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According to early reports the Hyperloop's initial tests (open air tests) were a success at their test track in North Las Vegas. Image.
It didn't go far but it did work. A metal sled accelerated from zero to 116 mph in 1.1 seconds, or about 2.4 Gs of force. It traveled little more than 100 meters, then stopped, kicking up a cloud of sand in the process.
The Verge has a couple articles Here, before the test and test pictures here.
Pencilled in for Q4 2016, however, is what the company is describing as its "Kitty Hawk" moment - a reference to the Wright Brother's first flight - where it plans to run a full-scale test track. Expected to be more than two miles of low-pressure tube, the pod inside should run at over 700 mph if all goes as planned.
Even if the system scales as Hyperloop One expects it to, human passengers may not be welcome, at least initially. The company is looking to cargo transportation as the most likely use for a commercial Hyperloop system - presumably because boxes and crates are less fragile than families - with interest already from a number of countries in a potential logistics system that would run through tubes and underground tunnels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:01AM
To be fair, my dad had discussed similar designs as far back as the 60s. And no doubt the working basics had been passed on long before then.
The difference is putting your money where your mouth is. With the sheer amount of STUFF being passed back and forth, maybe it makes more sense now than back when (not to mention better technology).
That doesn't detract from the accomplishment, nor how much this could transform transportation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:21AM
To be fair, my dad had discussed similar designs as far back as the 60s. And no doubt the working basics had been passed on long before then.
Sure, everybody "invented" (in their mind) the lowly pneumatic tube as a means of transportation. This is nothing more than an up-scale of the systems used in large office buildings for almost 100 years till computers made them mostly obsolete. Now you mostly just see them as drive through cashier lanes in banks,.
Right you are, its all about who would step up and actually build a human scale tube, Still, probably not many takers for the first 10 or 20 years till they solve all the potential problems. 700 MPH is "pink mist" speed if something goes wrong. You won't feel a thing.
But sooner or later it will probably be safe enough.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:55AM
pneumatic tube as a means of transportation. This is nothing more than an up-scale of the systems used in large office buildings
I don't think it is a good idea either; but no, it is not a pnuemaitic tube system.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:06PM
This test was "open air".
The completed system will indeed use pneumatic tubes, in that there will be a partial vacuum in the tubing ahead of the capsule to reducing drag.
If you don't believe the wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop [wikipedia.org]
then just check out Hyperloop's own site:
https://hyperloop-one.com/hardware [hyperloop-one.com] and also https://hyperloop-one.com/what-is-hyperloop [hyperloop-one.com] (on the latter one hover over they little blue green circles in the first cut away view.
Meets the definition of a pneumatic tube easily because there is no hard and fast definition. Some operated on compressed air, some on vacuum, and some on both,
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:04AM
Sure, everybody "invented" (in their mind) the lowly pneumatic tube as a means of transportation
Small difference being dad had a Masters in thermodynamics from Cal. Tech., and the "pneumatic" aspect mattered less than getting rid of wind resistance. The difficulty from his perspective was synchronizing closing sections of tunnels to be in a near vacuum right when the train passed through so there wasn't the waste and cost of a constant vacuum. The smarts bit was controlling the amount of air to act as a brake and propulsion, so short of overcoming initial inertia, the whole thing could be run with air pressure alone.
So no, not everybody.
Cargo (as in things) would be the logical application. Design it around shipping containers, and you've knocked billions off of the cost of transport. Pink mist doesn't happen until far into the future.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 12 2016, @04:22PM
> Design it around shipping containers, and you've knocked billions off of the cost of transport.
This.
If you can't drop a container straight inside a hyperloop carrier without opening it, you don't integrate with the container system, and therefore you can't really win big.
Shipping containers save handling money and time. Airline containers save handling and time. Heck, even moving companies bring you pods to save handling time.
If you have to open the box to transfer stuff at both ends of the tube, you lose your value proposition.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:40PM
What about the illegal immigrants hiding in the shipping containers? Every so often a few dozen of them turn up dead or dying at our ports. It's a serious problem. Putting them in one of those tubes wouldn't be beneficial to their health.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Tuesday May 24 2016, @06:10AM
Rather than placing a shipping container inside a vacuum carriage, would it be feasible to place one or more vacuum carriages inside a shipping container?
1702845791×2
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Thursday May 12 2016, @08:48AM
None of the individual components of the Hyperloop are new except the vehicle travelling in a (partial) vacuum tube to reduce air resistance (but this test was open air anyway). Magnetic propulsion, air cushions - old hat.
Anyway, this is not going to "transform transportation". I can see a single line being built between two cities, LA and SF probably, or LA to Las Vegas because of the novelty entertainment factor, and that will be it. It's capacity will be low; it will be a market niche like Concorde was. This is a billionaire playing with a dream he had, one that any of us might have but would never have the means to try it in reality. It is not particularly clever in engineering terms as a concept.
You can see Musk already backing off from the idea of human passengers. His company is beginning to realise the massive regulatory hoops and safety expense involved in public transport. We keep hearing nonsense that the Hyperloop will be cheaper than a conventional railway - but it is those regulatory and safety issues that make railways so expensive, and those same issues (and more) will appy to Hyperloop too.
But it won't be much good for freight either; freight does not need to be moved at extreme speed, and for economy freight needs a big loading gauge (ie the cross sectional area of the way, allowing double-stacking of containers for example). A large loading gauge the Hyperloop does not have, and making that tube bigger is going to make it disproportionatly more expensive.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:00AM
Here and now, future doesn't exist yet, eh?
What about a mature technology, tested on/with humans (and paid by greedy investors hunting unicorns, which recover their money from other more greedy/gullible ones), which enables SpaceX to build a mix of smaller StarTram [wikipedia.org] and single stage rocket at the end?
Some years ago, nobody thought of recovering the booster to reduce launching cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by frojack on Thursday May 12 2016, @06:05PM
Greedy Investors!
Those bastages! How dare those 1%-ers spend their ill gotten fortune polluting our pure ideas!!!
We must put an end to this project right away. As well as driverless cars, electric vehicles, solor power, wind farms, and every other new thing. Why: because greedy investors.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @10:30AM
None of the individual components of the Hyperloop are new except
adequate, cheap computing power to synchronize operations at near Mach 1. Ooops!
Anyway, this is not going to "transform transportation".
Except for the fact you can get produce picked in California the very same day in New York. All at a cheaper cost (amortized) than train.
I wonder what something like Wal-mart, which is a logistical powerhouse, could do with shipping anywhere that day? What would it do to inventory costs?
freight does not need to be moved at extreme speed
Which is why FedEx next day air is hemorrhaging money. Which is why automotive parts suppliers source from many different vendors in case of hiccups. Which is why the local sushi place gets overnight fresh fish daily.
What you meant to say is you don't require extreme speed.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 12 2016, @03:20PM
So you say the credit for the Hyperloop should go to Intel?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 12 2016, @05:32PM
I'm saying someone dense enough to compare the technology from the 60s to today without acknowledging the thing he's typing on is probably free from the ravages of intelligence or is a rogue chatbot that escaped a BBS and still thinks 640k is good enough.