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Hyperloop One claims that its prototype ultra-fast train has completed a first full systems test in a vacuum, reaching a speed of 70 mph. The sled was able to magnetically levitate on the track for 5.3 seconds and “reached nearly 2Gs of acceleration,” according to the company.
The test was conducted privately but Hyperloop One offered some video that included footage from testing. Based on that footage plus a few seconds of additional b-roll shared with media, a lightweight skeleton sled uses a linear motor to accelerate, levitates briefly, and then comes to a halt as the brakes are applied.
Hyperloop One was created as an answer to a challenge from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who wrote a white paper envisioning a mode of transportation that would send pods at speeds greater than 700mph using a low-friction environment and levitation using air bearings.
Source: Ars Technica
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday July 14 2017, @10:14AM (12 children)
A serious question here.
Can anyone explain to me why there is such a hype around the hyperloop? I just don't get it in terms of throughput (cf anything but cars) nor infrastructure (heavier req. than tram, will cause interference between that of train and subway)), and in terms of speed it just is a vactrain (w low capacity). so, can anyone please explain the hype to me? Or is the hype that someone finally started to try to build a vactrain?
TBH the only advantage of it that I see is short platform length but that is a tradeoff (we build long platforms to allow higher throughput)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @10:44AM (11 children)
First, it's Elon Musk's pet project so there is this celebrity thing going on. Second, lower real estate footprint meaning a more lenient right of way and less obstruction to other modes of travel. It can go underground or suspended in air which will help with getting track through urban areas. Third, much higher speed possible than with a normal high speed train. At 600 MPH, it's barely subsonic (but considerably faster than current high speed trains), but there's no physical restriction to making it supersonic while trying the same with a high speed train means a surface sonic boom.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Friday July 14 2017, @11:04AM (5 children)
Gosh, if only normal trains could go underground or on raised tracks. (The Tube, Docklands Light Railway).
It's all about speed (but to be honest, most train systems could go a lot faster if you wanted them to - the problem is that people want to get off occasionally. And long-distance fast trains aren't really up to affected speeds anyway. Even Japan's bullet trains have speed limits in places. Anyone who followed Concorde will tell you what will happen - the infrastructure and costs of such speed will far outweigh the people willing to pay the extra to use them.
It's purely "because". Which pretty much sums up Musk's projects. Throw money at the problem, rather than think about it. Hope that if you throw enough money, one thing somewhere might take off enough to pay it all back. Current status: Nope. While you have billions to throw at it, anything can be done. The problem is that the reason these things weren't done before is because nobody wants to throw billions at something that will eventually exhaust all funds and prove it can't be cost-effective.
Sure, we threw billions at going to the Moon. And then never went back. And now NASA can't afford to get to Mars. We proved it could be done, but that it wasn't cost-effective, and spent the next 50 years sending small satellites, probes and robots instead (which is what we did before then too).
I mean, you do have to have people invest, and you do have to have the idiotic "first buyers", and you do have to have pioneers. But it seems to be more "let's throw money at things that industry has already proved are hard to do", rather than "let's throw money at something no-one has tried, or something entirely new".
Musk isn't the first guy on the planet to think that reusable space modules, or large batteries, or fast trains are good ideas in theory. Far from it. He's just the first guy that thought "If I just spend billions on this, something magical will happen and it will all become more viable, and I won't end up spending all this money, not making any of it back, and everything eventually running out so we end up back where we were, but poorer".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @12:33PM (2 children)
Higher loads per unit length. Keep in mind that the hyperloop vehicles are smaller and lighter.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday July 14 2017, @12:43PM
And travelling much faster, hence shallower turns and much harder to design the structures to contain such things at speed.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday July 14 2017, @07:56PM
Weight is not an issue underground. Hyperloop is lighter only because its cars carry a much smaller payload. But it will require some massively expensive infrastucture nevertheless because, at its speed, the route must have very easy curvature (in both horizontal and vertical planes). So expect some very long and lofty viaducts, or tunnels, unless you are building it in a flat and featureless desert.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Friday July 14 2017, @05:02PM (1 child)
"If I just spend billions on this, something magical will happen and it will all become more viable, and I won't end up spending all this money, not making any of it back, and everything eventually running out so we end up back where we were, but poorer".
You know, other than all of the random tech discovered along the way that will help inventors down the line create the next stage.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday July 14 2017, @05:42PM
Cool... so those batteries, for instance. Patented tech in them that makes a significant difference. Or just a bunch of Li-Po's in a box?
Or the electric car? That's no different to any other on the market?
Or the SpaceX vehicle? That's basically... a rocket (I *almost* could grant you something about the landing tech, but... we landed on the Moon and took off again in the 60's, the only difference here is that the rocket turns back and lands before even getting out of orbit - technically *inferior* to 60's Apollo tech).
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday July 14 2017, @11:14AM (4 children)
I guess this would explain why I don't get it - I don't get the thing with celebrities either.
Just like with any other train that can run on elevated platforms and in tunnels? (i.e: any train but heavy freight)
Also - there is a huge hassle to get permissions for subway and underground railways (bigger issue than most expect)
As I mentioned - just a low-capacity vactrain.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 14 2017, @12:36PM (3 children)
Higher speed compensates. It also means lower loads per unit length which is important for elevated track.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday July 14 2017, @01:39PM (2 children)
Not that much really - in general if you want a train to arrive faster you don't increase its speed but you reduce the number of stops (after a while it ends up with being in a constant deacceleration/acceleration cycle, and people dislike the g-forces of agressive (de-)acceleration). Also, high speed matters less than capacity unless you botch the passenger car design - a 1000 passenger train takes about as long to disembark-embark passengers as a 120 passenger train. So unless you start to bump the speed by 3-8 times it is often the less useful improvement (btw, lots of trains today are already approved for 250-300kph traffic, and shinkansen maglev aims for 500kph)
Regarding elevated track we know very well how to build elevated tracks - for instance the Shinkanshen runs on elevated platforms in bigger cities (dedicated track, keeps down on delays), and also the Shanghai Maglev runs quite a bit on elevated platforms. But yeah, if you skimp of maintainance or basic engineering lower load becomes important very quickly.
(Score: 1) by SomeRandomGeek on Friday July 14 2017, @02:51PM (1 child)
The trick is to have the vehicle stop fewer times. So, you make every train an express train. Consequently every passenger experiences an effective speed that is the same as the vehicle's maximum speed. Of course to run so many express trains, there is a smaller demand for each train. So you have to run more trains, each with fewer passengers. The smaller trains needed for the reduced number of passengers can be lighter, which dramatically reduces the cost of building the road bed needed to carry the trains. With many smaller trains, the system becomes dependent on fully automated vehicles, for both cost and safety reasons.
Whether the system will work has a lot more to do with logistics than technology. Of course there is a way to build it so that it will be slow, inconvenient, and expensive. There is also a way to make it fast and convenient, with costs TBD.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday July 14 2017, @05:10PM
Which also increases the overhead per passenger (then again - a modern train is at about 500-750kg/seated passenger, so quite a bit to fiddle with).
But yeah, I agree that the issue is with routing - just like with normal trains (the reason why the Shinkansen is on time all the time - dedicated tracks) - and I kinda look forward to seeing just how they plan in integrating the recently-stopped capsule with the at max-speed-flow, I'm curious just how much redudancy you must build into it for that (for normal trains they use long stretches of rail, with the relative speed being higher in the hyperloop...). However, with the low capacity of the hyperloop the routing either will be nightmarish [quite a few capsules] or it will be mosly empty (trains solve the routing to a large degree by using higher capacity carriers - thereby needing less routing).
So yeah - still wondering what the hype is about with the Hyperloop. :)