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Hyperloop may become reality in Dubai
- Karlozkiller 10y agoWas Elon Musk really the one first posing this idea?
- ErikHuisman 10y agoHe certainly popularised this idea.
- babyrainbow 10y agoOr was it the other way around. What did the Hyperloop thing do to his image? I think it elevated him to a visionary status in quite a short time. So in a way, it worked quite well for him, even if the idea itself ends up not working at all.
- onion2k 10y agoHyperloop came after Paypal, SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. Musk was already very well thought of before this idea was made public.
- babyrainbow 10y agoYou are missing the point. He was elevated to the status of a grand visionary from just an billionaire entrepreneur, with these big, grand "ideas"...
- TeMPOraL 10y agoNo, he's not missing the point. He was already elevated thanks to SpaceX and Tesla by the time he described Hyperloop.
- babyrainbow 10y agoSpaceX and Tesla are not doing anything really new.. Not sure how it elevates him from yet another billionaire entrepreneur...
- nkoren 10y agoLanding the booster stage of rockets is really new. Building mass-market electric cars that are supported by continent-spanning fast-charging networks and can drive themselves is really new. And with that, I'll stop feeding the trolls.
- babyrainbow 10y ago>Landing the booster stage of rockets is really new.. Wait a minute. Was there any new, ground breaking tech involved in it. Will you call delivering pizzas using drones ground breaking, even if it was not done by anyone else before? >Building mass-market electric cars that are supported by continent-spanning fast-charging networks and can drive themselves is really new... Same thing...Wait a minute, can drive themselves? Ok. I am done here.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoYou've missed the whole "first mass-market fully electric car that actually makes sense" thing and the whole "kicked the space industry in their lazy butts" thing, but the one thing that actually does the elevating is that he's not doing it for profit, but for forcing the electrification of transport and getting humans to Mars.
- kuschku 10y agoNo, and different versions of the concept have existed for not only decades, but over a century. But he was the first with a marketing budget for it.
- zardo 10y ago>But he was the first with a marketing budget for it. Only if you count the SpaceX student competition, but that's not marketing, it's recruiting.
- Retric 10y agoHyperloop yes, however this is just an evacuated tube which is a very old idea. His idea is closer to an electric aircraft in a tube than a train in a tube. After all if you are going to use a train just add cars to increase capacity.
- eloff 10y agoAdding cars affects throughput, not latency. For goods that doesn't matter much (hyperloop seems like a bad idea for goods anyway) but for passengers it could make a world of a difference.
- Retric 10y agoSure, but adding cars does not increase the latency either. So, everything stays the same but if you can send 5x the people for significantly less than 5x the price. Personal Rapid Transit is a great when there are lot's of destinations, but this is going to have minimal stops.
- mikeash 10y agoIt's not quite an evacuated tube, which makes it different enough from the old concepts to be interesting. The pressure in the hyperloop tube is very low, but it's not a vacuum. This means that the tube can be relatively leaky, and the air that it does contain is also used to lift the vehicle.
- chinathrow 10y agoWill I love the technology and would absolutely work for Hyperloop, I would never want them to make deals with the UAE. The abuse of human rights is just to much of an issue over there in these kingdoms. https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/n-africa/united-arab-emirates https://www.hrw.org/middle-east/n-africa/united-arab-emirate... "The government arbitrarily detains, and in some cases forcibly disappears, individuals who criticized the authorities, and its security forces face allegations of torturing detainees."
- ex3ndr 10y agoThey have very good explanation: They are only 10 years old, they don't have 1000s years of laws of europe or china. They are just studying. Isn't USA still electrify innocent people some times?
- knodi123 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
- lucaspiller 10y ago[deleted]
- chinathrow 10y agoYou tell me - I am not from the USA ;)
- csomar 10y ago1. Practically most of governments in the world are guilty of this. 2. I don't see how boycotting the governments/nations will help resolve this issue. In fact, it'll probably make it worse.
- _Codemonkeyism 10y ago"Practically most of governments in the world are guilty of this." In which way is this relevant to the argument?
- ythl 10y ago> Initially, it will explore the feasibility of building a line linking the two cities. So now it's one of those "feasibility" projects? Hyperloop suffers from the same problem as Solar Freakin' Roadways and Artificial Gills, I'm afraid: too much saying, not enough doing. I am instantly suspicious of projects that have lots of hyped up marketing but little to no prototypical substance. To me, Hyperloop One still seems like a sci-fi pipe dream (pun intended).
- huffpopo 10y agoBecause it is a bad idea it is probably for the best that there is more saying than doing.
- asadjb 10y agoJust curious but why is it a bad idea?
- Someone1234 10y agoDifferent poster. The Hyperloop is technically possible. It will struggle for the same reason Maglev struggled: It won't be cost effective to build or maintain within the safety factors people are comfortable with. You really have to look at the history of Maglev because the parallels are considerable. Maglev undeniably works, but nobody is building Maglev systems aside from a few pet vanity projects because High Speed Rail is "Good Enough" and cheap! Hyperloop takes all of the cost issues that Maglev had and makes them worse. Even if the tube didn't have a negative pressure (just a tube with atmospheric pressure) it would be a cost nightmare, but you add in the costs of building something which can withstand negative pressures and the whole thing is just a farce. Maglev, like Hyperloop, initially wanted to build on raised towers. But it largely wasn't because being able to escape during an emergency is kind of a big deal, same reason why the Euro-Tunnel is 2x larger than it needs to be to support escape tunnels. A project like Hyperloop won't ever be able to win against real life problems like bombings, earthquakes, fires, extreme weather, and so on. Or at least it won't within the normal realms of cost.
- secfirstmd 10y ago"The government arbitrarily detains, and in some cases forcibly disappears, individuals who criticized the authorities, and its security forces face allegations of torturing detainees." It's a sad world we live in that I speed read your post and wasn't sure if you meant the UAE or USA..........
- ythl 10y ago> It's a sad world we live in that I speed read your post and wasn't sure if you meant the UAE or USA.......... I hate this type of rhetoric comparing the USA to a police state. The USA does not detain, "disappear," or torture political dissidents or opponents. The USA is not a police state. It's not even close to a police state.
- chinathrow 10y agoNot a police state per se - but detaining political protestors at large isn't something to be fond of. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/occupy-wall-street-arrests_n_3326640.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/occupy-wall-street-...
- secfirstmd 10y ago"Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square-chicago-police-disappeared-thousands https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square... "The Counted" https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police... "Operation Condor" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor "Hell in “Dark Prison”: New forms of torture at CIA black site revealed" https://www.salon.com/2016/10/04/hell-in-dark-prison-new-forms-of-torture-at-cia-black-site-revealed/ https://www.salon.com/2016/10/04/hell-in-dark-prison-new-for... "Black Site" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site
- ythl 10y agoTell me, are you afraid of criticizing President Obama on Twitter? Are you afraid jack-booted secret police might kick down your door in the middle of the night and throw you in prison for 5 years if you complain about the government on Facebook? Those are the types of problems people in UAE have to deal with.
- Randgalt 10y agoThe tone and sarcasm of this video aside, the guy makes strong arguments that the Hyperloop cannot work technically. Worth watching as he makes good arguments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk edit: actually it can work technically, but it's not practical at all
- pitaj 10y agoAnd here's a playlist of videos debunking Thunderfoot's videos on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSPi1JFx4_-Gz0Fm0qq2KUz4c22UbZCco https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSPi1JFx4_-Gz0Fm0qq2K...
- lcnmrn 10y agoWhat happens when Hyperloop breaks the sound barrier inside a tunnel? Will it always be slower than the speed of sound? If yes, why don’t we invest in MagLev trains instead?
- Retric 10y agoThe low pressure means not much happens. Further low pressure makes a dramatic difference in energy needs.
- nicktelford 10y agoThe maximum designed speed is less than the speed of sound inside the tube, so I don't believe this will be a problem.
- hatsunearu 10y agoHuh, I thought that speed of sound increases when pressure decreases, but it seems to be the opposite.
- GeneralMayhem 10y agoYep. Intuitively, sound propagates when particles bump into each other and transfer energy. Lower pressure means lower density, so there are fewer particles, which means it takes longer before an energized particle happens to bump into another one and propagate the wave.
- grogers 10y agoThe speed of sound is invariant to changes in pressure, it is temperature that matters.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoHere's a graph I found. It appears highly non-linear. https://sooeet.com/speed/speed-of-sound-in-atmosphere-graph.php https://sooeet.com/speed/speed-of-sound-in-atmosphere-graph....
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- Mz 10y agoAnd I may become rich someday. Note how elegantly that statement sums up step 1 & ???????? = magic final result.
- l3m0ndr0p 10y agoThey're doing it in Dubai because they have access to all that slave labor
- emodendroket 10y agoWell, if there's one place in the world a project is likely to get done despite making no practical or economic sense it's Dubai.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- M_Grey 10y agoI think it's more likely that the project gets funded; this is one of those engineering projects that is almost certainly doomed beyond that stage. Still, as you say, Dubai.
- Animats 10y agoI predicted this a few weeks ago on YC.[1] Dubai to Abu Dhabi is 50 miles of flat desert, mostly empty. It's the easy case for the Hyperloop technology. But I bet it turns out to be maglev in a vacuum tube, not aerodynamic flying. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12708576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12708576
- lisper 10y agoI'll bet it turns out to be a maglev without the vacuum tube. Either that or plain old high-speed rail like TGV or Shinkansen. 50 miles is not nearly enough to make it worth accelerating past 200 MPH or so.
- curtis 10y agoIf it's maglev but it's running in a near vacuum rather than a hard vacuum I personally think we could still call it Hyperloop even though it wouldn't be exactly like Elon Musk's proposal. I.e. it's the "near vacuum" part rather than the air caster part that's significant. Now if someone successfully builds a maglev in a hard vacuum tube, then that would definitely not be a Hyperloop, it would just be a classic vactrain. On the other hand, I don't think Musk would be the least bit disappointed if somebody was able to actually build an operational vactrain.
- Mankhool 10y ago
- lisper 10y agoDubai is a much worse place than California for the Hyperloop for two reasons: 1. Dubai and Abu Dhabi is only 100 miles. That's not nearly enough to make the Hyperloop economically attractive even if it were to work (which it won't, see point #2). Regular high-speed rail can make this trip in 30 minutes. It's just not worth paying N times as much for some value of N>>1 to shave 18 minutes off of that. 300 miles (like San Francisco to LA) is about the minimum distance for the hyperloop to compete with conventional high speed rail even under ideal circumstances. 2. Dubai has bigger thermal swings than California, so the thermal expansion problem -- which is still unsolved -- will be that much worse in Dubai.
- sharpercoder 10y agoI the thermal expansion problem is solved in Dubai, it also means that it can be solved on many more places. From a prototypal standpoint, it's a pretty good place.
- lisper 10y agoIt is far from clear that the thermal expansion problem can be solved at all. AFAICT no one has ever proposed a solution that is even remotely close to being viable.
- ash 10y agoCould you please show why very-low-speed, low-precision linear bearing to "allow longitudinal slip" of the tube past the pillars, is not "even remotely close to being viable". It's an honest question. I know very little about bearings, but I have yet to find a serious discussion about it anywhere.
- lisper 10y agohttp://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/08/hyperloop/ http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/08/hyperloop/
- jcoffland 10y ago> Hyperloop was originally an idea from Tesla's boss and tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, who conceived the technical details of the transport system but left it to commercial firms to make the vision a reality. The BBC needs to get their facts straight. Elon Musk did not conceive the Hyperloop. This concept has been around for much longer. The trademarked name Hyperloop is what's generally known as a vactrain and the idea has been around for at least 100 years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain