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posted by martyb on Thursday August 20 2015, @10:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the 'empty'-promises dept.

The Hyperloop, detailed by the SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk in a 57-page alpha white paper in August 2013, is a transportation network of above-ground tubes that could span hundreds of miles. With extremely low air pressure inside those tubes, capsules filled with people would zip through them at near supersonic speeds. Musk published the paper encouraging anyone interested to pursue the idea, since he's kinda a busy guy.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced today that it has signed agreements to work with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and global engineering design firm Aecom. The two companies will lend their expertise in exchange for stock options in the company, joining the army of engineers from the likes of Boeing and SpaceX already lending their time to the effort.
...
The startup plans to start construction on a full-scale, passenger-ready Hyperloop in 2016. The prototype will run 5 miles through Quay Valley, a planned community rising from nothing along Interstate 5, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ahlborn says he's got several potential investors.

The hyperloop would certainly redefine the concept of commuting.

Related: SpaceX will hold a Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2016.


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  • (Score: 2) by snick on Friday August 21 2015, @02:21PM

    by snick (1408) on Friday August 21 2015, @02:21PM (#225854)

    Don't be so sure. You are sealed inside a tube inside another tube. The outside air temperature is over 100deg many days. Hopefully the low air pressure in the outer tube will limit heat conduction to the train, but if by "break down" I mean AC/air pressure/air circulation system goes offline, and help is 100 miles away, you might find yourself wishing you were in a disabled plane with a chance of gliding to a safe landing.

    Every train I have ever been on has self service emergency exits everywhere. The process of evacuating a hyperloop train can't even start until a section of the tube is isolated and pressurized. Then you need to get out of the train. THEN you need to get out of the tube. THEN you need to climb down the tower. (sucks to be very young/old/disabled)

    I'm not saying that the technology is inherently unsafe. What I'm saying is that responsibly planning for outages will be prohibitively expensive in terms of evacuation facilities built into the tube/train and maintenance/safety facilities every X miles along the line (where X is calculated by the time it would take to reach and evacuate a disabled train vs how long (worst case) people could be expected to remain in a disabled train)

    A demo loop that stays within a geographically compact area is going to make it look a lot cheaper than it will actually be.

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