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posted by martyb on Saturday April 08 2017, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the whoooooooosh! dept.

The first tests of Elon Musk's revolutionary high-speed transport system could begin soon after Hyperloop One, one of 12 companies competing to make the idea a reality, completed its test track. The company has finished work on its 500 metre long testing tunnel, which is situated in the Nevada desert, near Las Vegas, and has a diameter of 3.3 meters. It is expected to run initial trials on the near-supersonic speed train in the first half of this year.

The development follows last month's news that Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, another competing company, has started building the first passenger capsule. The pods will be able to carry 28 to 40 passengers at a time and depart every 40 seconds, the company said. They could be ready as early as next year.


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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:09AM (4 children)

    by butthurt (6141) on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:09AM (#491043) Journal

    > If the capsule is already supersonic, the column of air coming behind won't make it faster [...]

    A mass of air can move at supersonic speeds, as anyone who's spent time in a supersonic wind tunnel knows.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_wind_tunnel [wikipedia.org]

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:13AM (3 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:13AM (#491045)

    The question is whether it can just by flowing from 1 ATM into a partial vacuum.
    That wiki page includes a diagram with a High-Pressure tank as input...

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:41AM (2 children)

      by butthurt (6141) on Sunday April 09 2017, @02:41AM (#491053) Journal

      I see I mistook your meaning.

      > The question is whether it can just by flowing from 1 ATM into a partial vacuum.

      From that same article: "[t]he Mach number and flow are determined by the nozzle geometry." In this scenario the breach would take the place of a nozzle. It also mentions a "pressure ratio," saying that a ratio of 10:1 can support a Mach 4 flow.

      > That wiki page includes a diagram with a High-Pressure tank as input...

      In the paragraph above, it explains that that's done to conserve energy and that "another way of achieving the huge power output is with the use of a vacuum storage tank." It says that that method is limited to low Reynolds numbers (meaning laminar flow). How much of that article matches reality, I don't know. I think that if a gas is released into a hard vacuum, the speed of the molecules will follow a Boltzmann distribution: the hotter the gas, the faster they will move, with the speed of light being the only limit to their speed. However, it's been a long time since I was in science class.