Hyperloop

[kerbiloid]

7 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Why use this incredibly complex thing when you could just build a normal railroad.

As he tells that humans need to move to Mars asap due to the possible worldwide cataclysms, it looks reasonable to build an underground railroad to connect VaultTek vaults.

[Arugela]

He did apparently say it would be good on mars. And potentially said he wanted cities on mars. Unless it was just some investor stuff. But everything he makes looks like it goes with his mars colony ambitions.

https://www.universetoday.com/127356/hyperloop-on-mars/

https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-mars-city-codex

Quote

But in addressing transportation, Musk was able to incorporate another important concept that he has come up with, and which is also currently in development. Here on Earth, the Hyperloop would rely on low-pressure steel tubes and a series of aluminum pod cars to whisk passengers between major cities at speeds of up to 1280 km/h (800 mph). But on Mars, according to Musk, you wouldn’t even need tubes.

As Musk said during the course of the ceremony: “On Mars you basically just need a track. You might be able to just have a road, honestly. [It would] go pretty fast… It would obviously have to be electric because there’s no oxygen. You have to have really fast electric cars or trains or things.”

Essentially, Musk was referring to the fact that since Mars has only 1% the air pressure of Earth, air resistance would not be a factor. Whereas his high-speed train concept requires tubes with very low air pressure to reach the speed of sound here on Earth, on Mars they could reach those speeds out in the open. One might say, it actually makes more sense to build this train on Mars rather than on Earth!

I think this is how he comes up with his ideas. He thinks of mars then builds it here for now. Maybe he's trying to escape personally.

He even had a competition or something and got the pod idea from MIT. This means free ideas as well as testing of the idea for later.

Quote

The Hyperloop Pod Competition, which was hosted by SpaceX, took place between Jan 27th and 29th. The winning entry came from MIT, who’s design was selected from 100 different entries. Their pod car, which is roughly 2.5 meters long and 1 meter wide (8.2 by 3.2 feet), would weight 250 kg (551 lbs) and be able to achieve an estimated cruise speed of 110 m/s (396 km/h; 246 mph). While this is slightly less than a third of the speed called for in Musk’s original proposal, this figure representing cruising speed (not maximum speed), and is certainly a step in that direction.

He picked the idea with passive magnets and the lowest easiest looking maintenance realities. Maybe he was thinking long term.

Edited December 31, 2023 by Arugela

[mikegarrison]

On 12/22/2023 at 8:28 AM, kerbiloid said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-21/hyperloop-one-to-shut-down-after-raising-millions-to-reinvent-transit

Hyperl...oops.

Often listed as one of the supposed great innovations from Elon Musk, but it was pretty obviously deeply flawed from the start.

Same with his underground car tunnels idea.

In both cases, he wants to replace mass transit that already works (rail, above or below ground) with individual vehicles. I guess so you don't have to share your personal space with strangers?

Edited December 31, 2023 by mikegarrison

[DDE]

1 hour ago, mikegarrison said:

I guess so you don't have to share your personal space with strangers?

It's a commonly cited reason among car owners, yeah. But usually it goes hand in hand with soending hours in traffic jams.

[Hotel26]

22 hours ago, Arugela said:

all things made by elon musk

e.g. the Boring company; add to your list.

(Although, I haven't read the details of this hyperloop.  Maybe this will be a tube elevated above the surface?  I'll go back and read.)

Yeah: ignore the above.

Edited January 1 by Hotel26

[magnemoe]

On 12/23/2023 at 8:28 PM, Codraroll said:

To the great surprise of ... let's see ... no raised hands at all.

The one good thing about Hyperloop is that it raised awareness of "gadgetbahns"; those spectacular infrastructure works that promise to revolutionise transport but end up inventing a poorer version of the bus/tram/train/taxi.

In the case of Hyperloop, it was a system with the space requirements of a railway system, but the capacity of a bus ... while having to tolerate an environment comparable to a high-altitude air liner. That makes it heckishly expensive, and unable to capitalize on its speed, which would be its biggest advantage if built as intended. Not to mention the risks of some technical failure or other.

All that came together to make the decisionmakers say "ain't no way we're paying to build that stuff", which would make it quite clear that the company was doomed to end like it did. But I guess the key people got to claim quite hefty consultancy fees to hang on at the company for a while, so it might have worked out just fine for all involved parties. I wonder what happened to that demonstration capsule they built out of an old aircraft, though.

This, idea might make some sense in 100 years but it would be train sized for supersonic intercity trains because the maglev network is to slow, train sized also let you space out the trains so they don't run into each other and other systems up to cutting an hole in the tube to escape if needed. 

[kerbiloid]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:02 AM, mikegarrison said:

he wants to replace mass transit that already works (rail, above or below ground) with individual vehicles. I guess so you don't have to share your personal space with strangers?

 

Spoiler

Mostly yes, less interaction.

[magnemoe]

On 12/31/2023 at 11:02 PM, mikegarrison said:

Often listed as one of the supposed great innovations from Elon Musk, but it was pretty obviously deeply flawed from the start.

Same with his underground car tunnels idea.

In both cases, he wants to replace mass transit that already works (rail, above or below ground) with individual vehicles. I guess so you don't have to share your personal space with strangers?

Agree, but because you need to space out the pods so they don't crash into each others or simply that some want to stop be before the one behind so capacity will be low. And stuff like high speed rail is just relevant if capacity and obvious demand is high, if you want privacy buy an cabin ticket, cabins was common on older trains or something more like first class plane tickets, cheaper on an train as space is cheaper than on planes. 

[kerbiloid]

The suburban areas make the problem unsolvable in any way.
Before choosing between the public and the individual carriages, they should squash 2d hives into 3d ones.
Then distances will magically decrease by order of magnitude, and both road time and traffic will decrease, making the difference negligible.
Nobody builds a shop for one, and the same should be about the daily travel.

Edited January 3 by kerbiloid

[Nuke]

not really big on urbanization of all the things, i like seeing squirrels on the power lines, up to the point where they unwittingly become shunt resistors. 

[Codraroll]

47 minutes ago, Nuke said:

not really big on urbanization of all the things, i like seeing squirrels on the power lines, up to the point where they unwittingly become shunt resistors. 

You get that in more densely populated countries too. And besides, not everyone will always want to live out in squirrel-land where you have to drive for ten minutes to get to a grocery store and an hour on the six-lane freeway to get to work.

[Nuke]

48 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

You get that in more densely populated countries too. And besides, not everyone will always want to live out in squirrel-land where you have to drive for ten minutes to get to a grocery store and an hour on the six-lane freeway to get to work.

you drive 10 miles around here you will fall off the island and get wet. 

[kerbiloid]

If the humAnt Heap is 1 km in diameter, it takes just several minutes to walk and get to the squirrels.

Spoiler

The squirrels from Allods 1 & 2 are waiting for your nuts!

 

[Pthigrivi]

On 12/31/2023 at 5:02 PM, mikegarrison said:

In both cases, he wants to replace mass transit that already works (rail, above or below ground) with individual vehicles. I guess so you don't have to share your personal space with strangers?

It's worse than that. He admitted to his biographer that the entire proposal was made to kill high speed rail in California. Its just another of his malicious and self-serving marketing scams. 

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Pthigrivi said:

Its just another of his malicious and self-serving marketing scams. 

Yeah, the CEO of Pfizer is a bad dude!

[DDE]

On 1/5/2024 at 9:28 PM, Pthigrivi said:

It's worse than that. He admitted to his biographer that the entire proposal was made to kill high speed rail in California. Its just another of his malicious and self-serving marketing scams. 

To be fair, Hyperloop was inherently going to compete with high-speed rail whereever it happened. California was just the nearest and most plausible opportunity.

[darthgently]

14 minutes ago, DDE said:

To be fair, Hyperloop was inherently going to compete with high-speed rail whereever it happened. California was just the nearest and most plausible opportunity.

And the California high speed rail was a bad deal scam.  A lot of wasted tax dollars, nothing to show for it

[DDE]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

And the California high speed rail was a bad deal scam.  A lot of wasted tax dollars, nothing to show for it

I wasn't going to go for that, motsly because the people who've been saying that were the ones likely to have a political bias against the whole concept, and because my high-speed rail interests lie elsewhere (the 400 km/h Vostok promised for the completely rebuilt Moscow - Saint-Petersburg line).

[magnemoe]

4 hours ago, DDE said:

To be fair, Hyperloop was inherently going to compete with high-speed rail whereever it happened. California was just the nearest and most plausible opportunity.

Except its an worse solution, as said vacuum maglev trains makes sense then standard maglev is to slow and you want to go supersonic so 50 years from now optimistically. 
Don't see how hyper-loop avoid high speed rail problems, yes the pods are much lighter but they need straighter lines and the tubes. 

[kerbiloid]

So, the good ones win!

Spoiler

 

Btw, why is the coal behind the train? Do the passengers carry it?

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

So, the good ones win!

  Hide contents

 

Btw, why is the coal behind the train? Do the passengers carry it?

Excellent question, worse its no end of car doors on the passenger cars. Illustrations often make no sense, favorite is the three interlocked gears who would not be moving

[farmerben]

Other than the sonic boom breaking nearby windows I don't see what's so bad about going through air.  A train is the most streamlined vehicle there is by default.  Good skirting between and under the cars would help even more.  I recall the Air force missile testing going up to Mach 7 on rails.

On the moon or Mars we have a blank slate, without any of the height or width constraints on our terrestrial networks.  You could go as big as you want.

[darthgently]

39 minutes ago, farmerben said:

Other than the sonic boom breaking nearby windows I don't see what's so bad about going through air.  A train is the most streamlined vehicle there is by default.  Good skirting between and under the cars would help even more.  I recall the Air force missile testing going up to Mach 7 on rails.

On the moon or Mars we have a blank slate, without any of the height or width constraints on our terrestrial networks.  You could go as big as you want.

Breaking the escape velocity barrier on a lunar rail system would be exciting

[kerbiloid]

They should try the next idea: the intercontinental orbital rotavator.

 

[mikegarrison]

On 2/8/2024 at 11:38 AM, farmerben said:

Other than the sonic boom breaking nearby windows I don't see what's so bad about going through air.

It makes no sense to travel at high speed along the ground in thick air, when it is much more efficient to travel at high speed through the much thinner air at high altitudes.

Power required for a ground vehicle is approximately related to the velocity^3, while power needed for an airplane is approximately related to just velocity. (This is because the faster a plane flies, the more drag it makes but also the more lift it makes, which means the power required due to drag is compensated by a reduction in power required to provide lift. That's not the case on the ground.)

At low speeds, the ground vehicles are more energy efficient, but at high speeds the airplanes flying at altitude are more energy efficient.

The vacuum-train idea (which existed long before "hyperloop") is an attempt to get that benefit of lower drag without having to accept the cost of flying to high altitude. But it has its own costs, such as the energy it takes to maintain a vacuum in a tube that is hundreds or thousands of kilometers long.