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India is the latest nation to make plans for its own Hyperloop, with the south eastern state of Andhra Pradesh signing a deal with startup Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) to build a high-speed transport route between two of its major cities.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is just one of the startups working away on Elon Musk's futuristic transport concept. When fully realized, such a system would see passengers and cargo flung through near-vacuum tubes at around the speed of sound in specially designed capsules that could cut the travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco to just 30 minutes.
[...] And now it is making a move in India. The agreement signed between HTT and the government of Andhra Pradesh aims to connect the city centers of Amaravati and Vijayawada, which take around an hour to travel between by car but would take just six minutes by Hyperloop. HTT will start with a six-month feasibility study in October looking at the cityscapes to determine the best route for its transport tubes. If all goes to plan, construction will begin thereafter.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Saturday September 09 2017, @12:45PM (7 children)
You don't understand. This is not about relieving the existing railways - the carrying capacity of the Hyperloop will be abysmal. It is partly a whimsey by the politicians (as it is for Musk himself) who have thrown in the towel about dealing with India's real problems and want a distraction for themselves and the media.
It is also partly about providing transport for an elite, including the politicians themselves. You see, if they increased railway capacity or built a new road between the cities, it would promptly be filled by the same peasants, chickens and goats as fill the existing ones, even if they put futile "First Class" labels on it. A Hyperloop however would be an entirely separate transport system with its own entrance gates and the hermetic seal of the tube itself as a very effective physical class barrier between the haves and have-nots.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:36PM
In case you weren't paying attention: (grin) [soylentnews.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:39PM (1 child)
That's also true of India's space program. Why build rocket ships when you can't build toilets?
Then again, peoples have a deep need to feel proud of themselves, mixed with fatalism about things that have always been. The things that have always been feel impossible to change, while the things that are new and exciting feel possible.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:52PM
That's also true of India's space program. Why build rocket ships when you can't build toilets?
You could make similar criticisms of the US: why build rocket ships and space stations and Moon landers when you can't give your people universal healthcare and 1/6 of your children are growing up in poverty without enough food? But it's still correct to pursue the space program; fixing the social ills takes far more money, and also political will which just doesn't exist, and pursuing space programs has created huge economic benefits (from better technology developed) which do help much of the population. We'd certainly be in a far worse economic state now if we had never bothered with a space program or landing on the Moon.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:42PM (3 children)
HyperLoop isn't really a competitor to road-based or rail-based transport. It's competition for airlines. India already has a class-separated transport system: they have airports and airlines just like any large nation these days. The poor people with chickens and goats aren't riding on jetliners across the country. HyperLoop could very well be an excellent alternative to regional airlines, transporting similar numbers of people per car, but with far less energy and greater safety than a regional or commuter jet. If it gets high-volume and cheap enough, it could probably compete with first-class rail service too (which would leave more room on trains for everyone else).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 09 2017, @09:17PM (2 children)
This remains to be seen.
- "far less energy"- creating a vacuum in a long tube doesn't come for free. I'd love to see a comparison of the energy expenditure between the two cases;
- "greater safety" - mmm... in case of a temporary glitch, the pilots of a plane have some tens of seconds to compensate. The only advantage of a vacuumed tunnel: at 136 m/s (500kph), you'll be dead before you realize something is wrong
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:16AM
Plus, I really couldn't care about energy use; what really matters is energy efficiency. A mode of transportation could use more energy but be more efficient. For example, airplanes are simultaneously the most and least efficient mode of common transportation, depending on the plane load. It is hard to beat the passenger-miles of commercial flights and the mile-tons in some freight lines. But on the same token, Richy Rich taking his A380 alone is a horrendous waste of resources.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:00PM
Not to mention the energy (and material) that goes into making those steel tubes.