I highly doubt we'll ever be able to make strands of this stuff several thousands of km long, so shorter strands will have to be combined. The epoxy or whatever is used to hold them together will undoubtedly have some stretch.
Also, carbon bonds may not be particularly stretchy, but over that kind of length even a tiny amount will add up to a decent distance. If that's not enough, use the helical form.
If it were some random nutjob, sure. But I doubt Musk really feels the need for more attention.
It wouldn't be a great idea to build it on such a large scale before building a prototype, but putting together a detailed proposal for a real world project, that can be compared to an actual conventional solution for the same thing, gets people thinking. It makes the prototype more likely to be built.
PS: when someone who is clearly not crazy comes up with an interesting new idea and your reaction is "attention whore", that's kind of an example of the shitty attitude the OP was talking about.
Laying rail is pretty cheap. Buying land sometimes isn't, but putting a bunch of steel rails down end to end is pretty much the cheapest kind of transportation infrastructure you can build. It's possible sidewalks are cheaper.
Airports are extremely expensive, both to build and to operate. So is air traffic control, aircraft maintenance, inspection, fuel infrastructure, parts infrastructure....
I have friends who fly privately. Even for small planes, the purchase price of the aircraft is about the cheapest part of the whole enterprise.
That's not what unscheduled means. Unscheduled means you catch one when you want it. As you point out, there's one every two minutes. Not like a plane, where there might be a flight every few hours, or maybe just one, at eight am on alternate Tuesdays.
4) The possibility that may not have a single, continent-spanning nation state spanning North America within the next few decades.
Canada's not going anywhere. Quebec likes to threaten, but there's no way they'd actually break away. Also, Mexico seems to be having some difficulties, but they're going to be around in 50 years.
So what you're saying is that for the same cost you could go faster and when it's convenient, rather than taking a scheduled service? Clearly not practical.
It reduces the land problem from a continuous right of way the entire distance between the two cities to having to acquire footing for some pylons in a few minor areas and at the endpoints. Remember, this is being proposed as an alternative to a conventional high speed rail link.
Also, it's much easier to get footing space for an elevated line in cities than it is to build something on the ground. Elevated commuter trains in New York for example. Musk's hyperloop can be elevated, on the ground or underground, whichever is easier, at lower land/tunneling/support cost than a railway. The only question is whether the tube itself kills that advantage, and Musk makes a pretty good argument that it doesn't come close.
It is a shitty attitude, but it's not a new thing. Most people have always had it. Sometimes (and some places) there's more optimism and willingness to try new things than other times, but the people willing to do it are always a fairly small proportion.
On the other hand, despite being small, that proportion, and how much power they're given, seems to disproportionately affect the fortunes of a society. Rome thrived when people were willing to go out and get dirty and discover new places. Rome fell when some of those people decided it would be nicer to join the rest of the population getting drunk and partying.
Not really. We know a fair amount about the mechanisms behind cancer and we also have a lot of epidemiological data. Cancer can be caused by natural errors in copying DNA, or by corruptions caused by radiation or carcinogenic chemicals. All of those mechanisms tend to occur throughout life at constant (in the case of radiation) or increasing (in the case of copying errors) rates. Some of them can accumulate too, but that doesn't actually matter.
Your immune system normally kills cancerous cells (or they kill themselves) before they become a problem, but there's some probability of failure, resulting in the disease we call cancer. Also, both those mechanisms become less effective with age so that probability slowly grows.
ANY of those factors, never mind all of them together, mean you have a nonzero probability of developing cancer in any given year, and in fact this probability increases for most cancers the older you get. Either way, the result is a cumulative density function that increases monotonically with age. Which means the older you get the more likely you are to have had cancer, and if you live long enough you WILL get cancer.
It's not really a hypothesis. The hypotheses are contained in the first two paragraphs and they're well tested both experimentally and epidemiologically. The third paragraph is more of a logical consequence.
It really doesn't matter what you "think." Reality doesn't care much about your prejudices. Exercise helps your immune system stay healthier, which helps reduce your risk of cancer. Eating well does that and, depending on what you're eating, may also help reduce the rate of chemical mutation. Either or both do reduce your risk of cancer, but the rates are usually in the low single digits for particular cancers. Heavy alcohol use, for example, appears to raise your risk of prostate cancer by a few percent. Not half, and certainly not half across the board.
Both a healthy diet and exercise will also tend to keep you from dying from things like heart attack and stroke, which means you're more likely to live longer. Those extra years on the end of your life are also when you're most likely to develop cancer, so it's quite possible -- even probable, although I haven't seen any epidemiological studies looking at this -- that exercise and good diet increase your lifetime probability of getting cancer. Not that you shouldn't exercise and eat well - that small extra cancer probability comes as a direct result of not dying earlier from other things.
Most cancers are not lifestyle diseases. If sneering at fat lazy people makes you feel good, talk about cardiovascular disease.
Yes. He was one of the lucky people on the high tail of the bell curve and didn't live long enough, given his particular genetic and environmental makeup, to develop cancer, despite living to an old age.
In his 103 year he was much more likely to have or have had cancer than he was in his 33 year, and a bit more likely than in his 102 year. If he'd lived longer, his chances in his 150th year would be higher than at any previous time. Cumulative density functions are like that, but the probability density is also higher for most cancers at greater ages. Once exception is the nastier kinds of brain cancers, which have spikes in probability density in babies, then a drop, then increasing pd with age.
Ridiculous. Ever been on a roller coaster? Have you noticed what roller coasters do when they go around a corner? Hint: it involves roll.
1 g is just fine for something designed properly. 2 for short periods of time shouldn't be a problem. You're right that a half g lateral acceleration is uncomfortable if it lasts too long, but you'd have to be nuts to design it that way.
Personally I've had 4+ g (not lateral) and thought it was awesome.
Damn, you'd think the guy had been involved in some big, successful engineering projects in the past or something. This Musk guy is quite the up-and-comer hey?
(note for the humour impaired: that's sarcasm, directed at all the but-it-wont-work-because-of-something-I-was-too-lazy-to-see-if-Musk-already-thought-of posts)
You should buy this Toyota. I'll sell it to you for only $100,000. Expensive you say? That's cheap! A 747 costs 350 million!
Yes, your post is a variant of the Wookiee defence.
Discount airlines can offer $100 IF they cram you in tight, fill the plane on every flight, and operate on a razor thin margin. The hyperloop as described is operating unscheduled. Imagine how much a plane ticket would be if you showed up at the airport whenever you wanted, hailed a plane, told the pilot where you wanted to go and he took you.
The hyperloop is a speculative concept that might or might not be practical, but high speed trains ARE cheaper than airplanes, and will only become more so as fuel costs rise.
Slashdot Mirror
Atoms have thickness, but bonds are essentially one dimensional.
I highly doubt we'll ever be able to make strands of this stuff several thousands of km long, so shorter strands will have to be combined. The epoxy or whatever is used to hold them together will undoubtedly have some stretch.
Also, carbon bonds may not be particularly stretchy, but over that kind of length even a tiny amount will add up to a decent distance. If that's not enough, use the helical form.
If it were some random nutjob, sure. But I doubt Musk really feels the need for more attention.
It wouldn't be a great idea to build it on such a large scale before building a prototype, but putting together a detailed proposal for a real world project, that can be compared to an actual conventional solution for the same thing, gets people thinking. It makes the prototype more likely to be built.
PS: when someone who is clearly not crazy comes up with an interesting new idea and your reaction is "attention whore", that's kind of an example of the shitty attitude the OP was talking about.
This is the same Google that insists in court: of COURSE we read your email... why would you expect anything else, right?
Laying rail is pretty cheap. Buying land sometimes isn't, but putting a bunch of steel rails down end to end is pretty much the cheapest kind of transportation infrastructure you can build. It's possible sidewalks are cheaper.
Airports are extremely expensive, both to build and to operate. So is air traffic control, aircraft maintenance, inspection, fuel infrastructure, parts infrastructure....
I have friends who fly privately. Even for small planes, the purchase price of the aircraft is about the cheapest part of the whole enterprise.
Unfortunately Musk is planning for 0.5 g maximum acceleration. Didn't read his proposal hey?
The point of a roller coaster is that you can take considerably more g-forces if they're not trying to tear your head off.
Ah. Then there were British.
Throughout most of the US's history they've had a credible enemy or competitor to be, uh, afraid of. Today? Not so much.
That's not what unscheduled means. Unscheduled means you catch one when you want it. As you point out, there's one every two minutes. Not like a plane, where there might be a flight every few hours, or maybe just one, at eight am on alternate Tuesdays.
Canada's not going anywhere. Quebec likes to threaten, but there's no way they'd actually break away. Also, Mexico seems to be having some difficulties, but they're going to be around in 50 years.
The size of the hammer you use?
It's braking!
So what you're saying is that for the same cost you could go faster and when it's convenient, rather than taking a scheduled service? Clearly not practical.
Yes. That's why a government needs to do it. Things like that are what governments are FOR.
Read the proposal. They mapped out the route, keeping maximum acceleration to 0.5 g.
I remember the attitude you're talking about. I can't quite figure out if it was just because everyone in the US was scared of commies though.
It reduces the land problem from a continuous right of way the entire distance between the two cities to having to acquire footing for some pylons in a few minor areas and at the endpoints. Remember, this is being proposed as an alternative to a conventional high speed rail link.
Also, it's much easier to get footing space for an elevated line in cities than it is to build something on the ground. Elevated commuter trains in New York for example. Musk's hyperloop can be elevated, on the ground or underground, whichever is easier, at lower land/tunneling/support cost than a railway. The only question is whether the tube itself kills that advantage, and Musk makes a pretty good argument that it doesn't come close.
It is a shitty attitude, but it's not a new thing. Most people have always had it. Sometimes (and some places) there's more optimism and willingness to try new things than other times, but the people willing to do it are always a fairly small proportion.
On the other hand, despite being small, that proportion, and how much power they're given, seems to disproportionately affect the fortunes of a society. Rome thrived when people were willing to go out and get dirty and discover new places. Rome fell when some of those people decided it would be nicer to join the rest of the population getting drunk and partying.
Not really. We know a fair amount about the mechanisms behind cancer and we also have a lot of epidemiological data. Cancer can be caused by natural errors in copying DNA, or by corruptions caused by radiation or carcinogenic chemicals. All of those mechanisms tend to occur throughout life at constant (in the case of radiation) or increasing (in the case of copying errors) rates. Some of them can accumulate too, but that doesn't actually matter.
Your immune system normally kills cancerous cells (or they kill themselves) before they become a problem, but there's some probability of failure, resulting in the disease we call cancer. Also, both those mechanisms become less effective with age so that probability slowly grows.
ANY of those factors, never mind all of them together, mean you have a nonzero probability of developing cancer in any given year, and in fact this probability increases for most cancers the older you get. Either way, the result is a cumulative density function that increases monotonically with age. Which means the older you get the more likely you are to have had cancer, and if you live long enough you WILL get cancer.
It's not really a hypothesis. The hypotheses are contained in the first two paragraphs and they're well tested both experimentally and epidemiologically. The third paragraph is more of a logical consequence.
It really doesn't matter what you "think." Reality doesn't care much about your prejudices. Exercise helps your immune system stay healthier, which helps reduce your risk of cancer. Eating well does that and, depending on what you're eating, may also help reduce the rate of chemical mutation. Either or both do reduce your risk of cancer, but the rates are usually in the low single digits for particular cancers. Heavy alcohol use, for example, appears to raise your risk of prostate cancer by a few percent. Not half, and certainly not half across the board.
Both a healthy diet and exercise will also tend to keep you from dying from things like heart attack and stroke, which means you're more likely to live longer. Those extra years on the end of your life are also when you're most likely to develop cancer, so it's quite possible -- even probable, although I haven't seen any epidemiological studies looking at this -- that exercise and good diet increase your lifetime probability of getting cancer. Not that you shouldn't exercise and eat well - that small extra cancer probability comes as a direct result of not dying earlier from other things.
Most cancers are not lifestyle diseases. If sneering at fat lazy people makes you feel good, talk about cardiovascular disease.
Yes. He was one of the lucky people on the high tail of the bell curve and didn't live long enough, given his particular genetic and environmental makeup, to develop cancer, despite living to an old age.
In his 103 year he was much more likely to have or have had cancer than he was in his 33 year, and a bit more likely than in his 102 year. If he'd lived longer, his chances in his 150th year would be higher than at any previous time. Cumulative density functions are like that, but the probability density is also higher for most cancers at greater ages. Once exception is the nastier kinds of brain cancers, which have spikes in probability density in babies, then a drop, then increasing pd with age.
I thought the clip from daytime US television of an idiot in a suit explaining why it was ridiculous by playing with toys was very illustrative.
Yeah. Awesome hey? Someone is actually thinking about doing something new. Kind of like when those dudes invented heavier than air flight.
You know Elon Musk builds space ships right? Do you seriously think he didn't zoom his map in?
Check out section 4.4 Route.
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf
The proposed route imposes a max 0.5 g acceleration on the passengers.
You really should read the proposal. It's well written, and he addresses every non-political objection I've seen someone come up with.
Ridiculous. Ever been on a roller coaster? Have you noticed what roller coasters do when they go around a corner? Hint: it involves roll.
1 g is just fine for something designed properly. 2 for short periods of time shouldn't be a problem. You're right that a half g lateral acceleration is uncomfortable if it lasts too long, but you'd have to be nuts to design it that way.
Personally I've had 4+ g (not lateral) and thought it was awesome.
If I recall correctly, they're not planning to run 800 mph busses on the freeways.
Damn, you'd think the guy had been involved in some big, successful engineering projects in the past or something. This Musk guy is quite the up-and-comer hey?
(note for the humour impaired: that's sarcasm, directed at all the but-it-wont-work-because-of-something-I-was-too-lazy-to-see-if-Musk-already-thought-of posts)
You should buy this Toyota. I'll sell it to you for only $100,000. Expensive you say? That's cheap! A 747 costs 350 million!
Yes, your post is a variant of the Wookiee defence.
Discount airlines can offer $100 IF they cram you in tight, fill the plane on every flight, and operate on a razor thin margin. The hyperloop as described is operating unscheduled. Imagine how much a plane ticket would be if you showed up at the airport whenever you wanted, hailed a plane, told the pilot where you wanted to go and he took you.
The hyperloop is a speculative concept that might or might not be practical, but high speed trains ARE cheaper than airplanes, and will only become more so as fuel costs rise.