9 ms·

Elon Musk Will Build a Hyperloop Track for Ultra-High Speed Transport Tests

193 points by phreeza 12y ago

trhway 12y ago
my hope is that Hyperloop is just a starting point for Musk in high-speed transport systems and Hyperloop 2.0 will be a ground launch system :)
- Chronic30 12y ago
  Hope doesn't build things. Execution does.
oxtopus 12y ago
Actually seems like it'd be a decent use of what became of the ill-fated super collider project south of Dallas. A quarter of it has already been bored.
grmarcil 12y ago
I'm most surprised by "Also thinking of having an annual student Hyperloop pod racer competition, like Formula SAE". FSAE teams can run out of a spare room in an engineering dept's basement with a 5- to low-6-figure budget. I'm not intimately familiar with the hyperloop proposal, but hazarding a guess here, I can't really imagine a team putting together a hyperloop pod on less than a million dollar budget, and the facilities needs would be greatly increased as well. Getting any competitors would be really impressive and would require pretty heavy corporate sponsorship.
- scoj 12y ago
  I sort of agree, however most teams also build on the previous year's team. So the first team has a much larger task, but it does get incrementally cheaper and easier. And if there are some initial specs that people can follow, then it's even easier/cheaper.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  It's my understanding that the hyperloop test track that's planned for Texas is going to be a small-scale version. This surely means it'll be a short distance but it also likely means that it will be a smaller diameter tube. I think most schools could come up with a 1:3 scale concept with a budget in the realm of 5-figures.
  - butwhy 12y ago
    What does the length of the track have to do with anything? They're making the pod that sits in the track (independent of length).
- fudged71 12y ago
  Many universities participated in the Solar Decathlon housing project, which took up a lot of space (ours was just outside the engineering building): http://www.solardecathlon.gov/ http://www.solardecathlon.gov/
saturdayplace 12y ago
As far as I can tell, this tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555803747792609280 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555803747792609280 is the only thing he's said about it at the moment. Looks like he's also planning on having an annual pod-racing competition: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555804403504918528 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555804403504918528
- DigitalSea 12y ago
  If you read the article, it points out he has barely said a word about the Hyperloop since 2013. The pod-racing competition aspect was also covered in the article. It will be pretty cool if he pulls it off, transportation hasn't really changed a whole lot in the last 100 years or so, the Hyperloop might be the next evolutionary step. Starting small for inner-city light rail type transport, then country to city type services and then eventually country-to-country. The test loop will determine the rough cost per metre for track, operational expenses, hazards and other factors a simulation cannot really accurately tell you. Bring on the Hyperloop. I am tired of flying.
  - at-fates-hands 12y ago
    >> transportation hasn't really changed a whole lot in the last 100 years or so This is mainly because it really hasn't needed to. See most smaller European and Scandinavian countries where public transportation works well and riding bikes is far more common than it is here in the US. There's no need to go form one end of a country to another in 10 minutes. I mean, in Germany, you can get a plan ticket to fly from Liechtenstein to Hamburg in about 60 minutes for around $300. Otherwise, it's about an 8 hour drive in your car. And that's one end of the country to the other. I'm sure someone would pay to go from one end of the country to the other in a few minutes, but I can't think it's going to be cheap.
    - 0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
      I see the hyperloop's best use case in those countries as high speed package delivery. While you may not have a reason to go across the country in 10 minutes, you might want to have your online purchase shipped across the country in 10 minutes.
firlefans 12y ago
I'm finding it hard to tell the difference between: https://twitter.com/boredelonmusk https://twitter.com/boredelonmusk and https://twitter.com/elonmusk https://twitter.com/elonmusk
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Yeah. @boredelonmusk is my favourite Twitter profile and I often can't see where the serious part ends and the joke starts.
- tsax 12y ago
  Poe's Law? In a good way.
grecy 12y ago
I'm excited that Elon is taking steps to make this happen. Is it a good idea? will it work? will it be as cheap as his team estimated? will it be safe? Will people want to ride it? Will terrorists blow it up? Will earthquakes tear it apart? Will it make enough solar power to be self-sustaining? Nobody knows for certain the answers to those and ten million other questions. Elon is forging ahead to find out - rather that sitting around nay-saying. Bravo. I wish there were more people in the world like this.
- NegativeK 12y ago
  There's a phrase at one of Chicago's hackerspaces (and probably at many others): Just Fucking Do It. Talk is cheap. Implementation is hard (and more interesting); JFDI. Naysayers will naysay, but a thing that's done is more powerful than "Oh, well, you can't do that because"; JFDI. It also extends to telling people they don't need permission. If it won't be costly (in time or money) for other people to undo, you don't need to ask -- JFDI. Hyperloop seems really weird, but arguing with Elon Musk forging ahead is weirder.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    > There's a phrase at one of Chicago's hackerspaces Pumping Station One [+] [+] http://pumpingstationone.org/ http://pumpingstationone.org/
  - sigil 12y ago
    "Fuck it. Ship it." -- Betaworks Variations on a theme. http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-fuck-it-ship-it http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-fuck-...
  - conjecTech 12y ago
    ps1?
  - grecy 12y ago
    JFDI - I like that a lot. Thanks. I'm going to add more JFDI to my life.
Someone1234 12y ago
I am very surprised this is being built. Who is paying for it? I am all for new ideas, but the Hyperloop has some safety concerns that need to be ironed out. Even the Channel Tunnel is substantially safer than the Hyperloop's initial design. For example, if a "train" (pod?) breaks down or gets stuck between stations how do you rescue people? It is a low atmosphere tunnel, you cannot just walk down it, it might take hours to re-compress, plus you're well off the ground so cannot just cut a hole... What if a fire breaks out on the train? Nowhere to run. So will you build it up to aircraft level-safety standards? Also how will stations work? You have low atmosphere tunnels, but stations have to be normal breathable spaces, so are they going to have decompression chambers? And if they are then you have to design trains which can be decompressed and recompressed (see aircraft). Plus these tunnels will have to be pretty large when you consider disabled people and luggage. The initial design showed a super low profile train, so much so that it was impractical for normal commuters, even relative to aircraft. The real thing would have to be much bigger (like road-tunnel sized). Overall building this is possible. But essentially you're building a fully functional aircraft in a tube with all of the same issues and limitations that go along with air travel. If something "bad" happens then it will get very bad very quickly (like aircraft). So safety has to be aircraft grade too...
- fogleman 12y ago
  Can't work out those problems if you don't build a prototype.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    That isn't really true. Most engineering projects of the last one hundred years had no prototype and the engineers were able to foresee and eliminate many of the problems. In particular I think many of the safety issues need to be considered before they build a scale prototype. Since presumably they wish to put people into the thing, it is a good idea to figure out how to get people out also.
    - prawn 12y ago
      They can do that without including it in the tweet or TC article.
BlakePetersen 12y ago
What's not mentioned here is California just broke ground on a similar project from "LA to SF" but is more like Burbank to San Jose. It is not only estimated to cost 10x as much, but because it will use existing Amtrak rails not designed for high-speed trains, it will never meet the legal requirement of getting from LA proper to SF proper in 2:40. Can someone please introduce Gerry Brown to Elon?
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > What's not mentioned here is California just broke ground on a similar project from "LA to SF" but is more like Burbank to San Jose. No, the actual termini for HSR are in the city centers. Unlike Musk's hyperloop proposals, where one part of hitting the low cost number was terminating far from either population center (IIRC, substantially north of LA for the southern terminus, and way out in the East Bay on the northern terminus.) > it will never meet the legal requirement of getting from LA proper to SF proper in 2:40. Even if that was true, Musk's proposed hyperloop orientation would hardly be an improvement, as LA proper to SF proper would, in many cases, take that long or longer only considering the time between the city center and the proposed station locations, even if the hyperloop was an instant teleport.
- bdamm 12y ago
  They know each other already, quite well in fact.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Literally every sentence of your post contains a verbatim copy of false FUD from CAHSR opponents. None of which is demonstrably true.
- mikeyouse 12y ago
  > Can someone please introduce Gerry Brown to Elon? It's "Jerry" Brown, and they've met once or twice: http://imgur.com/MS9vVJT http://imgur.com/MS9vVJT
- erispoe 12y ago
  The hard part about infrastructure is getting it through cluttered urban environments, like the Peninsula or LA County. The advantage of HSR is that it can use existing tracks to serve San Francisco and Los Angeles before new, more rapid tracks get build. The trains WILL go from LA to SF, even though they won't be high speed all the way at first. Hyperloop can't use existing tracks and in the first draft Hyperloop service was actually linking the outskirts of LA with the outskirts of SF, NOT LA to SF. Building things through the Central Valley is costly, but not nearly as much as in urban environments. The first draft of Hyperloop was presented as cheaper than HSR because it didn't account for land cost. Land cost is what accounts for the bulk of HSR cost. Yes, Hyperloop could be built as a viaduct, but so could HSR, and would still have to splurge mney into buying land/indemnize landowners. HSR doesn't have a technology problem as much as it has a land cost problem. And Hyperloop won't solve that. edit:typos
wozniacki 12y ago
Please - for all that you hold holy and pious, God or singularity - don't admonish this attempt, just for the sake of your momentary instance of peak bliss. Let us all aim for a better mean of comments than the ones posted on TC, as of this writing: http://i.imgur.com/7BBvKQc.png http://i.imgur.com/7BBvKQc.png Thx.
- wozniacki 12y ago
  Why was I downvoted? I have no affiliation with Mr. Musk or his projects, private or commercial. Does this need to be explicitly delineated ?
  - phreeza 12y ago
    Probably because people thought your comment didn't add anything constructive to the discussion
    - wozniacki 12y ago
      Then they should self-reprimand for such a poor inflectional decision. I am not of the Elon-Musk-Should-Always-Be-Lionized camp, but I surely do feel that the nay-sayers deserve a slow, ponder-simmering of sorts, in their chosen ways to oppose a man who is dead set on improving, resolutely, how we go about our lives. For that, and for that alone, I'd gladly vaporize all the HN credibility I yet have.
Animats 12y ago
I've been expecting Google to put in one between Mountain View and Google's airport (formerly Moffett Field) for their own employees. The practical problems with Hyperloop are right of way acquisition and emergency rescue. The technology seems workable. Acquiring right of way for large-radius curves is hard, but with political will and money, it can be done. Rescue is tougher. Underground sections may need something like Eurotunnel, where there are two running tunnels and an emergency service tunnel. This runs up the cost. Another big problem with Hyperloop is that the capacity isn't that high. The original numbers described a system that carried about as many people as currently fly between SJC and LAX. That's much less than regular trains can carry. Earthquakes can be designed for. The BART tunnel across the SF bay was barely affected in the 1989 earthquake, even though it crosses a fault. There are big rubber sections at joints. I did see one item of damage. At the SF end, the Transbay Tube terminates in a ventilating building near the ferry dock. There are some railings on both ferry dock and ventilating building connected by short chains, so relative motion won't break the railings. One of the chains broke in the quake.
- threeseed 12y ago
  You're joking right ? The hyperloop is an unproven, untested, unverified concept. It has massive regulatory and safety issues to overcome and as currently designed is completely stupid. No one is going to use it for 35 minutes without the ability to either (a) stand or (b) use the toilet.
  - Animats 12y ago
    No one is going to use it for 35 minutes without the ability to either (a) stand or (b) use the toilet. Ever fly in a light plane?
    - threeseed 12y ago
      Light planes aren't used for mass transit. They are used by a tiny, tiny fraction of the population who given those are planes are used for business are far more likely to be middle aged, professional, healthier individuals than general consumers. They are also like normal flying more of an "event" than your everyday commute i.e. you plan ahead for them.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- tod222 12y ago
  (Edit: This is a reply to a now-deleted comment about a CA ballot question to kill the CA high speed rail project and instead fund a Hyperloop pilot.) Hyperloop was originally intended to elicit exactly this response—replace a project based on current technology with a pie-in-the-sky research project based on an unproven tech. There have been many pilot projects in transit tech that were never successful enough to merit subsequent wide deployment. Is anyone connected to airline finances at all concerned about Hyperloop? If Hyperloop was real then airlines would be panicking. An analysis reported earlier here was that it will either be half as fast as proposed, or will cost more due to requiring larger diameter tubes. [1] If you read old discussions here on HN you'll find serious questions about the design's ability to cope with both seams and thermal expansion in the tube. [2][3][4] One proposal previously discussed here replaces Musk's design with a knitted carbon fiber tube. [5] Anyone who discounts the seriousness of the thermal expansion issue would do well to read the Heat Orders FAQ from Virginia Railway Express. [6] Hyperloop is back in the news because the pilot project is Musk's carrot dangled to the state of Texas to allow him to build showrooms, see "Tesla's Musk woos Texas lawmakers with talk of track, car plant". [7] The Hyperloop test track is about benefiting Tesla, not building out Hyperloop. It's a political bargaining chip. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000412 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202327 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202966 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773406 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658988 [6] http://www.vre.org/feedback/frequently_asked_questions/faq_heat_orders.htm http://www.vre.org/feedback/frequently_asked_questions/faq_h... [7] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/autos-tesla-texas-idUSL1N0UU2MJ20150115 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/autos-tesla-texas-...
pasbesoin 12y ago
I doubt Musk will ever be "poor". And now he is assembling, running, and driving organizations (1) that appear to be "just fucking doing it". Bravo. ---- 1) And/or creating and enabling organizations with their own inherent drives.

193 points by phreeza 12y ago

my hope is that Hyperloop is just a starting point for Musk in high-speed transport systems and Hyperloop 2.0 will be a ground launch system :)

Chronic30 12y ago
Hope doesn't build things. Execution does.

oxtopus 12y ago

Actually seems like it'd be a decent use of what became of the ill-fated super collider project south of Dallas. A quarter of it has already been bored.

grmarcil 12y ago

I'm most surprised by "Also thinking of having an annual student Hyperloop pod racer competition, like Formula SAE". FSAE teams can run out of a spare room in an engineering dept's basement with a 5- to low-6-figure budget. I'm not intimately familiar with the hyperloop proposal, but hazarding a guess here, I can't really imagine a team putting together a hyperloop pod on less than a million dollar budget, and the facilities needs would be greatly increased as well. Getting any competitors would be really impressive and would require pretty heavy corporate sponsorship.

scoj 12y ago
I sort of agree, however most teams also build on the previous year's team. So the first team has a much larger task, but it does get incrementally cheaper and easier. And if there are some initial specs that people can follow, then it's even easier/cheaper.
mikeyouse 12y ago
It's my understanding that the hyperloop test track that's planned for Texas is going to be a small-scale version. This surely means it'll be a short distance but it also likely means that it will be a smaller diameter tube. I think most schools could come up with a 1:3 scale concept with a budget in the realm of 5-figures.
- butwhy 12y ago
  What does the length of the track have to do with anything? They're making the pod that sits in the track (independent of length).
fudged71 12y ago
Many universities participated in the Solar Decathlon housing project, which took up a lot of space (ours was just outside the engineering building): http://www.solardecathlon.gov/ http://www.solardecathlon.gov/

saturdayplace 12y ago

As far as I can tell, this tweet: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555803747792609280 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555803747792609280 is the only thing he's said about it at the moment. Looks like he's also planning on having an annual pod-racing competition: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555804403504918528 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/555804403504918528

DigitalSea 12y ago
If you read the article, it points out he has barely said a word about the Hyperloop since 2013. The pod-racing competition aspect was also covered in the article. It will be pretty cool if he pulls it off, transportation hasn't really changed a whole lot in the last 100 years or so, the Hyperloop might be the next evolutionary step. Starting small for inner-city light rail type transport, then country to city type services and then eventually country-to-country. The test loop will determine the rough cost per metre for track, operational expenses, hazards and other factors a simulation cannot really accurately tell you. Bring on the Hyperloop. I am tired of flying.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  >> transportation hasn't really changed a whole lot in the last 100 years or so This is mainly because it really hasn't needed to. See most smaller European and Scandinavian countries where public transportation works well and riding bikes is far more common than it is here in the US. There's no need to go form one end of a country to another in 10 minutes. I mean, in Germany, you can get a plan ticket to fly from Liechtenstein to Hamburg in about 60 minutes for around $300. Otherwise, it's about an 8 hour drive in your car. And that's one end of the country to the other. I'm sure someone would pay to go from one end of the country to the other in a few minutes, but I can't think it's going to be cheap.
  - 0x5f3759df-i 12y ago
    I see the hyperloop's best use case in those countries as high speed package delivery. While you may not have a reason to go across the country in 10 minutes, you might want to have your online purchase shipped across the country in 10 minutes.

firlefans 12y ago

I'm finding it hard to tell the difference between: https://twitter.com/boredelonmusk https://twitter.com/boredelonmusk and https://twitter.com/elonmusk https://twitter.com/elonmusk

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Yeah. @boredelonmusk is my favourite Twitter profile and I often can't see where the serious part ends and the joke starts.
tsax 12y ago
Poe's Law? In a good way.

grecy 12y ago

I'm excited that Elon is taking steps to make this happen. Is it a good idea? will it work? will it be as cheap as his team estimated? will it be safe? Will people want to ride it? Will terrorists blow it up? Will earthquakes tear it apart? Will it make enough solar power to be self-sustaining? Nobody knows for certain the answers to those and ten million other questions. Elon is forging ahead to find out - rather that sitting around nay-saying. Bravo. I wish there were more people in the world like this.

NegativeK 12y ago
There's a phrase at one of Chicago's hackerspaces (and probably at many others): Just Fucking Do It. Talk is cheap. Implementation is hard (and more interesting); JFDI. Naysayers will naysay, but a thing that's done is more powerful than "Oh, well, you can't do that because"; JFDI. It also extends to telling people they don't need permission. If it won't be costly (in time or money) for other people to undo, you don't need to ask -- JFDI. Hyperloop seems really weird, but arguing with Elon Musk forging ahead is weirder.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > There's a phrase at one of Chicago's hackerspaces Pumping Station One [+] [+] http://pumpingstationone.org/ http://pumpingstationone.org/
- sigil 12y ago
  "Fuck it. Ship it." -- Betaworks Variations on a theme. http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-fuck-it-ship-it http://www.startupvitamins.com/products/startup-poster-fuck-...
- conjecTech 12y ago
  ps1?
- grecy 12y ago
  JFDI - I like that a lot. Thanks. I'm going to add more JFDI to my life.

Someone1234 12y ago

I am very surprised this is being built. Who is paying for it? I am all for new ideas, but the Hyperloop has some safety concerns that need to be ironed out. Even the Channel Tunnel is substantially safer than the Hyperloop's initial design. For example, if a "train" (pod?) breaks down or gets stuck between stations how do you rescue people? It is a low atmosphere tunnel, you cannot just walk down it, it might take hours to re-compress, plus you're well off the ground so cannot just cut a hole... What if a fire breaks out on the train? Nowhere to run. So will you build it up to aircraft level-safety standards? Also how will stations work? You have low atmosphere tunnels, but stations have to be normal breathable spaces, so are they going to have decompression chambers? And if they are then you have to design trains which can be decompressed and recompressed (see aircraft). Plus these tunnels will have to be pretty large when you consider disabled people and luggage. The initial design showed a super low profile train, so much so that it was impractical for normal commuters, even relative to aircraft. The real thing would have to be much bigger (like road-tunnel sized). Overall building this is possible. But essentially you're building a fully functional aircraft in a tube with all of the same issues and limitations that go along with air travel. If something "bad" happens then it will get very bad very quickly (like aircraft). So safety has to be aircraft grade too...

fogleman 12y ago
Can't work out those problems if you don't build a prototype.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  That isn't really true. Most engineering projects of the last one hundred years had no prototype and the engineers were able to foresee and eliminate many of the problems. In particular I think many of the safety issues need to be considered before they build a scale prototype. Since presumably they wish to put people into the thing, it is a good idea to figure out how to get people out also.
  - prawn 12y ago
    They can do that without including it in the tweet or TC article.

BlakePetersen 12y ago

What's not mentioned here is California just broke ground on a similar project from "LA to SF" but is more like Burbank to San Jose. It is not only estimated to cost 10x as much, but because it will use existing Amtrak rails not designed for high-speed trains, it will never meet the legal requirement of getting from LA proper to SF proper in 2:40. Can someone please introduce Gerry Brown to Elon?

dragonwriter 12y ago
> What's not mentioned here is California just broke ground on a similar project from "LA to SF" but is more like Burbank to San Jose. No, the actual termini for HSR are in the city centers. Unlike Musk's hyperloop proposals, where one part of hitting the low cost number was terminating far from either population center (IIRC, substantially north of LA for the southern terminus, and way out in the East Bay on the northern terminus.) > it will never meet the legal requirement of getting from LA proper to SF proper in 2:40. Even if that was true, Musk's proposed hyperloop orientation would hardly be an improvement, as LA proper to SF proper would, in many cases, take that long or longer only considering the time between the city center and the proposed station locations, even if the hyperloop was an instant teleport.
bdamm 12y ago
They know each other already, quite well in fact.
thrownaway2424 12y ago
Literally every sentence of your post contains a verbatim copy of false FUD from CAHSR opponents. None of which is demonstrably true.
mikeyouse 12y ago
> Can someone please introduce Gerry Brown to Elon? It's "Jerry" Brown, and they've met once or twice: http://imgur.com/MS9vVJT http://imgur.com/MS9vVJT
erispoe 12y ago
The hard part about infrastructure is getting it through cluttered urban environments, like the Peninsula or LA County. The advantage of HSR is that it can use existing tracks to serve San Francisco and Los Angeles before new, more rapid tracks get build. The trains WILL go from LA to SF, even though they won't be high speed all the way at first. Hyperloop can't use existing tracks and in the first draft Hyperloop service was actually linking the outskirts of LA with the outskirts of SF, NOT LA to SF. Building things through the Central Valley is costly, but not nearly as much as in urban environments. The first draft of Hyperloop was presented as cheaper than HSR because it didn't account for land cost. Land cost is what accounts for the bulk of HSR cost. Yes, Hyperloop could be built as a viaduct, but so could HSR, and would still have to splurge mney into buying land/indemnize landowners. HSR doesn't have a technology problem as much as it has a land cost problem. And Hyperloop won't solve that. edit:typos

wozniacki 12y ago

Please - for all that you hold holy and pious, God or singularity - don't admonish this attempt, just for the sake of your momentary instance of peak bliss. Let us all aim for a better mean of comments than the ones posted on TC, as of this writing: http://i.imgur.com/7BBvKQc.png http://i.imgur.com/7BBvKQc.png Thx.

wozniacki 12y ago
Why was I downvoted? I have no affiliation with Mr. Musk or his projects, private or commercial. Does this need to be explicitly delineated ?
- phreeza 12y ago
  Probably because people thought your comment didn't add anything constructive to the discussion
  - wozniacki 12y ago
    Then they should self-reprimand for such a poor inflectional decision. I am not of the Elon-Musk-Should-Always-Be-Lionized camp, but I surely do feel that the nay-sayers deserve a slow, ponder-simmering of sorts, in their chosen ways to oppose a man who is dead set on improving, resolutely, how we go about our lives. For that, and for that alone, I'd gladly vaporize all the HN credibility I yet have.

Animats 12y ago

I've been expecting Google to put in one between Mountain View and Google's airport (formerly Moffett Field) for their own employees. The practical problems with Hyperloop are right of way acquisition and emergency rescue. The technology seems workable. Acquiring right of way for large-radius curves is hard, but with political will and money, it can be done. Rescue is tougher. Underground sections may need something like Eurotunnel, where there are two running tunnels and an emergency service tunnel. This runs up the cost. Another big problem with Hyperloop is that the capacity isn't that high. The original numbers described a system that carried about as many people as currently fly between SJC and LAX. That's much less than regular trains can carry. Earthquakes can be designed for. The BART tunnel across the SF bay was barely affected in the 1989 earthquake, even though it crosses a fault. There are big rubber sections at joints. I did see one item of damage. At the SF end, the Transbay Tube terminates in a ventilating building near the ferry dock. There are some railings on both ferry dock and ventilating building connected by short chains, so relative motion won't break the railings. One of the chains broke in the quake.

threeseed 12y ago
You're joking right ? The hyperloop is an unproven, untested, unverified concept. It has massive regulatory and safety issues to overcome and as currently designed is completely stupid. No one is going to use it for 35 minutes without the ability to either (a) stand or (b) use the toilet.
- Animats 12y ago
  No one is going to use it for 35 minutes without the ability to either (a) stand or (b) use the toilet. Ever fly in a light plane?
  - threeseed 12y ago
    Light planes aren't used for mass transit. They are used by a tiny, tiny fraction of the population who given those are planes are used for business are far more likely to be middle aged, professional, healthier individuals than general consumers. They are also like normal flying more of an "event" than your everyday commute i.e. you plan ahead for them.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tod222 12y ago
(Edit: This is a reply to a now-deleted comment about a CA ballot question to kill the CA high speed rail project and instead fund a Hyperloop pilot.) Hyperloop was originally intended to elicit exactly this response—replace a project based on current technology with a pie-in-the-sky research project based on an unproven tech. There have been many pilot projects in transit tech that were never successful enough to merit subsequent wide deployment. Is anyone connected to airline finances at all concerned about Hyperloop? If Hyperloop was real then airlines would be panicking. An analysis reported earlier here was that it will either be half as fast as proposed, or will cost more due to requiring larger diameter tubes. [1] If you read old discussions here on HN you'll find serious questions about the design's ability to cope with both seams and thermal expansion in the tube. [2][3][4] One proposal previously discussed here replaces Musk's design with a knitted carbon fiber tube. [5] Anyone who discounts the seriousness of the thermal expansion issue would do well to read the Heat Orders FAQ from Virginia Railway Express. [6] Hyperloop is back in the news because the pilot project is Musk's carrot dangled to the state of Texas to allow him to build showrooms, see "Tesla's Musk woos Texas lawmakers with talk of track, car plant". [7] The Hyperloop test track is about benefiting Tesla, not building out Hyperloop. It's a political bargaining chip. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000412 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202327 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6202966 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8773406 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658988 [6] http://www.vre.org/feedback/frequently_asked_questions/faq_heat_orders.htm http://www.vre.org/feedback/frequently_asked_questions/faq_h... [7] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/autos-tesla-texas-idUSL1N0UU2MJ20150115 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/15/autos-tesla-texas-...

pasbesoin 12y ago

I doubt Musk will ever be "poor". And now he is assembling, running, and driving organizations (1) that appear to be "just fucking doing it". Bravo. ---- 1) And/or creating and enabling organizations with their own inherent drives.