Hyperloop

[ToddRLockwood]

Wow. I can't believe how far Elon dug into his proof-of-concept. The detailed solutions are both fantastic and real — to my eyes. I'll be very interested to see where this leads. The open-source approach is totally right, and it's exactly what's been missing in civil engineering over the past 30 years. Too many monolithic corporate projects looking after their bottom line while avoiding taking any revolutionary engineering risks.

 

[gregincal]

I have to question his "can't crash" claim. If the fan on a car fails it's going to slow down quickly, and there is another car coming at 700mph right behind it. I also don't see what's holding cars in place laterally. The air cushions lift it off the floor of the tube but what keeps it from bouncing from side to side?

I wouldn't bounce from side to side. The circle of the tube would cause it to slide up the side and then back down again. As far as a fan failing the idea is that the following cars would also do an emergency brake as well. Obviously we all know "can't crash" isn't really true, but "substantially less likely to crash than a train or airplane" is good enough (not that I'm saying it is, but it looks good).

 

[MilosK]

Simple: you can fly, drive, or loop from place to place.

Don't overlook the obvious! Yes, I like loop too – I was trying to be a bit more poetic


And BTW élan is French for a quick dash or sprint. Seems too good of a fit not to be able to use it somehow!

 

[Rodolfo Paiz]

As an engineer, my mind goes immediately to those devilish details: you know, things like high-speed switching at the proposed branch points; design of air locks and stations; security of the infrastructure as well as TSA-style vetting of passengers; plus all the myriad of failure modes and emergency cases that have to be considered and dealt with.

If the loop is intended to link city pairs together as airplanes do, then you might not use high-speed switching at all. You'd take the SF-LA loop, then switch to another loop to go to San Diego, just like you switch planes today. If there's a pod going from SF to SD, you could conceptually add the ability to move the pod from one tube to another and have the pod switch to another loop instead of having the pax switch from pod to pod... but that would be low-speed switching and done at a station.

I can also imagine high-speed switching being done with large-radius curves at the Y-point and using magnets to ensure that the pod "clings" to either the left or right wall, but that's an additional and fairly interesting challenge, and one not without substantial risks in case of component failure.

 

[gregincal]

Secondly, imagine building the same pylons as planned and then instead of running a tube, you run a railway line on top of it. What fundamentally is it that makes the railway line more expensive? Is it the weight requirement of the cars that causes the supporting structure to be more expensive?

I assume that the weight is the difference. The cost of building an elevated train is hugely more expensive than building a ground level train.

 

[SteveG3]

while we're unlikely to hear of anyone jumping in with funding in very near term, how awesome would it be if the respected household names from Silicon Valley past and present find the alpha compelling and chime in on the merit of the idea within weeks if not days.

 

[Norbert]

Elon Musk ‏@elonmusk 1h

Btw, this is not the very latest version. Will post an updated version with several late arriving corrections in a few hours.

 

[pete8314]

We laugh, but what if CA did in fact put up a KS to fund a developmental version, then green lit a full scale model?

I was only half joking. Probably not KS, but a crowd-funded pot of money for a crowd-sourced solution isn't such a bad idea, as long as Elon had some kind of control over it.

I'd steer clear of letting the government anywhere near it, it would just end up costing 3x as much, and be half as effective (that's a optimistic view, and I mean any government).

 

[deonb]

More interesting than a train. Seems crazy to spend billions of dollars and a decade building a system based on a hyped up design from the 1800's. Hats off for Elon and his team putting this out there. I'm sure a lot of effort went into this. However, I wonder about the cost elements? I'm sure that two rail lines and a level rail bed might sound less expensive than two air tight steel tubes, if not for the reality of land rights and an irregular landscape.

I think the "trick" lies in the fact that the Hyperloop capsules would be a lot lighter than a railway car. So you can just span the tube between pylons - can't span a railway track over more than a couple of feet.

I'm not convinced that the hyperloop idea gets around all of those. Seems to me that the one hour required for Southwest Airlines is a reasonable amount of time to travel from LA to SF. The killer is the wasted time getting to the airport, parking, security screening, waiting for luggage, etc.

You'd have the luggage in the same capsule (like the train), which cuts down over an hour on the checkin & checkout requirement. It will be more like loading luggage onto a small bus (think Airport shuttle).

The other thing is, you leave whenever you're ready. For an airplane flight you have to arrive a couple of hours early because if you get stuck in traffic on the way, tough luck to you. With the Hyperloop you just arrive whenever. This cuts down the "sitting and waiting for the airplane to board" part of the trip.

 

[Rodolfo Paiz]

Don't overlook the obvious! Yes, I like loop too – I was trying to be a bit more poetic


And BTW élan is French for a quick dash or sprint. Seems too good of a fit not to be able to use it somehow!

The English definition of élan is derived from the French, but no longer consistent with it. Elan refers to a spirit or mood, as in doing something with élan or showing élan. And it's neither a verb nor action-oriented itself; and it's a two-syllable word with a long "e" at the beginning, so it's phonetically less convenient. "Loop" is a one-syllable, quick, convenient verb that also directly describes what's going on, it's part of the name already given to the technology, and it's more intuitive.

I like your creativity, I just don't agree with your perception in this case.

 

[DaveT]

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/12/news/economy/hyperloop-elon-musk/index.html

"Musk, a co-founder of PayPal and the man behind commercial space transport firm Space-X and electric car maker Tesla, said up to 1,000 employees from both Tesla and Space X worked to come up with the idea, which is basically an elevated tube which moves travel pods at nearly the speed of sound."​

Wow, mind-blowing if true.

 

[lorih]

Have you read the 57 page report? If you did you would be as impressed as I am...can someone say "technogasm"?

 

[brianstorms]

Too bad the Hyperloop couldn't just be dropped into the Pacific and run from SF to LA suspended underwater...

Think of the expensive rights-of-way land issues you could avoid...

 

[SteveG3]

http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/12/news/economy/hyperloop-elon-musk/index.html

"Musk, a co-founder of PayPal and the man behind commercial space transport firm Space-X and electric car maker Tesla, said up to 1,000 employees from both Tesla and Space X worked to come up with the idea, which is basically an elevated tube which moves travel pods at nearly the speed of sound."​

Sounds kind of crazy: "up to 1000 employees from both Tesla and SpaceX worked to come up with the idea."

I saw 10 in another story. I think we all know these pieces can be that far off the mark.

 

[deonb]

Sounds kind of crazy: "up to 1000 employees from both Tesla and SpaceX worked to come up with the idea."

How the heck do you keep a secret between 1000 people??

 

[Norbert]

Have you read the 57 page report? If you did you would be as impressed as I am...can someone say "technogasm"?

I don't see page numbers...could you describe?

 

[pete8314]

Bless CNN.

This piece suggests that Elon said on the call that he'd probably build the prototype, unless someone beats him to it.

 

[vfx]

... As far as a fan failing the idea is that the following cars would also do an emergency brake as well. Obviously we all know "can't crash" isn't really true, ..

In this use, "crash proof' means one vehicle traveling on it's own. Of course a plane or tank could crash into it.

I bet the supercharger team plotted out the route.

 

[lorih]

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf

I wouldn't dare try to summarize 57 pages here..but read yourself. And hopefully we can all hear live or recorded version of Elon's conference call. That will be great, because people will ask questions, and he'll answer directly.

 

[Cheerose]

Only took an hour, but a NYT columnist on Twitter called it "Vaporware"