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from the just-wait-until-Apple-supplies-an-iPod dept.
We had submissions from two Soylentils on a recent high-speed demonstration by Hyperloop One.
Hyperloop One's Passenger Pod Takes its First Ride
Just weeks after Hyperloop One demonstrated a working, albeit slow, version of its levitating sled, the company has made another leap forward. This time around, the startup has successfully tested its XP-1 passenger pod, reaching speeds of up to 192 mph and levitating off the track as it accelerated.
XP-1 traveled for just over 300 meters before the brakes kicked in and it rolled to a gradual stop, hitting a top speed of 192 mph. That speed puts Hyperloop One's system a little bit ahead of Category 1 high-speed rail, which has a maximum running speed of 155mph, although it's not yet faster than Japan's bullet train.
Then again, Hyperloop One's plan is to push its pods at speeds closer to 750 mph, but that's clearly going to be tough to test in a tube that's just 500 meters long. But the milestones, slow and steady, are being met, and it's clearly a demonstration of the company's strength that it is developing its prototypes for real.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/hyperloop-one-first-pod-xp1-test/
Hyperloop One Claims Successful 192mph Test
For the number nuts, such as himself, your humble editor (FP), in a freshly woken daze - and assuming 300 m of acceleration, 50 m of gliding, and 150 m of deceleration - has calculated that the acceleration was at 2.5G, and the deceleration was at 5.0G, which doesn't make breakfast seem such a good idea.
[NB: That contains a factor of 2 error, as pointed out below by a careful reader, my bad -- FP.]
Today Hyperloop One claimed that its demo pod reached 192mph (310 kph) on the 500m (1/3 mile) test track that the startup built outside of Las Vegas. Hyperloop One showed off that demo pod last month—it's basically an 8.7m (28.5 ft) carbon-fiber shell on a magnetically levitating chassis.
This test run follows on a "Phase 1" test that sent a bare-bones sled down the test track at 70mph. At the time, Hyperloop One had said Phase 2 would involve getting to 250mph, but in a recent press release, the startup said that the 192mph test run this month satisfied Phase 2 development goals. Ars has reached out to Hyperloop One for clarification, and we'll update when we receive a response.
Although no media were present, Hyperloop One claims that in this most recent test, its large pod "accelerated for 300 meters and glided above the track using magnetic levitation before braking and coming to a gradual stop."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday August 03 2017, @02:48PM (9 children)
Low capacity compared to what?
It's unlikely to compete with highways anytime soon, but that was never the goal.
On the other hand if it lives up to it's promise it will be considerably faster, more efficient, and higher-volume than airlines, and quite possibly higher volume than trains as well. Sure, each individual car will have low capacity, but you can move a *lot* more cars per hour than with passenger rail, especially in the US where passengers trains are typically second-class customers on rails dedicated to freight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:08PM (3 children)
It's only faster than planes because of a limited number of people willing and able to pay. The Concorde was able to manage nearly double what the Hyperloop is aiming for and can be routed between arbitrary end points.
This is an idea that should have been killed years ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @04:18PM (1 child)
The Concorde has killed people. Hyperloop hasn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @07:07PM
Yet.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 03 2017, @05:30PM
The Concorde was also far less efficient, utterly unsuitable for shorter-range hops, and a major public nuisance (which is why it was artificially restricted to too few routes to be profitable). If anything comes of the NASA "quiet supersonic" initiative that aspect may change, but even if the efficiency improves in kind, it will still remain abysmal.
Meanwhile, the efficiency of Hyperloop derivatives may eventually exceed even that of trains (currently the most efficient form of transportation besides sailboats), is far more flexible on effective route length, and may easily outpace supersonic planes over extended straight stretches, such as crossing the great plains or going underground.
It remains to be seen if it can *deliver* on those promises, but the basic concept is over a century old - it's about time we gave it a shot.
Besides, it's not your money being spent, so what do you care? Ther will *always* be something better for other people to spend their money on, and most of the time it's spent on far worse pursuits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 03 2017, @05:39PM (1 child)
wouldn't you have to have a mechanical arm pluck people from the cars by their heads? how is it going to be fast when these fat asses still have to enter and exit the pods? have you seen people doing anything? i guess you would have to have loading and unloading zones and enough extra pods to compensate for the slugs.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday August 03 2017, @05:47PM
You'll have to troll better than that.
Besides, the fact is that those small cars mean fewer people to deal with - and small groups of people can usually be shepherded more efficiently than large ones - think loading a roller coaster versus a subway. (Also, a lot of that problem seems to be American in nature - Japan for example has radically more efficient loading and unloading behavior.)
And once your car is loaded it doesn't matter how slow anyone else is - they'll be sitting on a siding while you zoom on past.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 03 2017, @10:24PM (2 children)
Illogic. You can't just stick an "are" there - what *can* be done is not necessarily what *is* done.
You *can* move people more efficiently (measured by a balance between person-kilometers per hour and person kilometers per unit cost, including externalities) using rail rather than cars. Were fuel to be free, your argument might be correct, but alas on planet realism that's not the case.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday August 04 2017, @02:03AM
... I'm not sure I understand your objection. To start with, my "are" was simply a comment on the reality of passenger rail in the US hat exacerbates the problem - a reality that's unlikely to change unless the federal government backpedals on some extremely lucrative and well-established railway-usage laws.
And to clarify, when I said "cars" I was intending to refer to "hyperloop cars". Obviously rail blows the socks off traditional cars in terms of efficiency. At this point I think it's premature to comment too extensively on how Hyperloop cars would compare to trains in terms of energy spent per passenger-mile - certainly they would be more responsive to varying demand, and friction losses would be radically lower. If it operates as planned it will in many respects be a fully-electric vacuum-train with offloaded motors and low-loss regenerative braking. The big question would be how much energy overhead is incurred to maintain vacuum and levitation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 04 2017, @10:23AM
english be hard for you