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Hyperloop is making progress
- pjungwir 12y ago> nearly all of them have day jobs at companies like Boeing, NASA, Yahoo!, Airbus, SpaceX, and Salesforce. > A lot of the work is being done by 25 UCLA students. Huh? So at least 25% of the group are students, but "nearly all" are employed by name-brand companies?
- trose 12y agoMaybe it's 25 students + 100 working professionals?
- pjungwir 12y agoI thought so too, but then there is also this line: > At some point, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will likely have to shift from this work-when-you-can-but-don't-expect-money model to something a bit more conventional with, you know, employees. So no one is actually full time. I'm thrilled to see people working on this, but the article seems like a mess.
- bostonpete 12y agoThe "nearly all of them have day jobs" seems to clearly refer to the 100 engineers mentioned earlier in the paragraph. I think trose's description of them as working professionals is probably correct. The 25 students would not be considered engineers -- in fact, it doesn't even sound like they're studying to be engineers.
- th0br0 12y agoIt was my understanding that those 25 UCLA students work at the UCLA lab mentioned in the text and are essentially just an out-sourced free design agency. In addition to the 100 "engineers etc":
- jokoon 12y ago> At some point, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will likely have to shift from this work-when-you-can-but-don't-expect-money model to something a bit more conventional with, you know, employees. People need to understand that money is not the goal there, the goal is to improve transport standards. I'm sure the best CEO and investors understand that money is just an abstract measure, you can't dismiss money, so you must insert money in your strategy, but it's just to make it compatible with the current economic model. People in companies work not to say "look at my paycheck" but rather "look at what I made". The goal is to make something better. Who cares if the business model is shaky or out of the box or unconventional, the goal is keeping research and improvement makings going. Nobody likes to be an employees, but I don't see everyone knowing enough engineering and having the initiative to design some new technology like that.
- vinkelhake 12y ago> People in companies work not to say "look at my paycheck" but rather "look at what I made". People also work in order to, you know, pay bills and put food on the table.
- fludlight 12y agoThese aren't mutually exclusive when the labor market is sufficiently hot, as it is right now for engineers of most specialties. The SpaceX guys are making less than they could at boring Boeing, but that still comes out to a respectable sum.
- jokoon 12y agowell that's also what people would do in the soviet union and in 20th century China money is a mean, not an end.
- grecy 12y ago> People need to understand that money is not the goal there, the goal is to improve transport standards Which is the really cool thing about Telsa and SpaceX - Elon has said many times if you want to make a quick buck, don't buy Tesla because that's not what they're trying to do. They're trying to advance the world's knowledge and ability to design and build all-electric cars - making a profit is not the goal, nor is it even important. As long as they break even, they can keep going. I look forward to a future where more and more companies have the goal of making the world a better place, not the goal of making ever increasing profits.
- erikpukinskis 12y agoThe issue I would most like to see progress on is thermal expansion of the the tube. The best solution I have heard is slip joints at the stations but if we're talking miles of slip, I still have a hard time imagining how that would work.
- jarek 12y agoThey'll keep the tube at a constant temperature by piping Silicon Valley hot air through an insulating layer around it
- moocow01 12y agoThe world's only unlimited energy source
- lisper 12y agoThis. Thermal expansion is the show-stopper. Unless and until they solve this problem (and I don't see any practical solution) everything else is moot.
- mschuster91 12y agoRestrict the pipe from heating up, I'd say. Maybe hardened, temperature-isolated glass could be used for building them? And for the remaining bit of expansion it might be possible to let the pipes slide upon/inside the pillars and make even the terminals moveable.
- dragontamer 12y agoOh, so now we not only have hundreds of miles of a near-vacuum being maintained... but also hundreds of miles of a near-vacuum being maintained at a specific temperature. And for the remaining bit of expansion it might be possible to let the pipes slide upon/inside the pillars and make even the terminals moveable. So you want a hundreds-of-miles long vacuum sealed tube that is composed of movable, sliding joints. Please tell me, what kind of magical sliding joints are you familiar with that are cheap to produce and also able to hold a near-perfect vacuum?
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- swalsh 12y agoI don't know John Smith, and I assume his idea is poorly thought out and crap. Musk has a positive reputation, and proven experience doing hard things. That gives us a shortcut on the credibility analysis. We're starting from 5 out of 10 rather than 1 out of 10. Hearing other people's ideas is not a free process. There's an opportunity cost for it, John Smith's idea is more expensive.
- trose 12y agoI don't understand why there is so much focus on doing this in California where they have tons of development and the huge issue of earth quakes. Surely there's somewhere else that could reap the benefits of fast travel. Off the top of my head I would suggest doing this through the midwestern states which are incredibly flat and mostly void of development for hundreds of miles. You can pay ranchers and farmers for the right to build the support towers on their land. You'd have to worry about tornados and hail storms though. I'm not sure how much concern that would be. If this this is all steel and concrete it should be strong enough right?
- grecy 12y agoI think you also need the population density and a population that wants/needs to travel from A to B regularly to make it viable. Musk proposed LA->San Fran as a commuter route - i.e. people would take it both ways 5 days a week. How many people want/need to zip across the midwest both ways 5 days a week?
- rpedela 12y agoChicago to/from any city is great for freight and possibly commuters.
- fennecfoxen 12y agoBut the hyperloop isn't really targeted at freight, and would probably be a poor fit except for the most express of express freight. For general freight, Chicago already has plenty of railroad lines.
- nedwin 12y agoAlso commuters with the capacity to pay for expensive tickets - this thing isn't going to be cheap, at least not initially.
- ulfw 12y agoSo yea, he 'designed' it basically for himself (SpaceX in LA, Tesla in the Bay). Who else would do this commute daily (because it will certainly prohibitively expensive for just daily commuting)?
- debacle 12y agoThe hyperloop is an incredible idea. One could travel, theoretically, 400 miles in a little under 5 minutes with reasonable, constant acceleration and no maximum velocity in a straight line (so, unreasonable). That means I could make it to NYC in a pinch and be back by dinner. But I don't think the idea of an air rocket is one that will work. The cost will be incredibly prohibitive. The concept of a "stop" on the hyperloop seems to make the solution far more complex, and the cost of a single stop on the route (assuming in the middle of the trip) is almost 50% additional travel time.
- deadfall 12y agoThe article says "800 mph". Meaning it would be around 30 minutes. Not including accel/decel. No? It takes a flight hour to hour and a half from LA <> SF.
- debacle 12y agoYes, I was assuming constant acceleration. I mentioned that this was unrealistic.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago+1 for correct (even if inadvertent) use of the word "incredible".
- pinaceae 12y agoawesome. so commuting from the east bay to palo alto or SF will take longer than travel to LA. instead of extending BART around the bay, full circle and across in more places, let's invest billions in hyperloop.
- acomjean 12y agoI have the same sentiment, but for Boston. As someone who can sometimes walk the 3 miles to work faster than public transit (or private bus) can take me on a bad commuting day, its frustrating. Like highway off ramps built communities, communities will spring up around train station stops.
- erispoe 12y agoThere is very little chance that BART would be faster than Caltrain on the Peninsula. Caltrain has a good right of way that could host 4 tracks. I would focus on Caltrain here, not BART.
- ianbicking 12y agoThere's nothing exclusive about the two. Good systems should be self-justifying. But if you want decent travel times the current BART can't provide them. You'd need something like Personal Rapid Transit to get good trip times at the intra-urban scale. But the same argument you are making here - envy of something that doesn't even exist - is why we keep getting the same transit systems that are hard to grow because they don't provide enough benefit to enough people.
- tptacek 12y agoThis evades most of the criticisms of Musk's Hyperloop plan by not being the Hyperloop that Musk proposed. Specifically, and most importantly, it doesn't connect SF and LA, and instead chooses a route to fit the budget, instead of the other way around. Musk's plan for the SF-LA Hyperloop was almost self-evidently fantastical, so much so that it's easy to read it as a political tactic to discredit California's HSR plan (which is also moving forward).
- kbenson 12y agoWell, that's fairly hyperbolic. It wasn't near self-evidently fantastical, unless you base that entirely on political willingness. As for what you thought made it fantastical, I would love to hear a short list. My last understanding of it was that there wasn't anything specifically physical or technical that prevented it from being possible (albeit requiring more real-world testing), and there was at least some effort put into addressing the implementation details. If there are portions that are actually impossible rather than just unlikely I would rather know than remain ignorant.
- tptacek 12y agoNo, it was fantastical. For instance: the cost estimates Musk provided were premised on advancements in tunnel drilling and elevated track construction costs that would have revolutionized all of civil engineering, not just hyperlooping.
- kbenson 12y ago"Ahlborn says, and Musk's cost estimate of $6-10 billion for a 400-mile stretch of Hyperloop is on point, based on the team's work." Obviously this is a fluff piece, and he has incentive to not play up any problems with the budget, but it's stated there openly. You've stated the opposite, since I don't have evidence from either of you, why exactly should I consider your opinion more worthy than a group of many competent engineers?
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- Animats 12y agoNot LA <-> Vegas again. An LA <-> Vegas monorail was proposed in the 1950s. A maglev was proposed in the 1990s. All so morons can go to Vegas on weekends to push the buttons on slot machines. Maybe they can talk Google into funding a 1 mile link between Google HQ and Google's private airport, Moffett Field.
- tptacek 12y agoLas Vegas is the 38th largest economy in the US, and the 30th largest population center. The economy of LV is larger than that of NOLA, of SLC, of OKC, of Memphis, and of RTP. It's an easy lowbrow dismissal to talk about slot machines, but an LA-LV line probably makes as much sense (cost-adjusted) as SF-LA. One point that's easy to miss is that big-city smaller-city pairings can be uniquely economically productive. For instance, an actually-functional HSR between Chicago and STL would allow companies to easily set up satellite offices on either side of the line, taking advantage of the lower cost of living on the smaller side and the larger market and commercial network on the larger side.
- seanflyon 12y ago> It's an easy lowbrow dismissal to talk about slot machines According to Wikipedia "The primary drivers of the Las Vegas economy are tourism, gaming and conventions, which in turn feed the retail and restaurant industries." So people traveling to LV to gamble is a big part of what makes it the 38th largest economy.
- saturdayplace 12y agoI have anecdotal experience that might confirm the economic plausibility of a LA-LV line. Driving south on I-15 from LV on a Sunday will likely drive you absolutely up. the. wall.
- transfire 12y ago1. Don't see the point of economic class vs first class pods when the whole point is to get you to your destination so fast you won't be in the pod for very long. Mid-class pods for all makes more sense. 2. Please don't emulate the airport model and build over priced malls within a "security zone". A Hyperloop is supposed to get you from point A to point B quickly. Following the airport model will add two hours to every trip.
- dia80 12y ago1. The purpose of higher priced classes is to give people who are willing to pay more the opportunity to do so.
- tptacek 12y agoThe need to follow the airport model is one of the unaccounted-for costs of the Hyperloop, particularly on travel time. Because of the inevitable catastrophe implicated in any passenger attack on an 800MPH elevated train, it will absolutely have TSA-style security.
- kbutler 12y agoWhy bother with a passenger attack when the whole route is exposed? Or did you mean "TSA-style security" as completely ineffectual?
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- mrfusion 12y agoIs anyone else bothered by the idea of being enclosed in a tube with no possible way out for hundreds of miles? I guess it's no worse than an airplane but for some reason it makes me feel claustrophobic? Perhaps there's a way to add an escape hatch every mile or five?
- lando2319 12y agoFrom the original Alpha Document 4.5.3. Capsule Stranded in Tube "If a capsule were somehow to become stranded, capsules ahead would continue their journeys to the destination unaffected. Capsules behind the stranded one would be automatically instructed to deploy their emergency mechanical braking systems. Once all capsules behind the stranded capsule had been safely brought to rest, capsules would drive themselves to safety using small onboard electric motors to power deployed wheels. " http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-201...
- mrfusion 12y agoThat still doesn't make me feel better.
- jeffwass 12y agoThat doesn't answer mrfusion's question about being in a stranded capsule for 100's of miles before the nearest exit or escape hatch. How long does it take that electric motor to drive the stranded capsule 100's of miles to safety? With the stranded passengers stuck in a small capsule with no bathroom facilities or other amenities. It's be first thing I thought about when the hyperloop plans were first revealed.
- niche 12y agoHyperloop should be a freight system before a human system; makes everyone happy; tis the season! Also, tube transport in rivers would be nice...
- thrillgore 12y agoThe Hyperloop remains a well-designed proposal that solves a problem a Shinkansen/TGV model system solves, only it uses technologies that aren't proven or evaluated. Silicon Valley thinking at its finest.
- mrfusion 12y agoI've always thought a good enough high speed transport is a scheduled flight that leaves every hour on the hour and you can buy tickets right before the flight.
- patcon 12y agoAs i understand it, transporting humans via air is largely infeasible without fossil fuels. It think the main benefit of a hyperloop is that it seems possible to stick with it as we make the energy switch EDIT: pretty convenient that it would benefit from batteries and solar, huh? ;)
- visakanv 12y agoI'm a big Elon Musk fan and I think one of the best things he's got going for him is marketing acumen. I think of the Hyperloop as fundamentally a marketing story- doesn't matter whether it works or not, it gets the story out that the person running Tesla/SpaceX is some sort of whiz. Very well played IMHO
- awolf 12y agoThat's silly. The fuel and operation costs are way too high.