7 ms·
Improbable research: London to Edinburgh in five exciting minutes
- spellboots 13y ago480 miles in 5 minutes is 5757.87 Miles per Hour. That's going to be quite a ride...
- epo 13y ago480 * 12 is 5760! And that's assuming no time is spent accelerating and decelerating.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoI had to reread that... I'm quite curious as to how he arrived at 5757.87.
- bencollier49 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug ?
- morpher 13y agoIt's also 2560 m/s, or ~8 x the speed of sound. Good thing the article is satire and not some misguided historical proposal...
- shawabawa3 13y agoAssuming it never goes above 5g (which from googling seems to be a realistic maximum sustained g-force limit), it would roughly mean accelerating at 5g for 1 minute, followed by 3 minutes of 6600mph, followed by 5g deceleration for 1minute Sounds fun :)
- dasil003 13y agoYeah that would be an intense minute, followed by 3 minutes of terrifying anticipation, followed by some nasty seat-belt marks. Had they invented the 4-point harness in 1825?
- 6d0debc071 13y agoMaybe they expected you to swivel your seat around =p
- trumbitta2 13y ago"Passengers instead ride in traditional railway carriages on tracks affixed on top of the tunnel or tube. These passenger cars are coupled by strong magnets to the freight-carrying cars. As the freight train zooms through the tunnel or tube, its magnetic field drags the passenger train along on what is sure to be a rapid and exciting ride." Clever! Not backed by calculations there in the article, but clever and amazing nonetheless.
- Gravityloss 13y agoBefore steam engines became / turned out to be practical to place in a moving vehicle, there were railroads powered by pneumatic tubes so the heavy machinery could be stationary. The pneumatic tube was between the rails and it had a leather seam sealed slit all the way. The "locomotive" was attached to the piston in the tube with a vane going through the slit. The magnet cleverly eliminates that.
- DougWebb 13y agoThat's basically how aircraft carrier launchers work too. There's a long pneumatic tube with a piston running the length of the runway, and huge boilers that build up a lot of steam pressure behind the piston. The piston is attached to a little block on the deck, and the airplane is hooked into the block. Release the piston, and the piston and block shoot down the runway dragging the airplane with it.
- ig1 13y agoThe London Pneumatic Despatch Company actually built a system of pneumatic tube tunnels under London in the 1860s that were capable of carrying people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pneumatic_Despatch_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pneumatic_Despatch_Comp... (they were mostly used for packages but engineers travelled using the system as well)
- MrBuddyCasino 13y agoInteresting, the mail office actually used this for some time, but to quote the article: "The Edinburgh Evening News reported in 1876 that the trucks containing the parcels continually stuck in the tunnels, and this was the reason for the failure of the company."
- noelrock 13y agoNYC also had a pneumatic tube mail network: http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube-mail-network/ http://untappedcities.com/2013/03/15/nycs-pneumatic-tube-mai... It ran until 1953. Paris also had one. It's a worthwhile read.
- david927 13y agoPrague has one that's both extensive and still functions.
- agilebyte 13y agoYou mean this one? http://www.capsu.org/features/pneumatic_tube_system_in_prague.html http://www.capsu.org/features/pneumatic_tube_system_in_pragu... They say it is no longer working after the floods of 2002, but the article is from 2004 so what do I know.
- 7952 13y ago"The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage is worth reading if you are interested in this. It is mostly about telegraph, but includes tube systems. The obvious comparisons with the contemporary world are fascinating.
- tsenkov 13y agoJust a few days after Elon Musk publicly objected to the newly-approved "high speed" railway in California...[1] Is this supposed to make people sceptical about Hyperloop? 1. http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop
- vermontdevil 13y agoThe article was published in 2011.
- tsenkov 13y agoOoops, it is indeed. I feel so stupid. My apologies.
- TheAnimus 13y agoNo, it's more about the fact we've had some interesting ideas in history before. Some were even built in small scale, my personal favourite is one of Brunel's: http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_events/atmospheric_railway.php http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/em/_events/atmospheric_railw... There was even the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pneumatic_Despatch_Company http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pneumatic_Despatch_Compa... It is more a case of whilst this is in the public interest, how about some interesting history and tails of dreams lost.
- jussij 13y ago> Is this supposed to make people sceptical about Hyperloop? China announced plans to build a transport system very similar to Hyperloop some 3 years ago: http://www.dailytech.com/China+Plans+1000+KPH+Super+Train/article19268.htm http://www.dailytech.com/China+Plans+1000+KPH+Super+Train/ar... Now we have a link suggesting the idea is centuries old. I guess all that proves is the idea is nothing new and will not be revolutionary, that is until someone actually builds it!
- lambda 13y agoThere have been many variations of these basic ideas for a while. Hyperloop is different in that it does not require a full vacuum, but just a low-pressure atmosphere, which make the tubes much cheaper to build an maintain. It also does not require magnetic levitation along the full length of the tube (like the Chinese proposal uses), as it uses an air cushion provided by that a compressor that sucks in that low-pressure atmosphere, further reducing the cost of building the tube. It merely uses occasional magnetic linear motors spaced out along the route to accelerate and decelerate the pod, spending most of its time coasting on its air cushion. So, while it does share design features with many previously proposed systems, it is not exactly the same as what has been proposed before. There's a good reason why people have been talking about evacuated tube transport for centuries but no one has actually achieved it on a practical scale; the hope is that the low-pressure design will be much cheaper than the evacuated tube design. Now, I am somewhat skeptical of the incredibly low numbers that Elon Musk quotes, especially relative to the much more well understood high-speed rail he's comparing it to. But you shouldn't dismiss it just because there are some superficial similarities to previously proposed systems; as far as I know (and I haven't done much research, so I could be wrong), this is the first such system that proposes using low pressure, a compressor on the front of the pod to deal with the problem of the air mass not being able to flow around it, and an air cushion to support the pod taking advantage of the air taken in by the compressor.
- tlarkworthy 13y agocheaper than the trams
- mathie 13y agoMore likely to be finished, too.
- untog 13y agoMuch smaller scale, but in 1870 a demonstration pneumatic tube transit system was made in New York: http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Beach_Pneumatic_Transit Aside from anything else, it's a fascinating story. Refused a permit by the city, secretly built it anyway.
- pradocchia 13y agoIt's satire. From the article, last paragraph: The London and Edinburgh Vacuum Tunnel Company report is accompanied by a small notice: "The foregoing Jeu d'Esprit appeared in a recent number of the Edinburgh Star, and being well calculated to throw ridicule upon some of the preposterous plans now before the public for the investment of money, we insert it in the Register".
- adventured 13y agoWould freight hyperloops make more sense than those for people? Trains are still the cheapest form of freight transport in the US, but I assume radically faster speeds + even cheaper costs + lower pollution and environmental impact would generate a net win for a freight hyperloop. Freight doesn't care about inconveniences like lack of toilets or being cramped. Do the benefits begin to rapidly erode under much greater weight, or will that scale?
- untog 13y agoI'm not sure that speed matter for a lot of freight. Fresh food, perhaps. But a lot of stuff is shipped around the world on shipping containers that take weeks to get to their destination, and no-one particularly seems to care.
- dragonwriter 13y agoAside from the issues with perishables (of which fresh food isn't the only kind), delivery times for inputs (and finished goods to the market) combined with inventory (which has a cost) constrain response times to changing market conditions; how important this is depends on the market and the other constraints on response times in that market.
- randomsearch 13y agoApparently (I'm no expert but my Dad is) it makes far more sense to transport people by train and goods by car. People will autonomously complete the rest of their journey when dropped at a station, but goods will not. At least, so far.
- inthewind 13y agoI'd personally like more local storage depos. And keep freight off of the road during the day. Night time would also be a good time to shift freight. The last mile could be done with a small electric vehicle, or over pneumatic tubes. What makes buses and trains so attractive is that they take up far less space (if filled) compared with say a car carrying one passenger. It might be too late in the UK to get cargo and freight back on the canals. Also our local post offices are being closed down, which would be the natural choice for a local pickup point. I for one wouldn't mind a text to say I have a parcel to go and collect. I'd probably be happy collecting my mail once a week (bar the spam.) Side tracking further, I heard some old dears the other day, lamenting that they could no longer afford to send xmas cards. It now costs about a dollar to send mail by first class.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoI wonder how radically different transportation would be today had one of these systems been built. Even if it was in the early 1900's, it be a huge leap forward in technology.
- enko 13y agoIt seems pretty obvious to me that some variant on the vacuum maglev train is the long-term solution to travel on Earth. It's the only way, really, to get past the air problem. I doubt we'll ever see mass supersonic transport - a far riskier and more inefficient game of fluid dynamics russian roulette. It's not going to happen overnight, though. We're waiting on a few technological breakthroughs before it becomes viable. Fully automated robotic tunnelling and construction, for one. Automated manufacturing of those robots. Much improved materials science, probably nanotech-enabled. But when these technologies come, it's inevitable that we build such a network. The time isn't right for vactrains but it will be eventually. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed - and this particular future has been creeping forward for literally centuries. Give it a few more decades and we'll see the real hyperloop!