18 ms·
The difference between what an aircraft fuselage and what the hyperloop tube needs to do actually seem to be quite massive (caution, back of napkin understandin
by captainbland 6y ago
The difference between what an aircraft fuselage and what the hyperloop tube needs to do actually seem to be quite massive (caution, back of napkin understanding from somebody who is casually interested but by no means an engineer).
The hyperloop is apparently to be pressurised at around 1/1000th of the pressure of the atmosphere (around 0.015psi). An airplane cabin is apparently pressurised to around 11-12 psi and at an altitude of 36,000 feet apparently the atmospheric pressure is about 3.3 psi so actually the plane fuselage only has to manage a pressure difference of about 3.6 times. So it's like building a 100km long airplane fuselage that has to deal with pressure differences that are something like 280 times greater (please excuse/correct me if this is not the relevant comparison) - although you probably claw back a lot of the difference from a generalised perspective of engineering difficulty from not having to put the thing in the air to begin with.
Edit: I suppose it's more like building 100km of space craft cabin, which probably underscores my understanding of the difficulty a bit better.
- johnwalkr 6y agoI like the spacecraft analogy! It’s hard to overstate how much more difficult it would be compared to “just building a tube”