EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: EEVblog on July 25, 2016, 12:36:18 am
-
He's right, it's never going to happen. It's another Solar Roadways.
I've been on a MagLev train at 430kmh, it works, it's practical, and a hell of a lot less can go wrong with it. No contest.
Hyperloop will never happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk)
-
I've always been dubious about this. I think some of the problems could be solved technically, but the infrastructure costs would be horrendous. Maintaining even a low pressure inside a 600 km tube with the safety implications is not doable IMO.
-
I've always been dubious about this. I think some of the problems could be solved technically
But it only takes one showstopper.
-
Shanghai Maglev ticket is $8/single journey, compared to metro it is 12 times more expensive. Still, the government pays hundreds of millions CNY per year to maintain it.
Then that's a marketing and pricing issue, not an engineering issue.
The Hyperloop is all about the engineering, because there are so many potential showstopper.
It would be interesting to see a privately operated 800kph tube running and actually making money.
You will never see it running because the engineering of it will fail dismally, or even you can get the engineering to work, a failure due to some nutcase with a gun (it's America remember) is all but guaranteed . And the first time a deadly accident happens and people realise it's a fatal flaw in the entire concept, the whole thing will be sunk.
Thunderf00t is bang on when he talks about one plane (or train) failing doesn't bring down the entire system.
-
And the first time a deadly accident happens and people realise it's a fatal flaw in the entire concept, the whole thing will be sunk.
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/a2PBZtSS988/maxresdefault.jpg)
-
I'm chuckling, at people who didn't spot this as an obvious scam/stupidity from the very first mention.
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this? His other projects are fairly sensible, but the Hyperloop is completely whacked.
Some kind of tax writeoff perhaps?
Or maybe he uses it to warehouse the idiots who joined Tesla or SpaceX, after his HR dept recognizes them as idiots but can't fire them? Solution: shift them all to one project ideally suited to their 'skills', then let it fail spectacularly. Preferably with all the worst idiots in the first demonstration run of the hyperloop capsule.
Perhaps he even uses it as an idiot-detector. Survey form for all employees, along the lines of "Hey, have you heard of my wonderful Hyperloop project? (Brief outline of idea) Isn't that great? Would you like to work on it?" Anyone who is stupid and/or sycophantic enough to say yes, gets transferred. Do not want such people working in rocketry.
If he gets too many idiots for one sacrificial company, maybe he should start a Space Elevator company as well. That's another 'great idea' that would be completely insane in practice. (Hint: what's the voltage differential across the electrically insulating atmosphere, between the very conductive ionosphere and very conductive Earth? And what is the total capacitance? So what is going to happen if you run a wire between the two?)
Added:
The fallen one, if my memory serves me correctly, is an AirFrance one. The poor thing was hit by a debris coming from a poorly maintained PanAm.
The ultimate reason of Concorde being phased out, IMHO, is solely for cost reasons. By that time, new generation B767 and B777 have astonishing fuel efficiency and can also offer smooth traveling experience.
It was a bit of metal debris lying on the runway from a previous plane. Sucked into an engine of the Concorde on takeoff, turbine disintegration ruptured a wing fuel tank. Fire caused structural failure before it could make it to any landing site.
But yes, the accident was an excuse to quit Concorde flights, that were actually no longer profitable.
-
The first four letters were all I needed to read. :palm:
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this? His other projects are fairly sensible, but the Hyperloop is completely whacked.
To be fair, I don't think Musk is really involved trying to produce this, is he? I think he just introduced the conceptual idea to the public and coined the term. It may never work but it is an interesting idea.
While I don't dispute that it may not be possible, I think comparing it to the Solar Roadways nonsense is unfair and just a cheap shot. After all, companies like Hyperloop One have a large team of actual engineers (https://hyperloop-one.com/team) and they have actually developed a small scale prototype. They cannot be unaware of the issues raised in video. Of course that in no way implies they will ever find a way to overcome those obstacles but I find it improbable that they are all just trying to run a con.
So while I don't disagree with the argument that it will never work, it is much different than the Solar Roadways scam.
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this?
He's not, finacially.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop (http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies"
-
Shanghai Maglev ticket is $8/single journey, compared to metro it is 12 times more expensive. Still, the government pays hundreds of millions CNY per year to maintain it.
Then that's a marketing and pricing issue, not an engineering issue.
The Hyperloop is all about the engineering, because there are so many potential showstopper.
It would be interesting to see a privately operated 800kph tube running and actually making money.
You will never see it running because the engineering of it will fail dismally, or even you can get the engineering to work, a failure due to some nutcase with a gun (it's America remember) is all but guaranteed . And the first time a deadly accident happens and people realise it's a fatal flaw in the entire concept, the whole thing will be sunk.
Thunderf00t is bang on when he talks about one plane (or train) failing doesn't bring down the entire system.
I think you may be wrong on this one, but time will certainly tell. It's certainly not as insane as solar power roadways. I've always wondered how they will protect something like the hyperloop from, say, terrorist attacks. Your timing would have to be quite good (otherwise the vehicle would have time to stop), but you could probably do some serious damage that way.
Then again, the US (and others') oil pipelines could just as easily be destroyed in a similar way. Granted, this would not result in loss of life, but clearly the oil pipelines have some way of dealing with this potential problem. You (well I, for one,) don't hear about daily oil pipeline attacks.
I think it's absurd to say it's busted already. It's true that the engineering challenge is unbelievable, but it doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
It's clear for things like solar roadways, it's not even worth trying.
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this?
He's not, finacially.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop (http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies"
Musk introduced the idea for the simple reason that it generated press buzz for him, Tesla, and SpaceX. The actual viability of the project was irrelevant.
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this?
He's not, finacially.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop (http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies"
Musk introduced the idea for the simple reason that it generated press buzz for him, Tesla, and SpaceX. The actual viability of the project was irrelevant.
Or he recognizes that it is an interesting idea that deserves further research despite the obvious technical challenges. An idea that inspires engineers and entrepreneurs (which it has) and could lead to useful new technology even if it never leads to a large scale LA to SF type transporter. Musk is not really an engineer after all. He is a futurist (and an entrepreneur) whose role is to inspire others. It's up to the engineers to determine if his ideas can become reality.
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this?
He's not, finacially.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop (http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies"
Musk introduced the idea for the simple reason that it generated press buzz for him, Tesla, and SpaceX. The actual viability of the project was irrelevant.
Or he recognizes that it is an interesting idea that deserves further research despite the obvious technical challenges. An idea that inspires engineers and entrepreneurs (which it has) and could lead to useful new technology even if it never leads to a large scale LA to SF type transporter. Musk is not really an engineer after all. He is a futurist (and an entrepreneur) whose role is to inspire others. It's up to the engineers to determine if his ideas can become reality.
I am more cynical than most when it comes to this stuff. I think if you actually talked to Musk at a cocktail party about four drinks in, you'd find out his real opinion on the viability of hyperhype.
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this?
He's not, finacially.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop (http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies"
Ah ha, interesting. And yet: "To support this competition, SpaceX will construct a one-mile test track..." So he does have dollars in it.
I was mostly joking about the 'idiot filter' idea, but given Musk's involvement in 'Hyperloop concept support', including his personally coining the name, maybe it's not such a crazy thought after all.
He may not be an engineer, but he is smart and employs a lot of good engineers. Surely some of them would have explained Hyperloop's fundamental flaws to him, if he didn't see them himself?
As a name, "Hyperloop(y)" is a pretty cool joke. It's almost a stand-alone sanity check in itself.
-
It was a bit of metal debris lying on the runway from a previous plane. Sucked into an engine of the Concorde on takeoff, turbine disintegration ruptured a wing fuel tank. Fire caused structural failure before it could make it to any landing site.
But yes, the accident was an excuse to quit Concorde flights, that were actually no longer profitable.
Small correction. Debris on the runway cut one of the tires, which sent debris flying into the wing. This caused shock waves in one of the fuel tanks that ruptured the tank. The fuel eventually ignited. This happened a the worst possible moment, as they were already traveling too fast to abort takeoff. They plane became airborne, but was doomed by the fire, did not have enough time to return or divert to an other airport.
-
My only question is, why is Musk involved in this?
He's not, finacially.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop (http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies"
Ah ha, interesting. And yet: "To support this competition, SpaceX will construct a one-mile test track..." So he does have dollars in it.
I was mostly joking about the 'idiot filter' idea, but given Musk's involvement in 'Hyperloop concept support', including his personally coining the name, maybe it's not such a crazy thought after all.
He may not be an engineer, but he is smart and employs a lot of good engineers. Surely some of them would have explained Hyperloop's fundamental flaws to him, if he didn't see them himself?
As a name, "Hyperloop(y)" is a pretty cool joke. It's almost a stand-alone sanity check in itself.
He is an very good engineer, and he had some very good engineers on the design document that he released the document Hyperloop Alpha (http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf)
-
He is an very good engineer, and he had some very good engineers on the design document that he released the document Hyperloop Alpha (http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf)
Nah. That's just the paper he used to introduce the concept. It is not intended to be any sort of engineering or comprehensive design document.
Hyperloop is considered an open source transportation concept (emphasis mine).
-
Clearly, I haven't thought about this as hard as you guys or Thunderf00t, so I have a couple questions:
1)If the air pressure from a catastrophic fail up-tube is a problem, why wouldn't you make the tube capable of sensing that it has failed up-tube?
2)If you have done so and it has sensed this, why wouldn't you deliberately start venting air into the tube in a controlled fashion all along the tube? Air in the tube would help any transiting hyperloop cars stop, right?
3)Since you need expansion joints, why wouldn't you take advantage of the non-standard section to add a door that drops down to block the tube in the event of a catastrophic fail? It need not even be air-tight, it just has to make the air passage a lot smaller. Could be made of cement with a steel top held up by permanent magnets. In case of emergency, just disrupt the magnetic field of the permanent magnet (just like fire doors) and gravity does the rest. Maybe every 5 km or so? However far the maximum stopping time of a car in the tube is. These expansion joints also seem like a good spot to put the re pressurization valves noted above?
4)I'm just a programmer, not a thermal guy, but since he pointed out the temperature differential of the top of the tube in sunlight vs the bottom. Is the top of tube being in shade (solar panels!) all along its length not going to make any difference?
5)How can "the power go out" if it is locally powered by all those solar panels? Was the power all supposed to be sent back to some centralized bank 600km away?
Since Thunderf00t didn't even suggest any solutions of the sort, I assume they can't work?
-
1)If the air pressure from a catastrophic fail up-tube is a problem, why wouldn't you make the tube capable of sensing that it has failed up-tube?
To a limited extent, you could. The issue comes down to the practicality of such a safety mechanism. It would require a complex array of sensors and mechanisms in order to adequately seal and safely repressurise the system. The issue is there are too many single-points-of-failure.
2)If you have done so and it has sensed this, why wouldn't you deliberately start venting air into the tube in a controlled fashion all along the tube? Air in the tube would help any transiting hyperloop cars stop, right?
The key here is 'controlled fashion'. It requires many complex systems all working correctly to acheive this. It's not impossible, but grossly impractical. Remember: these safety mechanisms would need to be replicated the entire length of the hyperloop.
3)Since you need expansion joints, why wouldn't you take advantage of the non-standard section to add a door that drops down to block the tube in the event of a catastrophic fail? It need not even be air-tight, it just has to make the air passage a lot smaller. Could be made of cement with a steel top held up by permanent magnets. In case of emergency, just disrupt the magnetic field of the permanent magnet (just like fire doors) and gravity does the rest. Maybe every 5 km or so? However far the maximum stopping time of a car in the tube is. These expansion joints also seem like a good spot to put the re pressurization valves noted above?
Again, such safety mechanisms are possible, but impractical, and would be expensive. They would add to the cost of maintenance and upkeep of the system and should any part of the system be offline for maintenance or malfunctioning, the entire system would be potentially unsafe to a catastrophic failure. From what I've seen of the projected construction costs, it seems unlikely these sort of safety mechanisms have been taken into consideration.
I can't speak to points 4 and 5.
One thing worth noting (and where I foresee a massive obstacle to such a system) is what would happen in the event of a turbine blade failure. It seems from the animations that there isn't much margin for movement within the carriage within the tunnel. In a turbine failure, the outer containment shell will warp to absorb the impact of the massive amount of kinetic energy stored in those blades. If that distortion happened at speed, the carriage would likely disintegrate, and if it didn't it would likely deform to the point where it would make contact with the outer walls of the tunnel. The same outcome would likely occur in that scenario.
By comparison, turbine blade failures occur occasionally during an an aircraft flight, for instance, and often result in the loss of an engines power, but no significant impact to the safe operation of the aircraft. Even in the event of significant damage (See QF32: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn5hAgK1Jz8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn5hAgK1Jz8)) the aircraft isn't in a tube where it could potentially impact the fuselage. Multiple redundant control systems meant the aircraft was still flyable and able to be safely landed. The pilots had room to maneuver and react. The turbine blade containment failure in this incident resulted in the kinetic energy in the blades being directed away from the aircraft for the most part. In a tunnel, this would be bad news, likely resulting in localised tunnel failure and worse yet, ricochet of debris within the cabin.
While I love the innovative effort of this project, it's just a non starter from a safety and cost perspective. It's ultimately cheaper and safer, to use other proven technologies like Maglev trains and Aircraft.
-
I am watching the linked YT.
I do not like the part that describes thermal expansion. The deduction is flawed. It assumes no longitudinal strain is acceptable in the design while we know the strain is not a problem today - take a look at continuous (welded) railroads.
Thermal expansion is a design parameter. Besides, there are other materials available, like concrete, composites, elastomers, etc. As for steel, the 50mm expansion of 100m tube over [0:40]DegC seems like impossible to overcome. Otoh, that is a strain of only 100MPa (G=210GPa) or +-50MPa if you weld it at 20DegC. Any steel is capable of 50MPa. The one used for industrial piping goes up to 500MPa. Mind this is only the expansion part and the construction is subjected to other factors (vacuum, rust, terrorists, thieves, etc).
I would NOT use steel for members at compression, especially where the mass plays no role. I believe the steel is a temporary solution and the precast reinforced concrete + elastomeric joints are more likely to be a viable solution because of the cost and durability.
The idea that if the tube gets ruptured at any place and people inside die instantly because of the vacuum is also flawed. The capsules are pressurized and if the tube is punctured and filled with atmospheric air (gradually, via size-limited hole) then the drag would increase gradually and the capsule would eventually slow down. For God's sake that is not 600km of single piece of pipe and some locks are needed |O
You can die there when you derail or exceed G, but OTOH slowing down 900km/h (250m/s) at 5G (50m/s2, at emergency) takes lousy 5 seconds. Just let some air into a tube in a controllable manner. Ok, that is 625m to a standstill but dude, I would not exaggerate, at least you cannot hit the moose on the road.
Hitting a coke can with a ball :-DD Where is the BUT?
As of the emergency exiting, I think it should be presented in relation to emergency exiting when KLM + Pan AM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster) meet on one runway. How about then?
The weakest part of the project is its capital cost and technological challenges of the scale. It competes with airplanes so it is not hard to calculate the borderline cost of the trip of the hyperloop. Make it more expensive and people won't buy it.
-
Added:
The fallen one, if my memory serves me correctly, is an AirFrance one. The poor thing was hit by a debris coming from a poorly maintained PanAm.
The ultimate reason of Concorde being phased out, IMHO, is solely for cost reasons. By that time, new generation B767 and B777 have astonishing fuel efficiency and can also offer smooth traveling experience.
It was a bit of metal debris lying on the runway from a previous plane. Sucked into an engine of the Concorde on takeoff, turbine disintegration ruptured a wing fuel tank. Fire caused structural failure before it could make it to any landing site.
But yes, the accident was an excuse to quit Concorde flights, that were actually no longer profitable.
<edit>LazyJack has it already
I did read that 9/11 resulted in a drop off of business travellers which made the service un-economic :(
on-topic, the only MAGLEV I've been on was the one at Birmingham International (gone now I think) and it left alot to be desired !
-
To a limited extent, you could. The issue comes down to the practicality of such a safety mechanism. It would require a complex array of sensors and mechanisms in order to adequately seal and safely repressurise the system. The issue is there are too many single-points-of-failure.
Why would it have to be complex? A leak sensor system (required one way or another) wouldn't have to measure pressure, just that there is pressure. Not off-scale low, just anywhere on-scale means a leak. You could even make it triply redundant if you like. I just priced some pressure transducers at DigiKey, and even 10's of thousands of them wouldn't register as budget noise in a multi-billion dollar civil works project.
The key here is 'controlled fashion'. It requires many complex systems all working correctly to acheive this. It's not impossible, but grossly impractical. Remember: these safety mechanisms would need to be replicated the entire length of the hyperloop.
Again not seeing the complicated? They don't even have to talk to each other, but you'd want them too because they could react faster if they did. A backup "we can't communicate" mode where they all reacted passively should be possible. Any one segment letting air in because it smelled a leak would trigger adjacent ones in a cascade fashion whether they could talk or not. Again, the expansion sections seem ideal locations to put them. You need to have pumps at each one to evacuate it in the first place, right? Nobody would design it with one pump for the whole system at each end, right? It'd take eons to pump down. So you already have valves at each pump. If they failed, you could simply have an explosive bolt fire (purportedly one of the most reliable gadgets in the world) and leave a hole of prescribed size through which air could flow. There's your precisely controlled repressurization. The new air in the tube would act as a buffer against the uncontrolled air from the catastrophic breach. Considering the wiring/plumbing/HVAC,etc. in the average American Skyscraper, I don't see this as being orders more complex.
Again, such safety mechanisms are possible, but impractical, and would be expensive. They would add to the cost of maintenance and upkeep of the system and should any part of the system be offline for maintenance or malfunctioning, the entire system would be potentially unsafe to a catastrophic failure. From what I've seen of the projected construction costs, it seems unlikely these sort of safety mechanisms have been taken into consideration.
Every building of any size in the US is required to have a fire suppression system and automatic fire-doors that trigger automatically if one of the sensors pops (usually from measuring a pressure drop) or the alarms go off. This seems virtually identical, and differs only in being spread out. The system would require maintenance under normal circumstances, so it would need to be able to re pressurize in a controlled fashion anyway, right?
Thunderf00t is a pretty smart guy, and he may have had lots of experience working with vacuum, but (and I don't know the answer to this) has he ever worked on a large device that had to defend itself in the event of failure? He seemed to be implying his apparatus was an actual fair representation of a working system.
-
The idea that if the tube gets ruptured at any place and people inside die instantly because of the vacuum is also flawed. The capsules are pressurized and if the tube is punctured and filled with atmospheric air (gradually, via size-limited hole) then the drag would increase gradually and the capsule would eventually slow down. For God's sake that is not 600km of single piece of pipe and some locks are needed |O
This would be dependent on the location of the rupture, and where the carriage was in relation to that rupture. While a small rupture, as long as it didn't lead to some form of cascading failure of tube, could be handled, where I see concern is the rotational energy of the turbine being designed for the extreme low pressure of the tube suddenly (within a few seconds) of denser air. That would result in not insignificant anti-torque on the engine. That rotational energy would be transferred to the structure of the carriage, potentially deforming it. This could be tolerated within limits, but any significant sudden re-pressurisation would potentially be catastrophic for a turbine.
As of the emergency exiting, I think it should be presented in relation to emergency exiting when KLM + Pan AM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster) meet on one runway. How about then?
No-one is saying airline travel is completely devoid of risk. Incidentally that article also references (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster#Safety_response) all of the safety improvements that have been implemented as a result of that accident.The airline industry has a proven track record of improving its safety over time. Perhaps after 100 years of development, we may be technologically in a position where the hyperloop could be feasible. None of this rules out the concept, but does illustrate how impractical it is.
-
Before we all go ahead and solve all possible engineering challenges of Hyperloop in this topic. Do not forget, that the set of engineering problems that may be solved is much much larger that the set of problems financially feasible to solve. Since eventually someone has to pay the bill, that is a very big limiting factor. Would a government (or crowd funding, or investors somehow convinced) commit unlimited money, I bet Hyperloop would come very quickly into existence, just as the Moon landing happened.
Look at for example microelectronics. The astronomical cost of a new generation fab is now much more limiting in getting more transistors squeezed on a chip than physics itself.
Of course, there is an other aspect of getting investors with false claims, then grab the money and run. But that is not engineering, but simple fraud, dressed into a nice engineering dress. I'm not saying that Hyperloop is this, but this is definitely a high profile case of creating the "we can solve anything, just give me money" type image.
-
Can someone please explain to me the requirement for the Hyperloop (apart from being cool), with all it's inherent engineering problems, over a MegLev train?
Sure it's potentially twice the speed (so they claim), but what else? Nothing, just downsides. MagLev exists, works, is fairly robust, and has only had one(?) fatal accident, and that was a collision cause by human error.
Heck, what's that passenger capacity vs the two? MagLev might actually have greater throughput. The Shanghai one is 574 passenger capacity.
With all the ridiculous engineering requirements and potential failure points worth twice the speed? (even if it was possible)
Again, it's like Solar Roadways, solar panels aren't nearly as sexy an idea, but infinitely more practical.
-
Also suggesting the only viable topology is a linear one is flawed. Any topology is technically possible, including star, mesh etc. Single point failure won't stop whole infrastructure.
The question is about the:
a) investment cost,
b) running cost
c) durability
d) interest rate
-The interest rate is same for both Hyperloop and competing airplanes.
-The durability is not. Together with interest rate, it influences economics - durability of infrastructure can be an important decision factor.
-the investment cost per passenger*km, because of the infrastructure of that 600km...
-The running cost is tempting - no pilots on-board, automation in isolated environment, low friction, low energy usage, decent speed.
Now lets do some ballpark calculations for the 600km route and the relation in between the price and time it takes to travel that distance nowadays. In a modeled scenario one can comfortably load 4 people to a "33m/s car" (120km/h average) that in EU highway conditions does that 600km using 6*7dm3/100km*1Eur/dm3. Thus 10.5 euro and 5 man*hours per person might be assumed realistic.
Same could be done if you go to/from a hyperloop station (arbitrary 2*40 minutes, assume 0 eur) plus 40 minutes of "flight", gives 2h. How much over that 10.5 eur would you be willing to spend for the saved 3h?
If your travel time is worth 15 eur/hour for you then 10.5eur + 5h is a tie with 55.5eur + 2h. Ask more and the 15eur passenger that commutes 1h20 minutes from/to terminal won't bite.
-
Can someone please explain to me the requirement for the Hyperloop (apart from being cool), with all it's inherent engineering problems, over a MegLev train?
I have the feeling that people NEED some new mega-structure. Look at history. Pyramids, the great wall, Hoover dam, skyscrapers bigger and bigger. Today by the looks of it it is not enought to convert the entire world into a blob with internet access every square meters, road networks everywhere, oil pipes going through continents. The largest brige is "just" a bridge. They want space elevators, hyperloop, colonize the moon or build a halo over the globe. The bigger the better.
BTW, Concorde became 30 year old, extremely expensive to operate and buy tickets.
-
Also suggesting the only viable topology is a linear one is flawed. Any topology is technically possible, including star, mesh etc. Single point failure won't stop whole infrastructure.
The question is about the:
a) investment cost,
b) running cost
c) durability
d) interest rate
-The interest rate is same for both Hyperloop and competing airplanes.
-The durability is not. Together with interest rate, it influences economics - durability of infrastructure can be an important decision factor.
-the investment cost per passenger*km, because of the infrastructure of that 600km...
-The running cost is tempting - no pilots on-board, automation in isolated environment, low friction, low energy usage, decent speed.
Now lets do some ballpark calculations for the 600km route and the relation in between the price and time it takes to travel that distance nowadays. In a modeled scenario one can comfortably load 4 people to a "33m/s car" (120km/h average) that in EU highway conditions does that 600km using 6*7dm3/100km*1Eur/dm3. Thus 10.5 euro and 5 man*hours per person might be assumed realistic.
Same could be done if you go to/from a hyperloop station (arbitrary 2*40 minutes, assume 0 eur) plus 40 minutes of "flight", gives 2h. How much over that 10.5 eur would you be willing to spend for the saved 3h?
If your travel time is worth 15 eur/hour for you then 10.5eur + 5h is a tie with 55.5eur + 2h. Ask more and the 15eur passenger that commutes 1h20 minutes from/to terminal won't bite.
The costs of a car is a LOT more than just the fuel costs. You forgot the insurance and more importantly depreciation and maintenance.
Costs per km for a new car ranges from 0.40$ to 0.60$ .
So the 600km trip costs more like 250$...
But of course that makes the hyperloop idea not more viable, there are just too many risks and problems.
-
Costs per km for a new car ranges from 0.40$ to 0.60$ .
Well, I was trying to make a ballpark comparison of the scenario where 4 people (family/pals/coworkers/commuters etc) want to travel from A to B and it happens these two points are 600km apart.
As for the total cost of owning a car - I do agree there you also need whole infrastructure and there are additional costs involved. Same with airplanes and with hyperloop.
However, what hyperloop competing against as a company/project are mainly the running costs of other options (here a car). I also do agree that nowadays a passenger car is not a very endure asset, it is being scarped after 200k:300k km.
Ok, so add 25k eur/300k km *600km and it gives additional 12.5eur per person for the investment cost of the car. That ramps up the ticket price from 55.5eur to 68eur per person.
So the 600km trip costs more like 250$...
68eur*4=299$ as of today ^-^
So if the average wage and the value of an hour in some region is 15eur/h and there are enough customers within that 1h20min to/from range then a 68eur ticket per person is "within range".
-If it is twice as that, at 136eur, the project won't get serious attention and volume.
-If it is half as that, at 34eur, you are unlikely to meet <4 people of 15eur/h traveling from A to B by car.
What I wanted to point out is the top limit one can pull out of that hyperloop. If you want more then either find A and B where there are no roads in between (some straight) or where you can count on higher salaries than the 15eur/h or you can force some governmental restrictions on road traffic. I also understand that if the hyperloop is safer than other means, you can ramp up that 68eur a little bit. People are also likely to pay for an additional comfort, lower environmental impact, etc.
YMMV.
-
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/44/Marge_vs._the_Monorail_%28promo_card%29.png)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM)
-
The fallen one, if my memory serves me correctly, is an AirFrance one. The poor thing was hit by a debris coming from a poorly maintained PanAm.
The ultimate reason of Concorde being phased out, IMHO, is solely for cost reasons. By that time, new generation B767 and B777 have astonishing fuel efficiency and can also offer smooth traveling experience.
Debris from a GE CF6 as dropped by a Continental DC-10, not PanAm.
-
Unconvincing bust. He simplifies things quite a bit, takes several cheap shots, and doesn't allow for any obvious or less obvious solutions to the fatal problems he mentions. I like Dave's busting videos better, they seem to be more solid.
-
Yes, I can see that Solar Roadways are a silly idea, but when it comes to the Hyperloop I'm prepared to sit this one out for a while and see if anything realistic is produced. So, here's a target off the top of my head
A 5 Km Hyperloop test track within the next five years.
If I don't see that then I'll just write the idea off, but Musk has been associated with two ideas so far which people said would never work and, surprise surprise, we now have viable electric cars and reusable rockets.
-
Unconvincing bust. He simplifies things quite a bit, takes several cheap shots, and doesn't allow for any obvious or less obvious solutions to the fatal problems he mentions. I like Dave's busting videos better, they seem to be more solid.
That's because he's not debunking the concept - but the product Hyperloop as presented by the company. All their claims are obviously wrong, and he convincingly shows this.
You can make the Hyperloop, but the technical challenges are equivalent to or even bigger than landing on the moon (imho) - you can't do this on a $25 a ticket (or whatever the estimated price per ticket was). In fact, it will never be a financially viable competitor to existing ways of transport.
-
I wouldn't have thought it possible for a launch vehicle to land in an upright orientation but, somehow, it's happening.
In steam pipes, thermal expansion is taken up in S bends of the piping. Somehow, I think that problem is solvable. How about circulating liquid nitrogen through the 'rail' or whatever. OK, nitrogen might be a poor choice but there must be some way to keep expansion under control.
The rest is just details!
-
Maintaining even a low pressure inside a 600 km tube with the safety implications is not doable IMO.
Shanghai Maglev ticket is $8/single journey, compared to metro it is 12 times more expensive. Still, the government pays hundreds of millions CNY per year to maintain it.
It would be interesting to see a privately operated 800kphmph (wtf? supersonic?) tube running and actually making money.
I didn't know there was a maglev track in operation! :D
And yep, even if they are able to solve all the technical problems and safety issues, the question is if they can do it in an economically viable way.
A lot problems can be solved more or less "easily" if you can throw money at them, the tricky part is making things in an efficient and cost effective manner that still have the performance you want.
-
Qantas 32 had lots of error messages :P
I think the hyperloop is inefficient. The tube system in futurama even though much slower would be much more efficient as theres no vacuum, just pump air and only deal with the weight of people rather than capsules + people. Since everyone is transported individually there will not be any need for waiting so traffic going in and out will be smooth. This would mean a lot less cars and fuel.
-
Unconvincing bust. He simplifies things quite a bit, takes several cheap shots, and doesn't allow for any obvious or less obvious solutions to the fatal problems he mentions.
Perhaps you like to explain those solutions in detail then?
-
Qantas 32 had lots of error messages :P
It was crazy!
I highly recommend the book:
http://amzn.to/2a9vfSm (http://amzn.to/2a9vfSm)
-
I didn't know there was a maglev track in operation! :D
Yep, I've been on it. Got a photo of the 400+kmh speedometer sign somewhere, but can't find it. It was awesome. The train passing in the other direction at the same speed was insane!
-
What if this was only used for transporting cargo until they felt like they absolutely nailed
the human safety issue? It would eliminate limits on deceleration and what not.
Also I want to post something very interesting that was mentioned by someone else on this project.
I don't know much about gasses so hoping someone who does know can check if it's right.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hyperloop_one_busted_by_the_youtube/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hyperloop_one_busted_by_the_youtube/)
By Hwillis
"...
Decompression Shockwaves: He clearly did not do any math. The hyperloop is 300,000 times longer than it is wide. The flow into the tube is extremely limited over distance. 2km from the breach, flow will be slowed to 5%. Assuming air is indeed rushing in at the speed of sound, air will only be moving 80mph in the tube 2km from the breach. Perfectly safe.
Additionally, in order to get that fast flow, you need to destroy a section of tube entirely. A hole half a meter wide would cause 6% the flow of a fully open tube. You need an fully open tube, not a breach or leak, in order to cause a dangerous failure. A bullet, grenade or even a car crash would not be enough to do that. Since the sudden change in air pressure is gonna try to shut the tube as well, this circumstance is extremely unlikely. This shutting effect would only be at the end of the tube, since the crushing effect would only happen for a very brief time, and the tube is very strong. It's made of the same thickness of steel they use to cover large holes in the road."
He cites two equation websites for his reduced flow claim.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pressure-drop-compressed-air-pipes-d_852.html (http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/pressure-drop-compressed-air-pipes-d_852.html)
http://www.tlv.com/global/TI/calculator/water-flow-rate-through-orifice.html# (http://www.tlv.com/global/TI/calculator/water-flow-rate-through-orifice.html#)
Moving on, another interesting example of a long vacuum tube is the LIGO experiment built to detect gravity waves.
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/vacuum (https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/vacuum)
They state,
"LIGO’s vacuum tubes were constructed of spiral-welded 304L stainless steel a mere 3 mm thick."
"The 1.2 m diameter beam tubes were created in 19 to 20 m-long segments, rolled into a tube with a continuous spiral weld (far left photo). While a mathematically perfect cylinder will not collapse under pressure, any small imperfection in a real tube would allow it to buckle (a crushed vacuum tube would be catastrophic). To prevent collapse, LIGO's tubes are supported with stiffener rings that provide a significant layer of resistance to buckling under the extreme pressure of the atmosphere. The tubes must withstand these stresses for at least 20 years."
(https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/media_files/binaries/82/original/BEAM_TUBE_MFGR_AND_WELD_PHOTO.jpg?1430436713)
(https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/system/media_files/binaries/98/original/BEAM_TUBE_SEGMENT.png?1430438544)
-
Certainly, it's not going to be vulnerable to, say, small arms fire. The number of people in possession of AP or HE munitions is probably small. But, still, a valid risk, given the kind of people we have here...
The greatest challenge is, even if all these problems are solved (which I believe they can be), the fact will remain that it's preposterously expensive (way more than the initial estimate, to solve all the initially-unforeseen challenges, and to solve other problems as they arise), and worst of all, just a big overly-important financial circle-jerk for the backers (who will win and who will lose? Take a spin on Hyperloop Of Fortune!).
As with all things: follow the money. Who gets paid, who gets shafted? That's a bit of research I'd like to see.
Tim
-
The california high speed rail from los angeles to san francisco will cost $68billion to construct. That is for a conventional train.
How on earth is Hyperloop going to build the whole thing for 1/10th the price of a conventional rail?? This is pure BS.
It would more likely cost in the region of $100billion...
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050815/elon-musks-hyperloop-economically-feasible.asp (http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/050815/elon-musks-hyperloop-economically-feasible.asp)
-
Unconvincing bust. He simplifies things quite a bit, takes several cheap shots, and doesn't allow for any obvious or less obvious solutions to the fatal problems he mentions.
Perhaps you like to explain those solutions in detail then?
Well for the joints, rather than a sliding joint for expansion, a simple bellows connection between each pipe segment would be simple and effective. Works in real high vacuum systems and for oil pipelines. An emergency shutter to block any uncontrolled venting if the next car isn't going to hit it, etc.
I'm sure there isn't going to be just a vacuum pumping station at either end, so why not combine the shutter, pumping station and an emergency exit/station into one unit.
I also found the turbine / turbomolecular pump comparisons a bit lacking in substance. (Turbomolecular pumps go this fast, turbines only go this fast)
Sure, they are going to need a pressure ratio of 750-1000:1, and jet engines are usually 20-40:1, and turbo pumps are much higher. But at uhv, the physics get a lot different, and turbopumps don't even operate at 1 mbar like they want to operate the hyperloop at. Sure its an engineering task, but not insurmountable. It would be interesting to know what someone with experience in the field would say about it.
Honestly, I find the idea of metal fatigue in the passengers compartment, and station area much more concerning than some of the issues pointed out. Luckily it doesnt need to be as light as airplanes.
-
Qantas 32 had lots of error messages :P
It was crazy!
I highly recommend the book:
http://amzn.to/2a9vfSm (http://amzn.to/2a9vfSm)
You didnt get my joke in relation to my name lol.
-
Can someone please explain to me the requirement for the Hyperloop (apart from being cool), with all it's inherent engineering problems, over a MegLev train?
It's to save money. The idea is that air suspension is cheaper than MagLev.
I don't see why you couldn't put a MagLev in a low pressure tube though.
The california high speed rail from los angeles to san francisco will cost $68billion to construct. That is for a conventional train.
How on earth is Hyperloop going to build the whole thing for 1/10th the price of a conventional rail??
The idea was that they would save a huge amount of money by not having to purchase dedicated right of way. A lot of people have objected to that since the initial proposal.
-
Unconvincing bust. He simplifies things quite a bit, takes several cheap shots, and doesn't allow for any obvious or less obvious solutions to the fatal problems he mentions.
Perhaps you like to explain those solutions in detail then?
I'm not saying the Hyperloop can work, and I certainly don't have the skills do design the whole system, but I also don't make absolute claims, like Thunderf00t does. If you make claims, back them up with solid evidence. I don't know why you're calling me out here, since this is exactly what you did in your various busting videos: let them have every detail that you can't 100% show isn't possible, and still show it doesn't work. Or is it just that because Thunderf00t can make a fancy video that he's more right? Hyperloop's videos are even fancier, you know...
But hey, if you like I can go into the details.
Expansion of tubes, station shifting by hundreds of meters: as mentioned earlier in this thread, wouldn't rail tracks have the same problem? You don't see those shifting around all the time. Steel on this scale has quite a bit of elasticity to it, it can be compressed. Or if that's not an option, you can use sliding seals. Shock absorbers use those, and they hold up to a lot more than just 100kPa. I'm sure there are other solutions as well.
Lot's of vacuum seals, and implication that it's impossible to get them all to seal properly: probably true, but Hyperloop claim the distributed nature of the vacuum pumps will handle leaks, which even they acknowlege are unavoidable. So is it possible to make the seals reliable enough? I don't know, Thunderf00t certainly doesn't show any evidence that it isn't.
The video segments showing those interior designers: what are they doing in the video, they're supposed to show that Hyperloop consists of idea people with little background in engineering? I'm pretty sure they have engineers too. This is a cheap shot at ridiculing Hyperloop, an ad hominem attack (well, ad company), when otherwise the video is meant to show that the engineering is impossible. It seems out of place.
Massive buckling problems due to temperature differentials: Couldn't you just make the pipes strong enough to handle it? Maybe that'd make it economically unviable, but that's not what Thunderf00t says - he says it's technically impossible. But it's clearly not, otherwise gas pipelines would buckle all the time. There's really very little in the way of technical limits as to how strong you can make something, as evidenced by submarines (military ones handle thousands of kPa, research ones tens of thousands even) or, say, dams and tunnels. And if the steel pipe on it's own really is too weak, welding in some rings as shown in th picture above should do it? Or does that make it too expensive already? I don't know, but I do know that there isn't a technical problem here.
A catastrophic accident of a single car causing destruction of every other car in the system: Yeah, no. First, even if you open the pipe to its full diameter and let air rush in, that shockwave is going to die down, question is, how quickly. Now I'm not sure how to calculate this situation (but I have a COMSOL simulation running over night) but we could get a very rough idea by using the formula for calculating pressure drop from a compressor in a pneumatic system with constant flow. The numbers say, after about 66km there's about a 100kPa drop, after 37km (average car distance according to Hyperloop) there's a roughly 60kPa drop. Now clearly, that isn't the definitive answer since the actual situation isn't static, but it's enough to make me think that friction plays a role here and the pressure wave is not going to travel through the whole system at full strength, destroying everything, as Thunderf00t claims.
Second, why would the whole system have to be one open, connected tube? You could add a pressure lock every 1km that opens for cars and closes behind them, which would thus contain a catastrophe.
The engine: actually, that turbine is not meant for propulsion. Hyperloop say that the cars are powered by external linear actuators, the turbine is there to avoid the cars pushing a column of air in front of them, which even at 0.1kPa, will add up. So it doesn't have to produce any noticeable thrust. Of course, it might still be possible that even just moving the amount of air involved is impossible, I don't know. The parts of the video are based on a misunderstanding and aren't really helpful.
-
More thoughts -- underlying reasons.
Space gun (EM launch)?
It's a vacuum barrel, long enough to reach high into the atmosphere (if suitably supported). It's not advertised for escape velocity (perhaps that would be a little too ambitious of an introduction?), but could presumably be used as such, given enough power.
That's a *much* better connection to SpaceX, and gives them reason to invest. (Still, not excluding the executive-circle-jerk possibility. Which itself should have a bit more of an underlying reason. Which this maybe helps with, maybe not.)
Why not promote it as such? Well, travel is a more practical application. People balk at "useless" pie-in-the-sky space research. There's nothing up there. (Yet.)
Tim
-
So, the simulation is done, here's the result:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=243812;image)
What you see is a section of the tube 5km in length and 2.23 diameter (the diameter is drawn 100x bigger so we can more easily see what's happening) with the left end open. The scale is orange at the very left = outside pressure, dark blue = vacuum. The turquoise at the right near the end of the animation is about 0.75 * outside pressure.
The animation should be drawn in real time, i.e. at 10 frames per second, with one frame corresponding to 0.1 seconds in simulation time.
What we can clearly see is that the pressure behind the wave front drops as the wave runs through the tube, and that the wave front itself becomes more spread out. If we take that factor of 0.75/5km, after 35km (average distance to next car) we'll have a factor of 0.13, which doesn't seem so catastrophic anymore.
-
I think one of the problems people arguing this have is that they have been using smaller models since the size of the tube matters for how severe re-pressurisation is.
If the even of pressurisation perhaps other parts of the tubes could also start repressurising but at a slower rate to reduce the severity of a tube breaking up.
However i think that this hyperloop specifically is a scam and that it is better to get investors for R&D instead of trying to show that you are building it or something like that. I know people have good intentions but it is the R&D that is needed first. Its more to do with their presentation that makes me thing it is a scam like with those many sites that try to show cool technological stuff which arent real but make it seem plausible.
-
Seems to me just another example of technology being driven by the extremely wealthy who, whilst of course educated and successful, have no real grasp of practical engineering. I think it can work, but will it be practical and make money? nope. It's not as bad as U-beam -which isn't complete fruitloopery as you can transfer power, its just woefully impractical and dangerous if it is to transfer any useful power. I'm sure current engineering can make a single 'hyperloop' line work, but the only point would be to have something that seems futuristic and would become a black hole for its investors.
Also, people like Elon Musk make headlines. Remember a few months back he claimed that he thought the 'universe was a simulation'? Why was that news? its a very old idea, floated by many philosophers, and of course made into a successful film franchise. It was news because he said it, and the media like to think that those who have built very successful businesses must know everything about everything.
-
You Europeans are missing the context, which is the enormous boondoggle/scam called California High Speed Rail. Hyperloop may seem implausible, but at least it has a chance, where most people think CHSR is guaranteed to fail :(
-
You Europeans are missing the context, which is the enormous boondoggle/scam called California High Speed Rail. Hyperloop may seem implausible, but at least it has a chance, where most people think CHSR is guaranteed to fail :(
Worth noting that, although SF and LA are, themselves, rather large cities / metro areas, the fact is this: the distance between them is equivalent to travelling between states in Europe. Except, when you travel between states in Europe, you pass tens (hundreds?) of stops at large and small cities, along the way, say between Paris and Berlin for instance.
The vast majority of the US, is so large, and so low density, that you can drive the same distance without finding more than villages.
Not that the route between SF and LA is that low density (I forget which cities the planned route passes, but it'll be more than just the two endpoints), but it's still not the kind of density that makes railways so beneficial in Europe.
Here in Wisconsin, we've had the same sorts of proposals. We waste enough money on sports stadiums for crappy teams and games (but, I'm no fan of baseball, anyway... *cough* ;) ), we don't need to spend that kind of money on a rail that connects the two largest cities and a hundred miles of farmland!
Tim
-
You Europeans are missing the context, which is the enormous boondoggle/scam called California High Speed Rail. Hyperloop may seem implausible, but at least it has a chance, where most people think CHSR is guaranteed to fail :(
We're trying, we've got HS2, or as we like to call it H2S. http://stophs2.org (http://stophs2.org)
-
Bah, Solaren, now THAT's a scam!
http://www.solarenspace.com/ (http://www.solarenspace.com/)
-
The thing I don't get about this whole thing is that the logic seems to be: if you break the seal, everyone dies --> BUSTED!.
Well, by that metric, airplanes, trains, cars are all BUSTED as well because one can contrive (and see demonstrations of) deaths due to failures of components of all these things.
It's obviously a very very ambitious idea, and I have strong doubts whether it will ever succeed. But to call it "BUSTED", frankly, dilutes the brand of the word BUSTED which should be restricted to things that are impossible, not just dangerous.
-
I'm not saying the Hyperloop can work, and I certainly don't have the skills do design the whole system, but I also don't make absolute claims, like Thunderf00t does.
He's doing back of the envelop calcs to show how impractical and fragile the system is going to be.
You only need one of those showstoppers to be true to the entire project to be a guaranteed bust.
If you make claims, back them up with solid evidence. I don't know why you're calling me out here
Because you said this:
Unconvincing bust. He simplifies things quite a bit, takes several cheap shots, and doesn't allow for any obvious or less obvious solutions to the fatal problems he mentions.
That implies that you think he's wrong and you have "obvious" solution to his argument.
Please present those obvious and less obvious solutions.
, since this is exactly what you did in your various busting videos: let them have every detail that you can't 100% show isn't possible, and still show it doesn't work. Or is it just that because Thunderf00t can make a fancy video that he's more right? Hyperloop's videos are even fancier, you know...
It's about back of the envelope practicality calcs.
Expansion of tubes, station shifting by hundreds of meters: as mentioned earlier in this thread, wouldn't rail tracks have the same problem? You don't see those shifting around all the time. Steel on this scale has quite a bit of elasticity to it, it can be compressed. Or if that's not an option, you can use sliding seals. Shock absorbers use those, and they hold up to a lot more than just 100kPa. I'm sure there are other solutions as well.
Shock absorbers are much smaller in diameter, not a good analogy.
And you need thousands of these large diameter seals to work perffectly 24/7 to keep this system working. It's a fundamentally stupid idea from a practical engineering standpoint, when you can eliminate all that problem with existing proven tech at half the speed (MagLev)
Lot's of vacuum seals, and implication that it's impossible to get them all to seal properly: probably true
Now your getting it.
but Hyperloop claim the distributed nature of the vacuum pumps will handle leaks, which even they acknowlege are unavoidable. So is it possible to make the seals reliable enough? I don't know, Thunderf00t certainly doesn't show any evidence that it isn't.
The argument is that it seems pretty stupid to even try to manage such a system.
The video segments showing those interior designers: what are they doing in the video, they're supposed to show that Hyperloop consists of idea people with little background in engineering?
Solar Roadways have engineers.
UBeam have some of the finest ultrasonic PhD's in the world.
Both of these ideas will never ever work.
Massive buckling problems due to temperature differentials: Couldn't you just make the pipes strong enough to handle it? Maybe that'd make it economically unviable, but that's not what Thunderf00t says - he says it's technically impossible. But it's clearly not, otherwise gas pipelines would buckle all the time. There's really very little in the way of technical limits as to how strong you can make something, as evidenced by submarines (military ones handle thousands of kPa, research ones tens of thousands even) or, say, dams and tunnels. And if the steel pipe on it's own really is too weak, welding in some rings as shown in th picture above should do it? Or does that make it too expensive already? I don't know, but I do know that there isn't a technical problem here.
It's technically possible if you throw money at it, but any practical engineer should be able to see all the big potential showstopper issues here. Unless you have a cool job at Hyperloop and then you have blinkers on, just like those at uBeam.
A catastrophic accident of a single car causing destruction of every other car in the system: Yeah, no. First, even if you open the pipe to its full diameter and let air rush in, that shockwave is going to die down, question is, how quickly. Now I'm not sure how to calculate this situation (but I have a COMSOL simulation running over night) but we could get a very rough idea by using the formula for calculating pressure drop from a compressor in a pneumatic system with constant flow. The numbers say, after about 66km there's about a 100kPa drop, after 37km (average car distance according to Hyperloop) there's a roughly 60kPa drop. Now clearly, that isn't the definitive answer since the actual situation isn't static, but it's enough to make me think that friction plays a role here and the pressure wave is not going to travel through the whole system at full strength, destroying everything, as Thunderf00t claims.
I agree you are likely right here. But one incident will take down the entire system and likely costs lives. It's an inherent fragile engineering system. In fact it's probably the most fragile system you could come up with. Good engineering does not base itself around an inherently fragile system.
Second, why would the whole system have to be one open, connected tube? You could add a pressure lock every 1km that opens for cars and closes behind them, which would thus contain a catastrophe.
A door (and seals) that need to automatically open and close every 1km, at 1000kmh, do the math. This idea simply takes you further down the rabbit hole of impracticality.
You are trying to come up with a solution to fix an idea that is inherently flawed.
The engine: actually, that turbine is not meant for propulsion. Hyperloop say that the cars are powered by external linear actuators, the turbine is there to avoid the cars pushing a column of air in front of them, which even at 0.1kPa, will add up. So it doesn't have to produce any noticeable thrust. Of course, it might still be possible that even just moving the amount of air involved is impossible, I don't know. The parts of the video are based on a misunderstanding and aren't really helpful.
Probably right.
-
What we can clearly see is that the pressure behind the wave front drops as the wave runs through the tube, and that the wave front itself becomes more spread out. If we take that factor of 0.75/5km, after 35km (average distance to next car) we'll have a factor of 0.13, which doesn't seem so catastrophic anymore.
You can go ride it first then, good luck. I'll take the infinitely more robust and safe MagLev at half the speed thanks.
-
It's obviously a very very ambitious idea, and I have strong doubts whether it will ever succeed. But to call it "BUSTED", frankly, dilutes the brand of the word BUSTED which should be restricted to things that are impossible, not just dangerous.
BUSTED means it isn't a practical solution.
-
Qantas 32 had lots of error messages :P
It was crazy!
I highly recommend the book:
http://amzn.to/2a9vfSm (http://amzn.to/2a9vfSm)
You didnt get my joke in relation to my name lol.
I didn't get the joke because it wasn't a joke!
If you read the QF32 book, it's all about constant endless error messages being kicked up by the ECAM system and how they spent hours working through them.
-
Why not leave all the air in it, but make it a very fast wind tunnel, there'd be almost no wind resistance for 'the pod' then.
-
Why not leave all the air in it, but make it a very fast wind tunnel, there'd be almost no wind resistance for 'the pod' then.
Tremendous resistance from the pipe itself, and the 'pod' exhibits greater shear as the air is either confined to a smaller cross section (where the pod itself is), or the buildup of pressure waves (if supersonic flow, which would be necessary for comparable speed).
You'd need tens of atmospheres at one end of the pipe to maintain anywhere near subsonic flow, which you can imagine wouldn't go over well... Otherwise, you'd need pumps along the pipe to maintain flow, which is just as bad.
Another way to think of it: you have less shear per unit length (maybe) on a maglev train car, which travels the same speed but through free air (not air in a pipe). But that's drag only from the train's surface, not the entirety of the tracks it runs on!
Or in still other words:
The surface of a maglev train is only the train's body length. The inner surface of a "pneumatic tube" is the entire length of the tube!
Tim
-
You can go ride it first then, good luck. I'll take the infinitely more robust and safe MagLev at half the speed thanks.
Are you sure the first ride on a 380MPH MagLev would be robust and safe :-//
-
The inner surface of a "pneumatic tube" is the entire length of the tube!
I was surprised in the simulation above, that the air wavefront didn't quickly become very bullet shaped, it didn't look right to me.
-
So, the simulation is done, here's the result:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=243812;image)
...
Can you please share your equations and calculations?
This is the second time I've seen someone mention how the cascade scenario TF points to is a miscalculaton.
Another guy I quoted earlier on mentioned that the flow would be reduced to 5% after 2km into the pipe.
I haven't seen many try and proof read thunderf00ts claim of air rushing in at full volume at the speed of sound.
Also initially you can avoid any human danger by only using this for cargo transport.
Btw EEVblog, Hyperloop is maglev train, the turbine is there to further reduce air resistance
by shoving that air under or behind the capsule apparently.
p.s.
I am also a huge fan of the maglev train and especially love the transrapid by the Germans which is now dead unfortunately.
It would attract the train on to the rail then let go, and attract 100 000 times per second to maintain a constant gap of 10mm.
What a beauty!
-
The inner surface of a "pneumatic tube" is the entire length of the tube!
I was surprised in the simulation above, that the air wavefront didn't quickly become very bullet shaped, it didn't look right to me.
Wave physics! You'll see that at the entry opening, but it's a plane wave (more or less) that pushes ahead.
The ripples are from dispersion, because the pipe is an acoustic waveguide (which, unlike EM waveguide, does support low frequencies -- acoustic waves are longitudinal, so a pipe goes all the way down to DC, which requires a coax cable (supports TEM mode) for EM waves). Wave velocity varies with frequency, so the frequency components in the wavefront spread out as they propagate.
Dispersion also has another effect:
Because the frequency components separate, the wave front is no longer a sharp rising edge, but a series of ripples (something like a sinc(t) function, although it's more of a chirp wavelet). This manifests as a weaker overpressure, less peak acceleration when the wave hits something.
This is geometric in origin, and independent of loss. But losses will also contribute to dispersion, and considerably reduce the amount of pressure being supplied towards the wavefront. (Essentially, very low frequencies are significantly attenuated and delayed: hence, still more dispersion.) Which is akin to a tsunami, where the amplitude may not be much (a few feet / 10s of kPa), but even if the wavefront doesn't cause immediate damage, the constant and maintained flow will soon overwhelm anything in the way, pushing it around like matchsticks.
A shockwave is a phenomenon where so much energy has been pushed into the wavefront, that it heats up (adiabatically), thus raising the speed of sound and allowing the wavefront to propagate faster than the cool air it moves into. This is impossible* from atmospheric pressure alone, so we don't have to worry about shockwaves here.
*Well, maybe if the air rushes into a vacuum tube (as we're talking about here, but not so long that the wavefront disperses), then hits a rigid end wall and bounces back. That causes the wavefront to double back on itself, raising the pressure inside the tube (from the capped end towards the mouth) to about double, which will therefore heat it, and accelerate the return wave. The result will be a ringdown waveform (nominally a square wave, since it's a constant cross-section transmission line) with an odd duty cycle.
Tim
-
I'm still convinced that the front should be bullet shaped.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-GB&gbv=2&tbm=isch&q=laminar+flow+in+pipe (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-GB&gbv=2&tbm=isch&q=laminar+flow+in+pipe)
-
I'm still convinced that the front should be bullet shaped.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-GB&gbv=2&tbm=isch&q=laminar+flow+in+pipe (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en-GB&gbv=2&tbm=isch&q=laminar+flow+in+pipe)
Only if friction/loss is factored in. (Not taking a position on whether it should be or not, it's just silly to have a debate on "whether the front should be bullet shaped" because the answer to that question is totally contingent on whether you want to factor in wall friction.)
-
Only if friction/loss is factored in. (Not taking a position on whether it should be or not, it's just silly to have a debate on "whether the front should be bullet shaped" because the answer to that question is totally contingent on whether you want to factor in wall friction.)
As T3sl4co1l said "Tremendous resistance from the pipe itself". So no need to take that into account then. :)
-
Only if friction/loss is factored in. (Not taking a position on whether it should be or not, it's just silly to have a debate on "whether the front should be bullet shaped" because the answer to that question is totally contingent on whether you want to factor in wall friction.)
But it's not dependent. :)
Tim
-
The wavefront might be bullet shaped actually, I haven't checked. If it is, it would be hard to see, since the plot is stretched 100x vertically as mentioned above.
As for equations and so on: heh, I have no idea. I just put the geometry, fluid (air in this case) and pressure parameters into COMSOL's turbulent flow models, and tweaked the params a bit until it would finish the simulation in about 18 hours instead of 10 years, and then let it do its thing. And as for how COMSOL comes up with its results... eh that'd be quite an essay, but I'm sure someone has written it already :)
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDwe2M-LDZQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDwe2M-LDZQ)
-
Second, why would the whole system have to be one open, connected tube? You could add a pressure lock every 1km that opens for cars and closes behind them, which would thus contain a catastrophe.
Now one fails to open:
(http://rs523.pbsrc.com/albums/w356/unkadug/explosion-1.gif~c200)
>1000km/h into a wall sounds awesome!
-
Second, why would the whole system have to be one open, connected tube? You could add a pressure lock every 1km that opens for cars and closes behind them, which would thus contain a catastrophe.
Now one fails to open:
(http://rs523.pbsrc.com/albums/w356/unkadug/explosion-1.gif~c200)
>1000km/h into a wall sounds awesome!
Hehe yeah, that would be quite spectacular. So those locks better actually work :) And if they don't... well if you open them far enough in advance, the car can brake and stop before hitting it. Opening them about 6km ahead of a car should just about be enough.
-
He's doing back of the envelop calcs to show how impractical and fragile the system is going to be.
You only need one of those showstoppers to be true to the entire project to be a guaranteed bust.
Nope, he's not. He's facepalming in a very elaborate way. If he has done back of the envelope calculations, he's certainly not showing them in the video. And yeah, I agree, one showstopper would be enough. But Thunderf00t hasn't demonstrated one. Personally, I think the likely showstopper is cost; if I were to try busting the hyperloop idea, I'd start there. Then again, this might become a prestige project that some government would be willing to throw unreasonable amounts of money at. It happens :-//
That implies that you think he's wrong and you have "obvious" solution to his argument.
Please present those obvious and less obvious solutions.
No, I think he's making a fallacious argument: he's saying that some problem is unsolveable because one suggested solution doesn't work. But to be convincing, he'd have to demonstrate that no feasible solution can exist.
Shock absorbers are much smaller in diameter, not a good analogy.
And you need thousands of these large diameter seals to work perffectly 24/7 to keep this system working. It's a fundamentally stupid idea from a practical engineering standpoint, when you can eliminate all that problem with existing proven tech at half the speed (MagLev)
It wasn't meant as an analogy, but as an example. Maybe vacuum seals really won't scale up, but then again, they don't have to scale up far, we're only talking an order of magnitude here, which feels to me like something that's difficult but far from technically impossible to do. Maybe someone with a mechanical engineering background can elaborate? And Hyperloop claim that the seals don't have to work perfectly, again they say the assume that there will be leaks.
And well, calling something stupid with lots of handwaving towards various problems is stating an opinion, maybe even an educated one. But it's not really enough to be called busting an idea, imo.
The argument is that it seems pretty stupid to even try to manage such a system.
Didn't hear that, maybe because I didn't read between the lines deep enough. But hey, why not run the numbers in a back-of-the-envelope kind of way and say something like, even if you use the best available seals which have reliability x, and you have very good technicians to replace them in y time, you'd still spend more than half a day every day replacing seals, which would mean downtime for the system... yadayada. But saying "6000 seals!!!", and adding some more rethorical exclamation marks instead of an explanation isn't a very convincing argument.
The video segments showing those interior designers: what are they doing in the video, they're supposed to show that Hyperloop consists of idea people with little background in engineering?
Solar Roadways have engineers.
UBeam have some of the finest ultrasonic PhD's in the world.
Both of these ideas will never ever work.
My point was: How is showing that hyperloop employs designers too furthering the unfeasibility argument? Well, it doesn't. It's ridiculing hyperloop, which whether they deserve it or not does nothing as far as busting feasibility is concerned. So why even have that scene in there at all.
It's technically possible if you throw money at it, but any practical engineer should be able to see all the big potential showstopper issues here. Unless you have a cool job at Hyperloop and then you have blinkers on, just like those at uBeam.
They are throwing quite a bit of money at it. Is it enough? Again, some back of the envelope calculations would come in handy, but someone would actually have to do them. Maybe it should be the guy that's trying to convince everyone else it couldn't possibly work.
But one incident will take down the entire system and likely costs lives. It's an inherent fragile engineering system. In fact it's probably the most fragile system you could come up with. Good engineering does not base itself around an inherently fragile system.
Most fragile? I'd probably go with airplanes for that one. They're as safe as they are because of massive overengineering. And well, yes, incidents will affect the system and kill people, that's the nature of them. Train collisions unfortunately still happen too, they kill people, they cause blockages for days, yet people still use those.
A door (and seals) that need to automatically open and close every 1km, at 1000kmh, do the math. This idea simply takes you further down the rabbit hole of impracticality.
You are trying to come up with a solution to fix an idea that is inherently flawed.
I have thought about that, and it doesn't seem so difficult to do? The doors themselves could move quite slowly, and open well in advance of a car. They'd have to move just fast enough to isolate two cars from one another, pressure-wise.
But really, my point is not about the hyperloop. My point is that if you claim BUSTED, you need to actually show BUSTED. And saying "Can't you see how ridiculous this is?" isn't showing anything. Doesn't have to be an airtight proof, but there have to be at least a couple of steps in that direction. And if you don't do that, I'll call it an unconvincing argument, regardless of whether I think that the claim has merit or not.
-
But really, my point is not about the hyperloop. My point is that if you claim BUSTED, you need to actually show BUSTED. And saying "Can't you see how ridiculous this is?" isn't showing anything. Doesn't have to be an airtight proof, but there have to be at least a couple of steps in that direction. And if you don't do that, I'll call it an unconvincing argument, regardless of whether I think that the claim has merit or not.
I agree. My opinion of Thunderfoot went down a few notches after watching the videos. IMHO he's using the solar roadways comparison as click bait - trying to garner views, but his attempt at " busting" the hyperloop concept is a fail. It may or may not be viable but he has not proved it isn't - only pointed out some of the well known challenges while refuting some possible solutions to those. With solar roadways - the problems are well known and well studied - and easily proved insurmountable with current PV technology. Hyperloop is different - this is a new concept and most of the technology has yet to be developed.
I agree that any LA to SF hyperloop is very unlikely to ever be built - but I suspect that is will more likely be due to cost and politics.
-
Now one fails to open:
Hmm, it's also fairly important that railroad switches don't fail. Congratulations for once again delivering an argument that "busts" existing railroads just as much as the hyperloop. Seriously, I'm not defending the practicality of the Hyperloop, much like Maxlor. But pithy remarks like this that don't actually bust anything are exactly the sort of polarizing rhetoric that makes the internet such an echo-chamber.
BUSTED means it isn't a practical solution.
The claims made by solar roadways can be demonstrated to be impossible on the back of an envelope. Not just impractical, but forbidden by the basic laws of physics. The story for batteriser is similar.
The hyperloop could be constructed, theoretically. It might be insanely dangerous. It might cost more money that the entire world has. It might be entirely pointless, and indeed massively impractical. But it is not outright impossible. In particular, I find "If X breaks, then you die" arguments utterly bizarre and unconvincing, because airplanes.
Now of course there's no point getting into a nomenclature debate here, you are free to define "BUSTED" however you choose, and to be absolutely clear I'm not claiming that anything you've said or referenced is incorrect. I just want to express that there is a distinct shade of grey here*, unlike the cases of Solar Roadways and Batteriser. The tfoot video, in my opinion, muddies and dilutes the "brand" that is "BUSTED".
* Which, as expressed above, the internet sucks at handling/representing -- although I think this means we have a responsibility not to contribute to this fact.
-
Hyperloop is different - this is a new concept and most of the technology has yet to be developed.
It's a concept that is nearly 100 year old.
-
Hmm, it's also fairly important that railroad switches don't fail. Congratulations for once again delivering an argument that "busts" existing railroads just as much as the hyperloop. Seriously, I'm not defending the practicality of the Hyperloop, much like Maxlor. But pithy remarks like this that don't actually bust anything are exactly the sort of polarizing rhetoric that makes the internet such an echo-chamber.
Do the math.
The doors have to open and close within seconds of a capsule arriving at the speed of sound.
And a breach in one section will likely blow out the seal and/or the surround and cascade that failure into the next section.
It's engineering folly.
It's only being worked on because Musk is Musk, and he's able to generate a lot of hype that someone used to get funding. The rest is media frenzy.
It's important to note that Musk is NOT putting his own money into it, and has nothing to do with the company trying to make it.
-
BUSTED means it isn't a practical solution.
The claims made by solar roadways can be demonstrated to be impossible on the back of an envelope. Not just impractical, but forbidden by the basic laws of physics. The story for batteriser is similar.
The hyperloop could be constructed, theoretically. It might be insanely dangerous. It might cost more money that the entire world has. It might be entirely pointless, and indeed massively impractical. But it is not outright impossible.
You really need to read my sentence above again.
-
Hyperloop is different - this is a new concept and most of the technology has yet to be developed.
It's a concept that is nearly 100 year old.
...and already used on the moon since 1999.
(http://catacombs.space1999.net/main/images/spacehd/b/spb0451.jpg)
-
Hyperloop is different - this is a new concept and most of the technology has yet to be developed.
It's a concept that is nearly 100 year old.
I thought it was obvious that I was referring to the specific case of using it ("the compressor within a tube" concept) for mass transit on a large scale - and not the general concept of transport of an object in a low pressure tube - which has been around and used for years...
The comparison to solar roadways is bogus in either case.
-
You Europeans are missing the context, which is the enormous boondoggle/scam called California High Speed Rail. Hyperloop may seem implausible, but at least it has a chance, where most people think CHSR is guaranteed to fail :(
Madrid - Barcelona; 621 km
San Francisco - Los Angeles; 616 km
The former used to be the busiest air route in the world (seats/day), now there's a high speed train, every 30 minutes that takes between 2h30m (nonstop) to 3h10m (two stops) at 300kmph, and MAD-BCN isn't in the top 20 air routes in the world.
-
Hyperloop is different - this is a new concept and most of the technology has yet to be developed.
It's a concept that is nearly 100 year old.
I thought it was obvious that I was referring to the specific case of using it ("the compressor within a tube" concept) for mass transit on a large scale - and not the general concept of transport of an object in a low pressure tube - which has been around and used for years...
The comparison to solar roadways is bogus in either case.
In fact, its specific case of mass transit has been in use for almost 200 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway
-
Ok comparing this to solar roadways is just disingenuous.
With the solar roadway it's not a case of disproving it, it's a case of asking what's the benefit?
What is the point of combining solar panels with roads?
Conceptually right from the start there's not even a perceivable benefit to be understood there?
Where as with the vactrain i.e. Hyperloop, the supposed benefit is frictionless travel.
Maglev to get rid of wheel friction and a vacuum environment to get rid of air resistance.
On concept there IS a benefit and individually, the technologies already DO exist.
Vacuum tubes exist in the likes of LIGO which is probably the thinnest vacuum in the world and until
recently TWO completely different forms of Maglev trains existed as well.
The german transrapid and the japanese one (don't know it's name).
So like I said, completely unfair and disingenuous to suggest that this is in the same line as the
conceptually stupid solar roadway project.
-
Hyperloop is different - this is a new concept and most of the technology has yet to be developed.
It's a concept that is nearly 100 year old.
I thought it was obvious that I was referring to the specific case of using it ("the compressor within a tube" concept) for mass transit on a large scale - and not the general concept of transport of an object in a low pressure tube - which has been around and used for years...
The comparison to solar roadways is bogus in either case.
In fact, its specific case of mass transit has been in use for almost 200 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway
Interesting history. Thanks for the link. But of course very different than the hyperloop.
-
Where as with the vactrain i.e. Hyperloop, the supposed benefit is frictionless travel.
Maglev to get rid of wheel friction and a vacuum environment to get rid of air resistance.
Why bother?
I've been on a MagLev train at 430kmh, it works, it's safe, it's robust, and it's fast enough.
To go through orders of magnitude more engineering complexity, safety, and security to get the only tangible benefit which is double the speed seems pretty darn stupid to me.
-
So like I said, completely unfair and disingenuous to suggest that this is in the same line as the
conceptually stupid solar roadway project.
It's a completely fair conceptual benefits comparison I think.
The benefit of Hyperloop is double the speed of existing proven MagLev at the cost of orders of magnitude more complexity
The benefit of Solar Roadways is using existing road surface area at the cost of orders of magnitude more complexity.
-
The claims made by solar roadways can be demonstrated to be impossible on the back of an envelope. Not just impractical, but forbidden by the basic laws of physics.
Yes, many of the claims are. But the concept is perfectly plausible, and can actually be implemented and will produce energy. It's just horribly inefficient, non robust, and impractical on a large scale. It is guaranteed to fail miserably. But it can work, that is why it's so attractive to so many people.
(Of course I think the Colas Wattway project is much more practical than the stupid Solar Roadways glass tiles, but that's beside the point)
-
Why bother?
I've been on a MagLev train at 430kmh, it works, it's safe, it's robust, and it's fast enough.
To go through orders of magnitude more engineering complexity, safety, and security to get the only tangible benefit which is double the speed seems pretty darn stupid to me.
That is a completely fair assessment and one I would not argue with but it is completely different than TF's attempt at "busting" it.
It's a completely fair conceptual benefits comparison I think.
The benefit of Hyperloop is double the speed of existing proven MagLev at the cost of orders of magnitude more complexity
The benefit of Solar Roadways is using existing road surface area at the cost of orders of magnitude more complexity.
But that comparison has nothing to do with the supposed "busting"
The difference is that the solar roadways claims regarding solar output (and therefore benefit of the roadway) are easily and verifiably false where as the possibility of building a hyperloop with the benefits as envisioned by Musk is unknown - despite TFs elaborating on some of the challenges. They may turn out to be insurmountable - but at this point that is an unknown.
-
That is a completely fair assessment and one I would not argue with but it is completely different than TF's attempt at "busting" it.
You're taking it too literally. He's just pointing out the various problems.
In essence what he's saying is the same thing, it's just not going to be practical.
The difference is that the solar roadways claims regarding solar output (and therefore benefit of the roadway) are easily and verifiably false where as the possibility of building a hyperloop with the benefits as envisioned by Musk is unknown - despite TFs elaborating on some of the challenges. They may turn out to be insurmountable - but at this point that is an unknown.
Unknown? Rubbish. It something you can easily do back-of-the-envelope calcs on to ascertain the potential problems as TF has done.
You just don't like to admit that ultimately he's going to be right.
I can smell this engineering disaster a mile again, I'm surprised you can't.
-
Where as with the vactrain i.e. Hyperloop, the supposed benefit is frictionless travel.
Maglev to get rid of wheel friction and a vacuum environment to get rid of air resistance.
Why bother?
I've been on a MagLev train at 430kmh, it works, it's safe, it's robust, and it's fast enough.
To go through orders of magnitude more engineering complexity, safety, and security to get the only tangible benefit which is double the speed seems pretty darn stupid to me.
You could use the same argument to suggest that "high speed rail" as extensively used in Germany and the UK at half the speed and half the cost again would be sufficient. Maglev has some unique features making it attractive for short routes (Airport-CBD links are just about perfect) but its not a sure thing.
Externalising costs of the infrastructure makes air travel more cost effective than rail at the moment, and the hyper loop appears to be no more energy efficient than conventional rail so its hard to find much attractive about it.
-
I disagree, sure it maybe impractical but we don't know that for sure until we really test it out.
Here's an excerpt from wikipedia page on drag,
"Power
The power required to overcome the aerodynamic drag is given by: ...
Note that the power needed to push an object through a fluid increases as the cube of the velocity. A car cruising on a highway at 50 mph (80 km/h) may require only 10 horsepower (7.5 kW) to overcome air drag, but that same car at 100 mph (160 km/h) requires 80 hp (60 kW).[16]
With a doubling of speed the drag (force) quadruples per the formula. Exerting four times the force over a fixed distance produces four times as much work. At twice the speed the work (resulting in displacement over a fixed distance) is done twice as fast. Since power is the rate of doing work, four times the work done in half the time requires eight times the power."
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!
Now lets use the transrapid as an example, which I am fairly sure is the one you rode if this was in China.
Again wiki states,
"The normal energy consumption of the Transrapid is approximately 50 to 100 kilowatts (67 to 134 hp) per section for levitation and travel, and vehicle control. The drag coefficient of the Transrapid is about 0.26. The aerodynamic drag of the vehicle, which has a frontal cross section of 16 m2 (172 sq ft), requires a power consumption, at 400 km/h (249 mph) or 111 m/s (364 ft/s) cruising speed, given by the following formula ... 3.53MW"
So under the hyperloop concept, assuming the utmost ideal result, you would be getting double the normal performance
at 3.53MW instead of 28.24MW!
That seems worth trying out imo.
-
It something you can easily do back-of-the-envelope calcs on to ascertain the potential problems as TF has done.
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?
I've already said that i don't think it is likely to be built but TFs videos did not convince me that it will be because of insurmountable technical difficulties - It's too soon to say IMHO. But i'll admit I say that simply as a science/technically literate outside observer and not as an engineer.
In any case I'm glad companies like Hyperloop One are attempting to overcome the technical hurdles. It will be fun to see how far they get.
I am dissapointed that TF seems to be tryiing to milk the success of the solar roadways "Busted" videos and in that way is guilty himself of using hype to sell a product.
-
You could use the same argument to suggest that "high speed rail" as extensively used in Germany and the UK at half the speed and half the cost again would be sufficient.
Maybe, but at some point planes are going to beat them.
Maglev has some unique features making it attractive for short routes (Airport-CBD links are just about perfect) but its not a sure thing.
Sure, but from a practical engineering point of view I know where I'd put my development money.
Externalising costs of the infrastructure makes air travel more cost effective than rail at the moment, and the hyper loop appears to be no more energy efficient than conventional rail so its hard to find much attractive about it.
Agreed, especially with all the problems.
-
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!
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.
-
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?
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.
-
It something you can easily do back-of-the-envelope calcs on to ascertain the potential problems as TF has done.
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?
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]".
-
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.
-
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.
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.
-
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?
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.
That's a false logic and does not address the point - which is that demonstrating potential problems with an idea is not the same as "busting" it. As many here have pointed out the "Bust" of solar roadways was because it is easy to show that what they claim is physically impossible - not because there are difficult to overcome engineering challenges (which everyone agrees is the case for the hyperloop).
In any case I know better than to go round and round with the host of the party. As I've said - I agree that a SF to LA hyperloop is unlikely to be built - I just take issue with TF's claim of "busting" it and with the false comparison to the solar roadways scam.
-
Actually no, if you consider the profile of the main person,
Which "main person"?
A quick look over the the Hyperloop One Team (https://hyperloop-one.com/team) shows top execs with past successful careers and a total of 67 (!) engineers. Are you arguing that they all scammers?
-
There's a big problem comparing costs with the California High Speed Rail thing - that "high speed rail" project is yet another government boondoggle that will make a lot of people rich with taxpayer money - the costs per mile of that project far exceeds any reasonable amount for constructing a nice solid railroad track. No privately owned railroad would ever spend that much per mile for new track. Add in that this so-called "high speed" stuff is nothing at all like Euro high speed or Japanese high speed - it's more like getting BACK to speeds that steam engines hauled trains at 100 years ago. So to say the Hyperloop is dreaming at their cost by comparing it to the California HSR project is not a fair comparison.
-
and a total of 67 (!) engineers. Are you arguing that they all scammers?
They get paid to do interesting experiments, while assuming somebody else is doing the hard stuff.
Let's see their designs for an air-lock big enough for a train to pass through while still on it's rails!
-
There's a big problem comparing costs with the California High Speed Rail thing - that "high speed rail" project is yet another government boondoggle that will make a lot of people rich with taxpayer money - the costs per mile of that project far exceeds any reasonable amount for constructing a nice solid railroad track. No privately owned railroad would ever spend that much per mile for new track. Add in that this so-called "high speed" stuff is nothing at all like Euro high speed or Japanese high speed - it's more like getting BACK to speeds that steam engines hauled trains at 100 years ago. So to say the Hyperloop is dreaming at their cost by comparing it to the California HSR project is not a fair comparison.
And all that doesn't even take in the political issues. Do you really think they could build such a system that only served the two end cities without requiring lots of stops at other cities along the route? This idea is a true turkey and a real fiscal boondoggle.
-
There's a big problem comparing costs with the California High Speed Rail thing - that "high speed rail" project is yet another government boondoggle that will make a lot of people rich with taxpayer money - the costs per mile of that project far exceeds any reasonable amount for constructing a nice solid railroad track. No privately owned railroad would ever spend that much per mile for new track. Add in that this so-called "high speed" stuff is nothing at all like Euro high speed or Japanese high speed - it's more like getting BACK to speeds that steam engines hauled trains at 100 years ago. So to say the Hyperloop is dreaming at their cost by comparing it to the California HSR project is not a fair comparison.
And all that doesn't even take in the political issues. Do you really think they could build such a system that only served the two end cities without requiring lots of stops at other cities along the route? This idea is a true turkey and a real fiscal boondoggle.
Yes , it's possible to build a system that only serves a couple of cities, but the California proposal does pass through Bakersfield (300k+), Fresno (500k+) and San Jose (1m+)
How about Madrid-Zaragoza-Lleida-Barcelona; with half the trips doing Madrid Barcelona non-stop. MAD-BCN previously being the busiest air-route in the world; and now the high speed rail has taken it out of the top 20.
So other than the argument that "you can't build it without other stops", when there are
- Other stops; and;
- half the trips of a similarly distance system are non-stop
Have you any other arguments as to why it wont work in the USA? Or is it just that US engineering isn't up to European standards.
The project is only a turkey if you work in the automobile/aviation/oil industry, but sadly their lobbyists have convinced north americans otherwise.
-
No, the California High Speed Rail project is a huge joke on the taxpayers, and I LIKE trains. I ride them whenever I can. In 1981 they ended service from Philadelphia to Reading where I live, now if I need to go to a client there or get to the airport, I have to sit in traffic for what is almost always a 2 hour minimum drive even off peak times. Peak rush hour, forget about it. There is pretty much only 1 way in and out of the city, only 2 lanes in each direction with a volume of traffic that would crush a road with 4 lanes in each direction. ANd since they built it along a ledge above the river there is really no room to add additional lanes. I've moved and/or changed jobs in the past to avoid having to drive this area. If there was a train instead, I wouldn't mind so much. It takes me about 3 hours or so to drive to DC, coming home is usually more like 5 hours. Last time I had to go there, I told the PM who manages all the travel arrangements to put me on the train instead. An easy half hour drive from my house to the nearest station (prior to 1981, the station was about 5 minutes from me), and about the same 3 hours on the train, except that I was relaxed and reading a book, not driving. Return trip a few days later, more of the same.
My other hobby besides electronics is model trains, but I love the real ones too. I wish we had more of them in this country, I'd almost always chose a train over a plane. Even the commuter trains have far more room in the seats than any airplane. I also drive a fairly fancy car and would love it if the daily back and forth people would be on trains instead and keep the roads more open to drive for fun and occasional travelers.
-
People don't seem to understand the most important side of engineering, COST. Sure it sounds cool and I'd like to ride one but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Someone mentioned in a previous post that there's no alternative to the hyperloop performance, so I'll present my brilliant idea.
Lets use rockets to transport people faster then ever. At a speed of 7.9 km/s my new and futuristic transportation system tramples the hyperloop on performance. At first it might seem expensive but worry not we'll just use the Soyuz rocket which is proven technology + cheap(probs cheaper then hyperloop anyway). The vacuum for my rocket is free (space) with thorium solar panels as an optional accessory for a greener experience. Open to suggestions about a catchy name and wonder why no one thought of this before.
Jokes aside, to me at least this does seem very similar to solar roadways, something that could possibly work at an insane cost. If Elon is spending his own money on this then fine, but someone could miss out a government grant for more useful research because of this.
-
Musk is a nobody,
he puts his name on other peoples idea's and exploits government funding programs afterwards.
(reminds me of Einstein!)
read this pdf and tell me if musk was even born when it was drawn up!!!
BTW, some people think it was actually built and is in use now between military and government sites.
looking at the patents on nuclear tunnel boring systems from around the same period - it's very possible.
-
Jokes aside, to me at least this does seem very similar to solar roadways, something that could possibly work at an insane cost.
Pedantic, but: Solar Roadways can certainly not meet its stated goals (e.g. melting snow with solar energy) at any cost.
-
People don't seem to understand the most important side of engineering, COST. Sure it sounds cool and I'd like to ride one but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
I guess you didn't read the Hyperloop proposal. The whole point of it was to present a design with higher performance than CHSR, at lower cost.
You can certainly argue whether the cost estimates were reasonable, but you seem to have completely missed that Musk's proposal was all about cost.
-
Here is an interesting response to the thermal expansion problem TF mentions.
Titled: Re: The Hyperloop Busted (Thunderf00t) - Thermal Expansion Mechanism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a07B7cc_dk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a07B7cc_dk)
-
Here is an interesting response to the thermal expansion problem TF mentions.
Titled: Re: The Hyperloop Busted (Thunderf00t) - Thermal Expansion Mechanism
Yep, that is the only viable solution to the thermal expansion problem in the Hyperloop. It's still extremely challenging though.
-
Thermal expansion would not be a problem in a buried tube, and it would solve the vandalism problem as well.
-
I'm dubious that's a viable solution. Let's do some back of the envelope calculation:
Let's say there's a 100K temperature differential we need to consider, and our pin points are 1000m apart. The elongation of steel is 12ppm, so our previously 1000m of tube are now 1001.2m long. The sideways motion to accomodate those additional 1.2m is about 21.2m at the middle at the 500m point, which is not unreasonable, it's in about the same range as a multilane highway's width. However, the hypertube cars are now also travelling through an arc with a radius of about 5.9km, which at a speed of 300m/s results in a sideways acceleration of 15.2m/s^2, and what's more, the acceleration will switch from left to right every 3 seconds. That'd be a very uncomfortable journey.
What if the pinpoints were 10km apart instead of 1km? That'd increase the radius 10-fold, which would mean 1/10th of the acceleration, i.e. about 1.52m/s^2. That's about the acceleration you experience in a subway, and I think it'd still be uncomfortable to experience that constantly, with direction switching every 30 seconds. Then again, people put up with riding the subway with its constant starting and stopping, so maybe it'd be ok. However, the sideways motion of the tube would increase by a factor of 10 too, to a whopping 212m. That's quite a bit of land use there. So it'd be both slightly uncomfortable and use an unreasonable amount of land.
So I don't think just allowing thermal expansion is the answer.
-
Disclaimer: not trying to defend overall hyperloop practicality. Just devil's advocating.
Haven't been following this thread for a while, but how about simple sliding O-ring seals to allow for expansion? The air in the ISS is "famously" held in by a handful of O-rings: http://nerdist.com/air-pressure-on-the-iss-is-maintained-by-these-two-tiny-o-rings/ (http://nerdist.com/air-pressure-on-the-iss-is-maintained-by-these-two-tiny-o-rings/) (Apologies for the sensationalist headlines.)
Obviously keeping the air out of a hyperloop using O-rings is vastly more expensive than that, but I feel like vacuum on Earth is a less precious commodity than air is 400km up where the ISS is.
-
Disclaimer: not trying to defend overall hyperloop practicality. Just devil's advocating.
Haven't been following this thread for a while, but how about simple sliding O-ring seals to allow for expansion? The air in the ISS is "famously" held in by a handful of O-rings: http://nerdist.com/air-pressure-on-the-iss-is-maintained-by-these-two-tiny-o-rings/ (http://nerdist.com/air-pressure-on-the-iss-is-maintained-by-these-two-tiny-o-rings/) (Apologies for the sensationalist headlines.)
Obviously keeping the air out of a hyperloop using O-rings is vastly more expensive than that, but I feel like vacuum on Earth is a less precious commodity than air is 400km up where the ISS is.
Using an O-ring to maintain the vacuum of the hyperloop would work fine - if it was static system. The problem is that the hyperloop must be flexible, allow for both thermal expansions and boarding/offloading.
-
Using an O-ring to maintain the vacuum of the hyperloop would work fine - if it was static system. The problem is that the hyperloop must be flexible, allow for both thermal expansions and boarding/offloading.
That sounds like an orthogonal concern -- I'm just talking about dealing with thermal expansion on the plain parts of the track, away from stations. Longitudinal thermal expansion is handled (I propose) by having O-rings that can slide (think telescoping action, except only 10mm per segment).
-
if it is underground the temperature will be stable and the tube can be straight A-B with no turns.
-
What if the pinpoints were 10km apart instead of 1km? That'd increase the radius 10-fold, which would mean 1/10th of the acceleration, i.e. about 1.52m/s^2. That's about the acceleration you experience in a subway, and I think it'd still be uncomfortable to experience that constantly, with direction switching every 30 seconds. Then again, people put up with riding the subway with its constant starting and stopping, so maybe it'd be ok. However, the sideways motion of the tube would increase by a factor of 10 too, to a whopping 212m. That's quite a bit of land use there. So it'd be both slightly uncomfortable and use an unreasonable amount of land.
So I don't think just allowing thermal expansion is the answer.
Note that, by rolling the vehicle, lateral acceleration becomes indistinguishable from (and slightly additional to) normal gravity.
The repeat rate at which the vehicle oscillates (due to a buckled or buckling-induced path) is an interesting figure, though.
Now, what about trains? Because, so... they have 100% continuous steel tracks, and their spacings are exact. The path doesn't shift much, relative to the Earth, even over very long distances; except on very long paths, which can buckle on very hot days.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that the Earth itself expands and contracts, and is not, itself, an infinitely rigid element!
Tim
-
I'm dubious that's a viable solution. Let's do some back of the envelope calculation:
Let's say there's a 100K temperature differential we need to consider, and our pin points are 1000m apart. The elongation of steel is 12ppm, so our previously 1000m of tube are now 1001.2m long.
Or you heat the cold 1000m pipe to that +100K limit and weld that 1001.2m to the rest of the pipe.
Or you can stretch cold 1000m pipe to 250MPa when it reaches 1001.2m and then weld it.
Or heat it to +50K and stretch it to 125MPa and then weld it.
Whatever.
In above cases it would have 1001.2m and 0Pa strain at hot days and 1001.2m and 250MPa in tension at cold days.
No curves or bumpy ride is needed.
-
Obviously keeping the air out of a hyperloop using O-rings is vastly more expensive than that, but I feel like vacuum on Earth is a less precious commodity than air is 400km up where the ISS is.
Yes, but the ISS doesn't have a huge object hurtling through it at the speed of sound, it's not 600km long, it's not susceptible to storms and earthquakes and rednecks banging on it, has many orders of magnitude less joints, and it has a predictable thermal and stress environment.
I'd take the ISS any day of the week.
-
Btw for the cascading effect in the case of a rupture, surely you could design the tube to
just collapse at that point. Ofcourse it won't shut the tube with a vacuum tight seal but
it would greatly reduce the opening and reduce the inflow.
So at least it won't be destructive.
P.S.
Also why can't they drive a few stakes of steel into the earth underneath as a heat sink every 100 meters or so,
or as needed? Drive a metal rod maybe 5-6 meters into the ground with thermal insulation where needed to protect from
sun light and other sources of heat. And you would reduce some of the thermal expansion.
-
i dont know why your all talking about surface-rail.
underground rail is more expensive to build - initially.
*BUT*
surface rail requires years of negiotiations over land leasing / purchase etc.
and you have issues with objects in the way of the route that cant be purchased and leveled,
not to mention the terrain will need to be leveled in places and built-up in others.
it's also more vulnerable to nature, accidents, and sabotage.
-
I don't think we have the technology to dig a 400 mile tunnel :(
-
you do.
-
And all that doesn't even take in the political issues. Do you really think they could build such a system that only served the two end cities without requiring lots of stops at other cities along the route? This idea is a true turkey and a real fiscal boondoggle.
That is a feature which makes it politically possible. Politicians and their friends can buy up the land where future train stops will be added at the other cities along the route just like with the DC to Dulles freeway.
-
I don't think we have the technology to dig a 400 mile tunnel :(
Yes, it shouldn't be too difficult, because it wouldn't be that far underground. So after every couple of km one could make a opening to the surface to get the dirt out and bring machinery and people in.
Just many tunnels in series. ;)
Greetings
-
Politicians and their friends can buy up the land where future train stops will be added at the other cities along the route just like with the DC to Dulles freeway.
Greed. The best part of US.
-
UPDATE
So a team of hyperloop engineers had a reddit session and I thought I'd share the link here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/)
Also, one of them briefly addressed Thunderfoot, which I will quote here.
"I've got this one. I have watched the video, and made copious notes. Thunderf00t is a well known youtube science commentator, best known for debunking religious fundamentalists and understanding the surface-maximization of liquid alkali metals, published in Nature last year.
That aside, both hyperloop videos show a complete reluctance to engage with the real arguments. Sorry, but highlighting some semi-literate comments by your critics does not amount to engaging in a useful discussion. I would like to levitate this video into the sun.
Here are some specific points and rebuttals: -Thunderf00t primarily makes reference to the Hyperloop alpha whitepaper, written by some SpaceX employees in 2013. I saw no evidence of engagement with subsequent press releases by any of the hyperloop companies. In particular, TF doesn't seem to be aware that there is more than one hyperloop company. FYI, we are Hyperloop One, the company that has raised ~$108 and built the world's most powerful linear motor in 5 months. -Thunderf00t talks a good game about aerodynamics, but shows no evidence of even having read the wikipedia article on choked flow, duct flow, the Kantrowitz limit, or knowing any of the other 'first day on the job' level detail for our aero team. -One of Thunderf00t's technical gotchas was 'expansion joints are difficult', despite the fact that hydraulic cylinders exist, most steel rails are thermally pretensioned, and thermal expansion is probably something we thought of already. -Thunderf00t could have easily looked up our people on LinkedIn, checked their google scholar bona fides, whatever, but seemed more keen on a cheap take down than actually engaging with interesting and ongoing engineering challenges. -One symptom of the level of technical effort that went into TF's video is his careless assumption that 1g = 1m/s/s, as though Hyperloop was being built on some tiny moon of Jupiter. As a fellow academic, I was disappointed by TF's lack of intellectual humility in an area in which he is obviously not an expert. One would wonder why TF would put such hastily produced, easily debunked rubbish on his Patreon feed - people actually pay for that!
-Casey"
Thoughts?
p.s.
"$108" in the quote is meant to be $(10 to the power of 8 ).
-
So a team of hyperloop engineers had a reddit session and I thought I'd share the link here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/)
Also, one of them briefly addressed Thunderfoot, which I will quote here.
Thunderf00t could have easily looked up our people on LinkedIn, checked their google scholar bona fides, whatever, but seemed more keen on a cheap take down than actually engaging with interesting and ongoing engineering challenges.
uBeam have (had) the best acoustics experts on the planet, that doesn't make the idea the least bit practical.
-One symptom of the level of technical effort that went into TF's video is his careless assumption that 1g = 1m/s/s, as though Hyperloop was being built on some tiny moon of Jupiter. As a fellow academic, I was disappointed by TF's lack of intellectual humility in an area in which he is obviously not an expert. One would wonder why TF would put such hastily produced, easily debunked rubbish on his Patreon feed - people actually pay for that!
-Casey"
The inability of Casey to actually debunk his argument is duly noted. It was simply hand waving and throwing a few terms around.
-
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect)
-
i dont know why your all talking about surface-rail.
underground rail is more expensive to build - initially.
*BUT*
surface rail requires years of negiotiations over land leasing / purchase etc.
and you have issues with objects in the way of the route that cant be purchased and leveled,
not to mention the terrain will need to be leveled in places and built-up in others.
it's also more vulnerable to nature, accidents, and sabotage.
If you drive from LA to San Francisco you'll realize how easy it is to build surface rail on the bakerfields to gilroy section. It's flat, wideopen, and mostly farmland. No point in tunnels. Google for a picture of "Bakersfield" and you'll get the idea.
Will you need tunnels in and out of LA & San Fran? Yes.
-
UPDATE
So a team of hyperloop engineers had a reddit session and I thought I'd share the link here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/)
Thanks for the link Mark_Of_Sanity. It's an interesting read. Kudos to Hyperloop One for doing that.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect)
Yep.
-
Another update to the discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh0uwJoNnhc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh0uwJoNnhc)
Note, I personaly don't care for the petty tones of people on either side.
Why not just have an investigative mind and just be willing to find the facts of the matter.
Discussion can only broaden our understanding of the subject.
Both TF, some Hyperloop engineers and this dude needlessly try and make this personal. smh
P.S.
Summary of the video is that in the case of leak, the system is designed to go through a rapid represurization of the tube
in a controlled fashion, and for all the cars to come to a stop. He also states that the shockwave doesn't exist although
I don't quite understand that point entirely. But the controlled repressurization makes sense if it can be done that is.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDuXH2CJC10 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDuXH2CJC10)
-
Why not just have an investigative mind and just be willing to find the facts of the matter.
Quite a few factors make that mostly impossible: ego, personal interests, and (necessary) speculation, to name a few.
To me, this whole thing seems quite silly in that i don't see it being able to compete economically with other means of transportation. Unless that can be answer with a high degree of confidence, finding money for this is going to be difficult.
-
Hold onto your hats .... or should I say stomachs:
Hyperloop: high-speed rail network that could come to Australia
http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/hyperloop-highspeed-rail-network-that-could-come-to-australia/news-story/704d2ee6a76b425d8d1c23e756f8fd85 (http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/hyperloop-highspeed-rail-network-that-could-come-to-australia/news-story/704d2ee6a76b425d8d1c23e756f8fd85)
-
Hold onto your hats .... or should I say stomachs:
Hyperloop: high-speed rail network that could come to Australia
http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/hyperloop-highspeed-rail-network-that-could-come-to-australia/news-story/704d2ee6a76b425d8d1c23e756f8fd85 (http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/hyperloop-highspeed-rail-network-that-could-come-to-australia/news-story/704d2ee6a76b425d8d1c23e756f8fd85)
Not going to fly!!
The topography doesn't lend itself,plus NSW & Vic would have to get Federal funds.
That would go over like a wrought iron hanglider with the other States.
Perfect proof to WA that the Vic/NSW axis,with the connivance of Canberra, were out to screw us out of a fair share of
our GST,whilst blowing Billions on a "toy".
The rumbles of Secession will start to appear.
WAexit,anyone?? ;D
-
QUESTION:
Is current technology mass transit by rail limited by train velocity?
ANSWER:
No.
The limiting factors for the installation, adoption and use of mass rail transit, are, imo:
1) Ticket Cost
2) Infrastructure build and maintainance costs
3) Availability of land for use by said rail network (At least in the UK, where i live)
So the Hyperloop, assuming it can be made to work on a practical, day to day level, solves exactly none of those issues.
Hence, Hyperloop = pointless, irrelevant of any engineering practicalities or solutions.
-
So the Hyperloop, assuming it can be made to work on a practical, day to day level, solves exactly none of those issues.
And at least here in the US if the Hyperloop or any other train service *did* solve all of these problems and become competitive with airlines, TSA would step in and add security delays. We have already had incidents with TSA conducting security checks (euphemism) of train and bus passengers at their destination.
Why at their destination? Maybe because they are jerks.
-
QUESTION:
Is current technology mass transit by rail limited by train velocity?
ANSWER:
No.
The limiting factors for the installation, adoption and use of mass rail transit, are, imo:
1) Ticket Cost
2) Infrastructure build and maintainance costs
3) Availability of land for use by said rail network (At least in the UK, where i live)
Is that true, though? Do you have supporting studies or documentation? I'm not calling you out - rather I think we all have our own opinions that often aren't reality. Me included regarding trains.
I can tell you that in the Boston to NYC corridor, Amtrak implemented the Acela high speed rail and over the years, it has slowly gobbled up market share from the airlines to the point that it now has something like 70%. I have driven, flown, taken the bus and taken the train between the two cities and the high speed train is a really nice experience that I used to discount until I tried it. The only downside is that it isn't faster. That is the aspect they are working on. They aren't working on making ticket prices cheaper. Nor are they trying to lower maintenance costs. Nor are they worrying about availability of land. They have existing rail lines in densely populated areas (the only places where rail works), and the problem is upgrading old tracks, bridges, transfer points and tunnels to handle higher and higher speed trains. The trains they use here could go quite a bit faster, but they lean into turns, and this makes them incompatible with many of the tunnels. They are working on upgrading the bottlenecks one-by-one so that they can increase the speed of the trains, and they have already committed to buying a newer batch of trains which will be faster still. So my anecdotal evidence is that it's all about speed - people are perfectly happy to pay the same price as a plane ticket in order to be able to show up 10 minutes before departure, sit in a comfy chair at a table, get WiFi internet, have a meal car with food and drink and arrive at Penn Station on a perfectly predictable schedule. The straw that broke the camels (airlines) back was going from regular speed rail to high speed rail - that stole tons of airline market share. Making it faster still will grab even more.
So the Hyperloop, assuming it can be made to work on a practical, day to day level, solves exactly none of those issues.
Issues which, IMO, are not issues.
Hence, Hyperloop = pointless, irrelevant of any engineering practicalities or solutions.
I think people would absolutely pay a pretty penny to get between major population centers quickly. A 30 minute express hyperloop from Boston to NYC could easily command $200 each-way ticket prices all day long. That's around a 150 mile trip each way.
Sure, there are engineering challenges, but no way is it as much of a slam-dunk in the outrageous category as batterizer, solar roadways, the ultrasonic power thing or the other stuff Dave and Thunderfoot are comparing it to, IMO.
-
Hyperloop: high-speed rail network that could come to Australia
:-DD only in the Australian Capital Territory. the centrifugal force of the Loop can be use to remove politicians from out of office, that outstay their use by date. But Seriously Hyperloop should only be used for parcel express post. Maglev Trains of 430 km/h (270 mph).for passengers on long journeys with no stopping along the way.
-
Hold onto your hats .... or should I say stomachs:
Hyperloop: high-speed rail network that could come to Australia
http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/hyperloop-highspeed-rail-network-that-could-come-to-australia/news-story/704d2ee6a76b425d8d1c23e756f8fd85 (http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/hyperloop-highspeed-rail-network-that-could-come-to-australia/news-story/704d2ee6a76b425d8d1c23e756f8fd85)
Not going to fly!!
The topography doesn't lend itself,plus NSW & Vic would have to get Federal funds.
That would go over like a wrought iron hanglider with the other States.
I think Australia is the perfect place to propose the Hyperloop because we are fabulous at proposing high speed rail.
It is a form of national entertainment. I have a folder from the 1990 Very Fast Train Project Conference in Canberra. For only $150 million of government money and 5 Billion dollars of private enterprise investment and we were going to have a high speed Sydney to Melbourne train that was going to take 70% of the traffic away from the airways. The ticket price was going to be about $200 one way in today's money but I think that was before the airlines started really discounting the airfares.
If someone wants to come here and propose another High Speed Rail, we will welcome them even if the technology is impractical. It is not as if we are going to build anything.
-
ticket price is everything, for passengers.
in the u.k. for example, the corruption is so bad that if you have to cross the country then it's much cheaper to fly than take a train.
for goods it's going to be different, your comparing a rail-car to the cost of trucking it by road.
-
I think people would absolutely pay a pretty penny to get between major population centers quickly.
I think so too. People will pay for speed and convenience.
Sure, there are engineering challenges, but no way is it as much of a slam-dunk in the outrageous category as batterizer, solar roadways, the ultrasonic power thing or the other stuff Dave and Thunderfoot are comparing it to, IMO.
The commercial Hyperloop is never going to happen, guaranteed by the laws of practical real world engineering. I'll happily take a bet on it.
-
People will pay for speed and convenience.
everybody's seeking to unlock Time travel so just how do you get the DeLorean to hover? :-+
-
I think people would absolutely pay a pretty penny to get between major population centers quickly.
I think so too. People will pay for speed and convenience.
Had to laugh. The cost of a single ticket from Sydney to the City of Bathurst on our XPT train is $61 or $2.50 if you are entitled to a pensioner excursion ticket and it takes over 3 1/2 hours. The straight line distance is about 130km. The rail distance is about 200km.
For some reason, it is much more popular with pensioners then everyone else. Most people drive as it is quicker, cheaper and more convenient. I think it is only one passenger train a day on the line that serves the whole of Central NSW.
That is an indication of the state of our nationwide rail network. If you catch a suburban train from Sydney to Lithgow and catch a bus to Bathurst, it costs $8.80 but takes over 4 hours.
If we could have something like a regular country train service that could go at an average of 100kph at a cheap cost, that would be great.
-
Most people drive as it is quicker, cheaper and more convenient.
That was the point. Even if petrol was $5 a litre they'd still drive it if it's more convenient and faster.
If there was a suitable high speed train that was both of those things then people would use it.
-
I think people would absolutely pay a pretty penny to get between major population centers quickly.
I think so too. People will pay for speed and convenience.
Had to laugh. The cost of a single ticket from Sydney to the City of Bathurst on our XPT train is $61 or $2.50 if you are entitled to a pensioner excursion ticket and it takes over 3 1/2 hours. The straight line distance is about 130km. The rail distance is about 200km.
For some reason, it is much more popular with pensioners then everyone else. Most people drive as it is quicker, cheaper and more convenient. I think it is only one passenger train a day on the line that serves the whole of Central NSW.
That is an indication of the state of our nationwide rail network. If you catch a suburban train from Sydney to Lithgow and catch a bus to Bathurst, it costs $8.80 but takes over 4 hours.
If we could have something like a regular country train service that could go at an average of 100kph at a cheap cost, that would be great.
"The Australind" over a similar distance,( Perth-Bunbury) takes 2Hrs 30 Mins.(an average of 66.8kmh).
Rail & road distances are near as dammit the same at 167 km for the train,& 170 by road.
PS:- "The Prospector" travels the 653 km to Kalgoorlie in 6Hrs 45Mins (Average of 96.74 kmh)
-
Thing is, if you build an aeroplane, it can land at any airport. Should demographic changes result in lots of people wanting to suddenly fly from A to C, rather than A to B, it's very easy to accommodate that change. However, a fixed railway, and a VERY expensive ($/mile) one at that could be left high and dry if the demand changes or just moves away.
The UK is proof of this, as the rapid boom in railway expansion in the mid 1800's (the so called Railway Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania) ) led to massive building of intrastruture, that was later abandoned when the demand disappeared.
Increasingly, thanks to fast networking (optical fibre internet) people no longer actually need to physically travel between places at high speed, and i can' t see that changing?
-
Thing is, if you build an aeroplane, it can land at any airport. Should demographic changes result in lots of people wanting to suddenly fly from A to C, rather than A to B, it's very easy to accommodate that change.
Between Sydney and Melbourne, I can't see that being a problem. The only likelihood is people not wanting to get off at Canberra - so you could just close the station and trains simply express through it. I think I can say this safely ... people from Sydney and Melbourne wouldn't mind.
Might make for a useful venue, however - if we put a politician or two on the tracks ... >:D
-
Might make for a useful venue, however - if we put a politician or two on the tracks ... >:D
Tickets would sell out just for that!
-
We could even invite our American friends to join in .... Hilary and/or Donald, maybe?
-
We could even invite our American friends to join in .... Hilary and/or Donald, maybe?
Americans think big so all of Congress.
-
The commercial Hyperloop is never going to happen, guaranteed by the laws of practical real world engineering. I'll happily take a bet on it.
The people (I'm mostly referring to Thunderfoot) who have been shitting on the idea haven't actually demonstrated that there are insurmountable problems. Most of what I have seen him bringing up are overblown criticisms or intellectually dishonestly presented objections.
With your solar roadways video, you DID present "back of the envelope" calculations that showed it can't work. We know what solar panels can produce in the best case scenario. We know how much light is required for daytime visibility. We can reasonably accurately estimate what it would cost to produce a solar roadways panel. And based on that, we can confidently say that the claims put forth by the project creators are outright fabrications.
On the other hand, Thunderfoot didn't present any real calculations. Those that I saw him present were factually false in some cases or misrepresented in others.
It does a disservice to credible debunking videos like your solar roadways one or the ultrasonic power bullshit thing, or your batterizer video to lump this hyperloop video in with them. It's not close to being on the same level in terms of facts presented.
Now, it may very well be that the hyperloop never comes to be. If that happens, it will be because the ROI isn't there. That is different from solar roadways, batterizer or the ultrasonic power thing. Solar roadways just won't work - cars won't have traction on glass, it won't allow drivers to see lines which light up and change dynamically based on road conditions - it just won't physically work. Same with batterizer... it's just a bullshit product that doesn't actually work. Same with the ultrasonic power thing - simple physics proves it can't work.
Hyperloop is not the same. The folks saying the costs would be so astronomical as to make it unfeasible haven't actually presented any supporting evidence. The evidence that has been presented seems to have been largely misunderstood (if one is being kind) by the presenter or presented dishonestly (if one is more cynical).
-
Thing is, if you build an aeroplane, it can land at any airport. Should demographic changes result in lots of people wanting to suddenly fly from A to C, rather than A to B, it's very easy to accommodate that change. However, a fixed railway, and a VERY expensive ($/mile) one at that could be left high and dry if the demand changes or just moves away.
The UK is proof of this, as the rapid boom in railway expansion in the mid 1800's (the so called Railway Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania) ) led to massive building of intrastruture, that was later abandoned when the demand disappeared.
Increasingly, thanks to fast networking (optical fibre internet) people no longer actually need to physically travel between places at high speed, and i can' t see that changing?
I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly and thought it was so obvious it didn't need to be said, until I tried the high speed train around here.
If I fly from Boston to NYC, I get to the airport an hour early. I deal with security and all that BS and I have the problem of not being able to bring liquids (a hassle for toiletries). I land an hour after takeoff, but I am still an hour outside of Manhattan if traffic is light. If it's not, add 1.5 hours. Even if I take the subway, it's still an hour. Then I have to do the reverse on the return journey - it's a huge hassle. And it's also a pain in the ass if I want to change my flight time.
With the train, I show up and literally walk right on the train. I can get there 2 minutes before it departs. It departs on time right to the minute, and it arrives exactly 3 hours and 26 minutes later in 34th street in Manhattan regardless of traffic. I grab my bag and walk off the train and I'm in downtown NYC. I can bring whatever I want on the train - no liquids ban. I have high speed internet, I can spread out in a big chair with a table. I can get a sandwich, have a beer, use my cell phone, whatever. I used to think Amtrak were crazy to charge more than I can get a round trip airline ticket for, but now I would always choose the train over plane any day. That's why it has taken 70% market share from the airlines.
Sure, it's less flexible in terms of cost of building and changing the route - but Boston and New York City aren't going anywhere, and from the customer point of view, the cost to build it are immaterial - all that matters is cost, convenience, time and experience. Amtrak is expanding their network and gobbling up additional market share in the North East corridor (Boston/New York City/Washington/Philadelphia). It won't work in many places, but in the places it does work, I think the up-front cost could be worth it.
Another thing about hyperloop - if it ever comes to pass - is it would also be useful (maybe even start off being used) for freight. There are a HUGE number of freight shipments into NYC. A 30-minute courier service between Boston-NYC would be valuable. I've often thought that some sort of constantly moving tunnel-based high-speed conveyor belt or small-diameter mini-subway system would be great for big population centers. It would reduce traffic and congestion, allow cheaper and faster ingress and egress of freight and be reliable and fast. And without carrying people, the regulatory and maintenance requirements would have to be a lot looser.
-
about that symbolic crap you go through at the airport - the control-freaks want to phase it in at railway stations - followed by bus terminals.
the sooner they get put someplace safe - like under some dirt, the better.
-
Almost any engineering problem can be solved if you throw enough money at it. So, of course, the technical issues of hyperloop are really economic issues. I think one of the biggest wildcards in the economics of high-speed, medium distance, intercity transport in general is self-driving cars. Lots of people assume that, as airports and freeways get clogged with traffic, that the trend will be toward solutions like hyperloop, maglev, or traditional high-speed trains. But what if it's not? Maybe people will gravitate toward low- to medium-speed overnight trips in self-driving cars. If you're sleeping during the trip, you are less concerned about how long it takes to get there. There's also the added economic incentive of saving the cost of a night or two in a hotel room.
-
Hyperloop is not the same.
It's a bloody 500km long highly evacuated 3m wide tunnel with a capsule traveling at 1000kmh that needs to work at scale, and at capacity with the utmost reliability with one tunnel each way for the entire project.
If that doesn't instantly set off your engineering impracticality radar then I think you need to go in for a recalibration.
Hyperloop is worse than Solar Roadways, Batterieser, Ubeam etc because it's an all or nothing massive scale public transport infrastructure carrying humans. One catastrophic failure scuttles the whole project.
At least the others can work in limited scenarios, and actually could be a moderately successful niche products if pivoted right.
-
I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly and thought it was so obvious it didn't need to be said, until I tried the high speed train around here.
If I fly from Boston to NYC, I get to the airport an hour early. I deal with security and all that BS and I have the problem of not being able to bring liquids (a hassle for toiletries). I land an hour after takeoff, but I am still an hour outside of Manhattan if traffic is light. If it's not, add 1.5 hours. Even if I take the subway, it's still an hour. Then I have to do the reverse on the return journey - it's a huge hassle. And it's also a pain in the ass if I want to change my flight time.
With the train, I show up and literally walk right on the train. I can get there 2 minutes before it departs. It departs on time right to the minute, and it arrives exactly 3 hours and 26 minutes later in 34th street in Manhattan regardless of traffic. I grab my bag and walk off the train and I'm in downtown NYC. I can bring whatever I want on the train - no liquids ban. I have high speed internet, I can spread out in a big chair with a table. I can get a sandwich, have a beer, use my cell phone, whatever. I used to think Amtrak were crazy to charge more than I can get a round trip airline ticket for, but now I would always choose the train over plane any day. That's why it has taken 70% market share from the airlines.
Interesting, I didn't know there were any train routes in the US that were actually taking market share away from planes.
-
on-topic, the only MAGLEV I've been on was the one at Birmingham International (gone now I think) and it left alot to be desired !
Maglev was closed in 1995 due to cost of maintenance and availability of parts.....
-
on-topic, the only MAGLEV I've been on was the one at Birmingham International (gone now I think) and it left alot to be desired !
Maglev was closed in 1995 due to cost of maintenance and availability of parts.....
And works in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlwkluyVWA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qlwkluyVWA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc81Wej6XWI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc81Wej6XWI)
-
And works in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train)
I've been on that, it's awesome :-+
-
And works in China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train)
I've been on that, it's awesome :-+
The last prototype that was used on the test track here in northern Germany is up for auction at the moment. Its the same type as the one in Shanghai.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/the-futures-for-sale-germany-auctions-maglev-train/articleshow/54794667.cms (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/the-futures-for-sale-germany-auctions-maglev-train/articleshow/54794667.cms)
-
A new hype video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypab90bc1Yw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypab90bc1Yw)
This contains so much BS and rhetoric I don't know were to begin.
-
If they're planning to really build it - then this is the place where money isn't going to be as constraining as it would be in the rest of the world....
-
BTW Japanese are testing their SCMaglev (Superconducting Maglev, onboard magnets cooled with liquid helium to -269oC) which tested up to 603 km/h, and they are riding oridinary people at 500 km/h. Moreover tickets will cost only a little bit more that current Shinkansen. Also this is not going to be some just short line (current test line is 42.8 km), but ~500km from Osaka to Tokyo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKwchJKTYU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKwchJKTYU)
-
BTW Japanese are testing their SCMaglev (Superconducting Maglev, onboard magnets cooled with liquid helium to -269oC) which tested up to 603 km/h, and they are riding oridinary people at 500 km/h. Moreover tickets will cost only a little bit more that current Shinkansen. Also this is not going to be some just short line (current test line is 42.8 km), but ~500km from Osaka to Tokyo.
And that's the thing. The Hyperloop is orders of magnitude more engineering complexity and risk, for what, double the speed?
Not going to happen.
-
Anybody who went to expo 88 in Brisbane will remember the "Scram jet" powered commercial aircraft that were going to revolutionise the way we travelled in the future. They had a large exhibit full of impressive pictures, models and stats such as travelling to New York from Sydney in about 3 hrs, Sydney to Melbourne in 15 minutes or something ridiculous like that by flying into space and following a ballistic trajectory just like nukes do. I vaguely remember it being called the Hyperjet or something similar as it would fly at hypersonic speed. It was only 5 to 10 years away and would be the only way we travelled by the year 2000. All it needed was gob loads of money for the engineers to sort out the technical details of the scram jet. There was a show on abc at the time called "Towards 2000" and they expounded its virtues and technical difficulties on several shows. 10 years later the show was now called "Beyond 2000" and they were still saying it was only 10 years away and reported on the advances made to create a real working scram jet. The show became "Quantum" and they were saying the scram jet was basically ready to go and just needed a little bit more work to be done to figure out the technical aspects. Today engineers and scientists have made huge leaps but still haven't managed to develop the scramjet beyond experimental status, which was the only teeny tiny technical detail that needed to be sorted out to begin with. "Quantum" is now "Catylist" and this week the abc announced it planned to fire the entire science team before thinking about the shows future. This has nothing to do with thread but I thought that coincidence is pretty funny :-DD This is what the Hyperloop fans are in for. But chin up hyper speed travel fans, the Hyperjet should be here within the next 10 years..... >:D
-
Good news everyone.
The Hyper-Loop comercial is now available at Amazon Prime Video.
(At last on the european part)
https://www.amazon.de/Hyperloop-Explained-OV-Kelby-Weiler/dp/B01FIK7X6K/ (https://www.amazon.de/Hyperloop-Explained-OV-Kelby-Weiler/dp/B01FIK7X6K/)
-
They didn't even mention the most important and hardest part, and the one that will ultimately doom this concept. The vacuum :palm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4LTv_eNgQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4LTv_eNgQ)
-
Hmm...they did mention the vacuum at 15 seconds in and mention "almost all the air sucked out" around 00:43. Not saying it solves all the problems...
-
Hmm...they did mention the vacuum at 15 seconds in and mention "almost all the air sucked out" around 00:43. Not saying it solves all the problems...
Yeah, only in passing in how it ultimately works, not as part of the issues facing the the project, it's only like the biggest issue :palm:
-
the public's worship of elon musk utterly baffles me.
-
Yeah?
Hyperloop is hard.
Is it harder than making a luxury all-electric sedan with supercar-beating performance and 500 km range, and selling it at a profit for the price of an Audi or BMW? When everyone else was convinced you can only make golf carts.
Is it harder than taking a 30m high rocket 1st stage that is 75 km above the earth and travelling at 6000 km/h and propulsively landing it on a barge in the ocean? You've only got to go back about three years to find pretty much everyone saying it's somewhere between impossible and impractical. This year it has become so routine people are not bothering to get out of bed to watch the livecasts.
Hyperloop doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. There are lots of challenges many of which could be showstoppers if they can't be solved. But that's just a matter of engineering. I'm sure it could be done. The question is more the economics.
I'm not a fan of high speed ground transportation. I can't see much point spending tens of billions on a single 300 or 400 km/h train route when a lowly Dash8 takes 40 - 60 passengers at over 500 km/h with infinitely flexible routes between any arbitrary pair of towns less than 1500 - 2000 km apart that each possess a 1000 - 1200 meter long airstrip (or less, with reduced range and/or passengers).
If you've got 1600m of runway available then you can step up to a CRJ (or A318 probably) with more seats, longer range, 800+ km/h speed, and lower operating costs. But even the Dash8 beats any non-hyperloop high speed ground transport.
But, again, I don't see any fundamental reason that Hyperloop is "BUSTED" in the sense of being impossible or breaking any fundamental laws.
-
They didn't even mention the most important and hardest part, and the one that will ultimately doom this concept. The vacuum :palm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4LTv_eNgQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU4LTv_eNgQ)
Jeez, how much money are those guys spending on this?
Or team has about 6m of tube and no vacuum pump. We can levitate our tiny pod, but that's it. The first time we'll know if the propulsion works is when it arrives at the proving round in September.
-
Not sure it has been posted, but here is the Tesla proposal:
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/hyperloop_alpha3.pdf (https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/hyperloop_alpha3.pdf)
It does include a fair bit of detail. It doesn't run in a full vacuum like space - it runs at an air pressure in the tubes of 100 pascals - about 1/1000th of the atmosphere. In terms of safety concerns, it does seem to rely on the assumption that derailments, tube damage and collisions are extremely unlikely. If a carriage somehow becomes stranded, then supposedly all carriages behind it (the spacing can be under 800 meters) will stop and then drive back to the starting point on small battery powered electric wheels even of it is at atmospheric air pressure.
I do not think the possibility that every carriage in the tube could be stranded is considered. Say one carriage gets stranded and then one near the start of the tube fails while reversing on its wheels back to safety. The hundreds of carriages containing 28 people each in between would all be completely stranded.
-
Not sure it has been posted, but here is the Tesla proposal:
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/hyperloop_alpha3.pdf (https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/hyperloop_alpha3.pdf)
It does include a fair bit of detail. It doesn't run in a full vacuum like space - it runs at an air pressure in the tubes of 100 pascals - about 1/1000th of the atmosphere.
That makes things a little bit easier for the vacuuum pumps and permits minor leaks (mind you there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum). Structurally, it's identical to a full vacuum, for both the tube and the vehicles (and people in them).
I can't immediately find a table going that far, but I know a rule of thumb that says atmospheric pressure halves every 16000 ft is pretty close to at least 64000 ft, so ten halvings or 1/1024 of normal pressure is about 160000 ft altitude (50 km) equivalent.
-
Yeah?
Hyperloop is hard.
Is it harder than making a luxury all-electric sedan with supercar-beating performance and 500 km range, and selling it at a profit for the price of an Audi or BMW? When everyone else was convinced you can only make golf carts.
Is it harder than taking a 30m high rocket 1st stage that is 75 km above the earth and travelling at 6000 km/h and propulsively landing it on a barge in the ocean? You've only got to go back about three years to find pretty much everyone saying it's somewhere between impossible and impractical. This year it has become so routine people are not bothering to get out of bed to watch the livecasts.
Hyperloop doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. There are lots of challenges many of which could be showstoppers if they can't be solved. But that's just a matter of engineering. I'm sure it could be done. The question is more the economics.
Yep. Exactly my sentiments. Both economics and the associated politics are what will make the ambitious long distance projects extremely difficult if not impossible - at least in the U.S.
But, again, I don't see any fundamental reason that Hyperloop is "BUSTED" in the sense of being impossible or breaking any fundamental laws.
Yes, but just don't try taking that stand with the Thunderf00t fanboys!
-
Hyperloop doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. There are lots of challenges many of which could be showstoppers if they can't be solved. But that's just a matter of engineering. I'm sure it could be done. The question is more the economics.
The economics really bother me. Is this suppose to be more cost effective than a concrete channel operating at atmospheric pressure or existing fast trains?
And I would consider the engineering and economic problems secondary to the political problems at least in the US. There are lots of government actors who can say no to something and none who can say yes. (1) And government actors do not get paid for not objecting.
I'm not a fan of high speed ground transportation. I can't see much point spending tens of billions on a single 300 or 400 km/h train route when a lowly Dash8 takes 40 - 60 passengers at over 500 km/h with infinitely flexible routes between any arbitrary pair of towns less than 1500 - 2000 km apart that each possess a 1000 - 1200 meter long airstrip (or less, with reduced range and/or passengers).
And in the US once the TSA gets involved, it will lose all of the advantages of not dealing with the TSA at the airport.
(1) The way I remember it, that was how Southwest Airlines was able to get started. They got a route between Los Angels and San Fransisco where since it did not cross state lines, the federal government had little say in how they operated.
-
busted as in, not practical.
-
Hyperloop doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. There are lots of challenges many of which could be showstoppers if they can't be solved. But that's just a matter of engineering. I'm sure it could be done. The question is more the economics.
The economics really bother me. Is this suppose to be more cost effective than a concrete channel operating at atmospheric pressure or existing fast trains?
The track is really cheap to build.
I'm not a fan of high speed ground transportation. I can't see much point spending tens of billions on a single 300 or 400 km/h train route when a lowly Dash8 takes 40 - 60 passengers at over 500 km/h with infinitely flexible routes between any arbitrary pair of towns less than 1500 - 2000 km apart that each possess a 1000 - 1200 meter long airstrip (or less, with reduced range and/or passengers).
And in the US once the TSA gets involved, it will lose all of the advantages of not dealing with the TSA at the airport.
I'm actually on a hyperloop team and the main thing being talked about at the moment is cargo, not people. Sending shipping containers from one end of the country to another at 3000km/h is very attractive.
-
Hyperloop doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. There are lots of challenges many of which could be showstoppers if they can't be solved. But that's just a matter of engineering. I'm sure it could be done. The question is more the economics.
The economics really bother me. Is this suppose to be more cost effective than a concrete channel operating at atmospheric pressure or existing fast trains?
The track is really cheap to build.
Not compared to "no track" for a plane (or rocket).
I'm not a fan of high speed ground transportation. I can't see much point spending tens of billions on a single 300 or 400 km/h train route when a lowly Dash8 takes 40 - 60 passengers at over 500 km/h with infinitely flexible routes between any arbitrary pair of towns less than 1500 - 2000 km apart that each possess a 1000 - 1200 meter long airstrip (or less, with reduced range and/or passengers).
And in the US once the TSA gets involved, it will lose all of the advantages of not dealing with the TSA at the airport.
I'm actually on a hyperloop team and the main thing being talked about at the moment is cargo, not people. Sending shipping containers from one end of the country to another at 3000km/h is very attractive.
300 km/h matching or beating most fast trains I can easily believe.
800 km/h makes me go "hmmmmm"
3000 km/h completely fails to pass the giggle test.
-
The economics really bother me. Is this suppose to be more cost effective than a concrete channel operating at atmospheric pressure or existing fast trains?
It was supposed to be more cost effective than the existing California High Speed Rail project. That's the whole reason for the proposal.
-
The economics really bother me. Is this suppose to be more cost effective than a concrete channel operating at atmospheric pressure or existing fast trains?
It was supposed to be more cost effective than the existing California High Speed Rail project. That's the whole reason for the proposal.
California is not known for fiscally responsible rail projects. When they built BART, they selected a non-standard track gauge ensuring higher costs and then things got worse when they later needed replacement stock.
-
3000 km/h completely fails to pass the giggle test.
What's the cargo capacity of this:
(https://theaviationist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SR-71-1.jpg)
PRO: Can use existing facilities and fuel, has green exhaust on ignition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane))
CON: None that I can see
If there was a need for Mach 3 cargo, it could have been done half a century ago.
Besides, with 3D printers having "changed the game" (how many times now?), I thought we could fabricate anything on demand...
-
PRO: Can use existing facilities and fuel, has green exhaust on ignition
No.
CON: Must use a special fuel.
CON: Requires special facilities, e.g. start with less than full load of fuel and fill up after start from air tanker.
CON: Cargo space designed for a few special cargo options, not for standard containers.
-
PRO: Can use existing facilities and fuel, has green exhaust on ignition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triethylborane))
Actually
CON: Can't use existing facilities and fuel
it burned a really weird JP-7 mixture.
-
Well, OK, if you want to be picky about it... You also need two big block Hemis to start the thing, but I don't see that as a CON either. :)
-
They just want to spend tax money on high profit get rich quick schemes which they undoubtedly get kickbacks from, instead of investing it into anything that would actually help people.
-
I've flown between LA and SF dozens of times, and its a short relaxing flight with amazing views which is over before you know it. What sucks is the LAX and SFO airport traffic. Which is why smart travelers fly between Oakland and Long Beach. Its cheaper too.
There really is no need for a huge money spending hype-train project. Conventional high speed rail like they have in many other countries can make the trip in a bit more than an hour.
-
I've flown between LA and SF dozens of times, and its a short relaxing flight with amazing views which is over before you know it. What sucks is the LAX and SFO airport traffic. Which is why smart travelers fly between Oakland and Long Beach. Its cheaper too.
I've flown and taken the train between Los Angeles and San Diego and despite its problems, the train is much nicer in every way from dealing with security to the trip itself. The same would be true between southern California and San Fransisco if the train was faster.
The only real problem with the train is that Amtrak runs on freight lines so is subject to freight scheduling lengthening travel time. Between LA and SD you spent half of the travel time creeping along.
If trains were competitive though, I doubt this situation would last. The government would screw it up.
-
>The government would screw it up
It's a moot point.
My understanding that since January 1, 1995, our government, as well as other WTO members, are now largely prohibited from entering fields except where services are "supplied in the exercise of governmental authority"
"'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied "neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers."
Basically, competition policy makes it FTA-illegal for governments to enter fields where they would be competing with any commercial entity, unless they already had done so in 1995. (Especially in financial services, regulatory changes subsequent to a freeze enacted in 1998 must now be rolled back)
The ideology of progressive liberalization, (One way irreversible privatization) part of international economic governance now, gradually expands the sphere of corporate entitlement to include all service sectors and modes of supply, as well as captures all legislation in a one way manner if its deregulation. Thats called the "ratchet". CalTrain is a commercial entity and tickets are certainly not free- Like healthcare and higher education, railways are now commercial in the United States and cannot be expropriated (https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=&as_epq=indirect+expropriation). A few countries that make some services completely free, like healthcare in Canada, are exempted as long as they don't allow any commercial competition in (for example, private for profit healthcare, like in England, has caused the gradual privatization of the NHS, due to GATS and its progeny, TiSA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_in_Services_Agreement).) (See also here (https://www.citizen.org/sites/default/files/public-citizen-comments-on-international-services-agreement.pdf))
Australia has seen much privatization of roads. Also, the agreements gradually force international tending process and procurement, i.e. outsourcing of public service jobs or quasi publc services (whenever tax money is spent)
-
One problem with strictly private, commercial development of any Hyperloop route of consequence is that it would require that the government - through the legislature - acquire the necessary land in the name of the private entity building the route.
In the US anyways, the eminent domain clause of the 5th amendment requires "just compensation" be given to those whose land is taken.
-
Pre-development value, and it varies, consensus is usually around 3/4 of value is paid but then movers get a higher tax basis so many don't make it.
Now towns just give land to developers.. its often hype.
-
One problem with strictly private, commercial development of any Hyperloop route of consequence is that it would require that the government - through the legislature - acquire the necessary land in the name of the private entity building the route.
In the US anyways, the eminent domain clause of the 5th amendment requires "just compensation" be given to those whose land is taken.
That has not been a problem since our US Supreme Court ruled that "public" means the same thing as "private" in Kelo v. City of New London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London) and our government has no problem not paying just compensation. One trick they use is to condemn or otherwise encumber the land to be taken reducing its free market value to practically zero.
-
The Hype-rloop has been 100% successful.
It has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imaginations in separating unwitting investors from over $30MM USD. Since parting fools from money is all that matters these days, I suppose that should be commendable.
-
That has not been a problem since our US Supreme Court ruled that "public" means the same thing as "private" in Kelo v. City of New London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London) and our government has no problem not paying just compensation. One trick they use is to condemn or otherwise encumber the land to be taken reducing its free market value to practically zero.
That's an interesting link. If you read through it you'll see that one result of that case was that several states (including California) passed new legislation to restrict or prohibit state or local government from using eminent domain to acquire property for private use. Of course I have no doubt that if enough money is involved corrupt politicians would try to find ways around those laws.
-
That has not been a problem since our US Supreme Court ruled that "public" means the same thing as "private" in Kelo v. City of New London (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London) and our government has no problem not paying just compensation. One trick they use is to condemn or otherwise encumber the land to be taken reducing its free market value to practically zero.
That's an interesting link. If you read through it you'll see that one result of that case was that several states (including California) passed new legislation to restrict or prohibit state or local government from using eminent domain to acquire property for private use. Of course I have no doubt that if enough money is involved corrupt politicians would try to find ways around those laws.
Most of the state legislation is for show only and is either misleading or contains enough loopholes and exceptions to subvert the stated purpose.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/04/the-political-and-judicial-reaction-to-kelo/ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/04/the-political-and-judicial-reaction-to-kelo/)
-
I'm actually on a hyperloop team and the main thing being talked about at the moment is cargo, not people. Sending shipping containers from one end of the country to another at 3000km/h is very attractive.
300 km/h matching or beating most fast trains I can easily believe.
800 km/h makes me go "hmmmmm"
3000 km/h completely fails to pass the giggle test.
Well... maybe, but there has to be a tough-to-reach goal to make it interesting
Point: If we can avoid ships going into the Mediterranean or through the Panama canal to the East coast of the USA it's a big deal.
-
Another Thunderf00t video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwLnyzyybYs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwLnyzyybYs)
-
Heres example where we help to channel students talent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds21hg7Qhl4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds21hg7Qhl4)
4WD torque vectoring formula car with carbon monocoque. 220kg, 1680Nm torque, <2.6s 0-100km/h. Outaccelerating Tesla P90D (video in the middle of article):
http://www.postimees.ee/3850729/video-kumb-on-kiirem-kas-tesla-voi-elektrivormel (http://www.postimees.ee/3850729/video-kumb-on-kiirem-kas-tesla-voi-elektrivormel)
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=355767) (http://www.postimees.ee/3850729/video-kumb-on-kiirem-kas-tesla-voi-elektrivormel)
Sponsors will be given to test-drive latest model soon, interesting how it compares to formula Renault and 2007 Williams F1 Ive tried before. Think it will be very violent on the neck, will go karting today to regain shape a bit :D
I wonder which is eventually more satisfying for student, to watch some weird contraption in rusty tube that cant even turn or drive formula car he and mates designed... :popcorn: Ok, maybe for some seeing Musk-god up close will deliver but that aspect has little to do with engineering for practical end-goal :P
-
More Hyperloop BS, this time in Australia, and hint at superanuation companies being interested :palm:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/plan-to-build-hyperloop-for-highspeed-travel-via-inland-route-to-brisbane/news-story/c8f1d7b38a5c94df48a15bc27d7d96c9 (http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/plan-to-build-hyperloop-for-highspeed-travel-via-inland-route-to-brisbane/news-story/c8f1d7b38a5c94df48a15bc27d7d96c9)
And only 38 months from go-ahead to carrying passengers |O
and this utter bullshit, both the "full-scale tests" and the timeline claims.
Hyperloop One successfully completed the first full-scale tests at a track in the Nevada Desert and aims to have three services operating around the world by 2021.
-
AUS has some f-'d up politicians,
they should concentrate on expanding coal mining etc now we are entering a global cooling period.
the value of fuel is only going to rise.
-
my coworkers just won't shut up about hyperloop. this elon musk worship blinds them to all critical thinking.
-
More Hyperloop BS, this time in Australia, and hint at superanuation companies being interested :palm:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/plan-to-build-hyperloop-for-highspeed-travel-via-inland-route-to-brisbane/news-story/c8f1d7b38a5c94df48a15bc27d7d96c9 (http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/plan-to-build-hyperloop-for-highspeed-travel-via-inland-route-to-brisbane/news-story/c8f1d7b38a5c94df48a15bc27d7d96c9)
Australia is not the only country. Over here in the NL the government would like companies to build a 5km test track which can transport real people. The idea is to extend the system to connect two airports together IF it works. A high speed train track would be so much easier. The distance is like 50km so the door-to-door travel time will be dominated by waiting for the train to arrive anyway.
-
they should concentrate on expanding coal mining etc now we are entering a global cooling period.
We are? (Looking out the window at the missing snow)
-
they should concentrate on expanding coal mining etc now we are entering a global cooling period.
We are? (Looking out the window at the missing snow)
The warming hasn't been dramatic, and neither will any cooling be.
Everyone is by now accepting that we have at least a "pause" in warming. The conventional thinking is it warming will resume shortly. But it's perfectly possible that it's actually a maximum and cooling will set in for a period -- or permanently.
Anyone who bothers to go and look at the actual data can see a pretty obvious pattern. e.g.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:60 (http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:60)
This is the latest series combining sea surface temperatures from the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and land surface temperatures from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.
i.e. *the* standard data source
I applied smoothing by averaging 5 years to make the trends more obvious.
Namely:
- warming from 1850 to 1880
- cooling from 1880 to 1910
- warming from 1910 to 1945
- slight cooling from 1945 to 1975
- warming from 1975 to 1998
- the "pause" or maybe slight cooling from 1998 to the present, except for a big spike due to last year's El Nino
The observant will notice that each phase has been roughly 30 years long. If the pattern continues we can expect the Earth to cool until about 2030.
The warming periods are, so far, stronger than the cooling periods, in keeping with overall warming since the Little Ice Age around the 16th to 19th centuries.
The 1975 to 1998 warming period is not significantly different in nature to the 1910 to 1945 warming period.
Feel free to select other series.
-
We'll probably see less hot days due to the sun's activity declining over the next few years (there is data to back that up) but overall the climate has become warmer during my lifetime. When I was a kid there used to be snow and ice during the winter. Those kind of winters are long gone. Some people even did the unthinkable and started to grow grapes and produce wine in the southern parts of the NL.
-
We'll probably see less hot days due to the sun's activity declining over the next few years (there is data to back that up) but overall the climate has become warmer during my lifetime. When I was a kid there used to be snow and ice during the winter. Those kind of winters are long gone. Some people even did the unthinkable and started to grow grapes and produce wine in the southern parts of the NL.
Unfortunately you can't tell much from one small area.
In the case of NL, the weather and climate are very affected by the jetstream over the north atlantic:
https://bigsalty.com/en/charts/jet_stream_forecast/netherlands/
It wanders up and down, sometimes passing over NL and sometimes not, with changes on both short and long time scales.
If one place gets hotter as a result of a movement of the jetstream then another place a few hundred km away gets colder.
-
Unfortunately you can't tell much from one small area.
You are aware that the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere reached 407.06 ppm in October? Things are not like they used to be. The levels reconstructed from ice cores going back more than 400 000 years never exceeded 300 ppm.
-
Unfortunately you can't tell much from one small area.
You are aware that the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere reached 407.06 ppm in October? Things are not like they used to be. The levels reconstructed from ice cores going back more than 400 000 years never exceeded 300 ppm.
And so?
Someone has a theory that carbon dioxide levels control temperature. They made up all kinds of equations and ran them on a computer and made predictions -- which have never yet been anything like accurate.
Someone else has a theory that temperature controls carbon dioxide levels. Some of the historical records appear to show temperature changing a few hundred years before a corresponding CO2 change. Maybe. Those measurements are done using indirect methods which we have no idea whether they work accurately, or whether the time scale is accurate.
What I showed is actual temperature measurements, using the relatively modern method of a thermometer and written down on paper at the time, over the last 150 or so years.
I have issues with whether you can really average temperatures across the whole world and get a meaningful single number accurate to 0.01C -- especially from instruments 150 years ago -- and I even doubt whether the whole concept makes physical sense, but this is the closest thing to actual real data in this field.
Data, not a theory, or the output of a sensitive and unstable numerical integration process run on a computer.
-
What I showed is actual temperature measurements, using the relatively modern method of a thermometer and written down on paper at the time, over the last 150 or so years.
The temperature in the graph you link to shows an exponential rise in temperature over the past150 years. Either way even IF CO2 isn't the cause it is not a bad idea to change to reduce energy consumption and switch to renewable energy sources because the fossil fuels we are relying on will run out pretty quick especially if you look at the commercially viable sources and the sources which don't have a political price tag. West Europe for example does not want to rely on gas from Russia because that gives people like Putin way too much power.
-
What I showed is actual temperature measurements, using the relatively modern method of a thermometer and written down on paper at the time, over the last 150 or so years.
The temperature in the graph you link to shows an exponential rise in temperature over the past150 years.
Exponential?
You can draw a straight line dead through the mid point of each of those ~30 year warming and cooling periods. Try it.
Either way even IF CO2 isn't the cause it is not a bad idea to change to reduce energy consumption and switch to renewable energy sources because the fossil fuels we are relying on will run out pretty quick
Except they won't run out. There have never been bigger known reserves than right now, and production capability continues to increase (despite repeated "peak oil" predictions). What has ACTUALLY peaked is demand, now falling below production capacity because of everything from cars to factories needing less energy and engines getting more efficient at the same time. The price is going to drop out the bottom of the oil and gas markets, with or without renewables.
especially if you look at the commercially viable sources and the sources which don't have a political price tag. West Europe for example does not want to rely on gas from Russia because that gives people like Putin way too much power.
So now we've gone from "we're all gonna fry!" to "I don't like some guy's politics". That's a slightly less critical thing, don't you think?
But don't worry, Putin's going to run out of money pretty quick, because of the falling prices because of the hugely increased production in every country that doesn't bow to "environmentalists" (mostly from fracking) and concurrent decreased consumption from technology. Russia's long term economic prospects are totally fucked if they continue to rely on gas.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJk-ajPSv0M (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJk-ajPSv0M)
Hyperloop test track tour at CES 2018
more hype
-
i said it before, but musk is just a subsidy hunting fraud(or maybe a front??).
https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html (https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html)
-
If it's worked in the past, it's worth trying in the future. So far, Musk's things are built entirely on investment. To keep putting along, what does he need more of, then?
Tim
-
I dunno, the last company I remember with Hype in the name ...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/hyperchip-to-announce-20-million-in-financing/article22499787/ (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/hyperchip-to-announce-20-million-in-financing/article22499787/)
went nowhere. We were looking at renting their space years ago, but it was too large.
-
i said it before, but musk is just a subsidy hunting fraud(or maybe a front??).
Except he barely received anything than can be called subsidies :palm:. Most of those "subsidies" are nothing more than some tax deduction over time period of like 20 years, no actual money given. Basically drop of water in the sea. All money received from Nasa was for doing particular work, and actually relatively small money compared to what "traditional" space companies receive. Spacex launches cost Nasa 3x less than ULA charges. Or, for example, Boeing received 2x more money for much inferior CST-100 Starliner manned space capsule development compared with Dragon V2.
As of fraud, in 2017 Spacex made more Launches than the rest of US and Russia combined. Most of those were commercial launches, which were non existent in US for last 10 years because of not being competitive. Almost all were made by Russia and Arianespace.
-
i said it before, but musk is just a subsidy hunting fraud(or maybe a front??).
https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html (https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html)
You’re in the wrong thread. Here’s the Musk hate thread (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/general-teslaspacexmusk-hatecomplaintwhining-thread/msg1356104/#msg1356104)
Musk is not financially involved with the various hyperloop companies.
-
Since some revived this old thread I watched the video in the first post. I find it cringeworthy. Commercial airliners are made of aluminium composite material and they deal with similar pressures safely so why is that suddenly a problem for the hyperloop? Also the expansion problem isn't there because they already solved that with oil pipelines. The same goes with pressurisation in case of a breach. For example: remote controlled inlet valves can be installed do a controlled pressurisation of the rest of the tube.
If the maker of the video lived 200-ish years ago he'd probably made a similar video about the dangers of steam trains.
Sure a hyperloop is complicated but the rewards can be very high. A lot of energy needed to transport something is wasted on friction with air (dominant at high speeds) and road surface. Lower the friction and the transport costs go down. So the real question is whether the resources and energy needed to build and operate a hyperloop are worth the energy savings. And remember: you don't need to transport people perse.
-
Since some revived this old thread I watched the video in the first post. I find it cringeworthy. Commercial airliners are made of aluminium composite material and they deal with similar pressures safely so why is that suddenly a problem for the hyperloop?
I'm not a mechanical engineer, yet I can think of many show-stopper problems and why this comparison with planes is not meaningful.
-
Since some revived this old thread I watched the video in the first post. I find it cringeworthy. Commercial airliners are made of aluminium composite material and they deal with similar pressures safely so why is that suddenly a problem for the hyperloop?
I'm not a mechanical engineer, yet I can think of many show-stopper problems and why this comparison with planes is not meaningful.
The airplane is just an example of a pressure vessel made as light as possible and yet it withstands similar pressure differences like the hyperloop is supposed to do. Actually an oil or gas pipeline is pretty much comparable to the build scale of a hyperloop tube (and oil and gas pipeline use much higher pressures). It is not like they are building something completely new. For once don't ignore the fact a lot of very smart people are working on building hyperloops allover the world and have working prototypes. Now it all comes down to whether it makes sense economically or not (which intrinsically means getting it safe to operate).
-
How are you getting up to his speeds if you deal with expansion like oil pipelines as you suggest?? Gonna be one wild as hell ride!
(https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-ea3eceb46c079278d445c18628c4c38d-c)
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-oil-pipelines-that-transfer-oil-long-distances-run-in-a-zigzag-manner (https://www.quora.com/Why-do-oil-pipelines-that-transfer-oil-long-distances-run-in-a-zigzag-manner)
-
Junctions for thermal expansion compensation are completely possible. They need to hold only 1 bar of pressure, therefore could be made even from soft polymer.
-
Since some revived this old thread I watched the video in the first post. I find it cringeworthy. Commercial airliners are made of aluminium composite material and they deal with similar pressures safely so why is that suddenly a problem for the hyperloop?
I'm not a mechanical engineer, yet I can think of many show-stopper problems and why this comparison with planes is not meaningful.
The airplane is just an example of a pressure vessel made as light as possible and yet it withstands similar pressure differences like the hyperloop is supposed to do. Actually an oil or gas pipeline is pretty much comparable to the build scale of a hyperloop tube (and oil and gas pipeline use much higher pressures). It is not like they are building something completely new. For once don't ignore the fact a lot of very smart people are working on building hyperloops allover the world and have working prototypes. Now it all comes down to whether it makes sense economically or not (which intrinsically means getting it safe to operate).
The problem with the pressure difference is not with the pod but with the tube!
It is very important whether the pressure differential is positive or negative. If you have a vacuum inside a tube the walls must be very thick to prevent buckling. And if the tube gets kinked enough then the whole tube collapses in on itself.
If the pressure is on the inside then the tube can withstand much higher pressure differentials.
-
Still it is not undoable.
My point is that all these 'debunking', 'busted', etc videos about big projects are just scaremongering, FUD and fake news (as it is called nowadays). IMHO a video which goes into the technical challenges and possible solutions is much more interesting. I hate the 'can't do /can't be done' attitude because it stops progress. FFS people have walked on the moon so how hard can it be to run a pod through a vacuum tube? Try it at least!
-
The problem with the pressure difference is not with the pod but with the tube!
It is very important whether the pressure differential is positive or negative. If you have a vacuum inside a tube the walls must be very thick to prevent buckling. And if the tube gets kinked enough then the whole tube collapses in on itself.
If the pressure is on the inside then the tube can withstand much higher pressure differentials.
OK, I'll offer submarines as an example then. Correct direction of the pressure differential there. Yes, they are built much sturdier than airplanes, and are rather short for a hyperloop tube... But they also withstand quite a bit more pressure than one atmoshpere.
-
this 285 mph - 500km/h japanese maglev train looks like a lot safer way to travel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKwchJKTYU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CKwchJKTYU)
as for Hyper loop
until we see a full working prototype that elon musk himself must ride, addressing all safety concerns.
Hyperloop will remain a billionaires toy train set.
-
Since some revived this old thread I watched the video in the first post. I find it cringeworthy. Commercial airliners are made of aluminium composite material and they deal with similar pressures safely so why is that suddenly a problem for the hyperloop?
I'm not a mechanical engineer, yet I can think of many show-stopper problems and why this comparison with planes is not meaningful.
The airplane is just an example of a pressure vessel made as light as possible and yet it withstands similar pressure differences like the hyperloop is supposed to do. Actually an oil or gas pipeline is pretty much comparable to the build scale of a hyperloop tube (and oil and gas pipeline use much higher pressures). It is not like they are building something completely new. For once don't ignore the fact a lot of very smart people are working on building hyperloops allover the world and have working prototypes. Now it all comes down to whether it makes sense economically or not (which intrinsically means getting it safe to operate).
The problem with the pressure difference is not with the pod but with the tube!
It is very important whether the pressure differential is positive or negative. If you have a vacuum inside a tube the walls must be very thick to prevent buckling. And if the tube gets kinked enough then the whole tube collapses in on itself.
If the pressure is on the inside then the tube can withstand much higher pressure differentials.
Heh, these assumptions are a bit of a fallacy in some ways. You could design around this to prevent catastrophic failure by taking for example a double walled tube with sections which fail in a controlled manner. (e.g. perforated inner tube with foam and reinforcement rings around it inside the tube that acts as the "pressure vessel") That way the failure would be a lot more gradual and a lot safer. Keep in mind folks, we're engineers and not nay-sayers, which isn't to say this is very ambitious, but to outright shoot it down based on simplistic assumptions seems a bit low. The math on this points at it being a lot more feasible than solar roadways for example... I've seen more questionable things than this succeed before.
-
The problem with the pressure difference is not with the pod but with the tube!
It is very important whether the pressure differential is positive or negative. If you have a vacuum inside a tube the walls must be very thick to prevent buckling. And if the tube gets kinked enough then the whole tube collapses in on itself.
If the pressure is on the inside then the tube can withstand much higher pressure differentials.
FWIW, usual tunnel tubes must withstand much higher outside pressure than miserable 1 bar in case of hyperloop.
http://www.cowi.com/menu/service/bridgetunnelandmarinestructures/tunnels/documents/021-1700-020e-10b_tunnelengineering.pdf
Great Belt
The Great Belt tunnel is to date the world’s
deepest tunnel in soft soil conditions and under
the sea.
The challenge was to design the tunnel lining
for extraordinary conditions with regard to
outside pressure and chemical aggressivity and
also to design joints to be resistant to the ambient
water pressure (8 bar).
The TBM is required to operate in open or
closed mode in extremely variable geological
and hydrogeological conditions with water
pressures corresponding to 130 metres head of
water. As such, the TBM was designed to be
able to excavate short distances at up to 13 bar
pressure.
-
this 285 mph - 500km/h japanese maglev train looks like a lot safer way to travel.\
Expensive as hell, and not nearly as fast.
-
I've been on a MagLev train at 430kmh.
There is a single city with a 430km/h maglev... when did you visit Shanghai?
-
FWIW, usual tunnel tubes must withstand much higher outside pressure than miserable 1 bar in case of hyperloop.
All underground where expansion is less of an issue since temps remain constant and they are not steel. Nothing stopping them from taking the hyperpoop underground. Might take a few generations before we see a cross country underground tube network.
I also don't think TBMs can work in all soil types either.
-
Still it is not undoable.
Solar roads, uBeam and Energous are not "undoable" either.
My point is that all these 'debunking', 'busted', etc videos about big projects are just scaremongering, FUD and fake news (as it is called nowadays).
No, they are calling out obvious impractical bullshit.
so how hard can it be to run a pod through a vacuum tube? Try it at least!
You'll see...
-
Anybody knows how much was the US deficit and debt in the sixties during the "space race" ? Isn't it now over eighteen million millions (108% of GDP)? Is it ok to increase both (deficit and debt) to spend in this, now? Is this experiment being private or publicly funded? And, do you even have a say on this matter?
-
Still it is not undoable.
Solar roads, uBeam and Energous are not "undoable" either.
My point is that all these 'debunking', 'busted', etc videos about big projects are just scaremongering, FUD and fake news (as it is called nowadays).
No, they are calling out obvious impractical bullshit.
Perhaps but without doing some real research into the subject, the project itself and the people behind the project a debunking video quickly becomes unfounded FUD. A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
-
Still it is not undoable.
Solar roads, uBeam and Energous are not "undoable" either.
My point is that all these 'debunking', 'busted', etc videos about big projects are just scaremongering, FUD and fake news (as it is called nowadays).
No, they are calling out obvious impractical bullshit.
Perhaps but without doing some real research into the subject, the project itself and the people behind the project a debunking video quickly becomes unfounded FUD. A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
-
No, they are calling out obvious impractical bullshit.
NASA and France space agency (CNES) both were skeptical about reusable rocket booster. Wording was not "impractical bullshit", but close. Yet SpaceX prove them wrong, in surprisingly short time BTW. All those who "debunked" rocket landing as obviously impractical bullshit, failed as well. So... you never know :)
With current knowledge and technology we most likely will not travel in vacuum tube, but maybe in 100 years our descendants or at least their postage - will.
-
I have not looked into the hyperloop in detail but it doesn't immediately jump out at me as bullshit, I see no over-unity claims, no magic required. Given unlimited resources I have little doubt it could be made a reality. Unlike aircraft, capsule weight is of relatively little importance, the thing could be incredibly stout and sturdy
Now whether or not it ever becomes feasible to actually build the thing I don't know but the safety aspect doesn't worry me too much. Somewhere between 100-150 people die every single day in car accidents just in the US, rapid transportation has inherent risks. Yes a hyperloop accident could be spectacular with a lot of deaths but so is an airliner crash and that doesn't stop us from flying. I suspect the barrier is going to be almost purely financial rather than engineering. Building an entire new infrastructure of this sort is incredibly expensive, it pretty much has to blast straight through to be practical.
-
Is it ok to increase both (deficit and debt) to spend in this, now?
Perhaps not, but better this than spend $700 Billion on the military (https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/13/headlines/trump_signs_massive_700_billion_military_spending_bill).
I I suspect the barrier is going to be almost purely financial rather than engineering. Building an entire new infrastructure of this sort is incredibly expensive, it pretty much has to blast straight through to be practical.
Exactly! It is the financial and political realities that will likely prevent long distance hyperloop transport in the USA, not the engineering. While there are certainly engineering challenges, I’ve read enough back and forth between the “busted!” proponents and real Engineers with experience and expertise in the relevant areas to convincingly debunk the “debunkers” IMHO.
-
A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:
Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Has there been some radical breakthrough in ridiculously large scale vacuum tunnel technology suitable for human carriage over hundreds of km? No.
Has there been some other radical breakthrough in the transport market space? No.
Has there been some other breakthrough in cost reduction in anything to do with this? No.
Has there been some huge hype from the most influential tech person on the planet? Yes.
Does this hype attract bandwagon chasing money? Yes.
-
I would still prefer the hourly high speed trains that runs at 20% below its maximum test speed. A lot safer and likely a lot cheaper. Yes I am talking about the China Railway High-speed trains "Rejuvenation" that runs between Shanghai and Peking.
-
Still it is not undoable.
Solar roads, uBeam and Energous are not "undoable" either.
My point is that all these 'debunking', 'busted', etc videos about big projects are just scaremongering, FUD and fake news (as it is called nowadays).
No, they are calling out obvious impractical bullshit.
so how hard can it be to run a pod through a vacuum tube? Try it at least!
You'll see...
I'm mostly curious about energy efficiency, what'd take less energy:
- Vacuum pumps running 24/7 to keep an inherently leaky system at low air pressures.
- Doubling the speed of high speed maglev-based "rail".
I would expect there's a point where they meet, and I'm not so sure the current speeds are there already. Especially over long distances it would most likely be more energy efficient to run the second option.
-
NASA and France space agency (CNES) both were skeptical about reusable rocket booster. Wording was not "impractical bullshit", but close. Yet SpaceX prove them wrong, in surprisingly short time BTW.
That skepticism is not without merit. Think of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. You have to lift the fuel you are going to need for the landing, so presumably it basically boils down to saving more on not having to build a new booster versus the price of the extra fuel needed.
-
Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:
Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Maglev and linear motor technology itself shall be considered as breakthrough in this context. Then it did not exist - maybe that's why no one has done it.
Has there been some huge hype from the most influential tech person on the planet? Yes.
Does this hype attract bandwagon chasing money? Yes.
Has there been people who tend to use popular hype "buzzwords" to their advantage? Yes.
Does such approach attract more people to their audience? Yes :)
-
Think of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. You have to lift the fuel you are going to need for the landing
Yes. Think of it. When landing comes, payload and 2nd stage is already lifted and fuel which were used to lift all that is already gone - meaning not that much fuel is needed to decelerate remaining mass for safe reentry speed. After all they are doing it now, so nothing much to discuss here.
-
NASA and France space agency (CNES) both were skeptical about reusable rocket booster. Wording was not "impractical bullshit", but close. Yet SpaceX prove them wrong, in surprisingly short time BTW.
That skepticism is not without merit. Think of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. You have to lift the fuel you are going to need for the landing, so presumably it basically boils down to saving more on not having to build a new booster versus the price of the extra fuel needed.
Half of what at least ESA does is purely politically motivated. Each country contributes a certain amount of money, and based on that staff hiring and project assignments are done. Project calls are written with said assignments in mind, and it's really just a political game. So take anything a European space agency says with a serious grain of salt, the feasibility analysis is often based in politics and not physics.
-
According to the CEO, Hyperloop have already "proven" the technology works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uVbXok0Oc4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uVbXok0Oc4)
Not much left to do, I guess.
Or did he mean that they have proven that if you drive an object down a tube, it does go down the tube? How many million did that cost?
I listen to a bit of some of the hype. Lots of talk about building Hyperloop in tunnels and underwater - that is going to make rescue easy. The ideas are all based on some sort of super computerised network that means you capture a driverless vehicle to the station and when you get out, your seat in a hyperloop is waiting - no time wasted. The thing is they will need the same security as airports. Perhaps more since the concept is just so vulnerable.
You fire a tiny charge that pierces the skin of a passenger carriage at the 900 Km mark of a 1000Km pipe and they have to immediately flood the whole tube with air. They then have to rescue the thousands of people in the tube which could mean some have to drive 900Km at a slow speed back to the starting point. The Hyperloop is down probably for the day.
They are now only talking of a 2/3 cost saving over high speed trains, and so by the time it is implemented, the reality could be 3 times the cost of high speed trains. They know what trains cost. The Hyperloop costs are fictional at this stage.
-
Think of the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. You have to lift the fuel you are going to need for the landing
Yes. Think of it. When landing comes, payload and 2nd stage is already lifted and fuel which were used to lift all that is already gone - meaning not that much fuel is needed to decelerate remaining mass for safe reentry speed. After all they are doing it now, so nothing much to discuss here.
You missed the point. The fuel needed for landing is equivalent to a larger payload that must be lifted.
There are two possibilities for why it appears to work out for SpaceX:
1) It truly is cheaper to spend more fuel lifting fuel to be able to recover the booster than to build a new booster.
or
2) Their booster is just so much cheaper than their competitors' more expensive systems that they can afford it anyway and still be the cheapest alternative.
That they are doing it now doesn't automatically entail that it is optimal or even a good idea. Just that it works.
-
So take anything a European space agency says with a serious grain of salt, the feasibility analysis is often based in politics and not physics.
Ideally feasibility studies should be grounded in both physics and economics.
-
Tepe, if it were just economics I wouldn't see any issue with it, but it is heavily based in politics. The theoretical application process for research grants and projects from ESA should be:
a) Check list of open calls.
b) Submit proposal with consortium based on skills.
c) Choose best candidate
The actual process seems to be more like this:
a) Contact the local representative to get the call modified to target a subject you're already working on.
b) Submit a proposal with a consortium based on geographical divisions and political favour.
c) Hope that no one has more friends than you and your project partners.
But to get back to the original topic:
I listen to a bit of some of the hype. Lots of talk about building Hyperloop in tunnels and underwater - that is going to make rescue easy. The ideas are all based on some sort of super computerised network that means you capture a driverless vehicle to the station and when you get out, your seat in a hyperloop is waiting - no time wasted. The thing is they will need the same security as airports. Perhaps more since the concept is just so vulnerable.
We also run high speed trains without security, and someone setting of a small explosive charge near a link between carriages or the locomotive would also cause a massacre most likely... The only place where I've seen the type of outrageous security you suggest is in the US really, and the security for aeroplanes is still a joke at the end of the day.
You fire a tiny charge that pierces the skin of a passenger carriage at the 900 Km mark of a 1000Km pipe and they have to immediately flood the whole tube with air. They then have to rescue the thousands of people in the tube which could mean some have to drive 900Km at a slow speed back to the starting point. The Hyperloop is down probably for the day.
Wouldn't it be 100 km to the other end point, just to be a bit pedantic :-DD
And you'd have to segment the tunnel with airlocks anyway, to have a realistic chance of maintaining a vacuum in the majority of the tunnel when you have to do maintenance for example. So you wouldn't have to pressurise the entire tunnel. Honestly there are enough holes in this thing that you don't have to poke at it with these weak arguments. Pretty much every argument I hear against the hyperloop can be categorised as the following:
- The entire tube will collapse if there is a single dent.
- The vehicle is very fragile and we'll need outrageous security measures to keep everyone safe since they'll be killed instantly otherwise.
Both are issues you can design around, they feel more like emotional arguments than based in fact. If you want to bash it at least go for something that is more into the ballpark of actual concerns (construction cost, energy expenditure, ...) and not a simplistic assumption. By the same logic and demonstrations I can claim a submarine is going to implode instantly when it touches the water, and an aeroplane will explode the moment it goes above the clouds.
They are now only talking of a 2/3 cost saving over high speed trains, and so by the time it is implemented, the reality could be 3 times the cost of high speed trains. They know what trains cost. The Hyperloop costs are fictional at this stage.
No company is going to release their actual cost estimations since it'd make them vulnerable to the competition if there would ever be an actual project call for it. But no matter what it'd run massively over cost, see the average monorail project to get an idea of how bad these things can get.
-
So take anything a European space agency says with a serious grain of salt, the feasibility analysis is often based in politics and not physics.
Ideally feasibility studies should be grounded in both physics and economics.
japanese maglev trains have fully working prototypes that the public can ride on.
as full-sized non-working structural models imaginary, simulated, or theoretical do not cut it.
scientific calculations must be tested in the real world. elon musk needs put his money where your mouth is.
a working prototype, not a lot of test jigs. prove that it works. have it top out at 670 mph (1080 km/h) in the tube
over range of 263 miles (or 424 kilometers) simulated range of Los Angeles to Las vegas.
-
You missed the point. The fuel needed for landing is equivalent to a larger payload that must be lifted.
Indeed it can be payload in place of landing fuel/gear. I did not miss any point, Mr.Obvious, I just said that not that much fuel is needed for deceleration. Anyway if it would not be feasible, then they would not even try. After all they are leading rocket scientists, not you or me :)
1) It truly is cheaper to spend more fuel lifting fuel to be able to recover the booster than to build a new booster.
For sure initial cost of booster refurbishment is much higher as stated, but it will go down w/o doubt:
http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/ (http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/)
Shotwell said it was too early to set precise prices for a reused Falcon 9, but that if the fuel on the first stage costs $1 million or less, and a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so, a price reduction of 30 percent – to around $40 million – should be possible.
-
For sure initial cost of booster refurbishment is much higher as stated, but it will go down w/o doubt:
http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/ (http://spacenews.com/spacex-says-reusable-stage-could-cut-prices-by-30-plans-first-falcon-heavy-in-november/)
Shotwell said it was too early to set precise prices for a reused Falcon 9, but that if the fuel on the first stage costs $1 million or less, and a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so, a price reduction of 30 percent – to around $40 million – should be possible.
How does "without a doubt" fit with that vague Shotwell quote? (fantastic name to have in the rocket business, by the way)
Let's see how it goes. At the moment it's just guesses and marketing speech.
Addendum:
It is mainly the "[if] a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so" part that it all hinges on.
Can they really refurbish a first stage for only $3 million?
-
How does "without a doubt" fit with that vague Shotwell quote? (fantastic name to have in the rocket business, by the way)
Come on :) It's about product life cycle basics. http://productlifecyclestages.com/ (http://productlifecyclestages.com/)
-
How does "without a doubt" fit with that vague Shotwell quote? (fantastic name to have in the rocket business, by the way)
Come on :) It's about product life cycle basics. http://productlifecyclestages.com/ (http://productlifecyclestages.com/)
I try again :)
It is mainly Shotwell's "[if] a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so" part that it all hinges on.
Can they really refurbish a first stage for only $3 million?
-
It is mainly Shotwell's "[if] a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so" part that it all hinges on.
Can they really refurbish a first stage for only $3 million?
Is it so hard to comprehend that nobody can tell? :D -Because nobody refurbished rocket boosters on production scale. Final numbers will be known when they get there. Target is 3$mil, but you know, trade secrets and misleading of customers and competition is going on all around us. We will see.
Anyway for all those LEO constellations to come, lots of launches will be needed. We better pray they meet those numbers so we all can have better and lower cost communications.
-
It is mainly Shotwell's "[if] a reused first stage could be prepared for reflight for $3 million or so" part that it all hinges on.
Can they really refurbish a first stage for only $3 million?
Some of that may be from the history of the Space Shuttle where the engines had to be completely rebuilt because they suffered damage on every flight. NASA ended up redefining cracked turbine blades from a failure to a maintenance problem. If the engines are only designed to be used once, then refurbishment may amount to a complete rebuild.
Presumably SpaceX designed their engines for multiple flights so refurbishing amounts to more testing than rebuilding. This implies that they could get more performance out of them by operating them to destruction.
-
Is it so hard to comprehend that nobody can tell? :D
Not at all. We are in violent agreement.
-
Is it ok to increase both (deficit and debt) to spend in this, now?
Perhaps not, but better this than spend $700 Billion on the military (https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/13/headlines/trump_signs_massive_700_billion_military_spending_bill).
Isn't that a straw man fallacy?
-
Is it ok to increase both (deficit and debt) to spend in this, now?
Perhaps not, but better this than spend $700 Billion on the military (https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/13/headlines/trump_signs_massive_700_billion_military_spending_bill).
Isn't that a straw man fallacy?
No. It’s prioritizing spending.
There is a pervasive political hypocrisy here in the US, where politicos say we can’t afford x (usually education, research, infrastructure spending and the like) while enthusiastically supporting much, much larger amounts of spending on the military industry and various corporate welfare or banking bailouts - the places the lobbying money and/or revolving door cushy after-government-service jobs are.
This graph on the US annual discretionary spending gives some perspective.
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=387327;image)
-
This graph on the US annual discretionary spending gives some perspective.
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=387327;image)
Wow. Amazing. For comparison, spending in defence in Spain is about half of the green slice:
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=387339;image)
source: http://www.sepg.pap.minhafp.gob.es/sitios/sepg/es-ES/Presupuestos/pge2017/Documents/LIBROAMARILLO2017.pdf (http://www.sepg.pap.minhafp.gob.es/sitios/sepg/es-ES/Presupuestos/pge2017/Documents/LIBROAMARILLO2017.pdf)
-
FYI, these are different graphs. This is an error frequently made, even by the media.
This is total fed spending. It looks much more similar:
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png
Tim
-
When a country joins the WTO it has to buy into the WTO ideology of "progressive liberalisation" which means that eventually everything must be privatized.
So, unless they had public services before their date of accession, and haven't changed them at all or charged money for them at all, or explicitly carve them out (http://www.epsu.org/article/new-study-model-clauses-exclusion-public-services-trade-and-investment-agreements), they have to suffer a death of a thousand cuts.
What people need makes no difference it seems. Its like an inside job to steal the whole planet where they all help one another rip off the public everywhere.
-
We also run high speed trains without security, and someone setting of a small explosive charge near a link between carriages or the locomotive would also cause a massacre most likely... The only place where I've seen the type of outrageous security you suggest is in the US really, and the security for aeroplanes is still a joke at the end of the day.
It's almost all just theater to make it look like we're "doing something" to keep people safe. The system is full of gaping holes and it's trivially easy to sneak contraband through. On one occasion I flew from a small podunk airport, the sort where you walk through an old fashioned metal detector then wander out onto the tarmac and climb into a plane, into a major international airport. It occurred to me when I arrived that I was standing within the "highly secure" terminal area having completely bypassed all of the security and body scanners, simply by flying a short distance from an airport lacking all those facilities. It's a joke.
-
A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:
Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Has there been some radical breakthrough in ridiculously large scale vacuum tunnel technology suitable for human carriage over hundreds of km? No.
Has there been some other radical breakthrough in the transport market space? No.
Has there been some other breakthrough in cost reduction in anything to do with this? No.
You can turn this reasoning around quite easely: if there is no demand for a radical breakthrough then it won't happen. Chicken & egg until someone throws serious money at the problem and makes the breakthrough happen. Creating something new often requires solving technical issues nobody has solved before.
-
You can turn this reasoning around quite easely: if there is no demand for a radical breakthrough then it won't happen. Chicken & egg until someone throws serious money at the problem and makes the breakthrough happen. Creating something new often requires solving technical issues nobody has solved before.
People bitch and moan about dumping money in to force technology to evolve but it worked with LED lightbulbs. When they first appeared on the market they were very expensive, $50+ per bulb. Efficiency mandates and subsidies got the ball rolling and now they are in widespread production, readily available and dirt cheap. Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market. People are highly resistant to change and sometimes a visionary has to come in and give something a nudge.
-
A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:
Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Has there been some radical breakthrough in ridiculously large scale vacuum tunnel technology suitable for human carriage over hundreds of km? No.
Has there been some other radical breakthrough in the transport market space? No.
Has there been some other breakthrough in cost reduction in anything to do with this? No.
You can turn this reasoning around quite easely: if there is no demand for a radical breakthrough then it won't happen. Chicken & egg until someone throws serious money at the problem and makes the breakthrough happen. Creating something new often requires solving technical issues nobody has solved before.
And sometimes, just sometimes, an idea will always just remain fundamentally impractical.
IIRC there is someone on this forum who is part of one of the top HL design teams who have published very details technical papers on it, and even they admit that the vacuum based HL idea is poorly thought through and basically may not happen.
And make no mistake, you can't separate the vacuum idea from Hyperloop, because without it it's no longer the Hyperloop idea.
A vacuum based passenger carrying intercity HL will never happen, I'll bet you a bitcoin on it.
-
FYI, these are different graphs. This is an error frequently made, even by the media.
This is total fed spending. It looks much more similar:
https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/total_spending_pie%2C__2015_enacted.png
Tim
Yes, that is true. The graph I posted is, as I said, discretionary - that is, spending which congress has some say in on a year to year basis versus long germ obligations such as social security, medicare, interset on debt, etc - which must be paid and cannot be prioritized, at least not on a near term basis.
It’s the discretionary spending is what’s relevant to this discussion.
-
Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market.
The total cost of ownership of LED bulbs is much higher than incandescent bulbs where I am because either burn out in about 6 months due to our dirty power. At least the incandescent bulbs were cheap so replacing them was cheap.
-
Yes, that is true. The graph I posted is, as I said, discretionary - that is, spending which congress has some say in on a year to year basis versus long germ obligations such as social security, medicare, interset on debt, etc - which must be paid and cannot be prioritized, at least not on a near term basis.
It’s the discretionary spending is what’s relevant to this discussion.
Congress, or more specifically the House of Representatives, has a say in all of it. Congress cannot bind itself to a rule that it cannot break.
They play the same kind of word game with "cuts" when they really mean they are not increasing something as much as originally planned.
-
Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market.
The total cost of ownership of LED bulbs is much higher than incandescent bulbs where I am because either burn out in about 6 months due to our dirty power. At least the incandescent bulbs were cheap so replacing them was cheap.
I rather suspect you just buy very crappy bulbs. For decent bulbs quality of power won't matter too much.
-
A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:
Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Has there been some radical breakthrough in ridiculously large scale vacuum tunnel technology suitable for human carriage over hundreds of km? No.
Has there been some other radical breakthrough in the transport market space? No.
Has there been some other breakthrough in cost reduction in anything to do with this? No.
You can turn this reasoning around quite easely: if there is no demand for a radical breakthrough then it won't happen. Chicken & egg until someone throws serious money at the problem and makes the breakthrough happen. Creating something new often requires solving technical issues nobody has solved before.
And sometimes, just sometimes, an idea will always just remain fundamentally impractical.
IIRC there is someone on this forum who is part of one of the top HL design teams who have published very details technical papers on it, and even they admit that the vacuum based HL idea is poorly thought through and basically may not happen.
And make no mistake, you can't separate the vacuum idea from Hyperloop, because without it it's no longer the Hyperloop idea.
A vacuum based passenger carrying intercity HL will never happen, I'll bet you a bitcoin on it.
Do you have a link to those papers or some more specific search keywords to feed into Google?
-
Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market.
The total cost of ownership of LED bulbs is much higher than incandescent bulbs where I am because either burn out in about 6 months due to our dirty power. At least the incandescent bulbs were cheap so replacing them was cheap.
I rather suspect you just buy very crappy bulbs. For decent bulbs quality of power won't matter too much.
And I know that I did not; expensive bulbs hardly last any longer and not even longer proportional to the increase in cost. There is nothing to be done about the power short of installing active power conditioning.
Even California concluded that the operating life of LED bulbs was grossly overestimated making their economic savings questionable but of course that did not give them pause in mandating their use. The whole exercise was for rent seeking as I expected.
-
"HYPELoop"
Whatever it's purpose, it's NOT transportation~
It's likely a "shambolic" gesture as Simon puts it.
-
Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market.
The total cost of ownership of LED bulbs is much higher than incandescent bulbs where I am because either burn out in about 6 months due to our dirty power. At least the incandescent bulbs were cheap so replacing them was cheap.
Glad I don't live where you do, I replaced all the bulbs in my house with LEDs shortly after I moved in, almost 4 years ago now. Haven't had a single one fail. And they aren't the real expensive ones, almost all of them are just the Utilitech ones from Lowes. I even have one in the fully enclosed fixture over my kitchen sink and it seems some members of the household just can't be bothered to turn it off so it runs 24/7.
-
And I know that I did not; expensive bulbs hardly last any longer and not even longer proportional to the increase in cost.
:palm: I hope you at least did not order them from China.
-
A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.
Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:
Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Has there been some radical breakthrough in ridiculously large scale vacuum tunnel technology suitable for human carriage over hundreds of km? No.
Has there been some other radical breakthrough in the transport market space? No.
Has there been some other breakthrough in cost reduction in anything to do with this? No.
You can turn this reasoning around quite easely: if there is no demand for a radical breakthrough then it won't happen. Chicken & egg until someone throws serious money at the problem and makes the breakthrough happen. Creating something new often requires solving technical issues nobody has solved before.
And sometimes, just sometimes, an idea will always just remain fundamentally impractical.
IIRC there is someone on this forum who is part of one of the top HL design teams who have published very details technical papers on it, and even they admit that the vacuum based HL idea is poorly thought through and basically may not happen.
And make no mistake, you can't separate the vacuum idea from Hyperloop, because without it it's no longer the Hyperloop idea.
A vacuum based passenger carrying intercity HL will never happen, I'll bet you a bitcoin on it.
all is not lost there is always the toy market.
Japan's Maglev Train - Linear Levitation Toys Train For Kids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PdevFmzzk8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PdevFmzzk8)
the idea of a hyperloop toy is a tube kit that makes sounds, as the idea kids imagine the train inside the tube. :-DD
-
I do think that all these mega-speed transportation ideas are attacking the commuter problem from the wrong angle.
A bunch of electrons are struggling to get through a narrow wire from - to +. This is making the wire hot. You decide to alleviate the problem by fitting a heavier cable. The result? More electrons decide that this would be a great idea, so... :bullshit:
In the UK we have Stamp Duty, which adds to the already high cost of moving house. It's effective a government fine for relocating. :wtf:
-Is it any wonder there is such a commuter problem?
If the government wanted to solve this, they would:
- Make it easier, not harder, for people to move to where there is work.
- Discourage the building of 'dormitory towns' far away from any work or amenities.
- Stop charging city residents a fortune to park outside their house in daytime.
- Encourage remote working.
- Make it more expensive for firms to service huge areas from one central depot.
The problem at the moment is that the government makes huge amounts of revenue from vehicle and road fuel taxation, and parking charges. This could explain why the situation perpetuates itself.
-
And I know that I did not; expensive bulbs hardly last any longer and not even longer proportional to the increase in cost. There is nothing to be done about the power short of installing active power conditioning.
Even California concluded that the operating life of LED bulbs was grossly overestimated making their economic savings questionable but of course that did not give them pause in mandating their use. The whole exercise was for rent seeking as I expected.
I can't really say how long they last because so far I've never had one fail except for a cheap one I used in a fully enclosed fixture even though it said not to. The LED bulbs in my porch lights run an average of 12 hours a night on a timer and I labeled them when I installed them in Nov 2011, still going strong. My house was 100% LED (except for the oven and microwave bulbs) as of 2012 and even the early bulbs I was paying $40 each for have paid for themselves by now.
I haven't heard of the data regarding California you mention, but I do know the guys at the BSL in Los Angeles have had an LED streetlight running 24/7 for 5 or 6 years now and last I heard they had not recorded any measurable lumen depreciation.
-
When I was a kid, I remember going to NYC to places like the Empire State Building and seeing that offices there used a pneumatic vacuum tube system to send and receive their mail. It was pretty old at that point, but it was still being used.
They had similar systems in a lot of cities/large businesses. I don't think any of them are still in use.
-
Banks all had pneumatic tube systems for the drivethrough stations, I don't know if they still do. The Costco near me has one, I'm not sure precisely what it's used for but I think it's for sending cash from the registers back to a central point. There's even one in the kitchen of the food court which is outside the main part of the store.
-
Many hospitals have pneumatic tube systems and still use them. The work geat. The local Walmart has one as well that they use for their pharmacy. These systems work well.
-
-Is it any wonder there is such a commuter problem?
If the government wanted to solve this, they would:
- Make it easier, not harder, for people to move to where there is work.
- Discourage the building of 'dormitory towns' far away from any work or amenities.
- Stop charging city residents a fortune to park outside their house in daytime.
- Encourage remote working.
- Make it more expensive for firms to service huge areas from one central depot.
You can't use cars to solve the commuting "problem" as they don't scale with dense cities, America tried a car centric approach and to fit in all the required car parking spaces they could never achieve densities to support mass transit and locked those cities out of getting any larger.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/27/cities-eliminating-car-parks-parking (https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/27/cities-eliminating-car-parks-parking)
https://www.shoupdogg.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/08/Putting-a-Cap-on-Parking-Requirements.pdf (https://www.shoupdogg.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/08/Putting-a-Cap-on-Parking-Requirements.pdf)
Mass transit (public and/or private variety) is the way to build shorter commute times and increasing the cost of car ownership is exactly they way to reduce congestion and commute times. If you can rent land for a fraction of the price to park your car on, can I get the same price and park a caravan on it then rent out the residence for profit? There are better uses for land and the free market can balance that well so if you want to park at your house you are free to purchase the land required and have the parking space for whatever purpose you desire.
-
This is really good.. A "Must" read!
In Car Nation part one: Cause
by Nick Sousanis
http://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation1.html (http://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation1.html)
In Car Nation part two: Effect
http://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation2.html (http://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation2.html)
Except the problem is, the car was built for a certain time, which is drawing to an end. People in the future are not going to have the incomes or the need for private automobiles, because many wont have jobs as they did in the past. Others will work over the Internet, often for employers hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
Also, some areas may become too dry or too hot or too polluted to support human habitation. Will people move back into the cities?
-
I haven't heard of the data regarding California you mention, but I do know the guys at the BSL in Los Angeles have had an LED streetlight running 24/7 for 5 or 6 years now and last I heard they had not recorded any measurable lumen depreciation.
The lumen depreciation is part of the problem. LEDs are specified that way but most failures are complete and have nothing to do with that. Regulators confused operating life with reliability when they did the calculations for total cost of ownership.
-
The lumen depreciation is part of the problem. LEDs are specified that way but most failures are complete and have nothing to do with that. Regulators confused operating life with reliability when they did the calculations for total cost of ownership.
I don't follow. An LED's lifetime is specified as the time until it's light output it drops below XX% of its initial output. Whether that's due to gradual depreciation or fatal failure should not matter. I.e. in a test batch of LEDs, every reliability fault will also drag down the average operating lifetime.
Edit: Typo
-
I haven't heard of the data regarding California you mention, but I do know the guys at the BSL in Los Angeles have had an LED streetlight running 24/7 for 5 or 6 years now and last I heard they had not recorded any measurable lumen depreciation.
The lumen depreciation is part of the problem. LEDs are specified that way but most failures are complete and have nothing to do with that. Regulators confused operating life with reliability when they did the calculations for total cost of ownership.
But still the fact that LED lamps don't work for you due to poor power regulation (which makes me wonder how other electronic equipment survives and/or whether you bought good quality LED lamps) doesn't mean they don't work well for other people. So far Philips CFL lamps have worked well for me so I bought a whole bunch of LED lamps from Philips.
edit: typo
-
It's true that in some parts of the US electronics damage from power surges is a very real problem. Much of the midwest is wide open space with frequent lightning storms and most of the power distribution is overhead, it's not economical to bury it in sparsely populated regions. Lightning damage is rare where I live but even so I've seen a few appliances that had components vaporized off the PCB. I fixed a dishwasher that was a lightning strike victim, the fuse was missing entirely, only a black splotch on the PCB and a pair of splayed leads remained. The internal thermal fuse in the transformer primary had opened and part of a trace was blown off the PCB.
This sort of thing is very common in the midwest, I've seen pictures of all manner of consumer electronics with vaporized traces and cratered parts.
-
WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?
-
WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?
Well it was to show that if you pour money into a new 'unrealistic' product it can turn into a good product after all. >:D
-
WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?
It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone. The subsidies made a prohibitively expensive product affordable for long enough to drive the manufacturing cost down. It's a form of the classic chicken & egg problem, a new tech is too expensive for people to afford it, because it's too expensive to sell enough of it to bring up the volume and lower the cost.
People in general are notoriously short-sited and in the era of instant gratification and the extreme focus on quarterly gains it's only getting worse.
-
WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?
It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone.
Yes, but AFAIK there are currently no government subsidies involved in hyperloop development. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
People in general are notoriously short-sited and in the era of instant gratification and the extreme focus on quarterly gains it's only getting worse.
Yeah, you got that right. I can only imagine where technology would be now if that had been the case during the 1950’s and 1960’s.
-
WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?
It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone.
Yes, but AFAIK there are currently no government subsidies involved in hyperloop development. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
Small companies, however at least one very serious company which has real train business invested into it https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/12/richard-branson-and-virgin-join-forces-with-hyperloop-one/ (https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/12/richard-branson-and-virgin-join-forces-with-hyperloop-one/)
-
WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?
It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone.
Yes, but AFAIK there are currently no government subsidies involved in hyperloop development. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
AFAIK the Dutch government has indicated to be willing to invest if a company comes up with a good plan and at least facilitate building a test track.
-
I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
I am afraid you are indeed wrong. Virgin Hyperloop One shall not be considered as small company. Nobody knows tells how much Branson invested, but it shall be huge pile of money.
https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one (https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one)
Quite recently they got new "injection" to burn in form of 50$ mil:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html)
-
I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
I am afraid you are indeed wrong. Virgin Hyperloop One shall not be considered as small company. Nobody knows tells how much Branson invested, but it shall be huge pile of money.
https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one (https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one)
Quite recently they got new "injection" to burn in form of 50$ mil:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html)
That money will never see any return on investment, it will just vanish.
-
People in general are notoriously short-sited and in the era of instant gratification and the extreme focus on quarterly gains it's only getting worse.
To completely mangle another famous quote from Carl Sagan - Don't be so long sighted that your eyeballs falls out.
You can argue that uBeam and Solar Roadways are all "long sighted" projects too, good luck with that.
-
I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
I am afraid you are indeed wrong. Virgin Hyperloop One shall not be considered as small company. Nobody knows tells how much Branson invested, but it shall be huge pile of money.
https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one (https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one)
Quite recently they got new "injection" to burn in form of 50$ mil:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html)
That money will never see any return on investment, it will just vanish.
Spin-off is the keyword you are missing here. I did some projects in the past which didn't pan out themselves but the knowledge & IP gained turned out to be very profitable. And big corporations have enough money to add patents into the mix. You can't predict the future but sitting on your thumbs is not going to be profitable for sure.
-
You can argue that uBeam and Solar Roadways are all "long sighted" projects too, good luck with that.
Why don't you add water powered cars and cold fusion projects to the list? :-DD What I am trying to say - uBeam/FreakingRoads to Hyperloop is apples to orange comparison. Yes, they can struggle to get safety approval for human transportation for many years to come, but to say that Hyperloop is utterly failure or scam is.. how to say.. uneducated imprudence.
[edit] "uneducated imprudence" was the best I got: google.translate ;)
-
I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.
I am afraid you are indeed wrong. Virgin Hyperloop One shall not be considered as small company. Nobody knows tells how much Branson invested, but it shall be huge pile of money.
https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one (https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one)
Quite recently they got new "injection" to burn in form of 50$ mil:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html)
Um, you left out the main point of my quote about there not being government subsidies, which your links show no evidence of that I see - only that Richard Branson has invested a large amount of money in one of the companies. Whether that makes them a large company now is beside the point . I don’t think it does, but that has nothing to do with the point I was making about government subsidies.
That money will never see any return on investment, it will just vanish.
Perhaps - that is one opinion. Of course Branson losing his money if it occurs, does not mean the hyperloop fails and certainly doesn’t mean it is not an achievable engineering challenge.
.
-
but that has nothing to do with the point I was making about government subsidies.
I did not give chit about government subsidies. I selectively picked only "I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams" part which I did mention by quoting you.
-
I selectively picked only "I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams"
Exactly.
-
I selectively picked only "I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams"
Exactly.
Well, sorry then :) I can tell it now that I agree to you regarding that (government subsidies) part and obviously had nothing to add.
-
I selectively picked only "I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams"
Exactly.
Well, sorry then :) I can tell it now that I agree to you regarding that (government subsidies) part and obviously had nothing to add.
Even if it was not relevant to my point, I’m glad you brought the info regarding Richard Branson’s investment into the general hyperloop discussion. He may loose his money, but he’s no fool and has a good track record.
-
That money will never see any return on investment, it will just vanish.
Perhaps - that is one opinion. Of course Branson losing his money if it occurs, does not mean the hyperloop fails and certainly doesn’t mean it is not an achievable engineering challenge.
The trouble is that early investors in overhyped projects can make a lot of money and prestige. You can also look like visionary and a hero. You can be directly in touch with world leaders. A project like the Hyperloop can potentially attract billions of dollars, and that money has to go somewhere.
For example, there is Virgin Galactic trying to make vehicles that can fly into space. Hyperloop requires the development of safe passenger craft that can work in a vacuum. Can some of the development money cross between the groups, or can technology that Virgin Galactic needs be developed with Hyperloop money?
The Hyperloop would be a fantastic laboratory for exploring how to make space craft safer. Developing vacuum emergency equipment.
The attraction of Hyperloop is that the raw concept is fine - of course it would be possible to send a vehicle down a vacuum tube at high speeds and with very low friction. Hyperloop say they have now "proved" it, but the concept never needed $1 spent to be proved.
If you look at some other areas of technology like the development of the transistor, IC's, Quantum Computing, WiFi, the Internet, medical imaging, etc. These are all massive technological leaps forward that are not based on anything obvious. Someone has to invent new technology that never existed before.
-
I’m glad you brought the info regarding Richard Branson’s investment into the general hyperloop discussion. He may loose his money, but he’s no fool and has a good track record.
The term is: risk investment. He definitely knows what he is doing, why he did not invest in uBeam but in Hyperloop :)
-
Spin-off is the keyword you are missing here. I did some projects in the past which didn't pan out themselves but the knowledge & IP gained turned out to be very profitable. And big corporations have enough money to add patents into the mix. You can't predict the future but sitting on your thumbs is not going to be profitable for sure.
Very good point. Even if the hyperloop is never realized as a large scale public transport project (as I suspect will be the case due to financial and political but not technical reasons), one or more of the companies involved may still be successful. One could argue that the education and inspiration it has contributed to engineering students has already made it a success.
-
Even if it was not relevant to my point, I’m glad you brought the info regarding Richard Branson’s investment into the general hyperloop discussion. He may loose his money, but he’s no fool and has a good track record.
As did Alan Bond, till he "went down the gurgler"!
-
Very good point. Even if the hyperloop is never realized as a large scale public transport project (as I suspect will be the case due to financial and political but not technical reasons)
I'm happy to categorically state that practical realities will kill it, even if the financial and political will are there.
I'll even take a bet on it.
-
Why don't you add water powered cars and cold fusion projects to the list? :-DD What I am trying to say - uBeam/FreakingRoads to Hyperloop is apples to orange comparison.
No, because both are similarly impractical. Both are a ridiculously convoluted way to do the intended task.
Yes, they can struggle to get safety approval for human transportation for many years to come, but to say that Hyperloop is utterly failure or scam is.. how to say.. uneducated imprudence.
I have never said it was a scam, I'm saying it will ultimately be impractical to implement, it will not succeed as a public transport system as intended (e.g. the stated vacuum thing).
Not when you have perfectly practical existing technologies that work. e.g. Maglev works at 430kmh, I know, I've been on it.
To think that an order of magitude more complex, expensive, and less reliable system that only goes twice as fast will be a solution is complete folly.
-
I have never said it was a scam, I'm saying it will ultimately be impractical to implement, it will not succeed as a public transport system as intended (e.g. the stated vacuum thing).
Not when you have perfectly practical existing technologies that work. e.g. Maglev works at 430kmh, I know, I've been on it.
To think that an order of magitude more complex, expensive, and less reliable system that only goes twice as fast will be a solution is complete folly.
You can barely call Maglev as such being practical. Huge power is needed to push the train, therefore it's extremely expensive to build. It's absence except a few very short routes is an obvious consequence for that. Also running it underground needs some huge tubes or reducing the speed a lot. Air resistance is the main reason why Maglev cannot run faster. Placing Maglev into vacuum severely reduces requirements to Maglev part and therefore makes it able to run much faster, cheaper and more practical to implement. I'm not saying that other parts of the whole system are not required to be viable as well.
No, because both are similarly impractical. Both are a ridiculously convoluted way to do the intended task.
Look no further than modern CPUs/GPUs with billions of transistors in them. Convoluted as hell, especially by merits just a few decades ago. Yet you have them everywhere. If in 80's you said that in relatively near future PC or even freaking portable phone will need gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of storage, people would call you stupid or crazy.
Comparing hyperloop with uBeam and Solar Roadways is incorrect because you compare things which cannot work in theory to begin with what can work in theory but may be hard to implement.
-
You can barely call Maglev as such being practical. Huge power is needed to push the train, therefore it's extremely expensive to build. It's absence except a few very short routes is an obvious consequence for that. Also running it underground needs some huge tubes or reducing the speed a lot. Air resistance is the main reason why Maglev cannot run faster. Placing Maglev into vacuum severely reduces requirements to Maglev part and therefore makes it able to run much faster, cheaper and more practical to implement. I'm not saying that other parts of the whole system are not required to be viable as well.
And therein lies the devil in the practical detail.
It's all fine saying normal Maglev has problems and limits, and that reducing those problems isn't beneficial, but just think at what is involved in doing that, it's a showstopper.
Look no further than modern CPUs/GPUs with billions of transistors in them. Convoluted as hell, especially by merits just a few decades ago. Yet you have them everywhere. If in 80's you said that in relatively near future PC or even freaking portable phone will need gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of storage, people would call you stupid or crazy.
It wasn't a huge jump, it was a slight increase in performance and techniques every year for, what, 50 years.
Comparing hyperloop with uBeam and Solar Roadways is incorrect because you compare things which cannot work in theory to begin with what can work in theory but may be hard to implement.
Rubbish. uBeam and Solar roadways can both work in theory and also in practice, demonstrably so, that's a fact. They are just impractical.
-
Very good point. Even if the hyperloop is never realized as a large scale public transport project (as I suspect will be the case due to financial and political but not technical reasons)
I'm happy to categorically state that practical realities will kill it, even if the financial and political will are there.
You need to be more specific about what you mean by "practical realities". In my view the financial and political will are the major practical realities.
-
You need to be more specific about what you mean by "practical realities". In my view the financial and political will are the major practical realities.
Political will may last one Hyperloop or two.
It is not going to build the loop around Europe and the Baltic countries. It is not going to build massive Hyperloop networks into cities. It is not going to build big networks of container Hyperloops from major ports. The only way complete networks will be built is if it is practical. If it is not practical, it cannot be financially viable no matter what the politics. Even at this stage when no Hyperloop exists, they are only saying it will be a little cheaper then high speed rail. I guess that means it will more expensive then truck or freight train.
Some Hyperloops may be built, but there is no guarantee that supersonic speeds will even be safe. It may be the safe speed is under 200mph.
-
Very good point. Even if the hyperloop is never realized as a large scale public transport project (as I suspect will be the case due to financial and political but not technical reasons)
I'm happy to categorically state that practical realities will kill it, even if the financial and political will are there.
You need to be more specific about what you mean by "practical realities".
Sure, the vacuum part.
If "HyperLoop" becomes a reality then it will not involve the vacuum part as has been, dare I say it, hyped.
Make no mistake, the entire premise of the Hyperloop concept is based on the vacuum to lower to air resistance and lower the maglev power. It has no other "innovation".
-
Very good point. Even if the hyperloop is never realized as a large scale public transport project (as I suspect will be the case due to financial and political but not technical reasons)
I'm happy to categorically state that practical realities will kill it, even if the financial and political will are there.
You need to be more specific about what you mean by "practical realities".
Sure, the vacuum part.
If "HyperLoop" becomes a reality then it will not involve the vacuum part as has been, dare I say it, hyped.
Make no mistake, the entire premise of the Hyperloop concept is based on the vacuum to lower to air resistance and lower the maglev power. It has no other "innovation".
First of all you have to define vacuum when it comes to the hyperloop. The amount of energy you can save depends linear on the density of the gas you are travelling through. So at 1/10 of the atmospheric pressure you save 10 times the energy. Some people may not call that a vacuum though.
However in general IMHO you'd do better to take a more objective approach rather than being the umpteenth armchair nay-sayer. Going through the technical challenges and trying to find the economic angle without prejudice/judgement will result in a much more informative video and not deteriorate your credibility. After all there are things you don't know about a project because they are kept secret for competitive reasons.
It is good to be critical about things but when a lot of smart people + lots of money are involved in a project then it is better to watch and learn. For example: when Google announced Android as a Java based mobile device platform I was convinced it could never work because Java applications where typically such a pile of buggy crap (also due to Sun's implementation). Later on I learned Google already figured that out for themselves and was going to write their own Java engine from scratch. The rest is history.
-
A major issue I see is that operating in a vacuum involves many of the safety issues of operating in space. There is enough experience of space operations to know the ins and outs of this (suit required for the out part!) and that there are quite a few gotchas that can lead to a fatal accident if due care is not taken.
If the train springs a leak, people start asphyxiating rather fast. Oxygen masks are also no use in a complete vacuum; about a fifth of sea level pressure is the lowest they will sustain life in, and that won't be enough vacuum for the hyperloop.
This is probably the biggest issue, since it means that any small prang with a train that cracks the hull means everyone on board dead in a few minutes.
-
However in general IMHO you'd do better to take a more objective approach rather than being the umpteenth armchair nay-sayer. Going through the technical challenges and trying to find the economic angle without prejudice/judgement will result in a much more informative video and not deteriorate your credibility.
Nothing wrong with my credibility.
I'll stand by my spidey sense impractical detector, thanks.
-
If the train springs a leak, people start asphyxiating rather fast. Oxygen masks are also no use in a complete vacuum; about a fifth of sea level pressure is the lowest they will sustain life in, and that won't be enough vacuum for the hyperloop.
This is probably the biggest issue, since it means that any small prang with a train that cracks the hull means everyone on board dead in a few minutes.
It's such a retarded idea, watch the money just disappear and the design teams progressively back down on the "vacuum" part of it.
-
Comparing hyperloop with uBeam and Solar Roadways is incorrect because you compare things which cannot work in theory to begin with what can work in theory but may be hard to implement.
Rubbish. uBeam and Solar roadways can both work in theory and also in practice, demonstrably so, that's a fact. They are just impractical.
In theory they are very inefficient way of using already existing technologies. Therefore I say they don't work in theory. Say, if you need to use unsafe levels of ultrasound = it does not work.
EDIT: And to be clear, this does not even include a cost to build. There is just no way uBeam and Solar roadways can operate sufficiently even if made for free.
-
Rubbish. uBeam and Solar roadways can both work in theory and also in practice, demonstrably so, that's a fact. They are just impractical.
In theory they are very inefficient way of using already existing technologies. Therefore I say they don't work in theory.
Nope, they can both be reasonably efficient enough in theory and kinda in practice even, just not under practical usage circumstances.
But it's semantics of course.
The idea of keeping a 1000km long several meter wide vacuum system working with a 1000km/h projectile in it is just madness.
-
Rubbish. uBeam and Solar roadways can both work in theory and also in practice, demonstrably so, that's a fact. They are just impractical.
In theory they are very inefficient way of using already existing technologies. Therefore I say they don't work in theory.
Nope, they can both be reasonably efficient enough in theory and kinda in practice even, just not under practical usage circumstances.
But it's semantics of course.
The idea of keeping a 1000km long several meter wide vacuum system working with a 1000km/h projectile in it is just madness.
The 1000km/h is a number not based on any safety testing. You can buy a car that can go at 440 km/h but that does not mean that it is safe to regularly travel anywhere at 440 km/h. The safe speed tends to come from experience, but in Australia, for example, they have settled for speeds varying between 70 and 110 km/h outside urban areas.
Let's say they can travel at 1000km/h. The tubes have to be safe. There has to be a safe distance between tubes so a crash in the Up tube can't take out the Down tube. A safe separation may be 100 meters. That is not the worst part. It has to be safe for people in the proximity of the tunnels. A safe distance exclusion zone could be 400 meters? I do not know but we are talking a possibility of a big high energy collision with shrapnel - it could be 1 km or more. So when they build the London to Edinburgh hyperloop that they talk about, are they going to build a corridor 2 km wide all the way through the heart of England? Even putting the tubes in trenches will not stop shrapnel flying for massive distances.
Talking about putting solar cells on top of the tunnels is a total joke if you are going to have 1km each side unoccupied.
Or will they mostly use tunnels?
Now they cannot just have a single tunnel with the two tubes. They have to have at least 3 separate tunnels. They will need one tunnel for the Up tube, one tunnel for the Down tube, and one tunnel in between for maintenance/rescue service access.
If the Up and Down tunnels take different routes, it is much worse. You need a total of 4 tunnels. Both the tunnels will need their own maintenance/ safety services tunnels.
Now, if they are mostly using tunnels, where are the solar panels now?
I think if you multiplied any current estimate of costs by 10, you would still be underestimating the costs.
To make it even worse, they are talking about sending shipping containers on the hyperloop at 800km/h or more. How much kinetic energy can a loaded shipping container have at this speed? The vehicle will probably have to have at least the mass of the heaviest container.
-
Let's say they can travel at 1000km/h. The tubes have to be safe. There has to be a safe distance between tubes so a crash in the Up tube can't take out the Down tube. A safe separation may be 100 meters. That is not the worst part. It has to be safe for people in the proximity of the tunnels. A safe distance exclusion zone could be 400 meters? I do not know but we are talking a possibility of a big high energy collision with shrapnel - it could be 1 km or more. So when they build the London to Edinburgh hyperloop that they talk about, are they going to build a corridor 2 km wide all the way through the heart of England? Even putting the tubes in trenches will not stop shrapnel flying for massive distances.
Talking about putting solar cells on top of the tunnels is a total joke if you are going to have 1km each side unoccupied.
Safe distance, LOL? By same merits, you would need to keep people away from usual high speed train at least a few km away as well :palm:
How much kinetic energy can a loaded shipping container have at this speed? The vehicle will probably have to have at least the mass of the heaviest container.
FYI due to much smaller size, kinetic energy will be lower than of usual high speed train.
-
Let's say they can travel at 1000km/h. The tubes have to be safe. There has to be a safe distance between tubes so a crash in the Up tube can't take out the Down tube. A safe separation may be 100 meters. That is not the worst part. It has to be safe for people in the proximity of the tunnels. A safe distance exclusion zone could be 400 meters? I do not know but we are talking a possibility of a big high energy collision with shrapnel - it could be 1 km or more. So when they build the London to Edinburgh hyperloop that they talk about, are they going to build a corridor 2 km wide all the way through the heart of England? Even putting the tubes in trenches will not stop shrapnel flying for massive distances.
Talking about putting solar cells on top of the tunnels is a total joke if you are going to have 1km each side unoccupied.
Safe distance, LOL? By same merits, you would need to keep people away from usual high speed train at least a few km away as well :palm:
No. A high speed train derailment is not an explosion. A Hyperloop crash can easily be an explosion. Totally different.
-
No. A high speed train derailment is not an explosion. A Hyperloop crash can easily be an explosion. Totally different.
Why, there is no fuel to explode compared to usual train. If you think about implosion because of vacuum, then it won't be that severe, it's is only 1 bar of pressure difference. There would be bent tube worst case.
-
No. A high speed train derailment is not an explosion. A Hyperloop crash can easily be an explosion. Totally different.
Why, there is no fuel to explode compared to usual train. If you think about implosion because of vacuum, then it won't be that severe, it's is only 1 bar of pressure difference.
You are kidding? You only need energy for an explosion. All an explosive is is a way to quickly release a lot of energy. Another way is to have an object weighing tonnes travelling at 1000km/h come into destructive contact with a stationary tube.
Anyway, there is fuel. The carriages have to carry hours of compressed oxygen, and if you combine this with metals at their combustion temperature, absolutely massive amounts of energy can be released. Aluminium when it oxidises releases far more energy then any fuel.
-
A high speed train derailment is not an explosion.
I don't see any solid evidence that won't be the case for hyperloop.
Another way is to have an object weighing tonnes travelling at 1000km/h come into destructive contact with a stationary tube.
It won't be head collision, and it will just bounce away from a wall.
The carriages have to carry hours of compressed oxygen
More likely just compressed air. Also probably there won't be any as there won't be complete vacuum, just low pressure air. They could use pumps to compress air present in the tube.
Aluminium when it oxidises releases far more energy then any fuel.
You need aluminium powder for that to happen. Won't happen with solid piece of aluminium.
-
Another way is to have an object weighing tonnes travelling at 1000km/h come into destructive contact with a stationary tube.
It won't be head collision, and it will just bounce away from a wall.
objects travelling around 300m/s tend to behave quite differently than people are used to in normal everyday life, maximum of 26.8m/s.
one of my hobbies deals with objects normally travelling at 300m/s or more. objects don't bounce like you think they do. any contact at those velocities will be catastrophic.
regardless, hyperloop is a silly impractical pipe dream.
-
Let's say they can travel at 1000km/h. The tubes have to be safe. There has to be a safe distance between tubes so a crash in the Up tube can't take out the Down tube. A safe separation may be 100 meters. That is not the worst part. It has to be safe for people in the proximity of the tunnels. A safe distance exclusion zone could be 400 meters? I do not know but we are talking a possibility of a big high energy collision with shrapnel - it could be 1 km or more. So when they build the London to Edinburgh hyperloop that they talk about, are they going to build a corridor 2 km wide all the way through the heart of England? Even putting the tubes in trenches will not stop shrapnel flying for massive distances.
Talking about putting solar cells on top of the tunnels is a total joke if you are going to have 1km each side unoccupied.
Safe distance, LOL? By same merits, you would need to keep people away from usual high speed train at least a few km away as well :palm:
No. A high speed train derailment is not an explosion. A Hyperloop crash can easily be an explosion. Totally different.
amspire, please do the math before you dream up explosion horror scenarios, lets go over the numbers:
A filled shipping container would weigh in at around 30 000 kg (more typical would be around 24 000 kg I'd expect), lets say it travels at the 1000 km/h as you seem to indicate. For a train travelling at 400 km/h to have the same kinetic energy it'd only need to weigh in at 187.5 ton. In comparison a TGV passenger train weighs in at about 380 ton, so it'd have even more kinetic energy than your hyper explosive container while travelling at 300 km/h. This still pales in comparison to the kinetic energy of an passenger or cargo jet at cruise speed, which is easily 10 times more still!
And the aluminium on fire one is a classic argument, honestly you'd have to do some pretty impressive stuff to set it off, not even incendiary weapons manage, nor does a pure oxygen atmosphere do the job easily, unless we're talking powdered aluminium. And believe me, given how many vehicles are built out of aluminium, the military has probably tried thousands of times to figure out ways to do it...
-
Rubbish. uBeam and Solar roadways can both work in theory and also in practice, demonstrably so, that's a fact. They are just impractical.
In theory they are very inefficient way of using already existing technologies. Therefore I say they don't work in theory.
Nope, they can both be reasonably efficient enough in theory and kinda in practice even, just not under practical usage circumstances.
But it's semantics of course.
The idea of keeping a 1000km long several meter wide vacuum system working with a 1000km/h projectile in it is just madness.
The 1000km/h is a number not based on any safety testing. You can buy a car that can go at 440 km/h but that does not mean that it is safe to regularly travel anywhere at 440 km/h. The safe speed tends to come from experience, but in Australia, for example, they have settled for speeds varying between 70 and 110 km/h outside urban areas.
Let's say they can travel at 1000km/h. The tubes have to be safe. There has to be a safe distance between tubes so a crash in the Up tube can't take out the Down tube. A safe separation may be 100 meters. That is not the worst part. It has to be safe for people in the proximity of the tunnels. A safe distance exclusion zone could be 400 meters? I do not know but we are talking a possibility of a big high energy collision with shrapnel - it could be 1 km or more. So when they build the London to Edinburgh hyperloop that they talk about, are they going to build a corridor 2 km wide all the way through the heart of England? Even putting the tubes in trenches will not stop shrapnel flying for massive distances.
Your reasoning sounds much like the scaremongering when steam trains, automobiles and airplanes where introduced. :palm:
If you'd reason like that then every airport in the world should have a clearance of a 50km radius and the terminal buildings should be bunkers made from reinforced concrete!
-
None of the examples you are quoting are travelling very close to a thin stationary tube. In a high speed train was stopped dead in a few seconds, you would have a major explosion.
A fully loaded shipping container that was out of control could easily rip apart any sort of tube they are contemplating. I think you are kidding yourself if you are imagining that every possible accident will result in a nice controlled sliding along this fragile tube for a minute or more at this speed.
You want some numbers?
1000km/h is a bit under 300m/s. Lets call it 300 m/s. A shipping container can be 36 tonnes and a carriage capable of carrying it, propelling it and doing emergency stops would probably weigh something similar. So lets say a total of 50 tonnes.
The energy of the moving carriage is 1/2 x 50000 x 300 x 300 = 2GJ. If something broke causing a violent rotation of the load so that it ripped trough the tube, the motion would mostly stop fairly quickly. It would only take a second or so to reach the next support. If most of that 2GJ is dissipated in 10 seconds, that is 200MW of power released over that 10 seconds. That is enough to make things incredibly hot. How is that 2GJ/200MW disippated?
According to my rough calculations that might be wrong, this is enough energy to melt 3 tonnes of steel.
If a carriage hit another stationary carriage in front at 1000km/h, it would be the same explosive energy as half a tonne of TNT. How close is it safe to be next to a half tonne TNT explosion in a steel tube? It would be a pretty spectacular pipe bomb.
This is nothing like your experience of seeing a car crash.
-
A Boeing 747 at 800km/h weighing 350 metric tonnes has a kinetic energy of over 17GJ.
-
Your reasoning sounds much like the scaremongering when steam trains, automobiles and airplanes where introduced. :palm:
If you'd reason like that then every airport in the world should have a clearance of a 50km radius and the terminal buildings should be bunkers made from reinforced concrete!
There most definitely are serious safety concerns at an airport. The terminals are a fair way from the landing strips, the landing strips are kilometers long and there usually is a runoff area. All fittings along a landing strip are break-away. The safety has been treated as an engineering problem.
Hyperloop will have to do the same, but I haven't seen Hyperloop ever describe what would happen in the accident scenarios I am talking about. I think they are fair issues that have a right to be discussed. They are talking about one carriage every five minutes. That is one carriage every 50km. In a 1000km tube, there can be 20 carriages going at 1000km/h. If any safety system fails there will be an accident, and luckily with physics, we can estimate the energy of that accident.
Now if high speed trains ran at full speed in an exposed elevated steel tube, there would definitely also be serious safety questions. Where they do run, safety experts do analyse the whole journey and where a derailment would be a devastation disaster, they force the train to run at a safe speed.
Are any high speed train services run at just 5 minutes apart?
-
Heh, 36 000 kg would actually be a partially filled 12 m container, and for 2 GJ half a ton of TNT wouldn't do the job unless you presume perfect detonation...
Anyway, amspire, a crashing aeroplane has more kinetic energy, is built out of materials which can be significantly more flammable, and yet the main cause of any fire or explosion is still the fuel and not the materials themselves, so for you to worry about aluminium and steel is rather interesting to say the least... Additionally aluminium is actually harder to set on fire than iron in a pure oxygen atmosphere. (Which I always found interesting.) Additionally your explosives vs. energy released calculation is off.
But lets go with your 50 000 kg assumption, have you considered how much of that energy goes into deforming/moving the materials involved? You're acting as if we're dealing with a theoretical immovable tunnel wall with an infinite yield strength and an object slamming into it in a perpendicular fashion. And even then the result is surprisingly less damaging than you'd expect. Remember that test footage of that F4 jet slamming into a concrete wall at 750 km/h? You're looking at something with about 300 MJ of kinetic energy slamming head-on into a concrete wall there, and that took place in less than 100 ms. And yes I know the wall moved during that test, but what they forgot to tell you was that it was placed on air bearings for that test and you could have probably pushed it forwards with a few folks...
-
Are any high speed train services run at just 5 minutes apart?
Both TGV and ICE services trunk at those sorts of headways in the fully automated sections, sometimes less.
-
Very good point. Even if the hyperloop is never realized as a large scale public transport project (as I suspect will be the case due to financial and political but not technical reasons)
I'm happy to categorically state that practical realities will kill it, even if the financial and political will are there.
You need to be more specific about what you mean by "practical realities".
Sure, the vacuum part.
If "HyperLoop" becomes a reality then it will not involve the vacuum part as has been, dare I say it, hyped.
Make no mistake, the entire premise of the Hyperloop concept is based on the vacuum to lower to air resistance and lower the maglev power. It has no other "innovation".
First of all you have to define vacuum when it comes to the hyperloop. The amount of energy you can save depends linear on the density of the gas you are travelling through. So at 1/10 of the atmospheric pressure you save 10 times the energy. Some people may not call that a vacuum though.
Exactly. Without specifying what is meant by vacuum, one can continue to move the goalposts on what is meant by successful technical implementation of the hyperloop concept.
The original Musk "whitepaper" was only meant to stimulate others to explore the idea of high speed transport in a tube with pressure lower than 1 atm. The various teams inspired to pursue this idea, all have different parts of the basic concept which they've focused on and attempted to optimize, etc. If hyperloops are ever built, who knows what intraluminal pressure will turn out to be optimal to balance the other design considerations (cost, safety, etc)?.
Meanwhile Thunderfoot and his fanboys have had many of their half-baked technical criticism's debunked. Some have backtracked from their initial claims of "technically impossible" to now saying that while technically possible, it is just impractical (but without being precise about what they mean by impractical).
However in general IMHO you'd do better to take a more objective approach rather than being the umpteenth armchair nay-sayer. Going through the technical challenges and trying to find the economic angle without prejudice/judgement will result in a much more informative video and not deteriorate your credibility.
Good advice.
-
Some numbers on MagLev operating energy consumed:
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/ilonidis2/ (http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/ilonidis2/)
Maglev is also a very cheap and efficient mode of transportation. Maglev operating costs will be only 3 cents per passenger mile and 7 cents per ton mile, compared to 15 cents per passenger mile for airplanes and 30 cents per ton mile for intercity trucks. [8] Guideways can last for at least 50 years with a minimal maintenance because there is no mechanical contact and wear. [8] At 480 kilometers per hour, maglev consumes 0.4 megajoules per passenger mile compared to 4 megajoules per passenger mile of oil fuel for a 8.5-kilometers-per-liter (20 miles-per-gallon) auto that carries 1.8 people at 96 kilometers per hour. [8]. It is also interesting to compare the efficiency of maglev trains and conventional high-speed trains. Table 1 shows the energy consumption of the German high-speed maglev Transrapid and the German high-speed train ICE 3, both as functions of speed. Transrapid has better efficiency above 330 kilometers per hour but it is less efficient below 330 kilometers per hour.
This is without the evacuated tube, a.k.a Hyperloop.
Seems that most of the cost goes into the new infrastructure required. Hypoerloop will be what, maybe half an order more expensive than normal Maglev?
-
Some numbers on MagLev operating energy consumed:
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/ilonidis2/ (http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/ilonidis2/)
Maglev is also a very cheap and efficient mode of transportation. Maglev operating costs will be only 3 cents per passenger mile and 7 cents per ton mile, compared to 15 cents per passenger mile for airplanes and 30 cents per ton mile for intercity trucks. [8] Guideways can last for at least 50 years with a minimal maintenance because there is no mechanical contact and wear. [8] At 480 kilometers per hour, maglev consumes 0.4 megajoules per passenger mile compared to 4 megajoules per passenger mile of oil fuel for a 8.5-kilometers-per-liter (20 miles-per-gallon) auto that carries 1.8 people at 96 kilometers per hour. [8]. It is also interesting to compare the efficiency of maglev trains and conventional high-speed trains. Table 1 shows the energy consumption of the German high-speed maglev Transrapid and the German high-speed train ICE 3, both as functions of speed. Transrapid has better efficiency above 330 kilometers per hour but it is less efficient below 330 kilometers per hour.
This is without the evacuated tube, a.k.a Hyperloop.
Seems that most of the cost goes into the new infrastructure required. Hypoerloop will be what, maybe half an order more expensive than normal Maglev?
But the Maglev is only marginally more efficient compared to a regular train according to that website. And the reason is simple: friction. And friction losses go up squared when the speed increases and that is exactly what the primary problem the hyperloop addresses. All in all the extra costs of the Maglev don't get you a lot advantages in energy preservation. And if you think only the Maglev can go fast then I hate to tell that the French have tested their TGV at speeds over 550km/h only existing tracks.
-
But the Maglev is only marginally more efficient compared to a regular train according to that website. And the reason is simple: friction. And friction losses go up squared when the speed increases and that is exactly what the primary problem the hyperloop addresses. All in all the extra costs of the Maglev don't get you a lot advantages in energy preservation. And if you think only the Maglev can go fast then I hate to tell that the French have tested their TGV at speeds over 550km/h only existing tracks.
I'm not saying MagLev is viable, in fact it seems not based on the lack of uptake.
The point is that that Hyperloop is just Maglev + Huge amount of extra cost and engineering complexity + less reliability + extra safety concerns, for what? Perhaps a small reduction in running cost, and some extra speed that would be lucky if it was double the existing solutions.
Yeah, Hyperloop sounds like a winner ::)
-
But the Maglev is only marginally more efficient compared to a regular train according to that website. And the reason is simple: friction. And friction losses go up squared when the speed increases and that is exactly what the primary problem the hyperloop addresses. All in all the extra costs of the Maglev don't get you a lot advantages in energy preservation. And if you think only the Maglev can go fast then I hate to tell that the French have tested their TGV at speeds over 550km/h only existing tracks.
I'm not saying MagLev is viable, in fact it seems not based on the lack of uptake.
The point is that that Hyperloop is just Maglev + Huge amount of extra cost and engineering complexity + less reliability + extra safety concerns, for what? Perhaps a small reduction in running cost, and some extra speed that would be lucky if it was double the existing solutions.
Yeah, Hyperloop sounds like a winner ::)
You only need a relatively small fraction of usual maglev power to move the thing within vacuum / low pressure air. Therefore maglev part of the system becomes much cheaper. If you can keep the tube part reasonably priced, then it's more viable than pushing the air by brute force of full blown maglev.
-
A Boeing 747 at 800km/h weighing 350 metric tonnes has a kinetic energy of over 17GJ.
Potentially carrying something like 57,000 US gallons of fuel too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lksDISvCmNI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lksDISvCmNI)
-
I'm not saying MagLev is viable, in fact it seems not based on the lack of uptake.
The point is that that Hyperloop is just Maglev + Huge amount of extra cost and engineering complexity + less reliability + extra safety concerns, for what? Perhaps a small reduction in running cost, and some extra speed that would be lucky if it was double the existing solutions.
Yeah, Hyperloop sounds like a winner ::)
I wonder though if the extra construction cost to produce the specialized track or partial vacuum tube in this case is insignificant compared to the costs of securing a high speed rail track and purchasing the right of way.
How do other countries secure their high speed rail lines from vandalism?
-
You only need a relatively small fraction of usual maglev power to move the thing within vacuum / low pressure air. Therefore maglev part of the system becomes much cheaper. If you can keep the tube part reasonably priced, then it's more viable than pushing the air by brute force of full blown maglev.
Yeah, but regular Maglev has not taken off. Most of that seems to be the cost of new installation and lack of backward compatibility with existing rail networks. Operational cost seem fairly small in comparison.
Hyperloop may solve that small operational cost part and is guaranteed add a whole heap of extra cost, complexity, safety etc etc. It won't fly.
-
I wonder though if the extra construction cost to produce the specialized track or partial vacuum tube in this case is insignificant compared to the costs of securing a high speed rail track and purchasing the right of way.
The Edinburgh trams are good case study of the gotchas in that. Cost now approaching a cool billion, I believe. To serve just one route. :palm:
-
hyperloop may cost as much as the space shuttle program :o
total cost of all the dome airlocks and all high pressure expansion joints.
and the maintenance costs too.
be cheaper for Elon Musk to offer everybody free air travel
-
I wonder though if the extra construction cost to produce the specialized track or partial vacuum tube in this case is insignificant compared to the costs of securing a high speed rail track and purchasing the right of way.
The Edinburgh trams are good case study of the gotchas in that. Cost now approaching a cool billion, I believe. To serve just one route. :palm:
San Fransisco's BART faced this because they used a track gauge wider than standard. But that was just dumb because there was no reason to do so when standard gauge would have worked just as well and maintained compatibility with industry infrastructure. I suspect this was just an exercise in legislative rent seeking rationalized by the "more comfortable ride" excuse and it is one of my favorite examples of why public mass transit projects are a waste of taxpayer money at least in the US where legislative corruption is the rule rather than the exception.
-
hyperloop may cost as much as the space shuttle program :o
It wouldn't surprise me if more money got spend on crypto mining gear then the space shuttle program. You have to put things into perspective and modern day solutions get more expensive because the low hanging fruit when it comes to optimisations is long gone.
-
:=\ Hyperloop a Green Transportation Technologie which an Engine who run with a Fossil Fuel Engine. :palm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O42NaziRuOs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O42NaziRuOs)
-
Please help me out here (and help me to avoid watching the whole video ;)):
Where does the engine sit, and what type is it? I assume it is not preferred to run an internal combustion engine within the evacuated tube...
-
IIRC the engine is not in the tube, it's driving fans/pumps that suck the air out.
-
Air is probably not the only thing being sucked here. :-DD
-
Well I'm not arguing that it's a good idea, frankly I don't know whether it will work or not, although I suspect it's possible to solve the technical hurdles. Now whether it could ever be made economical, that's something I'm far more skeptical of.
-
We don't call it Hyperloopy for no good reason. :)
-
I haven't heard them officially mention the mode of propulsion, although I haven't followed it that closely. I assume they want to use linear motors and magnetic levitation (aka maglev). But maybe they can't because of piles of patents? It's the only thing that makes sense though imho.
This video seems relevant (sorry if it's already been posted):
TLDR: Often it is more cost effective to improve on existing infrastructure and technology rather than to build some fancy new revolutionary, expensive thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUXEFj0t7Ek (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUXEFj0t7Ek)
-
I'm pretty sure they did discuss propulsion, the idea is to work like the pneumatic tubes they have at banks. A big vacuum pump at one end sucks the air out of the tube while a blower at the other end forces air in behind the capsule. The capsule itself has no built in propulsion.
-
I found the hyperloop Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop):
Elon Musk's version of the concept, first publicly mentioned in 2012, incorporates reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by linear induction motors and [...]
an electrically driven inlet fan and axial compressor would be placed at the nose of the capsule to "actively transfer high-pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel"
However
The Hyperloop concept has been explicitly "open-sourced" by Musk and SpaceX, and others have been encouraged to take the ideas and further develop them.
There are now several different competing designs.
EDIT: Actually linear motors are also mentioned in the RI talk (@14.15) that Lord of Nothing posted earlier (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/msg2010062/#msg2010062).
-
Another analysis of the Hyperloop:
"The Biggest Problem With Hyperloop - Why It Will Fail Hard"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XFMIqiDWAc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XFMIqiDWAc)
-
However
The Hyperloop concept has been explicitly "open-sourced" by Musk and SpaceX, and others have been encouraged to take the ideas and further develop them.
There are now several different competing designs.
so when they all fail, elon can blame everyone else, instead of admitting it was a braindamaged idea to begin with.
-
However
The Hyperloop concept has been explicitly "open-sourced" by Musk and SpaceX, and others have been encouraged to take the ideas and further develop them.
There are now several different competing designs.
so when they all fail, elon can blame everyone else, instead of admitting it was a braindamaged idea to begin with.
Which is why he isn't putting any real money into it himself, apart from (SpaceX?) funding some student comps which is probably a tax write-off anyway. He left it up to other suckers to put in the serious money and try and do it. Same with the Boring company, Musk admitted on the Joe Rogan podcast that it's basically a joke.
Wouldn't surprise me if he's deliberately trolling everyone just for kicks.
-
Another analysis of the Hyperloop:
"The Biggest Problem With Hyperloop - Why It Will Fail Hard"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XFMIqiDWAc (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XFMIqiDWAc)
Great video, well researched and produced. Conclusions are bang on.
-
I see mostly FUD in the video. I wouldn't be too quick to write the idea off (lots of companies are investing in hyperloops after all). Think about transporting of goods. In Europe the effective speed of a freight train is 30km/h. This means a lot of stuff gets trucked for hundreds of kilometers from harbours to places inland because using a freight train takes too long. A hyperloop system which can automatically transport containers to and from a harbour could save a massive amount of money (no drivers) and fuel (less CO2 emissions). Having the pods run inside a tube makes them not prone to collisions like railways are. An automated routing system would take away the time needed to assemble a train and connect/disconnect wagons at each stop. Each pod can be directed to the place it needs to be.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/05/hyperloop-transportation-technologies-partners-with-port-of-hamburg-operator-to-develop-cargo-service/ (https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/05/hyperloop-transportation-technologies-partners-with-port-of-hamburg-operator-to-develop-cargo-service/)
-
Just watched the Elon Musk LITERALLY reinvents the tunnel! video from Thunderfoot.
Instead of the skate things they put little guide rails on the wheels.
(https://i.imgur.com/hi6NAWJ.jpg)
Is that something they have to put on manually?
Also I see they make pipes larger than 1.83m in diameters.
ASTM A252 API 5L Grb 2m Diameter SSAW Spiral Round Steel Pipe
(https://i.imgur.com/C1eh8ce.jpg)
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ASTM-A252-API-5L-Grb-2m_60764802350.html (https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ASTM-A252-API-5L-Grb-2m_60764802350.html)
I think Hyper Pipe is a better name for it.
After all it's all hype and he's piping on about it.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyy-19qyNWE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyy-19qyNWE)
BTW you have to skip to 13:00 to get the rest of the new info which carries on from the start of the videos, after he's gone onto mars and Therenos.
-
Meanwhile in the far east, next generation maglevs are aiming for 600 km/h:
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/china-highspeed-maglev-prototype/index.html
-
A discussion about Elon Musk connected with anything circular reminds me of this. You know, for kids!
Obscure?
-
Meanwhile in the far east, next generation maglevs are aiming for 600 km/h:
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/china-highspeed-maglev-prototype/index.html
I read somewhere that they built 200 mphs? trains and tracks since the 1980's.
-
Meanwhile in the far east, next generation maglevs are aiming for 600 km/h:
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/china-highspeed-maglev-prototype/index.html
I've been on one at 430km/h, they are pretty epic.
-
I read somewhere that they built 200 mphs? trains and tracks since the 1980's.
That's a rather hazy statement for an engineering forum (even the "General Chat" section)... :P
You are probably thinking of the Japanese Shinkansen. These were first deployed even earlier, starting in 1964, but they did not start at quite that high speed. The original Shinkansen went up to 210 to 220 km/h, and later generations reached 320 km/h, i.e. 200 mph, in 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen
-
Yes the bullet trains.
Sorry about that I got it wrong and confused.
I have should have doubled checked and provided a quote which I will do next time.
-
Spain and France are full of high speed trains.
-
Spain and France are full of high speed trains.
Agreed. The French hold the speed record for the fastest train. Both Maglevs and regular trains suffer from the same problem: air friction. At some point it isn't going to be (financially) efficient to run trains at high speed and that is where the hyperloop concept comes in. And you don't need a complete vacuum. The energy consumption goes down linear with lowering the air pressure. Half the pressure means a 50% reduction in the energy lost due to friction (I'll leave it up to the reader to look up the formulas for energy loss due to friction versus air pressure).
-
Spain and France are full of high speed trains.
Sure, as well as Italy, Germany, some lines in the UK and Belgium, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe
My point was that the Japanese Shinkansen was the first, by a fair margin to my knowledge.
-
Japan's L0 Series maglev holds the record with 603 km/h (on a test track), and the Shanghai maglev is the fastest in operation with a maximum normal operation speed of 431 km/h. Transrapid helped build the shanghai one, but it's only east Asia that's investing in maglev.
Half the pressure means a 50% reduction in the energy lost due to friction (I'll leave it up to the reader to look up the formulas for energy loss due to friction versus air pressure).
Not valid in a tube, the capsules will just push the air in front of it. That is why, in the concept art, the hyperloop capsules had large fans on the front that should funnel the air past the capsule.
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/the-hyperloop-busted/?action=dlattach;attach=758751;image)
The fan was probably also supposed to supply high pressure air for the air bearings.
-
Spain's high speed train system is a prestige project which makes no economic sense whatsoever. The waste and corruption in grand projects like this are a shame in a country where money could be and should be employed more productively.
-
Half the pressure means a 50% reduction in the energy lost due to friction (I'll leave it up to the reader to look up the formulas for energy loss due to friction versus air pressure).
Not valid in a tube, the capsules will just push the air in front of it.
That is just a technical detail which can be mitigated in several ways. The fact a lower air density reduces the amount of energy needed still stands.
-
Half the pressure means a 50% reduction in the energy lost due to friction (I'll leave it up to the reader to look up the formulas for energy loss due to friction versus air pressure).
Not valid in a tube, the capsules will just push the air in front of it.
That is just a technical detail which can be mitigated in several ways. The fact a lower air density reduces the amount of energy needed still stands.
If you have two identical tubes with different pressure then a train in the evacuated tube will use less energy. But you were comparing open air to a tube which isn't a valid comparison.
-
Swedish politicians consider high speed rail every now and then but every local politician of every little municipality, no matter how tiny the population, demand that the train stop in their village or else they will not let the tracks cross their land. And if it's gonna make a stop every few km it's not going to be high speed. In the Schengen area it might make sense with maglev tracks between the largest cities. :-\
-
Swedish politicians consider high speed rail every now and then but every local politician of every little municipality, no matter how tiny the population, demand that the train stop in their village or else they will not let the tracks cross their land. And if it's gonna make a stop every few km it's not going to be high speed. In the Schengen area it might make sense with maglev tracks between the largest cities. :-\
Here in China we have a similar situation. CR handles this by designing the stations to be passable at speed, so most of the faster trains just speed by the minor stations without even slowing down. It is a little bit scary to see a train pass by me at 350kph when standing on the platform...
-
A couple years ago we took a train from Xi'an to Linfen on our way to visit the Hukou waterfalls. The distance from Xi'an to Linfen is about 350 Km so not really huge. We were told that there were not any "bullet trains" but there were "high speed" trains which were slower. The train was doing about 240 Km/hr which is pretty good. Immaculately clean and everything well organized and running smoothly, like a well oiled machine. There is a yellow line on the platform and passengers are to stand behind it and well away from the edge. If you even dare put your toe over the line a pretty attendant will immediately correct you. Not surprising if trains may pass at speed without stopping. China is a country where cleanliness is not a priority but I have not seen trains, stations, airports, etc. as clean and tidy in any other country.
I have seen projects of high speed trains which could load and unload passengers without stopping. I suppose it could be as simple as releasing the last carriage and speeding up a separate carriage and catching up with the train. A high speed train that has to make six ten minute stops adds over an hour to the schedule.
-
I only found out yesterday that Elon didn't need to dig to the original old patent of this impractical idea.
Of all countries, in 1992, Switzerland proposed the "Swissmetro" system which has the exact same features as the the Hyperloop: vacuum tubes, maglev, highspeed, promise of energy efficiency.
Look up the Wikipedia article, there is even an official feasibility-study conducted (sorry, German only). Funny enough, all involved research parties were quite favorable, with the small footnote somewhere that the vacuum technology needs further investigation regarding power consumption and sealing of the system :palm:
It was stupid a hundred years ago, it is stupid today, and it will still be stupid in a hundred years!
-
It was stupid a hundred years ago, it is stupid today, and it will still be stupid in a hundred years!
Don't stop more investment money...
-
A couple years ago we took a train from Xi'an to Linfen on our way to visit the Hukou waterfalls. The distance from Xi'an to Linfen is about 350 Km so not really huge. We were told that there were not any "bullet trains" but there were "high speed" trains which were slower. The train was doing about 240 Km/hr which is pretty good.
I've been on the Shanghai Maglev at 430kmh andi t's pretty awesome. Shame it doesn't go anywhere really useful.
-
Of all countries, in 1992, Switzerland proposed the "Swissmetro" system
The economy of a transportation systems includes the factor that is "a value of time for a passenger". It is not surprising that Concorde traveled mainly between London/Paris and NY as there the factor gave Concorde an advantage over all other competing means of transportation (for some pa$$engers).
If you would like the same to happen with vacuum trains then this might happen only in some circumstances. It has to be in a place with high income and difficult transportation network. Switzerland and Alps fits. Germany and autobahns does not.
It was stupid a hundred years ago, it is stupid today, and it will still be stupid in a hundred years!
We need faster horses, not some automobiles.
-
I've been on the Shanghai Maglev at 430kmh andi t's pretty awesome. Shame it doesn't go anywhere really useful.
It would have went to Hangzhou should it not be some internal political strife during and after Chen Liangyu's tenancy as the mayor and Liu Zhijun's tenancy as Minister of Railways. The control center has enough coverage built into it, and there is preallocated space for a maglev station in Shanghai Hongqiao Transportation Hub.
There was even a debate on how Beijing-Shanghai HSR should be built - railways or maglev, and in early years the maglev solution was actually preferred since it is fundamentally faster.
-
There was even a debate on how Beijing-Shanghai HSR should be built - railways or maglev, and in early years the maglev solution was actually preferred since it is fundamentally faster.
I got the impression that it's a much better technology in most respects, especially the elevated tracks, it just seems to be an energy requirement thing.
-
If you would like the same to happen with vacuum trains then this might happen only in some circumstances.
It won't happen at all. It's just a fundamentally stupid idea from a practical engineering perspective.
-
I got the impression that it's a much better technology in most respects, especially the elevated tracks, it just seems to be an energy requirement thing.
Well the current high speed rail solution eventually won because of its compatibility with the existing railway infrastructure in China. Rescuing a stuck maglev train is a lot more difficult than rescuing a stuck railway train too. And the compatibility with existing infrastructure allows traditional locomotives being used as rescue engines on HSR.
Current China HSR system also make extensive use of elevated tracks too, with 4 out of 5 longest bridges in the world being part of mainland China's HSR network (and the remaining one on Taiwan's THSR.)
-
There was even a debate on how Beijing-Shanghai HSR should be built - railways or maglev, and in early years the maglev solution was actually preferred since it is fundamentally faster.
I got the impression that it's a much better technology in most respects, especially the elevated tracks, it just seems to be an energy requirement thing.
The big thing with maglev is the need for extremely rigid track. Trying to stabilise a train on a flexible track has defeated engineers so far. Making the track really rigid, rather than just strong enough to support the load, means the maglev in Shanghai uses an enormous amount of concrete. I don't think there is any particular issue with the track being elevated, but if they had made it at ground level it would have needed just as much piling, and just as thick a concrete bed to achieve the required rigidity.
Most people who think maglev should be low loss compared to a train seem to think of a train like a car. However, steel wheels have very low losses. As a kid we used to push lines of freight carriages around the local sidings at night. With persistence, even 3 or 4 small boys could get an enormous mass moving quite fast, because the rolling resistance is so low. If you look at the massive long distance freight trains in America, they don't go all that fast, but they are able to sustain the movement of kilometres of carriages with just the pull on one traction unit.
-
The incremental speed from 300kmph to 400 isn't really going to save you that much in total time, once you factor in start/stop. It would have to be a pretty significant distance before it was enough difference
What's the longest non-stop high-speed rail journey? (The Ave Madrid-Barcelona have a few non-stops @ 625km /2h45m it's damn damn impressive; but most journeys make a couple of stops)
Plus, you can use high speed rails for lower (but still fast) speed stuff as well; such as freight hauling.
Sadly, I live in North America, where the car rules supreme, and people are too short-sighted to see rail really work well. Once you take a 300kmph rail journey, you really wonder why the whole world doesn't do it.
-
The incremental speed from 300kmph to 400 isn't really going to save you that much in total time, once you factor in start/stop. It would have to be a pretty significant distance before it was enough difference
What's the longest non-stop high-speed rail journey? (The Ave Madrid-Barcelona have a few non-stops @ 625km /2h45m it's damn damn impressive; but most journeys make a couple of stops)
Plus, you can use high speed rails for lower (but still fast) speed stuff as well; such as freight hauling.
Sadly, I live in North America, where the car rules supreme, and people are too short-sighted to see rail really work well. Once you take a 300kmph rail journey, you really wonder why the whole world doesn't do it.
On Beijing-Shanghai HSR, there is a 617km/1h59min non-stop ride between Nanjing South and Jinan West, on the Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing South train G2. The whole journey is 1318km/4h28min with those two stops.
-
On Beijing-Shanghai HSR, there is a 617km/1h59min non-stop ride between Nanjing South and Jinan West, on the Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing South train G2. The whole journey is 1318km/4h28min with those two stops.
It's only 900km or so from Sydney to Melbourne. If the train could take 4 hours I'd certainly take it. Current train is about 11 hours.
-
On Beijing-Shanghai HSR, there is a 617km/1h59min non-stop ride between Nanjing South and Jinan West, on the Shanghai Hongqiao to Beijing South train G2. The whole journey is 1318km/4h28min with those two stops.
It's only 900km or so from Sydney to Melbourne. If the train could take 4 hours I'd certainly take it. Current train is about 11 hours.
Over on Whirlpool there was a discussion about shorter distance High Speed Trains.
They quoted a time duration for a HST trip from central Melbourne to Geelong.
On looking up the distance between the two, & comparing it with a trip over a similar distance between central Perth & Mandurah, it turns out that the existing narrow gauge commuter train on that service does the equivalent trip in a shorter time than their projected HST.
The difference, of course, is both topography, & that the Geelong trip would go a roundabout route via various "legacy" stations, whereas the Mandurah train goes straight down the centre of the Freeway.
-
That is the problem with high speed train connections. Add too many stations and the travel time will go up quickly. I see it here too. High speed train between Amsterdam and Brussels (IIRC). Some cities where it passed demanded it stopped there too. But it kinda defeats the purpose. High speed trains need to operate like airplanes which travel distances over 300km. Otherwise a car or regular trains are usually quicker.
-
The difference, of course, is both topography, & that the Geelong trip would go a roundabout route via various "legacy" stations, whereas the Mandurah train goes straight down the centre of the Freeway.
A high speed train taking the scenic route seems more a basis for a comedy sketch than a civil engineering project.
-
That is the problem with high speed train connections. Add too many stations and the travel time will go up quickly. I see it here too. High speed train between Amsterdam and Brussels (IIRC). Some cities where it passed demanded it stopped there too. But it kinda defeats the purpose. High speed trains need to operate like airplanes which travel distances over 300km. Otherwise a car or regular trains are usually quicker.
China have a similar problem too, but there is a solution: HSR stations that can be passed at speed. When a CRH train passes a station, it just speeds through at 350-380kph. The running lines never have a platform next to it, except at major stations where all trains must stop at anyway. China Railways also engineered high speed switches that can tolerate 400-450kph straight and 250kph side for use in those passable stations.
I was once on a platform waiting for another train when a train speeds through at 350kph on the second line from the platform. It is loud and a bit scary to be honest.
-
That is the problem with high speed train connections. Add too many stations and the travel time will go up quickly. I see it here too. High speed train between Amsterdam and Brussels (IIRC). Some cities where it passed demanded it stopped there too. But it kinda defeats the purpose. High speed trains need to operate like airplanes which travel distances over 300km. Otherwise a car or regular trains are usually quicker.
China have a similar problem too, but there is a solution: HSR stations that can be passed at speed. When a CRH train passes a station, it just speeds through at 350-380kph. The running lines never have a platform next to it, except at major stations where all trains must stop at anyway. China Railways also engineered high speed switches that can tolerate 400-450kph straight and 250kph side for use in those passable stations.
I was once on a platform waiting for another train when a train speeds through at 350kph on the second line from the platform. It is loud and a bit scary to be honest.
In some places those platform track/non-platform track arrangements are used as passing places. They time the slower train to be at the platform as a faster train passes straight through and overtakes.
-
I was once on a platform waiting for another train when a train speeds through at 350kph on the second line from the platform. It is loud and a bit scary to be honest.
On the Shanghai Maglev the two trains pass each other at 430kmh, it's as scary as you think it is.
-
I was once on a platform waiting for another train when a train speeds through at 350kph on the second line from the platform. It is loud and a bit scary to be honest.
Even at slower speeds, a fast train is an amazing amount of mass travelling with a mind-boggling amount of inertia.
I can remember standing on the platform at Reading (west of London), and there were announcements to stand back because the HS125 was passing through @ 125mph / 200kmph. I saw it pick up someone's briefcase and hurl it down the platform from the suction; still fresh in my mind.
-
I was once on a platform waiting for another train when a train speeds through at 350kph on the second line from the platform. It is loud and a bit scary to be honest.
On the Shanghai Maglev the two trains pass each other at 430kmh, it's as scary as you think it is.
They pass each other at 860km/h, since each is travelling at 430km/h. The trains pass each other very calmly. Its the steep banking on the curves that disconcerts most people.
-
That is the problem with high speed train connections. Add too many stations and the travel time will go up quickly. I see it here too. High speed train between Amsterdam and Brussels (IIRC). Some cities where it passed demanded it stopped there too. But it kinda defeats the purpose. High speed trains need to operate like airplanes which travel distances over 300km. Otherwise a car or regular trains are usually quicker.
China have a similar problem too, but there is a solution: HSR stations that can be passed at speed. When a CRH train passes a station, it just speeds through at 350-380kph. The running lines never have a platform next to it, except at major stations where all trains must stop at anyway.
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point. My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed. Public transport is simple: it takes you from a place where you aren't to a place where you don't need to be.
-
Public transport is simple: it takes you from a place where you aren't to a place where you don't need to be.
I like this one. ;D
-
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point. My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed.
For each HSR line, there is a formula between the scale of economy and/or population in the area the station services, and the maximum amount of stopping trains at that station. This means that at the planning stage that demand is already capped.
-
That is the problem with high speed train connections. Add too many stations and the travel time will go up quickly.
There is an idea of having trains not stop but having cars that accelerate and decelerate passengers to train speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Ig19gYP9o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Ig19gYP9o)
-
please tell me this was not Musk's idea :D
-
I can see having the last car released at speed and slowed down to a stop on a side track.
And I can see another car speeding up and catching up with the train and then hooking up.
This could be repeated n times along the way.
Car catches up and hooks up to train. Passengers move forward into other forward cars. Passengers alighting at next station move back into last car which will be released and a new car will catch up. This process can be repeated along the way and the main train need never stop.
-
I can see having the last car released at speed and slowed down to a stop on a side track.
And I can see another car speeding up and catching up with the train and then hooking up.
This could be repeated n times along the way.
Car catches up and hooks up to train. Passengers move forward into other forward cars. Passengers alighting at next station move back into last car which will be released and a new car will catch up. This process can be repeated along the way and the main train need never stop.
The problem is that there isn't enough room in a typical train for that many people to move. Especially when they travel with luggage.
-
"Typical train"? This is not a typical train! This is a train that I invented and it is designed with the concept in mind. I cannot see the problem. People move between train cars all the time.
"That many people"? How many people is "that many"? Suppose the accessory cars can handle a certain fraction of the total train capacity, say 1/10th, whatever, so when capacity is reached for a certain destination you stop selling tickets for that destination. You know, like it's always been done. And how is having a limited capacity for destination X not better than zero capacity because the train does not stop there?
The only reason I can see for not wanting to allow boarding and alighting in intermediate stations is if the train can be filled with passengers from end to end. Then you would want to have additional trains to/from/between intermediate stations.
A train from Hong Kong to Peking with six intermediate stops of 15 minutes each will be adding 90 minutes stoppage plus accelerating and decelerating time. A train that does not stop gains all that lost time.
The notion that the problem to be resolved is moving passengers between cars.... I don't know, maybe I am missing something.
-
I think you don't use the train that often. Try to move from cart to cart when the train is full. Getting to the door a few meters away is already a challenge.
-
please tell me this was not Musk's idea :D
Not unless Musk is about 100 years older than he looks. The idea of using feeders trains is old. Also, the idea of reasonably quick powered pedestrian walkways, using several side by side walkways, each 2 or 3kph faster than the next, is old.
-
please tell me this was not Musk's idea :D
Not unless Musk is about 100 years older than he looks. The idea of using feeders trains is old. Also, the idea of reasonably quick powered pedestrian walkways, using several side by side walkways, each 2 or 3kph faster than the next, is old.
But that doesn't say the idea can't be done. In some French cities you'll find trams fed from a center track. That idea has been invented over 100 years ago as well.
-
I think you don't use the train that often. Try to move from cart to cart when the train is full. Getting to the door a few meters away is already a challenge.
I don't know what trains you use and in what country. Sounds like India or Pakistan and, very definitely, not high speed. I have used what they call "medium speed" trains (>200 Km/h) in China and everybody is seated and the aisles are clear and I have walked the length of the train without any problem. Same thing with high speed trains in Spain. Nobody is standing. We are not talking about the city metro here.
I can super-definitely guarantee there are no passengers standing in the Hong-Kong to Peking high speed train.
Even on regular trains in China there are no "standing tickets". Everyone gets a seat. People might be standing if they feel like it but will definitely get out of the way for people who need to move. I have plenty of photos of Chinese trains and have posted a few on this board.
I dunno. Maybe we are talking about different countries.
-
I think you don't use the train that often. Try to move from cart to cart when the train is full. Getting to the door a few meters away is already a challenge.
I don't know what trains you use and in what country. Sounds like India or Pakistan and, very definitely, not high speed. I have used what they call "medium speed" trains (>200 Km/h) in China and everybody is seated and the aisles are clear and I have walked the length of the train without any problem. Same thing with high speed trains in Spain. Nobody is standing. We are not talking about the city metro here.
But that works for as long as people enter through the side doors and have a reserved seat. In case of selling tickets without reserved seats people may have to stand. Also if you are going to attach / detach carts from the back or front of the train (which is more likely a scenario with unreserved seats) you'll get a lot of traffic inside the train in opposite directions anyway.
-
I think you don't use the train that often. Try to move from cart to cart when the train is full. Getting to the door a few meters away is already a challenge.
I don't know what trains you use and in what country. Sounds like India or Pakistan and, very definitely, not high speed. I have used what they call "medium speed" trains (>200 Km/h) in China and everybody is seated and the aisles are clear and I have walked the length of the train without any problem. Same thing with high speed trains in Spain. Nobody is standing. We are not talking about the city metro here.
I can super-definitely guarantee there are no passengers standing in the Hong-Kong to Peking high speed train.
Even on regular trains in China there are no "standing tickets". Everyone gets a seat. People might be standing if they feel like it but will definitely get out of the way for people who need to move. I have plenty of photos of Chinese trains and have posted a few on this board.
I dunno. Maybe we are talking about different countries.
There is no standing on the bullet trains in China. However, I've stood a few times on other trains in China at busy times, when I didn't want to wait for the following train. It usually only at busy times when you need to stand, though.
-
please tell me this was not Musk's idea :D
I wonder what could go wrong with this really...
:-DD
-
Perhaps large strong nets could be used to get passengers on and off the non-stopping train.
https://youtu.be/0EGQWAZghaM?t=43
-
Perhaps large strong nets could be used to get passengers on and off the non-stopping train.
https://youtu.be/0EGQWAZghaM?t=43
Excellent idea. Just find the right net when you reach the station, and relax. You can't miss the train if you fall sleep. :)
-
But that works for as long as people enter through the side doors and have a reserved seat. In case of selling tickets without reserved seats people may have to stand. Also if you are going to attach / detach carts from the back or front of the train (which is more likely a scenario with unreserved seats) you'll get a lot of traffic inside the train in opposite directions anyway.
Again, where is this country where high speed trains sell standing space? I have never seen it of heard of anything like it. In China and in Spain riding the high speed train is more like an airport experience. You need a reserved seat just to get through security and there is no such thing as 'tickets without reserved seats".
And, of course, if this were a problem, all you need to do is not sell standing space and the problem goes away. But since they do not do this anyway the problem does not exist.
Again, where have you seen passengers with standing tickets on high speed trains? Do they allow standing passengers on airplanes as well?
I have not seen standing tickets sold for long haul destinations in Spain pretty much since I have memory. Maybe short haul but definitely not long haul. And in China I have also been told no tickets were available for long haul trains. I would have stood all night if necessary but was told not possible. Maybe it is different on other trains with shorter itineraries and daytime routes.
I am baffled by the notion that is it difficult or impossible for passengers to move up and down the aisles because it is done all the time. People move when they are getting on or off or getting ready to get off even if the train is still moving, or they want to go to the lavatory, or they are bored and want to stretch their legs. I have never seen anyone who could not move about the train.
I suppose you could make the case that someone on a wheelchair or other special needs might have difficulty moving about the aisles but that is just as true today whether the last car is going to be disengaged or not.
Maybe I am missing something but I just do not see the problem.
-
There is no standing on the bullet trains in China. However, I've stood a few times on other trains in China at busy times, when I didn't want to wait for the following train. It usually only at busy times when you need to stand, though.
There is standing on China HSR trains regardless of distance, but it is only available when it is exceptionally busy. Technically you also have a reserved "seat," but it is called "you are allowed to take the train but you have to stand."
please tell me this was not Musk's idea :D
Well I would say that Musk was on to something with the Boring Company. However running automated cars in tunnels might not be the best idea. Boring Company tunnels have almost exactly the same dimensions as London deep-level tube tunnels. So if his projects are supposed to be public transit systems, it is better to lay tracks in there and run Tube trains through it.
-
Well I would say that Musk was on to something with the Boring Company. However running automated cars in tunnels might not be the best idea. Boring Company tunnels have almost exactly the same dimensions as London deep-level tube tunnels. So if his projects are supposed to be public transit systems, it is better to lay tracks in there and run Tube trains through it.
The Boring Company has not brought any innovation to its tunnel building techniques. They use conventional TBMs to build their tunnels, just like anyone else. Their innovation is in what they intend do with the tunnels. If they put conventional trains through the tunnels they would have nothing new to bring to the market at all.
-
I'd say the Boring Company has lived up to its name so far. ;D
But hey, why not put people directly in those tunnels and just use high air pressure to move them from one point to another? No need for a car. :-DD
-
I'd say the Boring Company has lived up to its name so far. ;D
But hey, why not put people directly in those tunnels and just use high air pressure to move them from one point to another? No need for a car. :-DD
Or put them at an angle so people slide down to the destination.
-
The Boring Company has not brought any innovation to its tunnel building techniques. They use conventional TBMs to build their tunnels, just like anyone else. Their innovation is in what they intend do with the tunnels. If they put conventional trains through the tunnels they would have nothing new to bring to the market at all.
Didn't they make improvements in tunneling speed?
-
The Boring Company has not brought any innovation to its tunnel building techniques. They use conventional TBMs to build their tunnels, just like anyone else. Their innovation is in what they intend do with the tunnels. If they put conventional trains through the tunnels they would have nothing new to bring to the market at all.
While they use conventional TBM, what I hear is that through some clever tricks they can significantly lower the cost of TBM tunnelling. This means that putting Tube trains in Boring tunnels, even though resulting in a traditional looking metro line, still costs a lot less than a traditional metro line to build.
-
The Boring Company has not brought any innovation to its tunnel building techniques. They use conventional TBMs to build their tunnels, just like anyone else. Their innovation is in what they intend do with the tunnels. If they put conventional trains through the tunnels they would have nothing new to bring to the market at all.
While they use conventional TBM, what I hear is that through some clever tricks they can significantly lower the cost of TBM tunnelling. This means that putting Tube trains in Boring tunnels, even though resulting in a traditional looking metro line, still costs a lot less than a traditional metro line to build.
You're going to have to quantify that, because they are using the same machine as everyone else uses, and a small diameter one at that.
-
You're going to have to quantify that, because they are using the same machine as everyone else uses, and a small diameter one at that.
A small diameter by itself is already cutting costs. Then AFAIK there are mods Boring Company did to their TBM's to speed up the process (also saves money.) Boring Company have yet to publish concrete numbers though.
-
You're going to have to quantify that, because they are using the same machine as everyone else uses, and a small diameter one at that.
A small diameter by itself is already cutting costs. Then AFAIK there are mods Boring Company did to their TBM's to speed up the process (also saves money.) Boring Company have yet to publish concrete numbers though.
The Boring Company have yet to say or show anything more than smoke and mirrors. Making small diameter tunnels is a very normal way to cut tunnel costs. That's why small diameter TBMs exist as standard products. The snag is that unless your tunnel is for something like water or sewerage there is a minimum usable diameter needed to get solid objects through. The deep lines of the London underground train network differ from most metro trains in that they already run in minimal diameter tubes. The trains are heavily curved at the top to fit in those small tunnels, and they get power from the tracks to avoid the need to allow space for overhead power lines. Like so https://cdn.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20195533/ntfl-exterior-platform.jpg . If you've only experienced the modern metro systems in Asia, you may not have seen trains like this. The Asian ones use quite large tunnels, fairly square trains, and have space above for overhead power lines. They are mostly very shallow, and many were built by digging down from the surface. That's why they choose a different approach to most of London's lines. London ran out of shallow options very quickly, so most of its lines were built using tunnel boring methods (originally using manual labour). London has been using small tube train lines since the 19th century, when the trains were first electrified, and it has substantially reduced costs. All that has been demonstrated by The Boring Company so far is just a car in a minimal tunnel, providing no way for it to flow safely, quickly and reliably through that tunnel. Doing that will require the tunnel to grow.
-
The Boring Company have yet to say or show anything more than smoke and mirrors. Making small diameter tunnels is a very normal way to cut tunnel costs. That's why small diameter TBMs exist as standard products. The snag is that unless your tunnel is for something like water or sewerage there is a minimum usable diameter needed to get solid objects through. The deep lines of the London underground train network differ from most metro trains in that they already run in minimal diameter tubes. The trains are heavily curved at the top to fit in those small tunnels, and they get power from the tracks to avoid the need to allow space for overhead power lines. Like so https://cdn.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/20195533/ntfl-exterior-platform.jpg . If you've only experienced the modern metro systems in Asia, you may not have seen trains like this. The Asian ones use quite large tunnels, fairly square trains, and have space above for overhead power lines. They are mostly very shallow, and many were built by digging down from the surface. That's why they choose a different approach to most of London's lines. London ran out of shallow options very quickly, so most of its lines were built using tunnel boring methods (originally using manual labour). London has been using small tube train lines since the 19th century, when the trains were first electrified, and it has substantially reduced costs. All that has been demonstrated by The Boring Company so far is just a car in a minimal tunnel, providing no way for it to flow safely, quickly and reliably through that tunnel. Doing that will require the tunnel to grow.
The point I was trying to make is that London deep-level tube trains (those curved-top ones) happen to be able to fit Boring Company tunnels . This means instead of cars we can run Tube trains in those minimal tunnels as-is.
As of Asian cities, they are much more denser requiring larger trains, which in turn forces the use of larger tunnels. At least in Shanghai with the exception of a small stretch of tunnel on Line 1, all Shanghai Metro tunnels are dug with TBM's.
I have watched too many Geoff Marshall and All the Stations to not have a grasp on how railways and Tube looks like.
-
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point.
My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed.
idea of having 350kph+ trains that do not stop but having train cars that accelerate and decelerate passengers to train speed.
you have two tracks side-by-side. one for a 350kph high speed train on a 1000km loop the express, and the other trains that run on a side catch up track, the shuttles. so the system has 4 train tracks, 2 running in one direction, two running in the other direction.
two are shuttle tracks. and two are express tracks.
when the catch up shuttle train is side-by-side with the high speed express train,
then the passengers can transfer from train to train via a side door way at
with the high speed express trains that never stops at any station!
the transfer shuttle train accelerate from the stations so passengers can catch up with the 350kph high speed express trains.
and then decelerate so other passengers can transfer to stations. also the catch up transfer train can hop between stations.
this would only work in China, because of the massive infrastructure needed for 4 parallel 350kph train tracks
the passengers would need to transfer via a elevator type doorway at the train stations.
not a open platform because of the express trains passing behind the stopped transfer shuttle trains.
this all sounds complicated and it is. passengers would need to transfer via doorway at the train stations.
then transfer via doorway at speed to the express train.
so the design of the shuttle railcar is not the same as the design of the express railcar.
the shuttle railcar has a telescopic transfer door that docks with the express railcars at 350kph +
also the shuttle railcar has a door that docks with the train station doorways, in its opposite side. go figure this one out.
-
Do they allow standing passengers on airplanes as well?
Many a word spoken in jest, etc...
Skyrider 2.0 (https://www.treehugger.com/aviation/skyrider-20-just-might-be-greenest-way-fly.html)
(https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/airbus202.jpg.410x225_q70_crop-smart.jpg)
OK, I know that's not applicable (each person has an allocated space) but it shows the way they want to take things.
-
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point.
My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed.
idea of having 350kph+ trains that do not stop but having train cars that accelerate and decelerate passengers to train speed.
you have two tracks side-by-side. one for a 350kph high speed train on a 1000km loop the express, and the other trains that run on a side catch up track, the shuttles. so the system has 4 train tracks, 2 running in one direction, two running in the other direction.
two are shuttle tracks. and two are express tracks.
when the catch up shuttle train is side-by-side with the high speed express train,
then the passengers can transfer from train to train via a side door way at
with the high speed express trains that never stops at any station!
the transfer shuttle train accelerate from the stations so passengers can catch up with the 350kph high speed express trains.
and then decelerate so other passengers can transfer to stations. also the catch up transfer train can hop between stations.
this would only work in China, because of the massive infrastructure needed for 4 parallel 350kph train tracks
the passengers would need to transfer via a elevator type doorway at the train stations.
not a open platform because of the express trains passing behind the stopped transfer shuttle trains.
this all sounds complicated and it is. passengers would need to transfer via doorway at the train stations.
then transfer via doorway at speed to the express train.
so the design of the shuttle railcar is not the same as the design of the express railcar.
the shuttle railcar has a telescopic transfer door that docks with the express railcars at 350kph +
also the shuttle railcar has a door that docks with the train station doorways, in its opposite side. go figure this one out.
This sounds like a script from a Hi-Sci horror movie...
-
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point.
My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed.
idea of having 350kph+ trains that do not stop but having train cars that accelerate and decelerate passengers to train speed.
you have two tracks side-by-side. one for a 350kph high speed train on a 1000km loop the express, and the other trains that run on a side catch up track, the shuttles. so the system has 4 train tracks, 2 running in one direction, two running in the other direction.
two are shuttle tracks. and two are express tracks.
Now calculate how many trains you need in total. And the problem I mentioned earlier (people moving through the primary train) remains. There is only one way high speed trains work efficiently and that is by letting them stop at as few stations as possible.
-
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point.
My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed.
idea of having 350kph+ trains that do not stop but having train cars that accelerate and decelerate passengers to train speed.
you have two tracks side-by-side. one for a 350kph high speed train on a 1000km loop the express, and the other trains that run on a side catch up track, the shuttles. so the system has 4 train tracks, 2 running in one direction, two running in the other direction.
two are shuttle tracks. and two are express tracks.
when the catch up shuttle train is side-by-side with the high speed express train,
then the passengers can transfer from train to train via a side door way at
with the high speed express trains that never stops at any station!
the transfer shuttle train accelerate from the stations so passengers can catch up with the 350kph high speed express trains.
and then decelerate so other passengers can transfer to stations. also the catch up transfer train can hop between stations.
this would only work in China, because of the massive infrastructure needed for 4 parallel 350kph train tracks
the passengers would need to transfer via a elevator type doorway at the train stations.
not a open platform because of the express trains passing behind the stopped transfer shuttle trains.
this all sounds complicated and it is. passengers would need to transfer via doorway at the train stations.
then transfer via doorway at speed to the express train.
so the design of the shuttle railcar is not the same as the design of the express railcar.
the shuttle railcar has a telescopic transfer door that docks with the express railcars at 350kph +
also the shuttle railcar has a door that docks with the train station doorways, in its opposite side. go figure this one out.
This is a train control nightmare, and it is likely going to be very dangerous.
-
That is the common solution to have high speed and low speed trains use the same track but that wasn't my point.
My point is that people are inclined to demand high speed trains stop at everyone's doorstep and don't see that that slows the train down to snail speed.
idea of having 350kph+ trains that do not stop but having train cars that accelerate and decelerate passengers to train speed.
you have two tracks side-by-side. one for a 350kph high speed train on a 1000km loop the express, and the other trains that run on a side catch up track, the shuttles. so the system has 4 train tracks, 2 running in one direction, two running in the other direction.
two are shuttle tracks. and two are express tracks.
when the catch up shuttle train is side-by-side with the high speed express train,
then the passengers can transfer from train to train via a side door way at
with the high speed express trains that never stops at any station!
the transfer shuttle train accelerate from the stations so passengers can catch up with the 350kph high speed express trains.
and then decelerate so other passengers can transfer to stations. also the catch up transfer train can hop between stations.
this would only work in China, because of the massive infrastructure needed for 4 parallel 350kph train tracks
the passengers would need to transfer via a elevator type doorway at the train stations.
not a open platform because of the express trains passing behind the stopped transfer shuttle trains.
this all sounds complicated and it is. passengers would need to transfer via doorway at the train stations.
then transfer via doorway at speed to the express train.
so the design of the shuttle railcar is not the same as the design of the express railcar.
the shuttle railcar has a telescopic transfer door that docks with the express railcars at 350kph +
also the shuttle railcar has a door that docks with the train station doorways, in its opposite side. go figure this one out.
This is a train control nightmare, and it is likely going to be very dangerous.
I do note that the Chinese YT video double decker roof-top shuttle train design,
that I got this theory from was a bad & dangerous design, In my opinion.
a train passenger potato slicer or train passenger decapitation unit. :scared: :o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Ig19gYP9o (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Ig19gYP9o)
if one is too slow to transfer from a moving train to train roof-top shuttle car.
up a stairway?! so I added my own hypothetical train system or transit System theory. here
update-
computer simulation of passengers is needed to prove or disprove if their is any time saving in this hypothetical train system or
transit System theory.
In my opinion their is passenger time saving over long distance's by the hypothetical non-stop high speed express trains.
however time is lost hopping between local or nearby train stations with the shuttle rail cars as its priority is
given to catch up with any express trains.
my conclusion is as follows. my hypothetical train system is a time compressor between the most distant and nearby train stations.
however no energy saving is to be had as more complicated infrastructure is needed to make it work.
-
A train from Hong Kong to Peking with six intermediate stops of 15 minutes each will be adding 90 minutes stoppage plus accelerating and decelerating time. A train that does not stop gains all that lost time.
What high speed trains stop for 15 minutes??
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda for 2.
and Thalys Amsterdam - Brussels stops in Rotterdam for 4 minutes, Antwerp for 3
...
-
A train from Hong Kong to Peking with six intermediate stops of 15 minutes each will be adding 90 minutes stoppage plus accelerating and decelerating time. A train that does not stop gains all that lost time.
What high speed trains stop for 15 minutes??
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda for 2.
and Thalys Amsterdam - Brussels stops in Rotterdam for 4 minutes, Antwerp for 3
...
You need to add the slow down and speed up times to get the total interruption due to the station, but its far less than 15 minutes. Most high speed trains in China are only stationary for a couple of minutes at each intermediate station, and they don't spend that long slowing down and speeding up. I'm not sure how long. I've never tried measuring it.
-
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda for 2.
It's Lérida not Llieda.
-
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda for 2.
It's Lérida not Llieda.
It's Lleida , according to Renfe.
[attachimg=1]
-
It's Lleida , according to Renfe.
It's Lérida, according to the Royal Spanish Academy.
http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida (http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida)
-
It's Lleida , according to Renfe.
It's Lérida, according to the Royal Spanish Academy.
http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida (http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida)
I'll let you stand on the platform and tell them they have spelled their train station's name incorrectly, or perhaps suggest they change all of their official signage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida_Pirineus_railway_station
-
It's Lleida , according to Renfe.
It's Lérida, according to the Royal Spanish Academy.
http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida (http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida)
I'll let you stand on the platform and tell them they have spelled their train station's name incorrectly, or perhaps suggest they change all of their official signage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida_Pirineus_railway_station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida_Pirineus_railway_station)
I don't know the correct spelling of this place, but it seems Spanish tourist web pages use both spellings, even intermixed on a single web page. This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida seems to indicate that Lleida is an Anglicized spelling, and Lérida is the Spanish one.
-
A train from Hong Kong to Peking with six intermediate stops of 15 minutes each will be adding 90 minutes stoppage plus accelerating and decelerating time. A train that does not stop gains all that lost time.
What high speed trains stop for 15 minutes??
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda for 2.
and Thalys Amsterdam - Brussels stops in Rotterdam for 4 minutes, Antwerp for 3
...
You need to add the slow down and speed up times to get the total interruption due to the station, but its far less than 15 minutes. Most high speed trains in China are only stationary for a couple of minutes at each intermediate station, and they don't spend that long slowing down and speeding up. I'm not sure how long. I've never tried measuring it.
"Not a high speed train's bootlace", but I remember many years ago, driving into a very small town, just as the "Prospector" was slowing to stop at the station.
We slowed down from 110kmh to 60kmh to transit the town, & had just reached the 110kmh zone again, at the other end of town, when the Prospector caught us up & passed us.
We had not stopped at all, whereas the train had stopped to set down/pick up passengers.
The current iteration of this train does the 549.5 km from Perth to Kalgoorlie in 6hrs 50mins, an average speed of just over 80kmh.
By comparison, a car trip takes just under 30mins less, & an air trip is 4hrs 30mins,* so even a conventional train stacks up well, when you take limited stops into consideration!
PS :-*Actually, this is bollocks!-----I made the assumption that the Kalgoorlie flights had experienced the same downgrading to small commuter planes as just about everywhere else in WA has.
In fact, the Kalgoorlie flights are still proper pure jet airliners & only take 1 Hr 15 minutes.
The website I cribbed the original info made the same mistake!
-
Here is the longest non-stop HSR ride in China I found: G17 from Beijing South to Nanjing South, 1023km in 3h13min. Said train terminates in Shanghai Hongqiao after Nanjing South with no more stops.
China has the rule that one HSR engineer can only work continuously for up to 4 hours for safety reason. This means that for long haul HSR trains (like the 2760km 13-hour journey between Beijing West and Kunming South, currently the longest HSR ride in the world) requires multiple engineers and has to add intermediate stops at least to change crews.
Here in China it is usually accepted that 1300km is the balance point between HSR and air travel - HSR wins for shorter haul and air wins for longer haul. This means that for those ultra long haul journeys it actually makes more financial sense to add intermediate stops, as the passengers that would take the whole journey is limited. The distance between Beijing and Shanghai, 1318km, happens to land very close to the balance point, resulting in extremely fierce competition between China Railways and the airlines.
Speaking of between Beijing and Shanghai, there are so much traffic between the two cities, Chinese government is planning a second HSR and a second freeway between the two cities.
-
It's Lleida , according to Renfe.
It's Lérida, according to the Royal Spanish Academy.
http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida (http://lema.rae.es/dpd/srv/search?key=L%E9rida)
I'll let you stand on the platform and tell them they have spelled their train station's name incorrectly, or perhaps suggest they change all of their official signage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida_Pirineus_railway_station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida_Pirineus_railway_station)
I don't know the correct spelling of this place, but it seems Spanish tourist web pages use both spellings, even intermixed on a single web page. This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lleida) seems to indicate that Lleida is an Anglicized spelling, and Lérida is the Spanish one.
Actually Lleida is the Catalan spelling, and it's what the station is called, it's what is on the signage at the station (see pic above)
-
Actually Lleida is the Catalan spelling
Exactly. And you wrote:
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda Lleida for 2.
In that sentence there's four spanish cities, three spelled in spanish and one for no good reason in catalán instead. Mind you, Renfe does that wrong too. It would be the same as saying London, Bristol and Dùn Èideann instead of London, Bristol and Edinburgh. I hope you get it now. Cheers.
-
Actually Lleida is the Catalan spelling
Exactly. And you wrote:
Ave Madrid - Barcelona stops in Zaragoza for just one minute, and Llieda Lleida for 2.
In that sentence there's four spanish cities, three spelled in spanish and one for no good reason in catalán instead. Mind you, Renfe does that wrong too. It would be the same as saying London, Bristol and Dùn Èideann instead of London, Bristol and Edinburgh. I hope you get it now. Cheers.
I'm not naming cities, I'm naming stations; and I've used the correct spelling (other than ie vs ei in one post) for each of these train stations. By correct I mean the name posted in large letters outside the station, the name used by the rail operator, the name displayed in and outside of the train etc etc.
A city having an 'official name' vs a common name is not something unusual in the world, and if you'd like to go fight other battles on incorrectly named stations, perhaps your next one is getting NS to rename "Den Haag Centraal" to "s Gravenhage Centraal".
But for the purpose of this discussion, your pedantic rants are inappropriate and in this case wrong as I was talking about the station, not the city
-
I'm not naming cities, I'm naming stations; and I've used the correct spelling (other than ie vs ei in one post) for each of these train stations. By correct I mean the name posted in large letters outside the station, the name used by the rail operator, the name displayed in and outside of the train etc etc.
A city having an 'official name' vs a common name is not something unusual in the world, and if you'd like to go fight other battles on incorrectly named stations, perhaps your next one is getting NS to rename "Den Haag Centraal" to "s Gravenhage Centraal".
But for the purpose of this discussion, your pedantic rants are inappropriate and in this case wrong as I was talking about the station, not the city
There are even public transport stations with names that are totally irrelevant to the location it is in or the location it serves.
-
I'm not naming cities, I'm naming stations; and I've used the correct spelling (other than ie vs ei in one post) for each of these train stations. By correct I mean the name posted in large letters outside the station, the name used by the rail operator, the name displayed in and outside of the train etc etc.
A city having an 'official name' vs a common name is not something unusual in the world, and if you'd like to go fight other battles on incorrectly named stations, perhaps your next one is getting NS to rename "Den Haag Centraal" to "s Gravenhage Centraal".
But for the purpose of this discussion, your pedantic rants are inappropriate and in this case wrong as I was talking about the station, not the city
There are even public transport stations with names that are totally irrelevant to the location it is in or the location it serves.
Or places have been renamed but some transport names still reference an older name. Case in point PEK and YFB airports
-
There are even public transport stations with names that are totally irrelevant to the location it is in or the location it serves.
'Bir Hakeim' in Paris comes to mind.
-
Or places have been renamed but some transport names still reference an older name. Case in point PEK and YFB airports
The name PEK referring to actually didn't change, however since the local name is in a different script than Latin, Romanization changed. PEK is based on the older Wade-Giles transliteration Peking, while the modern spelling Beijing is based on Hanyu Pinyin transliteration. Pinyin was introduced just a month before PEK opened, by when it is too late to change the codes.
-
Or places have been renamed but some transport names still reference an older name. Case in point PEK and YFB airports
The name PEK referring to actually didn't change, however since the local name is in a different script than Latin, Romanization changed. PEK is based on the older Wade-Giles transliteration Peking, while the modern spelling Beijing is based on Hanyu Pinyin transliteration. Pinyin was introduced just a month before PEK opened, by when it is too late to change the codes.
Wade-Giles dates from the middle of the 19th century. Spellings like Peking are much older. The first European settlement in East Asia was Macau. Europeans learned a lot about East Asia from the people of Macau, who speak Cantonese. So, a lot of western spellings for things in China, Korea and Japan are far from how they sound in Mandarin, Korean or Japanese, but not far from how they sound in Cantonese. For example, in Cantonese Beijing is pronounced something like bak-ging, a lot closer to Peking that many munging of Mandarin gets. The Japanese pronounce their nation ni-hon, which is nothing like Japan. However, in Cantonese its something like yat-boon, which is a lot closer to Japan. Add a few centuries of pronounciation drift, and you can see where the western names for many East Asian places originate.
-
But for the purpose of this discussion, your pedantic rants are inappropriate and in this case wrong as I was talking about the station, not the city
The name of the station is Pirineos, the other station there is Vilanoveta, now not used, both are in Lérida, and there's no reason to put in the same sentence some city names in a language and some in another. City-name-Station-name: Madrid-Atocha, Madrid-Chamartín, Lérida-Pirineos, do you get it?
-
.
-
:palm: Could be within a decade....... :palm: What are they smoking?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0S8LLplfI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B0S8LLplfI)
-
:palm: Could be within a decade....... :palm: What are they smoking?
Building HSR like this, regardless of technique used, requires a lot of coordination. If the government can secure funds and gain political support like in China, it is doable like in China. If not...
-
:palm: Could be within a decade....... :palm: What are they smoking?
Building HSR like this, regardless of technique used, requires a lot of coordination. If the government can secure funds and gain political support like in China, it is doable like in China. If not...
AND I REPEAT:
:palm: What are they smoking?
-
The Hyperloop problem has been solved!, by a 13yo
::)
I'll give her an A for effort and imagination though.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hyperloop-design-teenager/index.html
-
The Hyperloop problem has been solved!, by a 13yo
::)
I'll give her an A for effort and imagination though.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hyperloop-design-teenager/index.html
Is that article explaining the idea badly, or does it make no sense at all?
-
The Hyperloop problem has been solved!, by a 13yo
::)
I'll give her an A for effort and imagination though.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hyperloop-design-teenager/index.html
Is that article explaining the idea badly, or does it make no sense at all?
You can quite rubbing your eyes, I see the same thing, a regular high speed train somehow attached to the side of a redundant pnuematic tube system. :palm:
What the hell are they teaching those kids about physics? |O
-
The idea - build a second tunnel next to the first and drag the train in the vacuum tunnel with the first train by magnetic coupling.
Oh! And make it use 100% renewable energy.
Who’d a thunk it - all we need to do is specify that something uses 100% renewable energy and poof, Job ldone!!
-
and drag the train in the vacuum tunnel with the first train by magnetic coupling
I am failing to grasp the problem which this solves.
-
The problem with high speed rail isn't getting up to speed, it's keeping the damn train from derailing.
You could make a 600 mph train with "relative" ease, but the chance of derailment is fairly high, especially given the near-mm tolerances that high speed rail operates on.
-
The Hyperloop problem has been solved!, by a 13yo
::)
I'll give her an A for effort and imagination though.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hyperloop-design-teenager/index.html
Is that article explaining the idea badly, or does it make no sense at all?
It makes no sense. It just proves that they don't teach basic physics to 13 year olds. Besides that the idea with a magnet in a secondary tube to tow a train along is over 100 years old.
-
and drag the train in the vacuum tunnel with the first train by magnetic coupling
I am failing to grasp the problem which this solves.
It attempts to solves the death trap that is Elon Musk's humans in a vacuum hyperloop. Which in itself didn't solve anything. it's turtles all the way down.
-
H. L. Mencken wrote that for every complex human problem, there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong. A thirteen year old has found the solution that is neat, simple and wrong.
I am not too concerned about a teenager being ignorant. That is what being a teenager is about. What is more concerning is that reporters and media have such a degree of ignorance and incompetence that they would publish such drivel. That is a serious issue.
I remember decades ago every few years we would have the news that someone had invented a car that ran on water.
-
H. L. Mencken wrote that for every complex human problem, there is a solution that is neat, simple and wrong...
If we totally strip Earth of its atmosphere then all electric trains and cars could operate more efficiently without all that drag. And, as a bonus, with no more CO2 we've eliminated global warming.
I remember decades ago every few years we would have the news that someone had invented a car that ran on water.
I have one. But I haven't been out fishing for the longest time and the outboard could probably use some looking after.
-
Media loves the tale of the solitary genius who is smarter than the whole (inherently malevolent) industry - even more so if it's a child. Plus, the problem with the representation of science in media is that the people who write about it don't even fathom how little they actually know.
Nothing new though. Back in the eighties, newspapers here reported how students easily found a fraction that represent Pi exactly , somewhere in the 2000s, there was a report about a school girl who invented a breakthrough cryptography that would revolutionize the internet.
-
Most trains ran and all nuclears run on water. That girl surely is a cousin of Greta Thunberg.
-
It makes no sense. It just proves that they don't teach basic physics to 13 year olds. Besides that the idea with a magnet in a secondary tube to tow a train along is over 100 years old.
What about the judges, there's a form of collective stupidity.
The judges are all very clever people, none of them wants to be the first to say "Hang on, I don't understand this, it makes no 'king sense to me", so it all gets passed as a brilliant idea, with each judge individually thinking it's just him/her that doesn't have a clue, until it's too late. :)
-
It attempts to solves the death trap that is Elon Musk's humans in a vacuum hyperloop.
Sure, but the hyperloop at least had a problem to resolve: going faster than is practical using rails in open air. This 'solution' for the hyperloop issue appears to be to not go faster than a normal train. The only thing it seems to add is complexity, a huge cost to add a tube which will suffer all the failure modes of Musk's tubes, and completely blocking access to one side of the train and tracks.
-
What about the judges, there's a form of collective stupidity.
The judges are all very clever people, none of them wants to be the first to say "Hang on, I don't understand this, it makes no 'king sense to me", so it all gets passed as a brilliant idea, with each judge individually thinking it's just him/her that doesn't have a clue, until it's too late. :)
Well, it could be that this was indeed the best idea presented and all other entries were worse.
-
What about the judges, there's a form of collective stupidity.
The judges are all very clever people, none of them wants to be the first to say "Hang on, I don't understand this, it makes no 'king sense to me", so it all gets passed as a brilliant idea, with each judge individually thinking it's just him/her that doesn't have a clue, until it's too late. :)
Well, it could be that this was indeed the best idea presented and all other entries were worse.
Hmm... 'Even in the world of losers there is a winner.'
-
Well, it could be that this was indeed the best idea presented and all other entries were worse.
It's more than 100% useless, I can't think what the others would have been.
-
Normally I enjoy criticism, but aren't we being a bit harsh to a 13-year-old? Of course the idea doesn't really solve any problems, but the fact she got recognition and praise isn't her fault, its the media and people jumping on the bandwagon (as deadbeef pointed out, people love a good "underdog" story).
Also I don't see how it reflects that she was taught bad physics. As we all know in this thread, it isn't about "doing the impossible", its just impractical and doesn't improve upon current systems.
What do kind of analysis do you expect a 13-year-old to do to indicate efficacy? Calculating air friction losses, and the energy requirements for a pneumatic system and and the start-stop of transport is not exactly what I would consider 8th grade stuff, sure there can be some calculations but it would end up with so many simplified assumptions as to be worthless (like the analysis of the original hyperloop!).
Also, anyone who likes these kinds of underdog stories is going to read this thread and see "ha! its impossible, she's a fool!" and think "why would people enjoy laughing at a child?". It just ends up making people distrust engineers/scientists even more. The fact you're right doesn't matter, but being smug will make joe-public ignore your opinions.
-
Normally I enjoy criticism, but aren't we being a bit harsh to a 13-year-old? Of course the idea doesn't really solve any problems, but the fact she got recognition and praise isn't her fault, its the media and people jumping on the bandwagon (as deadbeef pointed out, people love a good "underdog" story).
Also I don't see how it reflects that she was taught bad physics. As we all know in this thread, it isn't about "doing the impossible", its just impractical and doesn't improve upon current systems.
What do kind of analysis do you expect a 13-year-old to do to indicate efficacy? Calculating air friction losses, and the energy requirements for a pneumatic system and and the start-stop of transport is not exactly what I would consider 8th grade stuff, sure there can be some calculations but it would end up with so many simplified assumptions as to be worthless (like the analysis of the original hyperloop!).
Also, anyone who likes these kinds of underdog stories is going to read this thread and see "ha! its impossible, she's a fool!" and think "why would people enjoy laughing at a child?". It just ends up making people distrust engineers/scientists even more. The fact you're right doesn't matter, but being smug will make joe-public ignore your opinions.
We are talking about a 13 year old, not a 3 year old. At 13 most people haven't studied much physics, but their common sense is pretty well developed. Smart 13 year olds come up with all sorts of clever ideas, often ones that take some pretty advanced knowledge to see a flaw in. Its hard to imagine that only one person proposed a more interesting idea than this. I suspect dumb or partisan judges.
-
I already said she is not at fault and it is the incompetence of the adults around her, including the media.
-
and drag the train in the vacuum tunnel with the first train by magnetic coupling
I am failing to grasp the problem which this solves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)) Have you ever been in subway when train is nearing and you feel how air is pushed out of the tube? Once you are past certain speed, most of energy is spent on overtaking the drag. And in the tube it becomes much worse since there is a very little space for air to go. So even if you have MagLev (no friction with rails), drag is still the same.
-
and drag the train in the vacuum tunnel with the first train by magnetic coupling
I am failing to grasp the problem which this solves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)) Have you ever been in subway when train is nearing and you feel how air is pushed out of the tube? Once you are past certain speed, most of energy is spent on overtaking the drag. And in the tube it becomes much worse since there is a very little space for air to go. So even if you have MagLev (no friction with rails), drag is still the same.
Which is why they want the hyperloop to operate in a near vacuum. Technically it makes sense to reduce/remove the air fricition. Whether it is worth the investment depends on whether it is cheaper to operate compared to methods of transportation which already exist (which in turn where also greated by great sceptisism). BTW the idea with the magnet I've seen works the other way around. The magnet is moved outside the vacuum tube and drags a carriage along which is inside the vacuum tube.
-
The winner "formulated a nano particle liquid bandage", if only CC had said the tube was made of a graphene material she'd have won. >:D
According to this the idea was nothing to do with Hyperloopy, cnn has just made that up.
https://www.youngscientistlab.com/competition/video_challenge/archives/2019?award=winner (https://www.youngscientistlab.com/competition/video_challenge/archives/2019?award=winner)
It's still daft and easier to power the train through the tracks.
-
I saw her presentation and she is not going to be an engineer but a politician. She uses all the buzzwords and generalities without providing any specifics.
Talks about reducing pollution, reducing global warming, etc. All the common cliches. She just needs to add that it will help battered women get away from those evil men.
She is on the right path for politics.
-
and drag the train in the vacuum tunnel with the first train by magnetic coupling
I am failing to grasp the problem which this solves.
It attempts to solves the death trap that is Elon Musk's humans in a vacuum hyperloop. Which in itself didn't solve anything. it's turtles all the way down.
Then you should call airplanes death traps as well. At their cruise altitude they fly in near vacuum (~20% of sea level air pressure) as far as human organism or cabin strength is concerned. Going by 0.2 atmospheres lower does not make much difference. People think that vacuum is something extraordinary. But such vacuum capsule would experience only a little bit more pressure difference compared to usual passenger airplane. So capsule strength needed is about the same. Going from sea level pressure to absolute vacuum is only 1 atm or Bar. When you think about many pressurized systems which exist, it's nothing. For example hydrogen tank in Toyota Mirai is at about 700 Bar pressure and located under back seat :). It makes no difference if you put it under vacuum or sea level air pressure. 701 vs 700 Bar pressure difference to endure. Fill it by 1% less, and even under vacuum it will experience less stress than normally.
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Toyota_Mirai_fuel_cell_stack_and_hydrogen_tank_SAO_2016_9028.jpg)
-
Normally I enjoy criticism, but aren't we being a bit harsh to a 13-year-old? Of course the idea doesn't really solve any problems, but the fact she got recognition and praise isn't her fault, its the media and people jumping on the bandwagon (as deadbeef pointed out, people love a good "underdog" story).
Also I don't see how it reflects that she was taught bad physics. As we all know in this thread, it isn't about "doing the impossible", its just impractical and doesn't improve upon current systems.p
What do kind of analysis do you expect a 13-year-old to do to indicate efficacy? Calculating air friction losses, and the energy requirements for a pneumatic system and and the start-stop of transport is not exactly what I would consider 8th grade stuff, sure there can be some calculations but it would end up with so many simplified assumptions as to be worthless (like the analysis of the original hyperloop!).
I'm pretty sure that when I was 13, I would have been able to point out the problems with her idea-----but I was a horrible little Geek
(I normalised with age).
Kids these days do not have the "hands-on" experience of the real world which was much more common in earlier generations.
At 13, I had helped in the rebuild of a car engine, assisted in the repair of a synchromesh gearbox, & had a working knowledge of the 4 stroke I.C. engine "Otto Cycle".
They don't read as much, either.
How many 9 year olds would know what a "Beche de Mer" was?(It's another name for Trepang or "sea cucumber")
How about a "Mudskipper"?, Or a "Nudibranch"?
(I was seriously Geeky at that age!)
Also, anyone who likes these kinds of underdog stories is going to read this thread and see "ha! its impossible, she's a fool!" and think "why would people enjoy laughing at a child?". It just ends up making people distrust engineers/scientists even more. The fact you're right doesn't matter, but being smug will make joe-public ignore your opinions.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyEMU_qu4PM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyEMU_qu4PM)
-
It's very possible the "mentor" was in charge of this ridiculousness.
-
Seems Musk has a resident shill at CNN :D
-
You may as well take the energy used for the pneumatic system and put it straight on the train. The main issue with a high speed train in the open is the possibility of derailment and fact that it's just open to the environment. Wild life etc can cause big issues.
I think a compromise for the hyperloop would be to have a tunnel (under or above ground does not matter) that makes a literal loop, maybe one per province, and it covers all the major geographical locations, and has stations that are evenly spaced. All trains would depart and stop roughly at the same time. That way each train just pushes air while the next one pulls air. There's obviously still going to be a lot of static pressure, but it would probably be half decently efficient vs if they all stop at different times. There could be various air vents too, that would be an engineering feet to some degree to design them effectively while ensuring nothing can get in, but it's doable. But either way having them all take off/arrive at once means they never have to stop for others. The train itself does not matter too much how it's designed (rails, wheels all around the tube, maglev etc) but the idea is with the tunnel you can travel at a relatively fast and constant speed without risking hitting anything. It would probably be cheaper to operate than an airline, so it would ideally be cheaper to travel on than an airline (at least that would be the point, it needs to be affordable to use). So what would take you say, 8 hours to drive, you could do in maybe 4 with this train. It would essentially be an alternate way to travel far while being cheaper than flying. Not sure how sound my idea really is though but it does sound more reasonable than some of these ideas. Sometimes you need to compromise instead of going for crazy stuff. Say the real hyperloop is built and works, how much would it cost to maintain and cost for passengers vs flying? Probably a lot. If it's the same price or more expensive then people are just going to fly. I think if anyone wants to "revolutionize" travel, it needs to be a system that fits right between driving and flying in terms of speed and cost.
-
Anybody who has any interest in maglev should watch Professor Eric Laithwaite's seminal demonstrations from the early 70's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_HFnNTfyU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI_HFnNTfyU)
There are plenty of other youtube videos of his demonstrations which are well worth watching - if only for the fashion influences on his assistant!
It was his Royal Institution lectures on his work on linear motors, which lead to maglev trains, which inspired me into engineering. It was tragic that his ideas on the fundamentals of gyroscopes so damaged his reputation.
-
It's this:
Good luck getting it working at 500-1000km/h over hundreds of km with a full load.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniP3T_PPB4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KniP3T_PPB4)
-
According to this the idea was nothing to do with Hyperloopy, cnn has just made that up.
https://www.youngscientistlab.com/competition/video_challenge/archives/2019?award=winner (https://www.youngscientistlab.com/competition/video_challenge/archives/2019?award=winner)
No, it's in the CNN article, they interviewed her and used several quote where she mentions Hyperloop. Unless you want to say that CNN made up the quotes?
-
Hyperloop Dubai Vision 2020 : Biggest Revolution In Economy & Technology !
:palm: WTF, Dubai? How big is Dubai, around 50 km long by 20 km wide?
And transporting cargo? You have got to be kidding me.
The point of hyperloop speed is to get people whose time is worth money from point A to point B as fast and cheap as possible. With a 50km long city, how will the stops be placed? Will the hyperloop even be able to comfortably accelerate up to above 500km/h between stops? Say something like 5 of them in the city every 10km, or even shorter.
If it's for parcel delivery, I'll wait the extra 1-2 hours to have it shipped to my door by truck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbXSY0A0aU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbXSY0A0aU)
-
But politicians love high profile projects in which to spend taxpayers $. Be it useless airports, highways that nobody uses, solar freaking roadways, and such. Now hyperloops too, or so it seems.
-
Hyperloop Dubai Vision 2020 : Biggest Revolution In Economy & Technology !
:palm: WTF, Dubai? How big is Dubai, around 50 km long by 20 km wide?
And transporting cargo? You have got to be kidding me.
I think its to Abu Dhabi?, so about 150km
The point of hyperloop speed is to get people whose time is worth money from point A to point B as fast and cheap as possible. With a 50km long city, how will the stops be placed? Will the hyperloop even be able to comfortably accelerate up to above 500km/h between stops? Say something like 5 of them in the city every 10km, or even shorter.
Yes, it's pointless for short trips, only city-city direct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbXSY0A0aU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbXSY0A0aU)
That's some fine rendered wankery!
-
According to this the idea was nothing to do with Hyperloopy, cnn has just made that up.
https://www.youngscientistlab.com/competition/video_challenge/archives/2019?award=winner (https://www.youngscientistlab.com/competition/video_challenge/archives/2019?award=winner)
No, it's in the CNN article, they interviewed her and used several quote where she mentions Hyperloop. Unless you want to say that CNN made up the quotes?
In the video at youndscientistlab she spends far more time talking about how bad cars are than talking about her idea. However, she does say her idea is based on compressed air, and not a vacuum like hyperloop.
-
In the video at youndscientistlab she spends far more time talking about how bad cars are than talking about her idea.
And, as some have already noted, it's the main (and possibly only) reason why this got media traction to begin with.
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) Have you ever been in subway when train is nearing and you feel how air is pushed out of the tube?
How does the train being out in the open fix that? I mean, if it could be out in the open they wouldn't need a tube and then have to evacuate it in the first place. AFAICS, there are two reasons for the tube: one being that they can evacuate it and therefore go blindingly fast, and the other being that it is underground to really tricky not to be in a tube. The tube-by-the-side 'solution' is a strange way to deal with those.
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) Have you ever been in subway when train is nearing and you feel how air is pushed out of the tube?
How does the train being out in the open fix that?
Simple. Air can go sideways. Not pushed all the way through the tube in front of train and some of it passing through the gap between tube and train.
-
Hyperloop Dubai Vision 2020 : Biggest Revolution In Economy & Technology !
:palm: WTF, Dubai? How big is Dubai, around 50 km long by 20 km wide?
And transporting cargo? You have got to be kidding me.
The point of hyperloop speed is to get people whose time is worth money from point A to point B as fast and cheap as possible. With a 50km long city, how will the stops be placed? Will the hyperloop even be able to comfortably accelerate up to above 500km/h between stops? Say something like 5 of them in the city every 10km, or even shorter.
If it's for parcel delivery, I'll wait the extra 1-2 hours to have it shipped to my door by truck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbXSY0A0aU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHbXSY0A0aU)
It's Dubai, where they use money as tissue with their mega fancy hotels and artificial islands. ::)
If they do build it, it'll just be a tourist trap that bleeds money from impracticality until it becomes a financial failure. Then when the POS inevitably breaks down they'll just rip it up, dump it in the ocean, bury it in sand and build a resort on it. You'll never hear about it again. ;D
-
It's Dubai, where they use money as tissue with their mega fancy hotels and artificial islands. ::)
If they do build it, it'll just be a tourist trap that bleeds money from impracticality until it becomes a financial failure. Then when the POS inevitably breaks down they'll just rip it up, dump it in the ocean, bury it in sand and build a resort on it. You'll never hear about it again. ;D
I've heard it's going to be just a cargo delivery system at first?
Either way it's going to fail either spectacularly or with a whimper bogged down in technicalities.
-
I've heard it's going to be just a cargo delivery system at first?
Totally unrelated to the hyperloop but I always thought that in densely populated areas the old pneumatic tube would make sense. With computer automatic controls you could send a small item, like a book or a phone, across town, in no time and much faster than by courier.
I have always thought it would be worth looking into this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) Have you ever been in subway when train is nearing and you feel how air is pushed out of the tube?
How does the train being out in the open fix that?
Simple. Air can go sideways. Not pushed all the way through the tube in front of train and some of it passing through the gap between tube and train.
There was a bit more to my post which you appear to have missed. It's a solution to a strawman problem.
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics) Have you ever been in subway when train is nearing and you feel how air is pushed out of the tube?
How does the train being out in the open fix that?
Simple. Air can go sideways. Not pushed all the way through the tube in front of train and some of it passing through the gap between tube and train.
There was a bit more to my post which you appear to have missed. It's a solution to a strawman problem.
:palm: Air resistance is a huge problem. If it wasn't, Chinese Maglev would run at over 1000 km/h. And I wasn't even talking about Hyperloop. Just subway train vs free air train.
Why do you think Japanese Shinkansen has such shape?
(https://cdn.cheapoguides.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/hello-kitty-shinkansen.jpg)
-
Why do you think Japanese Shinkansen has such shape?
(https://cdn.cheapoguides.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/06/hello-kitty-shinkansen.jpg)
Because they think it looks cool? ;)
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/JGR_C5343_hauling_train.jpg/1024px-JGR_C5343_hauling_train.jpg)
-
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/JGR_C5343_hauling_train.jpg/1024px-JGR_C5343_hauling_train.jpg)
Because they think it looks cool? ;)
It's not aerodynamic at all unlike Shinkansen, lower part is for cleaning snow and debris on rails. It seems to have air guides for pushing smoke above the train together with incoming air. Also if you look how those steam locomotives were made, it's quite natural it has front of such shape. Most of them had two small wheels at front.
(https://history.rw.by/uploads/locomotives/images/960x420_tt/is_big.png)
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/db/48/e9/db48e9c140a51151d6f7c5e8503818f5.jpg)
-
Air resistance is a huge problem. If it wasn't, Chinese Maglev would run at over 1000 km/h.
Yes, exactly! Hence one reason why they want to run without air, and the way to do that is in an evacuated tube. Having the train OUTSIDE the tube, as in this girl's solution, does not fix that problem.
-
Yes, exactly! Hence one reason why they want to run without air, and the way to do that is in an evacuated tube.
I did not say it fixes it entirely. But train in free air certainly has less problems with air resistance than train in tube.
Having the train OUTSIDE the tube, as in this girl's solution, does not fix that problem.
Where did I say it's not an idiotic proposal? Combining worst of both.
-
But train in free air certainly has less problems
Are my posts being censored or something? Appropriate bits being chopped out so you don't see them? I don't think I am using big words or deliberately trying to be misunderstood, so I am lost as to how the central point of all this is being overlooked every cycle.
Ah well. I give up.
-
Yes, exactly! Hence one reason why they want to run without air, and the way to do that is in an evacuated tube.
I did not say it fixes it entirely. But train in free air certainly has less problems with air resistance than train in tube.
I have a feeling that the speed at which it really doesn't matter is lower than you think. Better run some numbers on air friction in a tunnel versus free air. Even in open space (outside a tunnel) air doesn't like to move very much.
-
Are my posts being censored or something? Appropriate bits being chopped out so you don't see them?
I did not chop anything appropriate. I quoted parts I commented on. I avoid making posts where quote in 10x larger than what I wrote myself and it's not even certain on what particularly I comment. If you want to read full original post, feel free to click the link on top of quote.
I don't think I am using big words or deliberately trying to be misunderstood, so I am lost as to how the central point of all this is being overlooked every cycle.
I did not see any clear central point of what you wrote. FYI, IMHO Hyperloop concept as such might be feasible given it can be made cheap enough and technical problems solved.
-
Yes, exactly! Hence one reason why they want to run without air, and the way to do that is in an evacuated tube.
I did not say it fixes it entirely. But train in free air certainly has less problems with air resistance than train in tube.
I have a feeling that the speed at which it really doesn't matter is lower than you think. Better run some numbers on air friction in a tunnel versus free air. Even in open space (outside a tunnel) air doesn't like to move very much.
What i wrote is just a comparison of 2 bads. It matters even at relatively low speed, like 50 km/h.
-
I wouldn't both arguing with wraper, he's part of the musk cult and seems to defend everything regardless of merit.
-
I wouldn't both arguing with wraper, he's part of the musk cult and seems to defend everything regardless of merit.
And then there are nut jobs who are triggered just by hearing his name. BTW thanks for Ad hominem attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Also I never said that Hyperloop will work or is necessarily feasible for real life transportation given technical problems need to be solved.
-
I've heard it's going to be just a cargo delivery system at first?
Totally unrelated to the hyperloop but I always thought that in densely populated areas the old pneumatic tube would make sense. With computer automatic controls you could send a small item, like a book or a phone, across town, in no time and much faster than by courier.
I have always thought it would be worth looking into this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube
This is what you end up with when you design point-to-point systems:
(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/ifoncqzlsv9wh7yggih1.jpg)
-
This is what you end up with when you design point-to-point systems:
And this if what you get when you don't
(https://external-preview.redd.it/2mmCa0H3AQX8cnRx32Ua6JhXMhSOAH32k25ohq9zadA.jpg?auto=webp&s=9143401bd3dd873ff0a97419f4c53ec0a67c1bd3)
-
Still defending your God @Wraper :-DD Seriously this is an Engineering forum BS may float in the mass media but facts matter. The Overhyped Loop is :bullshit:
-
Still defending your God @Wraper :-DD Seriously this is an Engineering forum BS may float in the mass media but facts matter. The Overhyped Loop is :bullshit:
Then please enlighten us with your facts. So far all I have seen from people trying to debunk hyperloop is just a heap load of smelly FUD. That isn't engineering. That is just mindless ranting about stuff they don't have the background and/or knowledge about. And my proof of that is very solid: there are several companies putting their own money on the line to investigate whether hyperloop is actually feasible or not. These people don't do off-the-cuff statements based on what their underbelly is saying today; they do real engineering. To me that is 100000000000000000000 times more interesting than just another person trying to add more clickbait to Yuoutube. It is the real engineers which get new technology out there and they should receive way more respect. Unfortunately being negative and set in old ways seems to be the modus-operandi nowadays. No wonder so little people want to get involved in engineering. Before they know it their work is belittled.
I think I'm going to watch 'from the earth to the moon' again. Much more interesting than rant videos on Youtube.
-
Still defending your God @Wraper :-DD Seriously this is an Engineering forum BS may float in the mass media but facts matter. The Overhyped Loop is :bullshit:
Says rational one who rejected my suggestions on PC hardware because of Elon Musk.
-
Still defending your God @Wraper :-DD Seriously this is an Engineering forum BS may float in the mass media but facts matter. The Overhyped Loop is :bullshit:
Then please enlighten us with your facts. So far all I have seen from people trying to debunk hyperloop is just a heap load of smelly FUD. That isn't engineering. That is just mindless ranting about stuff they don't have the background and/or knowledge about. And my proof of that is very solid: there are several companies putting their own money on the line to investigate whether hyperloop is actually feasible or not.
No, they all seem convinced that it's feasible and are going full steam ahead with that mindset.
You wouldn't be wasting money and time and resources on beautiful pod design mockups and giving timelines for completion if you were just doing basic feasibility engineering.
Only when they come-a-gusta will they realise, "oh gee, it wasn't feasible after all, what a shame because our pod design is just so fantastic".
Hyperloop is basically a fancy Kickstarer project on a massive scale. Produce the hype video and all the animations and give pie-in-the-sky timelines, including "As seen in the New York Times" and endorsed my Elon Musk and Richard Branson badges on the pages to suck people into the dream, and then figure out how to make it work.
-
They only thing I seem to remember suggesting you were wrong about was my choice of Case and going air cooled which has now passed its first mid 30 degree ambient day with flying colours so feel free to revise your incorrect post anytime you like :-//
Musk is a self promoting tosser! The only person to benefit from the overhypedloop is him be it is personal wealth, share price or work for the Boring Company. Any benefit to the population of the world so far ZERO.
-
Still defending your God @Wraper :-DD Seriously this is an Engineering forum BS may float in the mass media but facts matter. The Overhyped Loop is :bullshit:
Then please enlighten us with your facts. So far all I have seen from people trying to debunk hyperloop is just a heap load of smelly FUD. That isn't engineering. That is just mindless ranting about stuff they don't have the background and/or knowledge about. And my proof of that is very solid: there are several companies putting their own money on the line to investigate whether hyperloop is actually feasible or not. These people don't do off-the-cuff statements based on what their underbelly is saying today; they do real engineering. To me that is 100000000000000000000 times more interesting than just another person trying to add more clickbait to Yuoutube. It is the real engineers which get new technology out there and they should receive way more respect. Unfortunately being negative and set in old ways seems to be the modus-operandi nowadays. No wonder so little people want to get involved in engineering. Before they know it their work is belittled.
I think I'm going to watch 'from the earth to the moon' again. Much more interesting than rant videos on Youtube.
There is no Engineering beyond the overhype to show it will work, bluff and BS that it will work is :bullshit: Retrofitting it into a working real city is only one of the issues before you get near the :bullshit: non facts and figures Musk has offered. Smoke and mirrors and pushed out promises are not facts or Engineering.
-
The only person to benefit from the overhypedloop is him be it is personal wealth, share price or work for the Boring Company.
Fun fact, nor he, nor Boring company are not doing any hyperloop projects as of now other than tunnel built for student competitions. All you hear is from other companies who took the idea. Also Spacex and it's subsidiary Boring company are private. So share price argument is irrelevant.
-
There is no Engineering beyond the overhype to show it will work, bluff and BS that it will work is :bullshit:
What a BS. As a concept, it is completely operational, actually exists and proven to work. What's is under big question is real life implementation. What works as a concept, very often is not feasible in real life. Because of financial, safety, technical, whatever reasons.
Retrofitting it into a working real city is only one of the issues before you get near the :bullshit: non facts and figures Musk has offered. Smoke and mirrors and pushed out promises are not facts or Engineering.
:palm: How about retrofitting usual subway into existing cities? How it's any different from this standpoint.
-
So the gain to HIS PERSONAL WEALTH is not correct? The BS and SPIN of Musk benefits his net worth and those companies WITH SHARES as not all of the companies he is involved with are private or owned by him entirely. The value of assets is relevant as they are the beneficiary of the :bullshit:
Quit defending your God at all costs and look at the White Elephant he is committed to to save his ego and bottom line.
-
So the gain to HIS PERSONAL WEALTH is not correct? The BS and SPIN of Musk benefits his net worth and those companies WITH SHARES as not all of the companies he is involved with are private or owned by him entirely. The value of assets is relevant as they are the beneficiary of the :bullshit:
Quit defending your God at all costs and look at the White Elephant he is committed to to save his ego and bottom line.
Only Tesla is public company (shares). Dunno if you noticed but their cars sell quite well and have best performance on market.
-
There is no Engineering beyond the overhype to show it will work, bluff and BS that it will work is :bullshit:
What a BS. As a concept, it is completely operational, actually exists and proven to work. What's is under big question is real life implementation. What works as a concept, very often is not feasible in real life. Because of financial, safety, technical, whatever reasons.
Retrofitting it into a working real city is only one of the issues before you get near the :bullshit: non facts and figures Musk has offered. Smoke and mirrors and pushed out promises are not facts or Engineering.
:palm: How about retrofitting usual subway into existing cities? How it's any different from this standpoint.
Because in part of the claimed high speeds and the risk of explosive decompression in densely packed cities is part of how it is different. Try looking at what happens with decompression or a few thousand tons at high speed goes wrong. :palm:
Retrofitting Subways into existing cities is massively expensive and the Yawning tunnel company hasn't made magic pixie dust appear to change it.
"it is completely operational, actually exists and proven to work" seriously? Pass whatever you are smoking please :-DD
-
Because in part of the claimed high speeds and the risk of explosive decompression in densely packed cities is part of how it is different. Try looking at what happens with decompression or a few thousand tons at high speed goes wrong. :palm:
Regardless of what happens to hyperloop itself, there won't be damage to the city since it is deep under earth. Also there won't be big explosion. It's effing 1 bar pressure difference only.
Retrofitting Subways into existing cities is massively expensive and the Yawning tunnel company hasn't made magic pixie dust appear to change it.
You don't need to dig the tunnels from top. The only difference compared with digging it in free space is that you need to free up space for stations.
Decompression:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yG2h1aDB6k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yG2h1aDB6k)
-
"it is completely operational, actually exists and proven to work" seriously? Pass whatever you are smoking please :-DD
How about all those test tunnels already built? Tested under vacuum with pods running inside.
-
"it is completely operational, actually exists and proven to work" seriously? Pass whatever you are smoking please :-DD
How about all those test tunnels already built? Tested under vacuum with pods running inside.
You mean the test railed vehicles inside a metal tunnel doing 400'ish km/hr while actual high speed rail without tunnels is doing well over this (5-600km/hr) carrying thousands of actual humans each day?
The Hyperloop Alpha concept was first published in August 2013, proposing and examining a route running from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly following the Interstate 5 corridor. The Hyperloop Genesis paper conceived of a hyperloop system that would propel passengers along the 350-mile (560 km) route at a speed of 760 mph (1,200 km/h), allowing for a travel time of 35 minutes, which is considerably faster than current rail or air travel times.
Over stated :bullshit: and under delivered!
-
You mean the test railed vehicles inside a metal tunnel doing 400'ish km/hr
To get faster speed, you need longer tunnel. You cannot accelerate/decelerate instantly. You don't seem to have concept of what concept means. Also actual speed inside the tunnel is the least of problems. And it's not something there is any reason to debunk. Basic physics, remove friction, and your speed becomes limited only by propulsion.
while actual high speed rail without tunnels is doing well over this (5-600km/hr) carrying thousands of actual humans each day?
It's Maglev, not rail. Placing Maglev into vacuum removes speed limitation due to drag.
-
You really need to open your eyes a little looks like rails to me. Not all technologies for high speed rail are maglev! That's 574km/hr of TGV.
[attachimg=1]
It's Maglev, not rail. Placing Maglev into vacuum removes speed limitation due to drag.
:palm: Maglev chews power to 'reduce' drag it does not remove drag.
-
You really need to open your eyes a little looks like rails to me. Not all technologies for high speed rail are maglev!
You really need to read what it was. It was test for speed record. Because that thing could easily go off rails and disintegrate. Actual top speed of TGV is 320 km/h. There are cars going 1000 km/h for a short moment to make a record, though drivers often die.
:palm: Maglev chews power to 'reduce' drag it does not remove drag.
:palm: Maglev itself does not have anything to do with drag and does not reduce it a tiny bit.
-
It's Maglev, not rail. Placing Maglev into vacuum removes speed limitation due to drag.
You made the OVERSTATED claim not me. Own up to your ERROR of FACT.
-
It's Maglev, not rail. Placing Maglev into vacuum removes speed limitation due to drag.
You made the OVERSTATED claim not me. Own up to your ERROR of FACT.
Go learn some physics. Drag = air resistance. No air -> no air resistance (drag). Maglev removes friction to track as train does not touch anything. Maglev in vacuum means no drag and no friction. As if it was satellite in space.
-
Drag is resistance to motion from ALL sources not just air! It is you who needs to learn your physics. Electrical/Mmagnetic drag is part of it as are the likely use of guide wheels when cornering (not used on all maglevs) Add to that the energy used to make it happen.
Still smoke screens and mirrors to hide underperforming overhyperloop. 400km/hr on a custom test track with unstated vacuum condition is hype without actual data.
-
What's is under big question is real life implementation. What works as a concept, very often is not feasible in real life. Because of financial, safety, technical, whatever reasons.
Which is exactly the argument being presented - and you are taking it to task!! :-//
The logic of your position is non-existent.
-
Hyperloop is basically a fancy Kickstarer project on a massive scale. Produce the hype video and all the animations and give pie-in-the-sky timelines, including "As seen in the New York Times" and endorsed my Elon Musk and Richard Branson badges on the pages to suck people into the dream, and then figure out how to make it work.
Well, Werner von Braun just sold an idea to Hitler and ended up getting people on the moon 30 years later. Elon Musk in turn has got it right a couple of times. Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX for example. Not saying Elon Musk is such a great person but credit where credit is due and he did manage to convince people to put money into what turned out to be good ideas. Having succes in the past does help to get investors on board with new ideas. That is how it works. Saying hyperloop is just another Kicsktarter sounds to me more like Musk bashing rather than really looking into the merits from a proper engineering & financial perspective. Contrary to Kickstarter campaigns corporate investors do their due diligence before investing their money. And usually the investment happen in steps so it is not like figuring out how to make it work afterwards. That won't fly because corporate investors have their own engineers to look at projects as well. The investments happen in steps (milestones) where each step moves away from the initial demonstrator en gets closer to the end project. At each milestone the investors re-evaluate the results to determine whether a project is still viable or not.
-
You mean like in uBeam? Or Theranos? High investment isn't itself proof of efficacy. Successful and wealthy people are just as easily fooled as the rest of us, in some ways more-so since their wealth is proof they make good decisions right?. Silicon valley regularly has startups based on obvious pseudoscience that get several rounds of funding. In this case it isn't pseudoscience, just not economically viable.
I do think some have gone too far jumping on the bandwagon of "hyperloop?! LOL!" but I haven't read a single post here claiming it was impossible, just that it's a complicated way of solving a problem that doesn't seem to exist, and that the engineering and safety aspects will increase costs over current/other systems.
-
Elon Musk in turn has got it right a couple of times. Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX for example.
Please nctnico stop parroting that Paypal thing again and again, Paypal is NOT Elon Musk's anything, other than buying it then selling it to ebay and pocket in the process a good bunch of millions. Come on! 3/4 of the same story for Tesla.
-
Elon Musk in turn has got it right a couple of times. Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX for example.
Please nctnico stop parroting that Paypal thing again and again, Paypal is NOT Elon Musk's anything, other than buying it then selling it to ebay and pocket in the process a good bunch of millions. Come on! 3/4 of the same story for Tesla.
That is true but would Tesla and SpaceX have been where they are right now without Elon Musk? A company goes through several growth stages and it isn't a given the founders of the company take it all the way up. Elon Musk is someone who can take a company from a mature start-up phase to a big company but at some point he needs to be replaced as well (which already happened with Tesla).
-
Elon Musk in turn has got it right a couple of times. Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX for example.
Please nctnico stop parroting that Paypal thing again and again, Paypal is NOT Elon Musk's anything, other than buying it then selling it to ebay and pocket in the process a good bunch of millions.
Get the facts right. Paypal resulted from merger of Confinity and x.com (Founded by Musk). He did not buy it.
Come on! 3/4 of the same story for Tesla.
He was largest investor into it. He stepped in once company was almost run down the cliff into bankruptcy in it's early days. He was there as chairman 6 months since it's founding.
Tesla, Inc. (originally Tesla Motors) was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Elon Musk's involvement. Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004, joining Tesla's board of directors as its chairman.
Following the financial crisis in 2008 and after a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, Eberhard was ousted from the firm. Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008, positions he still holds today. Indeed, as of 2019, Elon Musk is the longest tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally.
-
I am certainly no Elon Musk fan, but it can't be denied that the success of Paypal, and then Tesla, are largely due to him.
He's no genius but certainly a clever businessman (with everything that comes with it...)
-
This is what you end up with when you design point-to-point systems:
And that is why the pneumatic tube would never work or even make sense as a point-to-point system. But it might make sense as a local star switches with tubes to every large business and residential building and trunks connecting the local offices. In the suburbs you could have a local office for a whole neighborhood. The carriers can arrive at boxes and the user opens it with a code.
The traveling carriers could be marked with bar codes and switched automatically to arrive at their destination.
In densely populated cities the tubes could use the subway tunnels or other utility tunnels or tubes.
Heck, if I owned the Madrid metro I would be looking into it. Place a sending/receiving station in each lobby. Thousands of small packages are sent daily across town. Spare parts, replacement parts, medicines, signed documents, etc.
If it can all be automated and require very little human intervention it could make economic sense (which is the only sense that counts).
Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread any further. If there is any interest in discussing this further we can start a new thread.
-
I am certainly no Elon Musk fan, but it can't be denied that the success of Paypal, and then Tesla, are largely due to him.
No Sir, you got that wrong, the success of Paypal is due to ebay.
-
And that is why the pneumatic tube would never work or even make sense as a point-to-point system.
A local point-to-point system. But their plan is (or was) to have those points 600km apart or so. That is, it would compete with inter-city rail rather than intra-city metro. For that it makes lots of sense: long enough to accelerate to a decent speed, no stops en route (that's an explicit feature if you care to read their blurb), far enough that cutting the time is appreciable (1hr instead of 2hr is more effective than 1min instead of 2min).
It would be the connection between local stars, in other words, not a star itself.
For local metro use there are a different set of problems and solution.
-
My throwaway comment about the pneumatic tube was prompted by the comment that in Dubai they might plan on using the hyperloop as a cargo delivering system. If using the hyperloop as a people mover makes zero sense, using it as a cargo mover would make negative sense.
-
My throwaway comment about the pneumatic tube was prompted by the comment that in Dubai they might plan on using the hyperloop as a cargo delivering system. If using the hyperloop as a people mover makes zero sense, using it as a cargo mover would make negative sense.
I don't think so. The problem with cargo trains is that the wagons need to be assembled into a single long train. This takes time at each stop. What I understand from the information from Hardt is that they picture a hyperloop system where each pod can have a unique destination. I looked up some numbers about the biggest port of Europe (Rotterdam) and less than 10% of the goods arriving or exiting is transported by train. The division between ship (up river) and truck is about 50/50. But these are distances of up to several hundreds of km. I too don't see how a hyperloop can be beneficial for a small place like Dubai. Stopping every few km for letting people in & out kills the speed. In London and Paris I can easely beat the effective speed of the subway system using a bicycle.
-
It's not aerodynamic at all unlike Shinkansen
I was just pulling your leg with that picture of the steam locomotive.
First generation Shinkansen had front ends looking more like those of passenger planes, btw.
-
I read Ashlee Vance's book about Musk. I take my hat off..
-
I am certainly no Elon Musk fan, but it can't be denied that the success of Paypal, and then Tesla, are largely due to him.
No Sir, you got that wrong, the success of Paypal is due to ebay.
No, sir... you have that bass-ackwards. The only reason fleaBay hasn't gone swirling down the drain years ago is due to the thin veneer of respectability and trustworthiness that the PayPal name brought to their steaming cesspool of fraud and thievery. PayPal was a force in international banking and commerce long before Musk bought them; their business model brought secure international banking and purchasing to everyday people, not just the wealthy. For many people, PayPal is still the only banking option available.
eBay TRIED to do the PayPal thing on their own. People stayed away in droves; founding member eBayers like myself told them in no uncertain terms that if they tried to force us to use THEIR payment services we'd close our accounts. Literally thousands and thousands of eMail and support messages. We didn't (and most of us still don't) trust eBay as far as we could sling a piano.
That said... eBay and PayPal NEEDED each other. eBay needed the boost to their reputation; PayPal was overextended internationally and needed the huge cash influx that eBay represented to stay solvent while they completed their expansion. Musk's genius contribution was in SEEING how much these two arch-rivals needed each other, and fixing PayPal's obstinate board so that a deal with eBay could be made.
For most PayPal cardholders, eBay is literally the smallest portion of their PayPal spending. It is everywhere ELSE that PayPal is accepted and still provides their buyer protection that everybody relies on; and without them forcing the change, all the major CC companies would STILL be selling and charging extra for similar purchase protection.
As for HyperLoop... yeah, sure. About the same time as we resolve the technology for the Space Elevator. Oh, and resolve the moronic quibbling over pieces of paper and lines on a map... and basic elements like stupidity and greed... :palm:
mnem
*back to my usual insanity*
-
The timeline may well be different your side of the pond, but over here...
For most PayPal cardholders, eBay is literally the smallest portion of their PayPal spending.
That's true for me now, but it started completely the other way. Paypal was as trustworthy (in the sense of, would you give them access to your bank account) as Facebook Libra is now. That is, no way. It was a nothing and not missed. I had several cash cards for Internet spending, which made sure that no online store had access to my unlimited funds.
But then I was using Ebay a fair bit, and PayPal was a lot simpler to use for payment on there. Took a while but eventually (and encouraged by Ebay) all my Ebay payments were via PayPal. But that's all. After that, and quite a lot after, since I had a PayPal account I started using it for online checkout at other places. Again, took quite a while to work up the trust and not that many big-name stores took it, but over time it crept in more and more. Ebay buying PayPal accelerated the process, and now it's my preferred payment processor online.
I doubt if I would be using PayPal so much if it weren't for Ebay, so in that sense Ebay carried PayPal forward. Now, PayPal doesn't need Ebay. Such is life :)
-
(https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/airbus202.jpg.410x225_q70_crop-smart.jpg)
OK, I know that's not applicable (each person has an allocated space) but it shows the way they want to take things.
I've been on flights that were literally 17 minutes from takeoff to landing, so... :-//
(eg. Valencia to Ibiza in Spain)
-
(https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/airbus202.jpg.410x225_q70_crop-smart.jpg)
OK, I know that's not applicable (each person has an allocated space) but it shows the way they want to take things.
I've been on flights that were literally 17 minutes from takeoff to landing, so... :-//
(eg. Valencia to Ibiza in Spain)
Lol that would be an odd flight. Seems kinda wasteful to even have that route haha.
"Please keep seatbelts on until we are at cruising altitude at which point the seat belt sign will turn off"
*ding*
"We are now starting to descend and preparing to land, please make sure your seat belt is fastened and your tray is in the upright position"
-
I've been on flights that were literally 17 minutes from takeoff to landing, so... :-//
"Please keep seatbelts on until we are at cruising altitude at which point the seat belt sign will turn off"
*ding*
"We are now starting to descend and preparing to land, please make sure your seat belt is fastened and your tray is in the upright position"
They start the final approach as soon as the thing gets off the ground. I'm surprised they even bother to retract the wheels.
(done that route three times now)
-
So you do the check-in for 1 or 2 hours and then also do the deboarding for another 30 Minutes?
Or are the quicker check-ins?
It has been some time since I last took a flight, but I remember having to wait quite some time before boarding, during boarding and also deboarding.
How much time does it take to go by Ferry? :o
-
So you do the check-in for 1 or 2 hours and then also do the deboarding for another 30 Minutes?
Yep. Boarding takes longer than the flight.
How much time does it take to go by Ferry? :o
2 hours, I think. I'm not sure if it's cheaper though, Ferries are for people who want to take their car with them.
-
Well the alternative is 4 hours by boat so it's not really that crazy
-
I've been on flights that were literally 17 minutes from takeoff to landing, so... :-//
"Please keep seatbelts on until we are at cruising altitude at which point the seat belt sign will turn off"
*ding*
"We are now starting to descend and preparing to land, please make sure your seat belt is fastened and your tray is in the upright position"
They start the final approach as soon as the thing gets off the ground. I'm surprised they even bother to retract the wheels.
(done that route three times now)
Perth, Western Australia to Rottnest Island beats that at 12 minutes for the landplane & 15 mins for the seaplane.
There is also a helicopter service, but they don't quote trip duration.
-
(https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2011/10/airbus202.jpg.410x225_q70_crop-smart.jpg)
OK, I know that's not applicable (each person has an allocated space) but it shows the way they want to take things.
I've been on flights that were literally 17 minutes from takeoff to landing, so... :-//
(eg. Valencia to Ibiza in Spain)
Pffff VLC-IBZ 108 miles; that's long-haul.
I've been on jet operated flights of 39 miles
-
Pffff VLC-IBZ 108 miles; that's long-haul.
I've been on jet operated flights of 39 miles
Any shorter than that and may as well be shot out of a canon! :-DD
(https://i.imgur.com/VLMveTI.gif?noredirect)
-
Pffff VLC-IBZ 108 miles; that's long-haul.
I've been on jet operated flights of 39 miles
Any shorter than that and may as well be shot out of a canon! :-DD
Pretty much shot out of a canon. It hasn't been operated by a jet in a long time (mid 80s), but back then was often DC9s (AC) and 737s (PWA).
Now it's pretty much all DHC8-400s (AC, WS)
.. Air Canada's regional carriers also operate a shorter 33 mile route (YVR-YCD). Such are the joys of living on an island
-
It appeared to me that China Eastern has a regular late night flight between Shanghai Hongqiao and Shanghai Pudong. It is not publicly available in ticketing systems, but if you ask the China Eastern manager at Hongqiao nicely he may sell you a ticket on that flight.
That is more like a regular technical movement of planes given a scheduled flight number. However since it is a late night flight happens after the Metro closed, it is useful as a transfer link between a late night Hongqiao arrival and an early morning Pudong departure. It is also priced below late night taxi fare between the two airports.