump or a refrigerator called jump or whatnot.
You're typing on a device that stores trillions of pieces of data and makes billions of computations per second with the ability to grab data on almost anything from around the world in milliseconds, using electricity transmitted from hundreds of kilometers through wires on towers dozens of meters tall connected to megastructures that do things like burn coal as fast as entire trains can pull into the yard, or spin in the wind with blades the size of jumbo jets, or the like, which were delivered to their location by vehicles with computer-timed engines burning a fuel that was pumped up halfway around the world from up to half a dozen kilometers underground and locked into complex strata (through wells drilled by diamond-lined bores that can be remote-control steered as they go), shipped around the world in tankers with volumes the size of large city blocks and the height of apartment complexes, run through complex chemical processes in unimaginable quantities, distributed nationwide and sold to you at a corner store for $1.80 a gallon, which you then pay for with a little piece of microchipped plastic, if not a smartphone, which does all of the aforementioned computer stuff but in a box the size of your hand that tolerates getting beaten up in your pocket all day.
But technology never seems to advance...
Overall I just find this winner very disappointing compared to the (rather innovative) Hyperloop Alpha proposal. 14:1 LD ratio, no obvious signs of shunting the piled-up air (looking at all of the boxes... there's no compressor, no battery packs, no cooling, none of what would be required for it)... they're talking about a vehicle with vastly higher drag. Which throws off the whole Hyperloop concept, which was built around brief accelerator segments and the vehicle coasting between them with almost no accumulated air drag and a 2000:1 LD ratio from the air bearings. Would they build vastly more accelerator segments, even continuous, to keep the thing moving? How is this scaleable?
Just a very disappointing direction.
Looking into it some more, I found this document, thanks to the Badgerloop team. It most definitely includes a monorail (???). Their logic is:
So from the sound of it...
1) They don't plan to have the system set up for polishing the walls for the test track, so even for air bearings they'd have to use the aluminum plate to get the requisite level of smoothness
2) They're designing the track to allow any conceivable type of vehicle to operate there, not just the air bearing-based one that they proposed.
So now 22 teams, each with their own different proposals for lift (including no levitation at all) can move on to build and test their proposals at the track.
Still, kind of weird how they're doing it...
Weird... I may stand corrected. The Hyperloop Alpha document (the original design proposal)was built around specifically avoiding maglev - yet the winner here appears to be using it. Given that then I'm not sure what the point to having any atmosphere in the tube at all is. Yet the pod description talks several times about drag (such as the nose shell being designed to keep it at a minimum), so they're expecting it to go through an atmosphere, not hard vacuum. Yet I see nowhere on their design the compressors that the Hyperloop Alpha document spent so much time going on about. Which raises the issue, how are they planning to shunt the air behind them (the whole point of the design document's compressors)?
Wait a minute, what the heck? "The pod’s lateral control will utilize passive magnets and active electromagnetic damping to maintain lateral stability and keep the pod centered on the rail." What rail? Looking over their pictures, they're drawing riding a bloody monorail. Is the test track going to be a monorail? Are they now planning to have the final design be a monorail?
Looking over it yet again... they're drawing the "permanent magnets" on the bottom... downward-facing permanent magnets causing levitation? The only system I'm aware of that causes that is something like Inductrack. Has Hyperloop now morphed into Inductrack?
This design raises vastly more questions than it answers. I have no idea what they're thinking now.
CA HSR is a $70B project. Hyperloop is a $6B project. Re: throughput: Hyperloop pods launch every 2 minutes during off-peak (30 seconds during peak) with 28 passengers, aka minimum of 20k per day, up to 80k per day depending on demand. HSR trains leave every 5-10 minutes with 450 passengers; they're ultimately hoping for 110k daily ridership, but it's expected to begin at well less than that (and critics think they're overestimating ridership by as much as 70%, but that's neither here nor there)
In short, HSR is higher throughput (it's designed to service a larger area), but not by the sort of margin that justifies the order-of-magnitude budget difference. It's also significantly slower, significantly more energy consuming, and significantly more cost per ride. Now, you can doubt Hyperloop numbers - that's fine. But that's not what this conversation is about: this conversation is about what the point of Hyperloop is: far better throughput per dollar at far better passenger cost, energy consumption, and trip time. That's the point. Whether they can pull it off, that's something they have yet to prove.
Honestly, I personally don't like how Hyperloop was set up as a competitor to HSR. Because it's really something new, something in-between high speed rail and air travel. I think they would have made far fewer "enemies" had they presented their initial pilot route as LA to Las Vegas. Probably could have gotten a lot of investment money from casino operators that way, too.
The cost for pipeline construction is... well, the cost of pipeline construction. We already make giant elevated pipelines thousands of kilometers long. The costs aren't prohibitive, and are far less than rail. Compared to a big oil pipeline project, Hyperloop has some advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages:
* Significantly less column loading
* No fire risk
* No spill risk
* Easier thermal management
* Easier permitting (one of the biggest costs)
* Less NIMBY opposition
* Lower pumping loads/power consumption
Disadvantages:
* Much greater need for internal precision (requires an internal polisher)
* Must be maintained highly straight, even during thermal expansion
* Human lives directly involved, not just indirectly.
* Larger diameter than most pipelines; comparable to the size of the worlds' largest pipelines
* New technology
Neutral/shared:
* Both require regular monitoring equipment, although different types
* Both need to meet stringent standards again natural or manmade disasters, such as earthquakes or car accidents
* Oil requires valves/tees/access points; Hyperloop requires periodic emergency exits
* Fairly similar wall thicknesses, though an oil pipeline of this diameter would have slightly higher walls due to the higher loading
I see no reason to expect the costs (for a given diameter) to be off from each other by orders of magnitude. And the cost of the steel itself is almost irrelevant compared to the total costs (see the calculations above).
And no, you could not "build a lot of new track for passenger and freight service" for $6B. California's HSR project for example is $70B. Part of the main impetus of Hyperloop was to be significantly cheaper than HSR while providing higher transit speeds (although to be fair to HSR, Hyperloop is not designed as a direct replacement; it's only point-to-point, no intermediary stops, and lower net throughput - more of an cross between rail and air travel). The main way in which it's cheaper (in addition to not having all of the stops, aka having to go through towns, and instead largely sticking to rural highways where right-of-way and permitting is much cheaper and easier) is that by dividing the load out into numerous smaller vehicles, the peak "track" loadings are far less with Hyperloop. Loadings are strongly correlated with cost.
That's a bizarre claim, given that its energy per passenger mile is far less than any other current form of transportation and it's designed to generate its own power via solar.
What's the point of going three times as fast with less energy at a fraction of the capital costs? Yeah, I can't figure it out either.
The train has to be sealed as well; it carries its own air supply. And yeah, it's a more challenging engineering project than the tube (hence the reason for the current challenge and the test track). Really, the main engineering challenges with the tube itself have nothing to do with the pressure - they're 1) withstanding thermal expansion while still keeping the track highly straight, and 2) maintaining a very precise surface on the inner walls. They have proposals for these things, but they need to prove them (again, it's an issue for the test track).
I live in Iceland and I'm wondering if I'm going to be affected; I think our channels are based on yours (at the very least, the commercials on them are in Norwegian).
I like to use some of those channels as "background noise" while I'm working on a project. Nothing so interesting as to draw too much of my attention, nothing so annoying as to make me angry at it (describes most of the stuff on History these days), but also nothing so tediously mundane as to not give me the benefit of "background". Discovery Science commonly suits the bill, sometimes NatGeo, sometimes BBC, etc.
I don't understand why they even need to build it. Can't they just use the internet? Or is it already filled?
Hyperloop does not use magnetic levitation. Try again.
This is for making a test capsule, not actual hyperloop pods. Hyperloop is not to the stage of full-scale implementation. A small scale test track has to be produced and validated first.
You may have also noticed that the test pod only travels at 110 m/s (far below the baseline Hyperloop speed), is only 250kg, and *ahem* has no seats.
Huh? Pneumatic vehicles are by definition vehicles propelled by pressure. That's what "pneumatic" means. In what manner do you think that is even remotely similar to Hyperloop, which operates in a low-vacuum (aka, pressure devoid) environment and has to be propelled by multiple coilgun segments?
Being borne by the mass of nearly 100 Eiffel towers, in a form naturally resistant to pressure (a cylinder).
Seriously, we deal with far more extreme pressure differentials in pipelines all the time. There's absolutely nothing exotic about the proposed pipeline. It's fairly large, but with nearly inch-thick steel (20-23mm), buckling isn't even close to a risk; the thickness of steel required for a 2,23m cylindrical shell to not buckle is a small fraction of that. The thickness of the tube is more governed by the issues of loading between columns than by the internal pressure.
No relation whatsoever, except that both involve a tube. Same with a vactrain. Hyperloop is "none of the above".
Lift:
* Pneumatic: (Usually) wheels (though sometimes aero or maglev)
* Vactrain: Maglev
* Hyperloop: Aerodynamic
Propulsion:
* Pneumatic: Backpressure
* Vactrain: Single-segment coilgun
* Hyperloop: Multi-segment coilgun
Dealing with air resistance:
* Pneumatic: Frequent stations that have to move a lot of air
* Vactrain: Hard vacuum, effectively no air resistance
* Hyperloop: Compressors shunt bypass air
Right, because inch-thick steel (hyperloop) just collapses like a can.
Seriously, have you run the numbers on how much force it takes to bend inch-thick steel? Even in the event of a bomb-induced rupture it wouldn't collapse like that, it'd simply give just enough to let air in.
Maintaining a vacuum is easier than maintaining high pressures, and we make and use long high pressure pipes all the time.
Steel is less likely to crack (some degree of cracking is considered normal with concrete) and more importantly has greater smoothness. Concrete can be polished smooth but not as smooth as steel, and the air bearing concept requires very tight tolerances. Furthermore, the cost of the steel is almost a footnote in comparison to the total project costs (see above).
As for the "screwed together" comment... there are no joints. The pipe segments are joined together with an orbital welder, making a continuous piece of pipe. The insides are then polished smooth by a rotary polisher.
You're right, it's not 10mm or 20mm.
It's "20-23mm". Basically, "nearly an inch", for Americans. And not only that, it's reinforced with stringers.
Steel is cheap. Seriously, run the numbers - it's only a small fraction of the total cost. 3.14159*((2,23m/2 + 0,0215)^2 - (2,23m/2)^2) * 579800m = 88173 cubic meters of steel = 687753 tonnes of steel = ~$138m of steel. Insignificant compared to the total project costs. Now, of course, that's not the cost to build the tube - pipe costs more than raw steel, and the cost to build is well more than the raw materials. But as for the concept of "Oh my god, that's a crazy amount of steel, it'd be way to expensive!"? No. No, it's not.
Anyway, the low air pressure isn't even the main load on the tube, it's the weight of the capsule + tubes between columns.