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| The Hyperloop: BUSTED |
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| EEVblog:
--- Quote from: Mark_Of_Sanity on July 29, 2016, 06:02:36 am ---So in light of that problem, an engineer wondering as to how much better a train would function in a low pressure environment, or a vacuum, isn't a completely disconnected thought, unlike with the solar roadway project. And suppose that doubling of the speed came for roughly the same energy expense as a train traveling half that speed through air at 1atm? That would be getting a level of performance that would normally require 8 times more power! --- End quote --- Sure, but if it comes at the expense of orders of magnitude more engineering complexity, safety and robustness concerns etc, then it's a dead duck idea. And to any practical design engineer without blinkers on, this looks, smells, and quacks like a dead duck. The main problem with the hyperloop is the near vacuum environment and all the associated issues that go along with it. Only a fool would think this is the future as a robust usable mass scale public transit technology running 24/7 over massive distances. Let's be honest, if anyone other than Elon Musk had proposed and started this hype, and it was just some random startup company, it would have been laughed at and wouldn't be taken nor discussed the least bit seriously. It's a pure media driven Musk inspired hype machine. |
| EEVblog:
--- Quote from: mtdoc on July 29, 2016, 07:11:03 am ---How easy would it have been to do back of the envelope calculations to ascertain the potential problems of proposed NASA missions 60 years ago? --- End quote --- The Solar Roadways, uBeam, and Fontus apologists make the exact same comparison, and they are massively and demonstrably wrong. Don't go there, you'll only dig an embarrassing deep hole for yourself. |
| Kilrah:
--- Quote from: mtdoc on July 29, 2016, 07:11:03 am --- --- Quote from: EEVblog on July 29, 2016, 05:23:08 am ---It something you can easily do back-of-the-envelope calcs on to ascertain the potential problems as TF has done. --- End quote --- I think pointing out potential problems is very different than "busting" something. As others have said, it dilutes the "busted brand". It will just lead to a boy-who-cried-wolf phenomenon. How easy would it have been to do back of the envelope calculations to ascertain the potential problems of proposed NASA missions 60 years ago? --- End quote --- I was going to say the same, the context is very different. Solar roadways can use existing technology, and it has been demonstrated, partly by Dave that regardless of any further development, and considering perfect components there would be no siginificantly useful output. That is BUSTED. It can't work. Its very definition implies constraints that limit its usability, you can't develop something new we don't know about yet and make it significantly useful compared to competing technologies to produce energy (some of which being just put the panels somewhere else). A project like the Hyperloop is completely different, it is useful by definition because it has no competition. Assuming it was made and held its promises it would allow for something (a 560km trip in 35min) that nothing else can provide. This likens it to things like Concorde, space exploration, or more recently for example the F-35. They may be hyper complicated, require decades of development of technologies nobody has even thought about yet, be a money pit and have dubious usefulness in the end, but because they had the promise of providing something that nothing else could achieve and someone was interested in it whether it's by deeming it useful or just as a pride/prestige thing they have been done. Could very well happen here. Again the key difference is competition. You can BUST something for which there are alternatives, and back of the envelope calcs show that regardless of how good the project is the alternatives will always be better... but you can't BUST something that aims to provide something for which there is no alternative unless you provide an alterntive that proves ability to achieve the same goal. For such things it is NOT engineering practicality that defines the feasibility of the project, it's entirely in the hands of someone who will either say "let's do this" or not. The only way you could BUST Hyperloop is with something like "a train in a vacuum tube is a stupid way to do 560km in 35min, you should do it that way instead becasue [pertinent reasons]". |
| SL4P:
Often projects like the Hyperloop, are used as R&D sinks to develop core technology for other future ventures. Not to say the Hyperloop team don't believe in it, but there would be much more confidence in developing the fundamental technologies. |
| System Error Message:
--- Quote from: SL4P on July 29, 2016, 08:05:25 am ---Often projects like the Hyperloop, are used as R&D sinks to develop core technology for other future ventures. Not to say the Hyperloop team don't believe in it, but there would be much more confidence in developing the fundamental technologies. --- End quote --- Actually no, if you consider the profile of the main person, the presentation and so on it is a scam. Only a bit of money goes into R&D and presentation, the rest goes into the scammer's pocket. |
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