13 ms·

Hyperloop Freight is a Joke

• Russell91 10y ago
  I always come to these hyperloop criticisms expecting to find some sort of fatal flaw in the physics of energy efficient supersonic travel. But to my surprise, they instead tend to be pessimists saying things like, "You'll never get past my friends: the regulators, the government bureaucrats, and especially the lawyers!. We will drive up your costs and make you look foolish". First, no one said that designing this thing in the USA means it has to be deployed in the USA. Countries without common law legal systems get around these unnecessary costs much easier. Second, if these are seriously the only objections, then thank god we are actually building this thing. I could see complaints if it were some $100 billion publicly funded project, but the fact that less than $1 billion in private capital has already gone so far into demonstrating the technological feasibility of such an innovative transportation mechanism is a huge win.
  • weego 10y ago
    I dunno... I'd feel much more comfortable if all humanities smartest technical people were trying to make the next whatsapp clone /s
    • KirinDave 10y ago
      Maybe in elementary school people should get high marks for effort. I don't know. But in the case of a company raising funding and claiming it wants to build a ton of subsidized infrastructure to service the public, it isn't the case that we should say, "This is better than some more vacuous application of the money." Because it's not at all clear that Hyperloop is actually a good plan to reintroduce high speed rail into America when so many problems keep coming to light about it.
      • xt00 10y ago
        Hyperloop is definitely vacuous..
    • na85 10y ago
      Contrarily, I'd feel more comfortable if "idea guys" like Musk would leave the engineering to actual engineers.
      • deleted 10y ago
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      • wcummings 10y ago
        Don't challenge the Musk hero worship!
      • icebraining 10y ago
        Then you'll be glad to know that's what he's doing with Hyperloop - he has just released the idea as a paper, but he's not directly involved in its development, which is being done by independent companies.
        • ant6n 10y ago
          You mean he released a paper renaming vactrains to hyperloop.
      • emodendroket 10y ago
        Elon Musk: I'll make the Wiki.
      • Manabu-eo 10y ago
        Dozens of engineers from Tesla and SpaceX contributed in the Hyperloop whitepaper. Plus Elon considers himself an engineer, even though he has a degree in physics.
        • na85 10y ago
          I consider myself a brain surgeon.
  • Xorlev 10y ago
    Reading through the criticisms the consensus is "sure, this can work if you allocate 10-100x more money than estimated." I'm not sure if it's truly innovative if it costs more, places considerable stress (up to 0.5g!) on the rider/cargo (what the author calls a "barf ride"). The analysis picks apart the touted benefits of additional speed when ultimately the capacity is lower and it takes longer to depart. In the case of cargo, the author argues that the "last mile" of cargo takes the longest, and as such there's little benefit to sending it at 1200kph if it then needs to be offloaded and trucked around anyways. To summarize: - construction costs are underestimated or completely wrong - capacity is lower than standard HSR - Hyperloop claims power usage is higher for HSR than it actually is - forces aren't adequately accounted for even with canting - assuming perfect canting the pylons must take the additional force - the majority of travel time is to/from the station + security screening. To me, it seems like it's optimizing for the wrong section of the trip.
    • notahacker 10y ago
      I think the biggest point the article makes is the great deal of care that needs to be taken in packing loads to meet weight requirements and avoid movement of goods in transit. What makes sense for international air mail doesn't make sense for a four hour journey by truck, especially if that truck can take a container straight from the ship to the city depot without carefully repacking everything, or go door to door with smaller loads.
      • woodpanel 10y ago
        Yes. With what exactly does freight-hyperloop try to compete? Trucks are more flexible while freight rail is struggling on most routes and speed seems of least concern there.
      • bwilliams18 10y ago
        Maybe I'm totally unaware, but don't trucking, air freight and sea freight have the same problems w/ regards to weight requirements and movement of goods in transit? Is this not a solved problem? Build Hyperloop Freight to fit a ULD and we're all set no?
  • treelovinhippie 10y ago
    Pessimism seems to be the default for the HN hivemind. Would be cool if we all just encouraged everyone working on moonshots.
    • icanhackit 10y ago
      > Pessimism seems to be the default for the HN hivemind. At the time of typing this the pessimism has been entirely reasonable and I'd say in the minority, with Xorlev outlining the fundamental issues with Hyperloop (capacity, costs, solving the wrong end of the problem) and KirinDave pointing out how while yes, there are more vacuous ways of spending money, when you're mucking around with other people's dough there's an expectation on return on investment, otherwise it's a charity. I'd like to see the Hyperloop built just as I'd like all kinds of cool, complex and not necessarily practical technologies develop. But it's not unfair to point out the economic and physical realities that will get in the way of those things.
    • mojomark 10y ago
      Nobody here is trying to crush dreams. The author, and many others, are simply trying to point out that there are much better uses of time and money. The factors (i.e. physics) underpinning the economics of freight shipping in all forms are well understood. Can a hyperloop be built? Sure. Is it better than existing intermodal cargo shipment infrastructure? Yes and no. It certainly offers speed, but doomedly at the expense of economies of scale: https://www.usmma.edu/sites/usmma.edu/files/docs/CMA%20Paper%20Murray%201%20%282%29.pdf https://www.usmma.edu/sites/usmma.edu/files/docs/CMA%20Paper... Here's a thoughtful assessment by Olaf Merk posted last month that draws the same conclusion as the author: http://shippingtoday.eu/musk_maritime/ http://shippingtoday.eu/musk_maritime/ Bottom line, if you can find enough high value bulk cargo that benefits significantly from high speed transit to only two or three "ports", then hyperloop is your answer. However, that's a very (perhaps nonexistent) niche in the industry. What we (transport engineering community) need to be expending resources on is: a.) eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, b.) designing a system of transport that scales with global trade demand (vice building 20K+ TEU megaships that can only be served by a few ports and promote trucking congestion in ports). Autonomous shipping, AI implementations in both freight forwarding (the logistics side) and transport control systems themselves, and applications of H2 fuel cells are technologies with great promise.
  • maxerickson 10y ago
    Aren't the acceleration figures a criticism of the physics? Same with the argument about centralization. It's a practical non starter if sticking the load on a truck that just goes to the destination is faster than shifting the load off the truck onto the hyperloop and then back onto a truck.
  • konschubert 10y ago
    Maybe there is no single fatal flaw. The point is, though, that there are many, many issues that need to be addressed and it is very clear already now that the hyperloop will be uneconomical. In other words: It might be possible to force it into existence, but it won't be worth it.
    • deleted 10y ago
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  • problems 10y ago
    The best legitimate criticisms I've seen are here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk Basically expansion and contraction as well as just plain vulnerability of running a vacuum make it extremely difficult to do practically. The phrase he uses, "all the problems of space travel except in a gun barrel" is a pretty accurate description of the issue. Any loss of vacuum will almost guarantee loss of life. No realistic demo has been done even on a small scale as of yet.
    • dpark 10y ago
      Why would loss of vacuum necessarily result in loss of life? I would expect loss of vacuum to result in sudden deceleration, but not with a deadly level of force.
      • problems 10y ago
        Air being drawn in results in pressure on the capsule, propelling it. Check the video out for a demo.
        • deelowe 10y ago
          That demo is unrealistic. The entire end of the tube isn't going to open all at once. Instead, any realistic leak would be pretty small in comparison.
          • UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
            I don't understand why a tube section couldn't come away? What if a bomb went off, a truck hit a support beam, or an earthquake caused a section to topple over... I don't think it is unrealistic at all.
            • deleted 10y ago
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          • Spooky23 10y ago
  • imaginenore 10y ago
    That's a strawman. Most of the criticisms are technological and security related. How do you keep an enormous vacuum tube with fast-moving pods inside secure against even simple attacks?
    • aaron695 10y ago
      ? Derail a train = put a rock on the tracks.
      • imaginenore 10y ago
        That will maybe derail one train. Versus the whole tube exploding at the speed of sound and/or the shockwave hitting every pod traveling at speeds designed for near vacuum.
        • Manabu-eo 10y ago
          Physics 303: "pipes are not lossless! Friction and viscous interactions between the entering air and the tube wall will slow down that "shock front" to a highway speed wind in only a couple km." (quote from schiffern post). You may want to look at derivatives of Bernoulli's equation, like Darcy–Weisbach equation. Plus there is a planned emergency repressurization of the whole tube that would eliminate even that medium speed shock front. Plus a small 10cm diameter bullet hole would imply in less than 1% of the flow of a completely broken tube (a much harder feat to do), per laws of conservation of energy and matter. As pods travel with 4km or so of separation, at most one pod will be affected. That is much less people than a derailed train.
  • bduerst 10y ago
    It's a criticism common to most future tech, not just the hyperloop. For example, there was lots of hang-wringing over Fusion power back in the 1970's, about how if the bureaucrats would just give it more funding then it would happen: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._his... I'm not saying any of this tech is without merit, just that it's common to need buy-in from many organizations to make it happen.
  • Spooky23 10y ago
    What part of "acceleration will lead passengers to vomit all over themselves" is a bureaucratic issue?
  • notahacker 10y ago
    To be fair, Musk's original paper advocating the concept was structured as a criticism of the supposed inefficiency of rail alternatives, and was heavy on deliberate cost underestimates and light on physics. So it's not exactly unreasonable that most critiques start off with the economics. This critique, however, raises quite specific physics-related logistical reasons why Hyperloop is a ludicrously impractical solution for most forms of freight and uneconomical for the rest. Things it doesn't mention, even implicitly, include regulation, government and lawyers. Perhaps you'd get more out of these hyperloop criticisms if you read them?
  • the_duke 10y ago
    so many are using the 'playing at moonshots with other peoples money' criticism. It's not like investors are blind or dumbstruck just because it's an idea from Musk. They do their due diligence and if they think the plan has potential, they invest. I'm sure there were countless technical issues and big challenges around airplanes in the initial stages. And cars. And trains. And, you know, every new technology. Could Hyperloop (One) fail miserably? Sure. Could it succeed? Also. Let's just wait and see. Also, whenever there are invested interests of established competition, they usually drum up the PR machine against new ideas, just as a precaution. Just look at the fascinating history of fridges vs ice box companies for one of countless examples.
    • rootusrootus 10y ago
      One need look no farther than Silicon Valley to see a plethora of starry eyed investors who are either blind, dumbstruck, or simply haven't done due diligence. Isn't the bubble about to pop... again?
      • the_duke 10y ago
        I don't think we are in a bubble anything like the dot com debacle. The industry as a whole is far more mature now, and paths to monetization are clearer. Competition is high, so is the competence of most VCs and investors. I'd also place an engineering project like Hyperloop in a whole different space than the typical SV stuff.
        • knieveltech 10y ago
          "paths to monetization are clearer." Indeed. Try to generate enough hype to bilk IPO investors or failing that get bought out by a firm that actually makes money.
  • tptacek 10y ago
    Just now, I read this piece and the linked New York Magazine piece (which, without mentioning regulators, managed to make the whole outfit sound like the kind of scam Hacker News usually delights in outing). I do not see any arguments of the form you're suggesting. It's not the author's friend "the regulators" that are going to make the Hyperloop fail; it's his friends "physics" and "economics".
  • eruditely 10y ago
    Statute law systems are the socialism of law, Common-law, this collaborative law making is the 'free market' problem, and it does not have a calculation problem via the legislator/statute marker.
  • Lazare 10y ago
    > I always come to these hyperloop criticisms expecting to find some sort of fatal flaw in the physics of energy efficient supersonic travel. But to my surprise, they instead Except, as the article points out, it's not actually faster, cheaper, or efficient than competing technologies. Those seem like really fatal flaws. > Countries without common law legal systems get around these unnecessary costs much easier. That same logic also applies to the competing technologies. The same magic wand that lets you build a hyperloop for 1/10th what it would cost in the US also lets you build the tracks for HSR for 1/10th what it would cost in the US. You can't compare the cost of building a hyperloop in China to the cost of building HSR in California and get a meaningful answer. Nobody is saying that the hyperloop is impossible; they're saying that it's a plan to build something objectively worse than high speed rail at prices that seem broadly comparable.
  • cbsmith 10y ago
    I think you are misinterpreting the criticism. There's a difference between "regulator, bureaucrats & lawyers will stop you" with "there is no compelling advantage with this approach. It's flashy and all to say you're going to break all the rules, but you could just as easily do that with conventional means of transportation.
• deleted 10y ago
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• johnm1019 10y ago
  The author spends the first 2 paragraphs discussing how existing rail and pylon technology wouldn't work for the hyperloop. I find this to be short sighted as it seems entirely reasonable to use different "rail" and "pylon" designs for the hyperloop. Surely engineers might come up with a different solution for a different problem?
• Tade0 10y ago
  Here's an idea: Ditch the vacuum and instead put a mixture of 80% helium and 20% oxygen at half sea level pressure. This way you'll get a breathable atmosphere that is five times less dense than air and causes as much less drag. Imagine Teslas hurtling 155mph through these tunnels using only as much energy as if they were traveling at 85mph.
  • cmrx64 10y ago
    Where do you get all that helium?
    • Tade0 10y ago
      I don't know, maybe from the 175 million cubic meters produced annually? For a 300km, two lane stretch you'd require around 7.5mln cubic meters - sure, that's a lot, but it's not an impossible amount.
      • jschwartzi 10y ago
        I think GP was asking: how do you get the helium from thousands of wells spread throughout the continent to the pump stations in California? Surely there are some logistical challenges involved in that.
      • D_Alex 10y ago
        Helium, for the time being, is a non-renewable resource, and there are concerns of a helium shortage for important applications like cryogenics. It is probably not a good idea to use helium as you suggested.
      • toomanybeersies 10y ago
        So almost 5% of global production of Helium? Add to that the fact that helium tends to leak at a much higher rate than any gas, and that sounds prohibitively expensive. Especially since the current price of Helium is artificially low, and it's not a renewable resource at current extraction rates, so the price is not going to remain so low in the future.
    • 10y ago
• xt00 10y ago
  I had thought the concept for hyper loop was that the infrastructure cost would be cheaper because it is a tube that does not require power or rails. But it does seem like saying instead of two rails that allow for deviations both horizontally and vertically and the vehicle stays on top, then now we need a really nicely round tube with a different set of requirements that must be maintained over hundreds or thousands of miles. I guess if hyperloop teams are still in the phase of proving stuff out and they need money then the money they will get will still probably be tiny compared to what it would cost to actually build a real full blown system when you factor in all of the costs of buying land and permits and construction companies.
• xt00 10y ago
  When people talk about using high speed rail in the US and talk about how it doesn't work, I think the problem is exemplified by how any rail system seems to get implemented in the US. Basically what I have seen in virtually all cities around the US that I've traveled, the train goes close to downtown or close to the airport, but not actually into the actual terminal in the airport. Or you have a fast train that drops you in some place where you have to transfer to something else like a taxi or bus or another train. For example as I understand it, the new high speed train in California in the SF area will not realistically be any better than riding Caltrain. So since it likely will cost more than Caltrain a big base of people who could be riding it everyday to get between SF and San Jose would not be using it. And I think it stops in like a far flung spot in San Jose probably far away from many people's jobs. So it's like, well may as well just keep taking Caltrain!
  • foolfoolz 10y ago
    the goal of high speed rail project in California is not taking you from SF to SJ. it's the bay area to LA area. this is not a train for within Bay Area commuters Caltrain with express trains works very well. sfo and oak have trains that go into the airport. caltrains goal of electrification if it ever happens should make SF to SJ a lot faster. trains in the Bay Area are not as bad as you make them out to be. personally I think high speed rail should go from Santa Clarita to gilroy or south San Jose. once you pass up the Central Valley you can take bart or Caltrain to your final destination
    • xt00 10y ago
      Yea I understand that the goal of the california HSR is to get you from SF to LA in its current form, but I guess what I'm getting at is that these systems become much more viable when they truly get you from point A to point B for commuters extremely quickly -- ridership goes way up. If it takes you 30 mins to get someplace that previously took an hour or more, then taking that small transfer seems like a small burden to add onto that. So at least if part of your trip is at very high speed that is extremely helpful, and focuses additional density desires for people who want to move there or build houses. For example, the Taiwan HSR can get you from Taipei downtown to Hsinchu in around 45 mins, and its around the same distance between SF and San Jose -- 50-ish miles. The baby bullet assuming you can actually catch one will take around 1.5 hours to get from SF to San Jose. In Taipei, driving to Hsinchu vs taking the HSR is kind of ridiculous because you hit so much traffic just trying to get out of the city and then the toll roads along the way can be backed up at various points.. so the result is that if you can take the HSR, a large percentage of people do take it. BTW to get that 45 minute time between Taipei and Hsinchu, it stops at I think 2-3 stops along the way. So, you could have SF downtown, SFO, maybe Redwood City, Mountain View, and then San Jose. I mean these trains can go 170 miles per hour and they only take a couple of minutes to get up to around 130 mph, so its not like they need to have zero stops. But I guess if a 1.5 hour commute vs. 45 min commute people don't care too much about, then HSR is not really that useful, but I do think people would really want that. The HSR in the SF peninsula area as far as I know will not go much faster than any trains on that same corridor right now for a variety of reasons. So basically what we really need is a totally new corridor that separates grade such as elevated or underground in order to get the speeds and safety.
• kordless 10y ago
  What's a joke is "journalists" making blaming comments about a company they'd unlikely be fit to work at.
• almost_usual 10y ago
  At this point Hyperloop would have to support Intermodal freight transport to even have a chance. The technical limitations of container ships or the containers themselves would need to be considered. Hard to be beat taking a container off a ship and dropping it right onto a train car.
• salimmadjd 10y ago
  Of all the hyped up startups out there. I'm personally most bullish on the promise of the Hyperloop. Really Hyperloop One since they're the only one making actual progress. The article makes some decent sounding criticism on the issue of last mile being the limiting factor. But it all reminds me of what I heard before regarding fast internet connectivity (the issue of the last mile), or why would people need personal computers. The problem with criticizing anything that can impact the future, is that we just don't know how it'll impact it. I do know that anytime transportation or means of connecting goods or people has been changed, it has had tremendous impact in economy and how the world works. Do we need to ship cargo at 500 MPH? With today's thinking, maybe no. But I do know by building and experimenting with Hyperloop not only we might just transform the world, in the process will probably make other accidental discoveries as an added bonus.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • foota 10y ago
    Seems like this is something a company like Amazon could be interested in, for the long tail of products it might be more cost effective to be able to ship via hyperloop vs building more capacity.
• mangeletti 10y ago
  Why not, instead of using an almost-vacuum and a separate means of propulsion, create a stream of air similar to that of bank tubes and just use that for propulsion? Fans inside of the tube would pull air in the direction of travel, and it could be circulated or pumped in from / out to the outside at the ends. At the end of the tubes a main fan system would be the primary work horse, creating vacuum forces on the arrival end and pushing forces on the departure end. In the last mile, the fan system could shut down and use the pressure to help stop the vehicle and even store some of the pressure to help start the system in the opposite direction later (i.e., regenerative breaking).
  • kinofcain 10y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit Among other things it's more efficient to send electricity than to send air.
    • mangeletti 10y ago
      I don't mean as a means to maximize efficiency, but to avoid a lot of the problems (e.g., the risks of a vacuum, the cost of engineering one, etc.).
      • kinofcain 10y ago
        Instead of the air resistance of a train-sized object (about a quarter mile long) you'd have air resistance equivalent to a train 300 miles long (think of the tunnel as an inside out train). It's inefficient by several orders of magnitude.
        • mangeletti 10y ago
          Ah, I see what you mean :/ EDIT: Wait, if the walls were made to be near frictionless, then the aggregate energy, minus what's lost to hear from turbulence, would be used for motion, right?
• DannyBee 10y ago
  Yawn. Freight has much bigger problems, like, in the US you have the Jones act, which essentially means freight from foreign countries gets bulk broken at a small number of ports instead of more directly moved to the ports it should go to. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Marine_Act_of_1920#Ef...
• meric 10y ago
  Put all the passengers on the hyper loop, build a freight-only rail beneath the hyper loop, which can be more efficient because it no longer needs to consider passenger requirements with regards to noise, width, height, or even atmosphere in tunnels.
• jfoutz 10y ago
  Side effects, side effects, side effects. Hyperloop may be an unmitigated disaster. But the effort has clear benefits. An innovative solution to shifting loads would be immediately useful to air freight, and probably trucking and shipping. Some solution to the sudden loss of vacuum would be useful in everything from oil pipelines to freeway traffic. Turning the wall of air into a smooth gradient in seconds is perhaps impossible, but even a partial solution would create a whole host of companies to take advantage of the new technique. New materials developed for the pylons, and techniques for manufacturing those pylons are likely broadly applicable. Bridges are of course an obvious example. Does every flaw with the hyperloop require science fiction? Or is it just out of reach? It seems like the Department of Transportation should provide a whole bunch of grad students money to answer the questions, rather than private investors, because those problems sound very big and very risky to me. But if they think they can do it, why not go for it?
• bigger_cheese 10y ago
  One thing the article misses is inflexibility. One of the big disadvantages of rail is that once the track is deployed it is very costly and difficult to upgrade it. One thing I'd want in any "futuristic" freight hauling method would be ease of scaling I don't think Hyperloop offers anything over rail in this regard once track is installed you are more or less stuck with the installed capacity forever. A computer analogy I'd give is to think of freight handling like information communication - the big issues are bandwidth (How much can you send/receive in one shipment) latency (How long does it take to arrive) and throughput (How many shipments can you handle at once). Hyperloop addresses the latency issue but does little to nothing to address the other two problems From what I see working in a heavy industry which relies on bulk freight (for import and export). Throughput (i.e Congestion) is the hot issue - we have a rail terminal and a deep water berth (which handles capesized ships). The rail corridor is shared and at times pretty heavily congested we use road trains (b-double trucks) to make up for the shortfall.
  • manicdee 10y ago
    The thousand-dollar-per-strawberry market cares a lot about latency, and not one jot about bulk handling capacity. Getting from Napa Valley to New York, New York in an hour without sitting in a box in the sun would be a big win.
    • misnome 10y ago
      I imagine strawberries (and squishy cargos) might be more sensitive to high acceleration and jerk.
  • toomanybeersies 10y ago
    > A computer analogy I'd give is to think of freight handling like information communication Unsurprisingly, a lot of the theory for transport networks maps extremely well to computer networks. Transport is essentially a literal packet switched network. You have routers (depots), routes (roads, rails, etc), packets (in many cases, literally packets), MTUs (twenty foot containers, or truckloads). Queuing theory equally applies to both as well (and a lot of other physical applications, at university we had an exercise applying it to customer support).
• codingdave 10y ago
  I'm never quite trusting of any article that starts by linking to their own previous article, with a tone of "I told you so."
• LordHumungous 10y ago
  Of course the hyperloop is a joke. Elon Musk has zero experience or training in transportation infrastructure, but we are supposed to have faith in some idea he farted out in a white paper, why? Because he has skillfully cultivated his image as a "genius", and we bought it? The hyperloop was nothing more than a (savvy) PR move to cement his image as a "visionary". That it actually got funded only goes to show what gullible shmucks some venture capitalists are. Edit: I worked on the LHC for several years. The challenges of maintaining a closed vacuum pipe that spanned a mere 17 miles were vast and expensive. Musk proposes doing it on an exponentially larger scale without addressing the challenges and pitfalls involved. Until he does so, I cannot take him seriously.
  • Someone 10y ago
    The LHC has lower pressure than Hyperloop is supposed to have (1E-7 pascal, reading http://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.high_vacuum http://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.high_... versus 100 pascal, reading https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Theory_and_operation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop#Theory_and_operati...) Still quite challenging, but not in the same league, even considering that hyperloop requires way longer tunnels.
    • wbl 10y ago
      The forces aren't much different, even if the allowable leakage is higher and the pumping easier.
  • Omniusaspirer 10y ago
    Would you be able to tell us about some of the problems the LHC faced? Hyperloop aside, this is an interesting subject.
    • LordHumungous 10y ago
      The tolerances on each part must be very tight. If there is a single flaw in one part, the whole vacuum fails. The challenges become exponentially greater as you scale up the diameter of the pipe, since the force on the pipe is proportional to the square of the radius. The LHC had a 50mm diameter pipe, the hyperloop proposes an 8+ foot diameter. You do the math.
• Animats 10y ago
  Vactrains might work out. There's nothing wrong with maglev in an evacuated tube. A system where the thing runs on open track until it gets out of the city and can switch to a vacuum tube might work. Then you can get someplace useful. Most of the "hyperloop" proposals, including the MIT demo, are really maglev vactrains. If you're already a maglev, a tube doesn't add much. Japan's maglev has already reached 600 Km/h. The Shanghai/Transrapid maglev routinely runs at 431 Km/h, and has hit 500 in tests. At those speeds, SF-LA is about an hour. But the track cost is very high. That's not stopping JR Tokai. The Tokyo to Nagoya maglev line has been under construction for two years now. They're taking the most direct route to get the fastest transit time. There are mountain ranges in the way. They're going straight through them. 90% in tunnel. Completion in 2027. Cost comparable to Twitter's peak market cap. Public support for this is so high that JR is being pushed to build the next section, Nagoya to Osaka, sooner. With enough money...
  • dilemma 10y ago
    >But the track cost is very high. That's not stopping JR Tokai. It all depends on perspective. If decision maker view the maglev as the 21st century version of the railway that let societies prosper in the 19th and 20th, then it might not be expensive at all because the return is so great and the horizon so long.
  • nickparker 10y ago
    Hypothetically, the vacuum tube gives you energy efficiency. Drag power is proportional to the cube of velocity, so drag energy losses over a fixed distance are proportional to the square. In an ideal world you're paying a fixed cost per unit time to pump the tube down then you shove as much stuff as you can through it at transsonic speed, catch it all with regenerative brakes at the other end, and pay an energy per kg payload cost lower than electric road vehicles. Of course in practice that fixed cost may turn out astronomically high, but that's the idea.
    • misnome 10y ago
      Presumably with all existing systems it has been much, much more cost effective to be aerodynamic rather than building/maintaining/decompressing the worlds largest vacuum tube
• Turing_Machine 10y ago
  an expert in logistics asked “why do we need to move cargo at 500 mph?“. The problem is one of face. I guess the 18,000 packages per hour that arrive at ANC by jet must also be a matter of "face"? What does this even mean? Edit for clarity: The FedEx terminal at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport can handle 13,400 packages per hour. The UPS terminal there handles about 5,000 packages per hour. Virtually all of these packages arrive from Asia on jets traveling hundreds of miles per hour (as opposed to the alternative, container ships, which are cheaper, but much slower). That's because Anchorage is the major airport that's closest to being on a great circle route between North America and Asia. Most of the packages clear customs in Anchorage, and are then fed into the FedEx and UPS systems for further distribution throughout North America. Clearly there is a very large market for moving cargo at 500 miles per hour. Frankly, I have a hard time believing that an "expert in logistics" would make such a statement.
  • mcguire 10y ago
    Tokyo to Anchorage is roughly 5500km, vs. 600km for LA to San Francisco. Alternatively, how much cargo does FedEx or UPS fly along the California coast?
  • LordHumungous 10y ago
    A transoceanic hyperloop might be valuable but that's not what has been proposed.
• m0llusk 10y ago
  Freight networks are critical and hyperloop has a claim to high efficiency transport. This might not work out as hoped but it is most certainly not a joke.
• jheriko 10y ago
  i still think there is a much bigger problem in simply getting the thing through the red tape necessary too... even if it was useful, it would be a real struggle to be allowed to operate at all imo...
• yellowapple 10y ago
  "This is actually worse for freight than for passengers, which is why the speed limits on curves are lower for freight trains than for passenger trains" I'm 91% sure that this is less to do with freight specifically and more to do with the amount of weight involved and how it's distributed in each car. Then again, I'm no expert on freight trains.
• Glyptodon 10y ago
  Are all the hyperloop proposals really for a single tube instead of a bank of tubes?
• spectrum1234 10y ago
  I wish this was readable but this guy comes off as extremely arrogant. It was a white paper for godsakes!! Is there an app that ensures I never read anything by this guy again? What is his name so I can avoid in the future? I'm not saying Hyperloop is perfect...its the tone of this jerk.
  • mcguire 10y ago
    https://hyperloop-one.com https://hyperloop-one.com $141M funding.
• Balgair 10y ago
  Every time I see the HyperRail stuff, I just get this little song monoloop'd into my head. It's so strange. Anyone else have that too? EDIT: I found the song!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM
• ant6n 10y ago
  What I find annoying about this "hyperloop" hype is that it's just a rehash of the concept of a vactrain, but because Musk wrote it is suddenly genius and visionary (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain).
• desireco42 10y ago
  I would totally comment on this article if I could read it. Contrast is terrible and not even per usual design guidelines, as background is white.