It's 2020. SF to LA for $25 on Elon Musk's Hyperloop - Are you buying it?

[DougSpindler]

If you calculate the projected cost to build the high-speed train from SF to LA every man women and child would have to make that trip 100 times, paying $100 just to cover construction costs/

You just made this up. You have no actual data on this.

Dude - Can you do second a third grade math calculation?  That's all I did.
Take the projected cost to build the high-speed train from SF to LA.
Divide that by the number of people living in California.

Before claiming someone is making something up, why not ask them first? 
That would be the polite thing to do.

You are right what happens if there is an earthquake and the ground shifts 25 feet?

Earthquakes usually pose no serious threats to underground systems, especially if you dig deep enough. Most of the damage happens on the earth surface. It's pretty much the same as waves on water, where the water underneath is calm.

Dude are you for real?  Did you do any research?  Or, I will used your words? Are "you making this up?
When you say most of the damage will be on the surface, does this mean there will be NO damage underground?  Doesn't sound like that way.

The high-speed train from SF to LA is to be on the surface in this part of the state.  Someone else posted the picture showing the fault where the ground shifted 25 feet or so.

Are you the one who is making shit up?
Try using the Internet - I found two "credible" research papers on earthquake damage in tunnels.

http://indexsmart.mirasmart.com/AREMA_CP_2019/PDFFiles/03%20Headifen%20et%20al.pdf

"The Hope Fault sheared the tunnel barrel with a reverse upward movement that lifted the northern 87.5
yards (80m) of the tunnel by 13.8 inches (350mm)..."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2467967417300053
"Their conclusions can be summarized as follow:
• Collapse of tunnels from shaking occurs only under extreme conditions.
• Tunnel collapse only occurred associated with movement of an intersected fault."

Hyperloop and the High speed train from SF to LA would cross several active earthquake faults.

Has any of these "creditable" research papers changed your mind? 

[DougSpindler]

There seems to be some confusion between groundwaves caused by an earthquake and sctual movement across the fault. If you build a tunnel accross or near a fault, you will have to worry about underground movement, otherwise it'll just be surface waves.

One interesting electronics related phenomenon which I have seen, which are still not well understood is, very large earthquakes cause very bright flashes in the sky. (the ones I saw were greenish blue) very much like lightning. This must mean that there are very high voltage potentials in the ground.

I saw this once years ago and for decades I had no idea what it was that I had seen because it was not described in the literature.

But recentlly, thanks to sites like Youtube now there are a great many videos people have taken of them.

So that represents another potential problem that must be planned for. If a high voltage spike is large enough to cause these discharges into the sky, they must be absolutely huge.

I did my college geology project on the electrical effects in earthquakes. There is actually a fair amount of research if you dig deep enough, including studies and theories for the above phenomenon, piezoelectric properties of different rocks, and even large scale experements in the 90s and 00s using magnetohydrodynamic generators to force microquakes preventing energy buildup that would cause a larger quake.

However...it's not going to pose a threat to a conductive metal tube, it would be similar to lightning hitting an airplane.

Your research sounds very interesting. 

Going off the deep end....  Sounds like this could be a way to supply California with electricity. 

[PlainName]

"Virgin Hyperloop became the first company to conduct a human test of the technology on Sunday at its 500-meter test track in the desert north of Las Vegas. The two volunteers, wearing casual street clothes, were whisked in a pod that was levitated by magnets inside a vacuum tube to 107 m.p.h. in 6.25 seconds"

A step forward

[james_s]

I could see it having a future as an amusement park ride, and it would make a slick attraction for a worlds fair like the monorail in Seattle. Like that monorail I don't see it ever scaling to what they are currently promising.

[PlainName]

The article says that the Dutch one is looking to move cargo first, which seems a pretty reasonable idea to me. Walk, trot, run - doing the reverse order often leads to tears (or nothing, as perfection always remains just out of reach).

[EEVblog]

"Virgin Hyperloop became the first company to conduct a human test of the technology on Sunday at its 500-meter test track in the desert north of Las Vegas. The two volunteers, wearing casual street clothes, were whisked in a pod that was levitated by magnets inside a vacuum tube to 107 m.p.h. in 6.25 seconds"

A step forward

2030 huh?
At least the reality is starting to kick in slowly...

[PlainName]

AFAIR, no-one said it had to happen next week. New stuff takes time to get right. Or fail, of course.

[EEVblog]

AFAIR, no-one said it had to happen next week.

LOL
Everyone was saying it was a couple of years away, including Virgin which said operational by 2021:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Hyperloop
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hyperloop-one-co-founders-on-first-successful-hyperloop-test/

[PlainName]

Fair cop - it is actually next week!

Mind, it's taken over 100 years to get this far, so a decade or so is probably within the error margins

[hans]

I wonder if anyone also has ran the numbers on the energy efficiency of these hyperloops. It's one of the first big claims on wikipedia. I've collected a few numbers of energy efficiency of various travel methods. Listed below:

- Walking: 22MJ/100km/person[1]
- Cycling: 11MJ/100km/person[1]
- E-bike: 12MJ/100km/person[1]
- Petrol car (5L/100km), 171MJ/100km[3]
     - 1 passenger: 171MJ/100km/person
     - 2 passengers: 85.5MJ/100km/person
     - 4 passengers: 42.8MJ/100km/person
- Electric car (152Wh/km), 54.8MJ/100km[4]
     - 1 passenger: 54.8MJ/100km/person
     - 2 passengers: 27.4MJ/100km/person
     - 4 passengers: 13.9MJ/100km/person
- Airplane regional (<1000km): Airbus A320, 2.25L/100km/person[2] -> 79MJ/100km/person[3]
- Airplane long-haul (10000km): Airbus A350, 2.39L/100km/person[2] -> 83.7MJ/100km/person[3]
- Train: depends on terrain and speed, but can be as low as 7.7MJ/100km/person[1]

So train looks to be pretty good. In fact, airplane and car seems so much worse that's pretty easy to beat.. (To be honest I was surprised that a petrol car and modern airplanes were this close)
Unfortunately, this does not account for infrastructure cost (train tracks, highways, airports, etc.) and vehicle costs.

And that's the point I've trouble finding accurate information about on hyperloops. How much metal or plastics is needed per km of track, and how does this compare to other infrastructure? How much quiescent power is there to create a low-pressure environment in the loop? How much energy does it cost to move the pods? Is it even practical, large-scale for thousands of km's, to build a tube with >2 meter diameter for such a low pressure? (Wall thickness scales with tube diameter) It's significantly bigger than for example oil or gas tubing, although those will have to deal with far greater pressure differences.

I really do question if there isn't an excessive amount of "energy" (= CO₂ release) required for the construction of these hyperloop tubes. Just comparing these hyperloops to existing train tracks, it seems like it requires a significant amount of additional infrastructure to build them. Virgin's site states very nicely there are no "direct emissions". That's great and all, but designing mega wind turbines becomes trivial if you have unlimited steel to play with. That doesn't mean that such a wind turbine net effect on the environment is positive.

Although the concept is cool and very futuristic, I'm yet to be convinced that this is an actual step forward to travel long distances more environment friendly. Or, perhaps worse, since it wants to compete with airplane travel times, facilitating long travel even more to the point that user patterns of energy consumption is far worse than the technology we use.

I'm not sure if SF to LA ticket would cost 25$.. It doesn't seem a sustainable price to me. If anything, marketing the hyperloop as the big step in future energy efficient travel while offering faster travel times seems so counter-intuitive too me. I'm not saying I'm unhappy with capitalism, but the fast travel claim just is that IMO.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_EPA_fuel_economy

[EEVblog]

I'm not sure if SF to LA ticket would cost 25$.. It doesn't seem a sustainable price to me.

I'd be stunned if it was. The Shanghai Maglev was not economically viable, and it can hold hundreds of passengers at a time like a normal train, not just a handful in a small Hyperloop pod.

[Haenk]

I'd guess that train infrastructure (aka rails) are way cheaper than roads to create and maintain. Probably in the order of magnitudes cheaper than Hyperloops (creating and maintaining).
There has been that cool "Transrapid" (Maglev train) in Germany, being pretty much fully developed - but it came with prohibitive costs. So China went with it, not sure, if it really pays off. (In Germany, it would have been impossible to build, unfortunately. In China, you simply move away peoples' villages, if they are blocking your road or rail...)

Concerning "tunnels and quakes", there is one seriously affected tunnel in Istanbul (Bosporus tunnel), which has movable parts to withstand a 7.5 Richter-scale quake. The area has smaller quakes all the time (tectonic plates collision zone), however they are still waiting on a projected much larger quake...

[cortex_m0]

were whisked in a pod that was levitated by magnets inside a vacuum tube to 107 m.p.h. in 6.25 seconds"

If I did the math right, the passengers were subjected to 0.8 g-forces? One of the other Hyperloop operators (HyperloopTT) said a year ago that their hyperloop between Chicago and Cleveland had been reduced to 0.1g acceleration because of Federal Railroad Comission compliance  reasons. See pg. 30 of this PDF: https://8508ab36-da5a-4138-b6f6-8384719812eb.filesusr.com/ugd/c9f49b_93809c4776b74bf6952050ea7fe0e08f.pdf

That's a pretty big gap, if HyperloopTT's description of the regulations is accurate.

[bitwelder]

https://defector.com/virgin-hyperloop-has-invented-the-worlds-crappiest-high-speed-rail/

LOL! 

[wraper]

https://defector.com/virgin-hyperloop-has-invented-the-worlds-crappiest-high-speed-rail/

LOL! 

Rather dumb article full of FUD frankly. They call it slow but fail to realize or mention that you cannot reach higher speeds in such a short section, you need to build a longer tube to do so. You simply won't be able to break before reaching it's end. Or that it's only a test track to demonstrate technology. And frankly acceleration is pretty good to indicate it can travel much faster. Then claiming BS like this:

dumping resources beyond counting into inventing some shit that already exists when for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time they could just purchase or at the very least copy what is already working just fine even in backward-ass doofus countries like freaking Italy.

What is that wonderful "shit" that already works? The fastest trains in Italy have 300 km/h operational speed.
I don't say that it's good or necessarily viable. But diminishing it by throwing random shit is not a good argument against it. Also currently reachable speed is the least important part of it. Because as long as they get the vacuum thing right, there is nothing fundamental that prevents it from reaching high speeds with maglev.

[wraper]

were whisked in a pod that was levitated by magnets inside a vacuum tube to 107 m.p.h. in 6.25 seconds"

If I did the math right, the passengers were subjected to 0.8 g-forces? One of the other Hyperloop operators (HyperloopTT) said a year ago that their hyperloop between Chicago and Cleveland had been reduced to 0.1g acceleration because of Federal Railroad Comission compliance  reasons. See pg. 30 of this PDF: https://8508ab36-da5a-4138-b6f6-8384719812eb.filesusr.com/ugd/c9f49b_93809c4776b74bf6952050ea7fe0e08f.pdf

That's a pretty big gap, if HyperloopTT's description of the regulations is accurate.

Acceleration is high because otherwise they would not be able to reach even this measly speed over a short track. If they build track which is tens of kilometers long, nothing prevents them from using slower acceleration.

[DougSpindler]

The Hyper-loop test was a scam.

https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA

[Nusa]

The Hyper-loop test was a scam.

https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA

I don't read eevblog to follow youtube links. If you can't take the time to present whatever argument you believe from the video, you'll just have to fail to communicate.

[PlainName]

You are very wise. I, OTOH, am having supper so gave it a whirl. The opening screenshot gave the game away - it is thuderf00t, of course. Had to skip to some random part to find out what his beef is, and that was where he was ranting that the capsule had windows. Which it does. As, of course, do the trains that run under the English Channel - maybe he BUSTED those in a previous cheque video.

Lost the will to live at that point.

[bson]

California is a very mountainous state.  I believe the current estimate for CAHSR is $68b, much of which is tunneling costs - and Hyperloop would need some very long railway tunnels as well.  (And that is almost certainly a sales-pitch underestimate, on the premise that once it's obvious it can't be met they will raise it to $80b, and sell it using the argument that since we're already $50b in... and then repeat until the project is done at a final cost closer to $200b.) Even if Hyperloop builds it out for $40b (a private enterprise will certainly cost less than a government one), if it somehow magically gets right-of-way through populated areas (CAHSR expects to reuse existing right of way, but no cities in the SF Bay Area will want an elevated railway, and will go to court to prevent it).  $25 per ride isn't going to begin to cover capital costs.  Even $100 would be optimistic.  (CAHSR will almost certainly be run at an operational loss, while having no capital costs, and they'll probably land around $100 - sufficiently subsidized to compete with air travel.)   Just a 5% interest payment on $40b is $2b...  That's the equivalent of 80 million trips at $25.  Just for the interest, never mind principal, maintenance, operational costs, reinvestment (improvements, rolling stock replacement, etc), facilities, terminals (for what, 200 million trips per year in a state with 40 million people???)...  It's just not a serious project.  Maybe Texas (which is much flatter, and has a much more sensible HSR project going).  This is separate from all the other technical objections, but if Hyperloop manages to economically bore railway tunnels they could run conventional tracks when the other 1950s poplit scifi stuff is abandoned.

[james_s]

I don't see any technological reason that the hyperloop could not be implemented, but to say that I'm skeptical of it ever being practical or economical would be an understatement. I just don't see much advantage over traditional high speed rail. It could be faster for the energy used, but any savings are likely offset by the much higher cost of the construction and maintenance.

[DougSpindler]

You are very wise. I, OTOH, am having supper so gave it a whirl. The opening screenshot gave the game away - it is thuderf00t, of course. Had to skip to some random part to find out what his beef is, and that was where he was ranting that the capsule had windows. Which it does. As, of course, do the trains that run under the English Channel - maybe he BUSTED those in a previous cheque video.

Lost the will to live at that point.

He does ramble on a bit, but you missed the point of his vide.  I have been on that train that runs under the English Channel and couldn’t see any fish out the window.  Have you?  Which is exactly one of the points he was making in the video.  Another is it didn’t transport the riders anywhere.  They got on, where they got off. 
Another is did he build the hyper loop in London or New York where people are going to ride it?  It’s opening this year. 
 

[DougSpindler]

I don't see any technological reason that the hyperloop could not be implemented, but to say that I'm skeptical of it ever being practical or economical would be an understatement. I just don't see much advantage over traditional high speed rail. It could be faster for the energy used, but any savings are likely offset by the much higher cost of the construction and maintenance.

There are some very difficult technical and safety issues which we don’t have solutions for.  One of the biggest is thermal expansion/contraction.  Other is maintains the vacuum. There are so many more.

[DougSpindler]

The Hyper-loop test was a scam.

https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA

I don't read eevblog to follow youtube links. If you can't take the time to present whatever argument you believe from the video, you'll just have to fail to communicate.

Sad you don’t watch any of Dave’s videos. They are very good.  I’ve learned a lot from Dave’s videos as well as other videos posted by others.  You might want to give watching videos a try before you die.  You might learn something.

[Nusa]

The Hyper-loop test was a scam.

https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA

I don't read eevblog to follow youtube links. If you can't take the time to present whatever argument you believe from the video, you'll just have to fail to communicate.

Sad you don’t watch any of Dave’s videos. They are very good.  I’ve learned a lot from Dave’s videos as well as other videos posted by others.  You might want to give watching videos a try before you die.  You might learn something.

That would be an invalid leap of logic, which doesn't surprise me. Not following blind forum video links to lengthy videos that rarely are worth watching does not mean I never watch videos. I do follow various channels from a proper interface where I can see the author, title, date, and length BEFORE I choose to view them now, later, or never.

Now if you weren't someone with a history of linking videos instead of using words and the video had a proper summary of something that interested me greatly, that might be another story.