I want to know what the G force is when it hits the brakes. That was a really sudden stop, all things considered.
I like accordions.
6 Likes
It won’t have windows, so it doesn’t matter.
2 Likes
I agree with the idea that it will lead to lass fatal accidents if it worked. I am saying the techonlogy and system itself is inherently dangerous.
The problem I have is I don’t think the idea is viable. 1) it takes a ton of energy to pump out that much air. And time. 2) Maintaining a near vacuum over MILES of tubes, where it will flex, expand, and contract in the elements seems like a fools errand. 3) Any failure of the vacuum is going to lead to a bad time. 4) a minor dent in the tube could lead to a very bad time.
Placing it under ground might help with some of the issues, but not all of them.
There are several videos where people go over the technological hurdles and the risk/rewards not measuring up. The idea isn’t new, it has been around at least a century. I am not trying to be a fuddy duddy on this, I like neat futuristic stuff as much as the next one, but I think the engineering challenges are going to be too great to warrant it a viable transportation system. It is possible it COULD work, but at what cost? We already have trains not enough people use. We could build trains right now to get people to and from safely. But the cost in creating and maintaining railways vs the number of people who will use it doesn’t make it economically viable.
4 Likes
8 Likes
I timed the deceleration at about 2.8 seconds, so about 32 m/s2, or a bit over 3 g. But that’s a prototype proof of concept unmanned pod. Obviously the final passenger version won’t brake that quickly. The intended final design is a maximum acceleration / deceleration of 0.5 g.
4 Likes
Well, then there is nothing to take from this. Dangerous, unpractical, not fast.
(sounds like one of those statements that will come back to bite you decades later when everyone is using that technology, but…)
1 Like
That’s what I’m talking about!
1 Like
My poor Krell.
5 Likes
Globally, trains are most often used for commuting and for relatively short (in North American terms) intercity travel. Where high-speed trains are currently the standard, intercity distances are <200 miles or so.
I would posit that the reason trains are underutilized for long-distance travel in North America is simply that they are too darned slow. I looked into train travel as an option for a vacation a few years ago to a remote national park. For 4 people, it took three days of travel, one-way, and cost more than double what flying to the nearest major city cost, plus rental car for a week. In the end, I bought a big, rugged SUV, drove it to the destination a day faster than the train, didn’t need to rent a car, and sold it for almost what I paid.
What’s compelling about the hyperloop concept is that it’s Concorde-fast with higher capacity and lower maintenance. I’m not surprised that there are people who like to point out that it can’t be done. There are people who still point out that space travel can’t be done, even though it has. The engineering will either happen or it won’t, long before the first passenger gets on board a hyperloop module and travels full speed.
10 Likes
Nice pair of nacelles.
6 Likes
Well, I’m checking the video now, and I don’t feel any…
…NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
!!!
3 Likes
Speed =/= acceleration. Fast describes speed. You don’t want to accelerate more than 0.6 g, it would terribly uncomfortable. And 320 km/h is still 320 km/h, which is plenty fast, no matter how long it takes you to get up to that speed. (If you’ve ever been in a land-based vehicle that went even half that, other than a high-speed train on another continent, I would very very surprised.) The proposed top speed of the operating passenger system is 1200 km/h – that is, a speed achieved when you maintain the acceleration in the video for three and half minutes, not 15 seconds.
“Dangerous, unpractical, not fast” is what lots of people said about trains. And then about cars. I think some of Mister44’s points are closer to the mark – it’s not the danger or feasibility of travelling at >300 km/h that will be the biggest barriers for this technology. It’s the engineering difficulties of maintaining the necessary vacuum, and North America’s peculiar lack of social buy-in of passenger rail as an effective means of transportation.
9 Likes
Part of this is that in most places in the country there is no dedicated passenger rail line and so Amtrak actually defers to freight trains. This makes traveling on those lines very slow and costly. The lines that are dedicated (like in the northeast) are pretty fast, comfortable, and profitable, but their proceeds offset the money-losing ones. I think I learned this info from an episode of freakanomics, but I can’t find the link…
Edit: @Mister44 posted the video I got that info from
9 Likes
Slow, inconvenient, and expensiveish. We didn’t invest in the infrastructure to maintain what we had. We also are sooo spread out compared to places like Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwjwePe-HmA
The arguments for why it won’t be viable mostly hinge on the construction of a giant vacuum. I am sure it could be DONE, but I have severe doubts 1) one can afford it and 2) one can maintain it. Ultimately they may have to sacrifice speed for what works, but it would still be faster that traditional travel.
You’re right that there have been many naysayers in the past. But for every success, there are dozens of failed ideas that just physically can not be done, or can’t be done to make it viable. I mean, we are still waiting to be able to turn lead in to gold. Me pointing out the impracticality of rearranging the basic parts of an atom in to gold doesn’t mean that one day we might find a way of doing so, doesn’t mean that it is at all practical currently.
You can see this isn’t a great idea because Musk is farming out the work to engineering students and schools in the form of contests. Which is great, I mean, gives them something to work on. But if this was really something that was so easy his “interns could do it” as claimed, then he would be fast tracking it with his own team. I think he knows it won’t work, but is willing to invest a little bit of money in the forms of contests to get more data to conclude it won’t work. At the same time, hes building a network of engineering students to pull from for other ventures.
9 Likes
The other engineering challenge is how to handle corners. From what I’ve read (I’m no physicist), at those high speeds, the corners would need to be very modest or else the g-force will be very unpleasant. This presents a crazy challenge: how do you build one of these things that could actually merge into existing city infrastructures and travel at speed? Wont this thing need to tunnel through mountains and go through private properties?
Really the biggest challenge is political and not technical… How do you requisition the land and resources to make a sustainable, efficient mass-transit system? The funding/tax breaks will ultimately come from public coffers because the capital costs are insane. We’re seeing Musk doing a hard-sell to get in on the ground floor.
I’m into exploring new tech but we shouldn’t get carried away by Musk’s hype machine… This thing could end up like the flying car, rocket pack, or segway… Certainly possible but not necessarily a game-changer in the way people think it will be now. Maybe this research will lead to other cool stuff we haven’t thought of yet.
5 Likes
Exactly. That’s mostly what I meant by “soclai buy-in”, but yeah, worth stating explicitly. And it’s especially true in CA, which has already planned to sink billions into a high-speed rail system to connect SF and LA and SD, using technology that you don’t have to invent first.
4 Likes
I am deeply saddened by how much time, money, and public attention is going to be wasted on this. Even if it works, it will be so exclusive that only very wealthy people can use it, and do we seriously think that the comfort of a few very wealthy people is more important than something like mass scale rail transportation?
1 Like
Well if it works, I don’t think it will be just for the very wealthy. I just don’t think it will work.
2 Likes
Well, I do declare!
5 Likes
