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.
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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.
Original Submission
Related Stories
On Monday, SpaceX announced that it would be holding a Hyperloop pod competition, inviting universities and private companies to build passenger pods based on SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's open sourced Hyperloop design. The company said it would build a one-mile test track for the pods on a lot adjacent to its Hawthorne, California headquarters.
The Hyperloop has been described as high speed rail combined with an air hockey table: in the system, human-sized pods are propelled by linear induction, with magnets on the outside of the pod repelling the magnets lining the track, which is enclosed in a low-pressure tube (to reduce drag on the pods). The system is supposed to move humans and cargo at a rate of 760 miles per hour.
The impetus for the idea was Musk's disapproval of California's attempts to build a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Musk detailed this in a 58-page document in 2013 (PDF), claiming that his Hyperloop idea could be built over the same stretch of land as California High Speed rail but for just $6 billion. (California's train system was estimated to cost around $68 billion as of this January.) But Musk decided to step back from the Hyperloop idea as soon as he put it forward. He made his designs open source and publicly said that neither SpaceX nor Tesla Motors, his electric vehicle company, would be building a Hyperloop.
Is a 1 mile long track long enough to test a train that goes 760 miles per hour?
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by snick on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:12PM
... a train carrying 300 people breaks down inside the tube 100 miles from anywhere?
Long haul enclosed trains would require an _incredible_ amount of safety and maintenance support, that just isn't getting factored in during the gee-whiz phase.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:24PM
There is probably no part of Central CA that is 100 miles from nowhere, anywhere, if by nowhere you mean a town with at least 25,000 people.
(Score: 2) by snick on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:30PM
By anywhere I mean a facility with the staffing and equipment to safely evacuate the train before the folks inside cook, and clear the track ... errrm, tube. Sure, there will be cows within 100 miles, but that won't help (much?)
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:44PM
It might as well be the middle of nowhere. It's going to be incredibly high up and the local population isn't going to have the tools or expertise to get in there and help.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by korger on Friday August 21 2015, @02:46AM
I'd much rather travel in a train that might break down, than in a plane that might break down. When an engine failure occurs, trains would normally just slow down to a halt, and waiting for a rescue team 100 miles from anywhere always beats crashing into the ground at terminal velocity from 13km above. Besides, European and East Asian practice has evidence that trains have an excellent safety record. Obviously this Hyperloop is new technology, which initially comes with increased risks, but it has the same potential for safety nevertheless, once the technology is perfected.
(Score: 2) by snick on Friday August 21 2015, @02:21PM
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @06:34AM
I thought you were going to ask "What happens when a train leaves San Francisco, heading north at a speed of 350 miles an hour. Another train leaves New York traveling south at 246 miles an hour...."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:22PM
I have word from a good source whose identity I will not disclose that Musk is lobbying the CA governor pretty hard to try to make something happen on the hyperloop.
(Score: 2) by SubiculumHammer on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:27PM
Well the article kind of makes that obvious. Should have had your *source* tell you it 4 months ago, or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @12:52AM
Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday August 21 2015, @04:35AM
That episode flew right over my head when I first saw it as a kid, but everytime I read about those kinds of ideas popping up in California, memories of that episode always nag the back of my head in disturbingly prophetic and unsettling ways.
Not because public transpiration is a bad thing, but because behind every good idea there's always at least one greedy bastard or interest willing to pocket more money at the expense of even safety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @11:01AM
I was curious whether anyone was old enough to get the reference (and I don't even consider that an "old" reference). I'm afraid I'm further out on the tail-end of the age distribution here.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday August 21 2015, @01:06AM
> With extremely low air pressure [in the surrounding environment], capsules filled with people would zip through them at near supersonic speeds.
If only anyone had invented such tech before, and installed infrastructure to allow slowdown of the capsules near their destination or at various points of their trip to enable an appropriate level of safety and population coverage... Will Elon's capsules include uncomfortable seats, smelly neighbors, luggage limits, and the TSA?
Don't get me wrong, I can't wait for the US to realize that high-speed rail is the answer to a lot of problems. But anything that runs on its own exotic tech has two major flaws: rerouting is impossible when sh*t happens, and you can't get adoption until every last mile is built, because you can't hop unto existing infrastructure to complete the trip.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @06:55AM
It doesn't have much carrying capacity for the cost.
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19848/musks-hyperloop-math-doesnt-add-up/ [greatergreaterwashington.org]
That means that the minimum separation between pods is probably closer to 80 seconds or more. Not a big deal. It still means 45 departures per hour. But that's only 1,260 passengers per hour in capacity. That's 10% of what the California High-Speed Rail can carry.
With a capacity of 1,260 passengers per tube, that means that the Hyperloop would need 10 tubes in each direction (not 1) to move the same number of passengers as the proposed high-speed line. And that would push the cost up by 10, which is actually more than the cost of the HSR.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @05:59PM
All true, but I love the first comment on TFA's thread.
"Maybe, but if it were to bankrupt a consortium of investors rather than the entire state of California, it would represent a vast improvement on current HSR plans."
Looking at it that way, yes, I have to agree. Privatize it, but don't subsidize it, and force them to let everyone in LA ride for FREE. Let those douche bag billionaires write a blank check to do it to the State's standards and watch 'em squirm.