"Hyperloop" The future of travel to be unveiled today.

This will never happen. The tube has to go through so many States, Counties and Districts. That is going be a sh*t load of planning red tape that will need to get passed. And it wont get passed because, there is no way they will just let Hyperloop whiz through their patch without it stopping.

Celticfire wrote: »

Twitter Photo

He was up all night doing that? pffft, 1st year stuff.

From the picture and the blog it looks like it's not the vacuum maglev people were speculating about. That's always been a bit of a pipe dream.

This appears to be an attempt to address the issue of distances that are too long to drive, but too short for supersonic flight. Supersonic flight's problem is that it's only good over huge distances. By the time you get up to speed and altitude, you've already covered about 500km. For a 1,000km flight, you'll then have to descend again. This was concord's issue. It was a nice novelty, but didn't offer enough to be a real competitor to normal flight because people rarely need to cover those kinds of distance. This is why we've been stuck in a speed limbo with flight for 30 or 40 years, practically restricted to speeds of 500-600km/h (once you get going that is).

So this looks like an attempt to break that barrier - mid-haul flight distances at supersonic speeds. There's clearly an intake of some kind on the front, but maybe that's to provide pressurised air for the air cushion, which perhaps stabilises the tube at full speed. Maybe it is maglev

Ultimately new transport ideas are all about buy-in. You can have the perfect idea, but if nobody invests in your infrastructure, it goes nowhere. My guess here is that the location he's using as an example/pilot is well chosen. The hope is probably that big tech like Google and Apple will help raise a couple of billion dollars to get the first line running. If that works as promised, governments won't be long investing in their own lines.

It better be a see through tube.. I swear to god that will be the most awesome thing if it happens

uncle_sam_ie wrote: »

This will never happen. The tube has to go through so many States, Counties and Districts. That is going be a sh*t load of planning red tape that will need to get passed. And it wont get passed because, there is no way they will just let Hyperloop whiz through their patch without it stopping.

Isn't that what the said when they were building the first railroads in America about the Indians, sorted them out goodo.

galway to dublin in what...10 mins?

or even london for that matter...or paris

Here's another PDF link if the first one doesn't work:
http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf

I thought the Japs had already done this years ago

Short version for anyone who's TL;DR'd it:

So you have two low-pressure tubes. Low-pressure versus vacuum because the latter is hard to maintain and any break or leaks and the whole system shuts down. Low pressure systems can tolerate breaks in the short-term without having to suspend traffic. And yes, the concept art is glass tubes.

The whole thing is electric-driven, powered by solar panels mounted along the entire tube. In the California sunshine, this will provide more than enough energy for nighttime and overcast conditions.

Friction is reduced by air cushions, using the same principle as air hockey tables, as well as aerodynamic design on the pods.

Headwind & drag is reduced by a fan on the front - effectively the same principle as the engine on an aircraft - which sucks air in, providing a small amount of propulsion, but also providing air pressure for the cushion and other stuff.

The motor is a simple induction motor, which basically used electricity and metal to create magnetic fields to push the thing along. This isn't pie-in-the-sky, it's basically the same technology that's been in use since the mid-1800s, using electromagnetic principles known since the mid-1700s. Since it's a low-pressure tube with minimal friction, it's estimated that the motor only needs to kick in every 70km at full speed, to give a boost. Making the power needs of this thing exceptionally low.

He claims that because it's mounted (like a monorail) and requires relatively little space, it can basically run along the length of the existing highway 5 in California with minimal need to use or buy land. Railroad by comparison requires a lot of space and is very disruptive to other forms of transport.

Price really is key. It's very US-centric as it appears to be an attempt to provide an alternative solution specifically for some proposed Californian railway project. Cost of that project is nearly 70 billion dollars. The projected cost of this Hyperloop is 6 billion dollars, 5.5bn of which is the tube itself. For $500m dollars you get 40 pods capable of carrying 1120 passengers.
For comparison, an A330 carries 300 passengers and will set you back $200m.

Everything about it seems sounds as far as I can see.

I don't get the big unveiling. I read about this in the Reader's Digest about ten years ago. Big underground tunnels with trains that were propelled with magnets at fantastic speeds. It was a concept then and it's still a concept now. Not sure how Musk can claim this as a big new idea.

Primarily he appears to have overcome the major technical challenges associated with such a system. The MagLev vacuum concept has always been blocked by two big problems - the maglev and the vacuum. Musk has eliminated both of these things from the design.

Big technical leaps are rarely made by inventing brand new technologies. They're more often made by merging a number of well proven and tested technologies into a new application. This is basically what he's proposing. There's nothing in the design which is a brand new untested technology.