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Dubai will consider building a hyperloop route to the United Arab Emirate's capital Abu Dhabi:
The city-state of Dubai announced a deal Tuesday with Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One to study the potential for building a line linking it to the United Arab Emirate's capital Abu Dhabi. The announcement took place atop the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, with the panorama view of the skyline of this futuristic city-state serving as both a backdrop and a sign of Dubai's desire to be the first to rush toward the future. "We are here today to sign a historic agreement with our partners from (the Dubai) Road and Transport Authority... and we begin to evaluate the delivery of the world's first hyperloop system across the country," the Los Angeles-based company's CEO, Rob Lloyd, told reporters. "We will initially focus on the value that Hyperloop One will deliver in Dubai and across the (United Arab) Emirates."
It sounds like science fiction but earlier this year, Hyperloop One held its first public test in the desert outside Las Vegas. A prototype system rocketed pods through reduced-pressure tubes at speeds of 1,125 kilometers per hour (700 mph). Planners suggest a Dubai-Abu Dhabi travel time via such a system would be a mere 12 minutes - significantly down from the roughly two hours it now takes by car to cover the 150 kilometers (93 miles).
Also at Dezeen, CNET, and Hyperloop One (YouTube).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 09 2016, @08:56PM
Yup, we should encourage them to continue to run their Bugatti Verons up and down that highway at crazy speeds so as not to waste a drop of oil.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by Atreidin on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:11PM
Ho ho ho, you're so clever, creating that strawman and knocking it right now. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great if it worked; I'm saying the Hyperloop won't work as intended, and is a complete waste of money. It makes more sense to install something that works instead of some bullshit future-tech that only runs in the dreams of the followers of the Cult of Elon Musk, wouldn't you think? Although I wish Abu Dhabi godspeed, maybe their huge cash pile can accelerate the train wreck that is Hyperloop so we can finally get off of it and do something useful.
The only way this could work is if this is just old maglev train tech repackaged with a Hyperloop brand name...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday November 09 2016, @10:50PM
I misread your phrase, "and is a complete waste of money" as "and is a complicated waste of money". Didn't make a lot of sense, so naturally, I read it again, and realized the mistake was my own.
But then, maybe it should be "complicated"? I mean, the more complicated the money trail gets, the fewer people who even understand the technology, all opens up new avenues for graft and corruption. So, yes, it will be a complicated waste of money, and no one will every know where all the money went.
As for the hyperloop itself - I dunno. Sounds great, but I'm not sure that the engineers can actually make anything like that, so that it lasts more than a couple years. Prototypes and proofs are easy. Building a durable product is another thing altogether.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 10 2016, @11:23AM
My personal take is one that was floated on this forum some time ago: That Hyperloop is simply a precursor to some kind of orbital launch system to help Elon get to Mars.
Think about it, if you build a big/ fast enough "hyperloop" in an equatorial location, open it up at one end and point it towards the sky you have a very cheap way of firing stuff (maybe not people, but definitely stuff) into orbit.
If the Emiratis want to help fund SpaceX's R&D then I'm all for it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 10 2016, @05:59PM
I played with this page for a couple minutes. http://www.ajdesigner.com/constantacceleration/cavelocity.php [ajdesigner.com]
Build that open ended hyperloop, capable of accelerating your vehicle at 3 gravities. (I use 3 G as a guideline, because Formula One cars accelerate at roughly 3G, but multiple sources say that you will black out at 5G after a very short period of time) You have to maintain that acceleration to exceed escape velocity (11.2 km/s), for a period of ~420 seconds, or ~7 minutes. That's one hell of a long track. We could probably build something like that starting on a plain, and running up the side of a mountain. putting our vehicle into thinner atmosphere when it exited our tunnel. Still there would be a transition from near vacuum, to thin atmosphere, back to near vacuum and then vacuum with a few seconds - making a pretty turbulent ride.
My question is, how long would that track have to be? Twenty miles, or longer? Let me see if I can figure that out . . . .
I haven't found my answer, but NASA has worked on the idea - http://vc.airvectors.net/tarokt_4.html#m5 [airvectors.net]
Nothing in that article suggests that they were planning to launch manned vehicles from the maglev track though. They may have envisioned a lot more G's than my 3 G's. Nor is there any mention of the length of the track.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday November 11 2016, @09:39AM
but multiple sources say that you will black out at 5G after a very short period of time ... turbulent ride
Yeah, it would most likely be for unmanned payloads - fuel, robots, colony-building materials, food & water etc. People can go up the old fashioned way on traditional rockets (until the space elevator is built, obviously).
Also bear in mind that the launch tube doesn't necessarily have to take the vehicle all the way to escape velocity: You could equip the launch vehicle with rockets to do the last bit on its own, after all most of the fuel / mass of a spacerocket is for the earliest stages of acceleration and lift off. If you can "skip" the first few kilometres of atmosphere using a launch ramp of some kind, you'd need a vastly reduced fuel tank to do the last leg up into the black.