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Building the structure is the least of the Hyperloop's problem. How about supporting near-vacuum on such a large scale? How about dealing with earthquakes, er
by ye 13y ago
Building the structure is the least of the Hyperloop's problem.
How about supporting near-vacuum on such a large scale?
How about dealing with earthquakes, erosion, landshifts, where even a small shift in a section of a tunnel would mean instant death for the travelers.
How about obtaining the land rights to build it between SF and LA?
- plam 13y agoRegarding ground changes, we can look to current bullet-train rail systems. Nobody has ever died on a bullet train in Japan due to earthquakes. I saw on a documentary that Japan feed seismic sensor data into train control centers where any dangerous seismic event would trigger automatic stopping of the trains.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ye 13y agoI never said it's impossible, I think it's a much bigger problem than building a machine to build the tunnel walls.
- ricardobeat 13y agoHow is it a bigger problem if it has already been solved today? The original paper attempts to deal with all of these problems, pressure, safety, land rights, it's a very interesting read.
- ye 13y agoFirst of all, it hasn't been solved in the US, and not for these speeds, which are at least double of the fastest bullet train in the world.
- akjj 13y agoNo passenger has ever died on the Japanese Shinkansen, but a train was derailed during an earthquake. The safety of high-speed trains, both in Japan and elsewhere, also relies on safety during a derailment by keeping the train rigid and having steel cars. In contrast, it seems to me that a breach of the integrity of the hyperloop tube would probably be fatal. Also, the higher speed of a hyperloop makes automatic stopping take longer. In all, the hyperloop as it's currently being presented is much more dangerous than high-speed rail during an earthquake, and this is a legitimate concern.
- huherto 13y agoI don't think the hyperloop requires near vacuum. As far as I understad it is filled with moving air.
- snewman 13y agoIt does require a near vacuum. At high speed, the tiny amount of air in the tube gets compressed to the point where it plays a significant role in the dynamics of the train's motion. So, both are true.
- ye 13y agoAccording to their specs, it's 1/1000 of normal air pressure. http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf
- vidarh 13y agoPretty much all of which were addressed in the whitepaper. Any specific reasons why you believe the treatment in the whitepaper doesn't hold water?