10 ms·

Russia Jumps into the Race to Build a Hyperloop

103 points by JDDunn9 10y ago

18172821 10y ago
I've never been able to find an actual technical description of the hype-loop. Wasn't it downgraded to maglev at some point?
- itake 10y ago
  Elon Musk wrote a paper on it[0]. [0] http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf
  - Retric 10y ago
    Just to add a company took the name and is trying to build something else. https://hyperloop-one.com https://hyperloop-one.com. There has also been a lot of ideas on these lines. What made the original design different was low vaccume* which is vastly cheaper than high vaccume, and using the fan on front and ground effects to effectivly fly vs maglev or traditional rail. Note in this context high vaccume is hard, low vaccume is cheap. http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/what-do-high-vacuum-and-low-vacuum-mean-(faq-pressure) http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/what-do-high-vacuum-and-...
- arcticfox 10y ago
  The original announcement itselfwas a technical paper.
- Animats 10y ago
  The original air-supported Hyperloop concept, with clearances of a few millimeters between vehicle and tube, isn't looking good. The MIT prototype uses maglev suspension and more clearance, which is safer. Maglev in vacuum or near-vacuum is not a new idea; it's been discussed for decades. The question was always whether the vacuum tube was worth the trouble. The Shanghai airport maglev reaches 250 MPH right now in normal operation, and air resistance isn't the limiting factor on speed. The Japanese L0 Shinkansen reaches 375 MPH in tests, with an operational speed of 315 MPH. The main problem with maglev is that the track costs too much. The main claim for Hyperloop is that the tube is cheap. The original cost estimates assume using someone else's right of way and unreasonably cheap tunneling. Also, to get the straight right of way, the endpoints have to be somewhere inconvenient, well outside major urban areas.
  - randartie 10y ago
    > the endpoints have to be somewhere inconvenient, well outside major urban areas. I imagine large urban areas will spring up around wherever a hyperloop endpoint is built. The builder might even be able to subsidize themselves by purchasing large radius of land around the endpoint prior to building it.
    - vegardx 10y ago
      I think you underestimate how long it takes to build a sizeable city, big enough to support having a hyperloop station or endpoint.
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        Depends on the circumstances. Sizeable cities have emerged at a rapid pace before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen http://www.newgeography.com/content/002862-the-evolving-urban-form-shenzhen http://www.newgeography.com/content/002862-the-evolving-urba...
        vegardx 10y ago
        Yes, but you can agree that Shenzhen is a little different from a station at the endpoint of a hyperloop. To have a city grow more or less organically it's going to take a lot of time. It makes more economical sense to build a hyperloop between cities that already exist and can sustain it, than to think the world works like Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
        rdiddly 10y ago
        Cities are like organisms, and as such, they only grow in the right "habitat" where conditions are right. Namely sites that are intrinsically important in some way, where there are numerous reasons for a city to be there. Proximity to transportation infrastructure is certainly one of the factors, but if that's all you have, lacking will be any of the others you'd find in a great city (most of which tend to be by-products of its having been there a long time, which usually means, maybe ironically, being near the transportation infrastructure we tend to associate with past centuries i.e. rivers, harbors). Result: You can't create a truly vibrant city in an arbitrary location. You might be able to manage a bedroom community or suburb though. An example like Shenzhen from a centrally-planned economy would tend to have limited applicability to the US, but this one is interesting because it's the exception that proves the rule. Shenzhen would've been an "important" place regardless, due to its being the first place in "mainland" China north of Hong Kong. Before 1980, the aforementioned central planning kept it from developing as fast as it probably would have otherwise. When they opened it for foreign investment, it took off like releasing a slingshot, hence the high growth rate.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
Incredible... the vac-train turned maglev... from the ultimate master of modern marketing, Elon Musk.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  Does it matter? He's seriously stimulated a market that has been fairly stagnant for decades, making it an exciting and interesting field again, and encouraging engineers who previously weren't interested in transportation to become interested. All without the hassles or complications of having to form and run the companies himself, or have to pony up the cash. His only investment has been the work on producing the original whitepaper, and the blast radius is huge.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    Does it matter? I don't know, we'll have to see if something other than some money going nowhere actually comes from this. If it's just "excitement" and some lucky folks making millions... don't expect me to get in a tizzy. Edit: If however this leads, by some longshot, to a functional maglev system in Cali or anywhere else in the US? Yes, I'd change my tune then.
  - bubuga 10y ago
    > Does it matter? He's seriously stimulated a market that has been fairly stagnant for decades, What market exactly are you talking about?
Grue3 10y ago
This will end as well as the "nanomachines" project did. By which I mean, nothing will happen, but a few people will get a bit richer.
- daveguy 10y ago
  That's quite an assertion. I think it is a leap to compare tech on a scale that has never been made with a novel rail design. Maybe it is commentary specifically on the funding of projects in Russia, but the hyperloop design seems quite a bit closer to reality than nebulous "nanomachines". Nanomachines are still very much an open ended research subject whereas the hyperloop seems more of an engineering project.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    > Maybe it is commentary specifically on the funding of projects in Russia Definitely this, it's far more likely to be a project to spread the national budget among Putin's cronies than to actually result in anything.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Sounds like a commentary on funding and execution of projects in Russia. Compare to http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/putin-says-he-needs-someone-to-hang-if-crimea-bridge-isn-t-built-ilxtahjl http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/putin-says...
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  That assertion doesn't really make sense. Nanomachines are still theoretically possible but we don't have the technology to really make them shine yet. But hyperloop? Nothing new really needs to be discovered. It's simply an engineering task at this point. So why do you think it would end like nanomachines? Simply Russian politics?
  - lisivka 10y ago
    The only way to complete it in Russia is to buy it. But it is impossible to buy it because nobody completed it. So it will fail. If you want to understand why every big government projects fails in Russia, just look at salaries of workers in government sector.
imaginenore 10y ago
Russian politicians make crazy promises all the time, and deliver almost never. All their recent tech projects have been disastrous, either technologically or financially, or the funds were simply stolen.
russellbeattie 10y ago
I don't understand why we haven't seen decently sized scale model before starting full sized tests. It seems that sending packages over a few miles would be an interesting viability test... Connect a bunch of oil pipes, design a self-driven transporter and see what the issues are. Then the public could also see the thing working as well. It's weird to me the groups so far have just started with massive designs.
- jballanc 10y ago
  How about a demonstration system spanning the island of Manhattan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor... The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even recent! The pneumatic mail system in NYC was in use between 1897 and 1953. What's new is that in the 1950s the energy economics made it cheaper to replace pneumatic tubes with automobiles. Fast forward 60 years and the energy economy has been turned on its head, thus hyperloop.
  - bubuga 10y ago
    > The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even recent! ...or even works. It's quite clear that all this hyperloop hype is a publicity scam targeted at states with deep pockets and whose governments are gagging for some propaganda talking point. The people behind hyperloop dedicate themselves to one thing only: generate hype around the project and jump from publicity stunt to publicity stunt. The end goal is to get a government to shelve a wheelbarrow full of hard cash for them to waste the money building a prototype for propaganda purposes. In short, it's the Simpson's monorail episode.
    - johansch 10y ago
      It seems like you are much smarter than the rest of us. Would you please tell us plebs what the fatal flaw is?
      - 10y ago
stcredzero 10y ago
People in this discussion keep on referring to the levitation as "maglev." It is a form of magnetic levitation, but it's significant that they're planning to use Halbach arrays. Musk's original idea was to basically "fly" the pod inside a low-vacuum tube using air bearings on the bottom of the pod. Halbach arrays basically fly above a series of passive metal coils. The faster the Halbach arrays are traveling, the stronger the field, which lifts the pod, which decreases the field, lowering it again. The system experiences negative feedback. It's self regulating. This makes it much cheaper than other forms of Maglev. The advantage over Musk's original idea, is that Halbach array levitation doesn't require the tight clearances that air bearing levitation would require. Apparently, the cost of manufacturing linear arrays of aluminum coils is cheaper than ensuring tight tolerances.
Const-me 10y ago
About two weeks ago, Russian president Putin told they are going to have teleportation by 2035: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-develop-teleportation-in-20-years/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-de... Isn’t teleportation more practical than a Hyperloop? It doesn’t require the land, nor the power to make and sustain the vacuum…
- erikj 10y ago
  I don't think Putin has said anything about teleportation yet.
  - johansch 10y ago
    His primary usecase would be to teleport dissidents to Siberia.
- DominikR 10y ago
  Typical nonsense brought by main stream media to discredit a politician they don't like. Apparently enough people here buy this as this is the top rated comment.
  - varjag 10y ago
    Source in Russian: https://lenta.ru/news/2016/06/22/teleportation/ https://lenta.ru/news/2016/06/22/teleportation/
    - DominikR 10y ago
      Every word Putin utters in public is recorded on video and lenta.ru is small opposition media. If Putin really said this it would be all over the largest media in Russia. Edit: The article you link to doesn't even state that Putin said this, why do you even link it here? Edit 2: The only teleportation mentioned in the article is using a quantum effect to "teleport" information, not physical objects.
jimbobimbo 10y ago
Rule of a thumb: every time you hear news about some Big Hairy Audacious Goal coming from Russia, it's about somebody trying to create an opportunity to fleece more federal money.
smsm42 10y ago
As most tyrants, Putin is attracted to flashy expensive projects allowing him to show off his greatness and power. Economic viability is not a big factor there, neither is the actual benefit vs. costs to the citizens - the only citizen whose opinion matters is Putin himself. This makes it attractive for some big projects - you only need to convince one person, and nothing else matters. However Russia would not be a good place to do this, the level of corruption is astonishing and the number of local interests one will have to satiate would be enormous. And the manufacturing culture is not that great, which means most of things will need to be imported and assembly will have to be very tightly controlled, and even then screwups will happen a lot. So I would estimate the probability of success as very low. BTW: I wasn't aware there was a "race". Who exactly is racing?

103 points by JDDunn9 10y ago

I've never been able to find an actual technical description of the hype-loop. Wasn't it downgraded to maglev at some point?

itake 10y ago
Elon Musk wrote a paper on it[0]. [0] http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf
- Retric 10y ago
  Just to add a company took the name and is trying to build something else. https://hyperloop-one.com https://hyperloop-one.com. There has also been a lot of ideas on these lines. What made the original design different was low vaccume* which is vastly cheaper than high vaccume, and using the fan on front and ground effects to effectivly fly vs maglev or traditional rail. Note in this context high vaccume is hard, low vaccume is cheap. http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/what-do-high-vacuum-and-low-vacuum-mean-(faq-pressure) http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/what-do-high-vacuum-and-...
arcticfox 10y ago
The original announcement itselfwas a technical paper.
Animats 10y ago
The original air-supported Hyperloop concept, with clearances of a few millimeters between vehicle and tube, isn't looking good. The MIT prototype uses maglev suspension and more clearance, which is safer. Maglev in vacuum or near-vacuum is not a new idea; it's been discussed for decades. The question was always whether the vacuum tube was worth the trouble. The Shanghai airport maglev reaches 250 MPH right now in normal operation, and air resistance isn't the limiting factor on speed. The Japanese L0 Shinkansen reaches 375 MPH in tests, with an operational speed of 315 MPH. The main problem with maglev is that the track costs too much. The main claim for Hyperloop is that the tube is cheap. The original cost estimates assume using someone else's right of way and unreasonably cheap tunneling. Also, to get the straight right of way, the endpoints have to be somewhere inconvenient, well outside major urban areas.
- randartie 10y ago
  > the endpoints have to be somewhere inconvenient, well outside major urban areas. I imagine large urban areas will spring up around wherever a hyperloop endpoint is built. The builder might even be able to subsidize themselves by purchasing large radius of land around the endpoint prior to building it.
  - vegardx 10y ago
    I think you underestimate how long it takes to build a sizeable city, big enough to support having a hyperloop station or endpoint.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      Depends on the circumstances. Sizeable cities have emerged at a rapid pace before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen http://www.newgeography.com/content/002862-the-evolving-urban-form-shenzhen http://www.newgeography.com/content/002862-the-evolving-urba...
      - vegardx 10y ago
        Yes, but you can agree that Shenzhen is a little different from a station at the endpoint of a hyperloop. To have a city grow more or less organically it's going to take a lot of time. It makes more economical sense to build a hyperloop between cities that already exist and can sustain it, than to think the world works like Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
      - rdiddly 10y ago
        Cities are like organisms, and as such, they only grow in the right "habitat" where conditions are right. Namely sites that are intrinsically important in some way, where there are numerous reasons for a city to be there. Proximity to transportation infrastructure is certainly one of the factors, but if that's all you have, lacking will be any of the others you'd find in a great city (most of which tend to be by-products of its having been there a long time, which usually means, maybe ironically, being near the transportation infrastructure we tend to associate with past centuries i.e. rivers, harbors). Result: You can't create a truly vibrant city in an arbitrary location. You might be able to manage a bedroom community or suburb though. An example like Shenzhen from a centrally-planned economy would tend to have limited applicability to the US, but this one is interesting because it's the exception that proves the rule. Shenzhen would've been an "important" place regardless, due to its being the first place in "mainland" China north of Hong Kong. Before 1980, the aforementioned central planning kept it from developing as fast as it probably would have otherwise. When they opened it for foreign investment, it took off like releasing a slingshot, hence the high growth rate.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

Incredible... the vac-train turned maglev... from the ultimate master of modern marketing, Elon Musk.

Twirrim 10y ago
Does it matter? He's seriously stimulated a market that has been fairly stagnant for decades, making it an exciting and interesting field again, and encouraging engineers who previously weren't interested in transportation to become interested. All without the hassles or complications of having to form and run the companies himself, or have to pony up the cash. His only investment has been the work on producing the original whitepaper, and the blast radius is huge.
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  Does it matter? I don't know, we'll have to see if something other than some money going nowhere actually comes from this. If it's just "excitement" and some lucky folks making millions... don't expect me to get in a tizzy. Edit: If however this leads, by some longshot, to a functional maglev system in Cali or anywhere else in the US? Yes, I'd change my tune then.
- bubuga 10y ago
  > Does it matter? He's seriously stimulated a market that has been fairly stagnant for decades, What market exactly are you talking about?

Grue3 10y ago

This will end as well as the "nanomachines" project did. By which I mean, nothing will happen, but a few people will get a bit richer.

daveguy 10y ago
That's quite an assertion. I think it is a leap to compare tech on a scale that has never been made with a novel rail design. Maybe it is commentary specifically on the funding of projects in Russia, but the hyperloop design seems quite a bit closer to reality than nebulous "nanomachines". Nanomachines are still very much an open ended research subject whereas the hyperloop seems more of an engineering project.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > Maybe it is commentary specifically on the funding of projects in Russia Definitely this, it's far more likely to be a project to spread the national budget among Putin's cronies than to actually result in anything.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  Sounds like a commentary on funding and execution of projects in Russia. Compare to http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/putin-says-he-needs-someone-to-hang-if-crimea-bridge-isn-t-built-ilxtahjl http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-18/putin-says...
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
That assertion doesn't really make sense. Nanomachines are still theoretically possible but we don't have the technology to really make them shine yet. But hyperloop? Nothing new really needs to be discovered. It's simply an engineering task at this point. So why do you think it would end like nanomachines? Simply Russian politics?
- lisivka 10y ago
  The only way to complete it in Russia is to buy it. But it is impossible to buy it because nobody completed it. So it will fail. If you want to understand why every big government projects fails in Russia, just look at salaries of workers in government sector.

imaginenore 10y ago

Russian politicians make crazy promises all the time, and deliver almost never. All their recent tech projects have been disastrous, either technologically or financially, or the funds were simply stolen.

russellbeattie 10y ago

I don't understand why we haven't seen decently sized scale model before starting full sized tests. It seems that sending packages over a few miles would be an interesting viability test... Connect a bunch of oil pipes, design a self-driven transporter and see what the issues are. Then the public could also see the thing working as well. It's weird to me the groups so far have just started with massive designs.

jballanc 10y ago
How about a demonstration system spanning the island of Manhattan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor... The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even recent! The pneumatic mail system in NYC was in use between 1897 and 1953. What's new is that in the 1950s the energy economics made it cheaper to replace pneumatic tubes with automobiles. Fast forward 60 years and the energy economy has been turned on its head, thus hyperloop.
- bubuga 10y ago
  > The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even recent! ...or even works. It's quite clear that all this hyperloop hype is a publicity scam targeted at states with deep pockets and whose governments are gagging for some propaganda talking point. The people behind hyperloop dedicate themselves to one thing only: generate hype around the project and jump from publicity stunt to publicity stunt. The end goal is to get a government to shelve a wheelbarrow full of hard cash for them to waste the money building a prototype for propaganda purposes. In short, it's the Simpson's monorail episode.
  - johansch 10y ago
    It seems like you are much smarter than the rest of us. Would you please tell us plebs what the fatal flaw is?
    - 10y ago

stcredzero 10y ago

People in this discussion keep on referring to the levitation as "maglev." It is a form of magnetic levitation, but it's significant that they're planning to use Halbach arrays. Musk's original idea was to basically "fly" the pod inside a low-vacuum tube using air bearings on the bottom of the pod. Halbach arrays basically fly above a series of passive metal coils. The faster the Halbach arrays are traveling, the stronger the field, which lifts the pod, which decreases the field, lowering it again. The system experiences negative feedback. It's self regulating. This makes it much cheaper than other forms of Maglev. The advantage over Musk's original idea, is that Halbach array levitation doesn't require the tight clearances that air bearing levitation would require. Apparently, the cost of manufacturing linear arrays of aluminum coils is cheaper than ensuring tight tolerances.

Const-me 10y ago

About two weeks ago, Russian president Putin told they are going to have teleportation by 2035: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-develop-teleportation-in-20-years/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-de... Isn’t teleportation more practical than a Hyperloop? It doesn’t require the land, nor the power to make and sustain the vacuum…

erikj 10y ago
I don't think Putin has said anything about teleportation yet.
- johansch 10y ago
  His primary usecase would be to teleport dissidents to Siberia.
DominikR 10y ago
Typical nonsense brought by main stream media to discredit a politician they don't like. Apparently enough people here buy this as this is the top rated comment.
- varjag 10y ago
  Source in Russian: https://lenta.ru/news/2016/06/22/teleportation/ https://lenta.ru/news/2016/06/22/teleportation/
  - DominikR 10y ago
    Every word Putin utters in public is recorded on video and lenta.ru is small opposition media. If Putin really said this it would be all over the largest media in Russia. Edit: The article you link to doesn't even state that Putin said this, why do you even link it here? Edit 2: The only teleportation mentioned in the article is using a quantum effect to "teleport" information, not physical objects.

jimbobimbo 10y ago

Rule of a thumb: every time you hear news about some Big Hairy Audacious Goal coming from Russia, it's about somebody trying to create an opportunity to fleece more federal money.

smsm42 10y ago

As most tyrants, Putin is attracted to flashy expensive projects allowing him to show off his greatness and power. Economic viability is not a big factor there, neither is the actual benefit vs. costs to the citizens - the only citizen whose opinion matters is Putin himself. This makes it attractive for some big projects - you only need to convince one person, and nothing else matters. However Russia would not be a good place to do this, the level of corruption is astonishing and the number of local interests one will have to satiate would be enormous. And the manufacturing culture is not that great, which means most of things will need to be imported and assembly will have to be very tightly controlled, and even then screwups will happen a lot. So I would estimate the probability of success as very low. BTW: I wasn't aware there was a "race". Who exactly is racing?