Hyperloop

[Cosmacelf]

Anyone have a link to the full press conference audio?

 

[CapitalistOppressor]

Yes, I caught that, too; he's not shy about making the tie-in. :biggrin:

The overall concept is brilliant. Partially evacuating the tube, making the tube substantially larger in diameter than the vehicle, and using an onboard compressor to move air from the front of the capsule to the back...very ingenious. 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. I hope somebody steps up to the challenge and makes it all work.

As someone with an engineering mindset, I am rather shocked at the quality and (to my knowledge) uniqueness of the proposal. This actually looks workable and economic to me. Incredibly simple, and robust when you look at how most of the widgets are contained within the pods and powered with swappable Tesla batteries.

The low pressure tube actually looks doable, compared to vacuum concepts or the unphysical high pressure concepts that folks were talking about.

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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'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. This part takes an additional two hours if not more. The Hyperloop station might have the same issues and if you add two hours to the trip then where is the advantage? I think Elon's idea for a small vertical take off jet might solve many of the logistical issues of airports, but then again maybe not. How about just speeding up the Tesla S, adding an autopilot and clearing the road. Traveling at 200 miles and hour is possible in a car and potentially safe on a clear and mostly straight road. Add autopilot features and then you preserve all flexibility and avoid all the airport/station issues. A 2 to 3 hour drive easily beats a 3 hour plane trip (one hour flight plus two hours in logistics).

The advantage is that it is faster, and potentially far cheaper.

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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).

There should be plenty of time for cars behind it to react.

Keep in mind, at the highest speeds a substantial amount of the air cushion is provided by aerodynamic forces alone. If the compressor fan fails there will be plenty of reaction time, and there is stored compressed air that will prevent an immediate loss of lift as well.

Losing the fans mostly causes the car to slow down because it can't overcome the aerodynamic forces that build up in front of it, as opposed to causing it to lose lift.

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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.

The design clearly envisions a network connecting multiple cities, along with multiple "onramps". The basic proposal covers only LA-SF, but it is clearly meant to used as a conceptual tool instead of an actual system design. Once you add in the additional complexity, cost will increase, but this system is so much cheaper than the alternative that it has a ton of room to grow.

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

In it's entirety.

 

[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.

Suspicions confirmed. Looks like CNN article was wrong.

Forbes is reporting about a dozen engineers involved.

"The plans Musk unveiled were developed by a team of a dozen engineers from both Tesla and SpaceX. They spent roughly nine months developing them, though Musk started thinking about a Hyperloop concept about two years ago. “It was very much a background task—it was not anybody’s full-time job,” he said. “We were just batting it around in the background at SpaceX and Tesla and then in the last few weeks we ended up allocating some full-time days to it.”

Hyperloop Update: Elon Musk Will Start Developing It Himself - Forbes

 

[Sparky]

An acoustic analysis would be useful. Granted, the lower pressure helps but lots of air still has to get moved in close proximity to passengers. I wonder how difficult it would be to shield the passengers from the noise of rushing air through the pod and the squirting air to provide air-bearing against 900 km of steel tube. Then some acoustic mode sets up to give passengers a blinding headache for the whole trip... gee, sort of like current air travel.

 

[CapitalistOppressor]

Rodolfo, I see your point and Kevin's. I'm not rushing to add shares, but I think this is the sort of day that will get people past comparing Elon to Steve Jobs or Henry Ford, and appreciate his gifts for what they are (which impacts how Tesla is perceived).

Comparing to Steve Jobs is insane, because I just don't see Jobs as that transformative on a world historical basis. And Henry Ford is wrong because he innovated in just a single area. The best comparison is Howard Hughes in terms of general flavor of their companies, but even that just doesn't capture it.

The number of major industries that Elon has attempted, or discussed attempting, to fundamentally disrupt is just shocking. This tendency is captured best in the one area that he has "failed" at, which was Paypal. It's not often understood, but Elon envisioned using Paypal to replace traditional banks. To this day he sounds bitter at how little Ebay has done to expand Paypal beyond the point where Elon left it.

The scope of the ambition implied in his critique of Ebay is just mind-boggling to me, especially since I can totally see how Paypal could have fundamentally transformed the banking industry instead of just turning into a payment system. The man is a danger to every established industry out there.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

The advantage is that it is faster, and potentially far cheaper.

Especially when you transport your car long distances and then drive out of the station.

 

[DaveT]

The man is a danger to every established industry out there.

The ability to come up with and execute on innovative ideas that disrupt multiple large industries is priceless. Today Elon demonstrated his chops again. It is truly remarkable.

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Comparing to Steve Jobs is insane, because I just don't see Jobs as that transformative on a world historical basis.

I give Steve Jobs more credit than that. He/Apple impacted the world profoundly with the iPhone/iPad (and resulting imitation Android) platforms (ie., just consider education/learning).

 

[JRP3]

Especially when you transport your car long distances and then drive out of the station.

I think I'd rather see a fleet of available cars on the other end instead of bothering to move an entire car.

 

[mitch672]

I think I'd rather see a fleet of available cars on the other end instead of bothering to move an entire car.

I think transporting your actual car is a far more valuable concept, you don't need to rent etc. this concept is similar to the Amtrack "Auto Train", except way more convenient.. The auto train loads cars in the morning outside Washington DC and heads south to Florida, the issue is, it only takes you about 500 miles, and it's all day, and it drops you off at the beginning of Florida, which is a very long state, most are going to Ft Lauderdale/Miami, that's still another 500 mile drive IN Florida to get to.. In short, the auto train is a failure, for most people. Elon's concept would be much better.

 

[JRP3]

Sure, the concept of moving your car with you is better, I think the reality of the engineering makes more sense to have cars waiting at the other end if you need one. Much cheaper build.

 

[EVNow]

Sure, the concept of moving your car with you is better, I think the reality of the engineering makes more sense to have cars waiting at the other end if you need one. Much cheaper build.

But you are transferring the cost to the passengers who now need to rent the car.

 

[Russell B]

The whole California "bullet train" concept seemed like a boondoggle to me. Politicians like to put people to work and will find the money to fund "bridges to nowhere". Along comes Elon who was offended by the concept of a fast train and its cost. Do you know anyone who would take a train to LA from SF that took hours and then you were dumped somewhere, probably in the boonies.

Can't believe how cool it would be to drive my Tesla on the hyperloop and drive off less than an hour later. I drive between LA and SF twice a month and this would be amazing.

What excites me is that this may actually happen because we have a very bright governor who has no further political ambitions, controls the legislature and has the support of the unions who could fight this. He'd love to be known as the first elected official to be part of changing the world of transportation.

One other thought, Elon originally said it was open-source but has now changed his mind. My guess is that some really smart people at venture capital firms, tech law firms and consultants told him that, to get it done, he'd need to control it and they will raise the money, in about one day. He seems to have an almost unlimited capacity for work and adding a third company to his CEO list is feasible.

 

[JRP3]

But you are transferring the cost to the passengers who now need to rent the car.

The savings in the build and in operating energy might more than subsidize the cost.

 

[EVNow]

The savings in the build and in operating energy might more than subsidize the cost.

Or you recover the extra cost by charging more to transport cars.

I understand your "efficient" transportation part - but transporting cars is just such an appealing idea, that might make the whole project more feasible.

 

[DaveT]

One other thought, Elon originally said it was open-source but has now changed his mind. My guess is that some really smart people at venture capital firms, tech law firms and consultants told him that, to get it done, he'd need to control it and they will raise the money, in about one day. He seems to have an almost unlimited capacity for work and adding a third company to his CEO list is feasible.

Hyperloop is still open source. It's just that Elon is tempted to make an initial prototype. This was clarified in the press conference this afternoon.

Hyperloop Update: Elon Musk Will Start Developing It Himself - Forbes

 

[EVNow]

It was smart to have made it an open source - now nobody can patent it.

I wonder whether some of the other daring CEOs like Bezos or Google guys would try it.

 

[voidptr]

My thesis that Tesla is just SpaceX's Martian Ground Transportation Division continues to gain credence . Anyone notice how many times the phrase "1/6th the atmosphere on Mars" appeared in that paper? That's not exactly a relatable reference for most people, but it's an easy one if you're already doing the math in your head on how to build a long distance transportation network between Martian colonies. It's even more suited for there than here -- routing is even easier, the lower pressure differential may mean you don't need quite as heavy gauge steel for the tubes, and you need pressurized cargo pods anyway.

 

[sp4rk]

I think transporting your actual car is a far more valuable concept, you don't need to rent etc. this concept is similar to the Amtrack "Auto Train", except way more convenient.. The auto train loads cars in the morning outside Washington DC and heads south to Florida, the issue is, it only takes you about 500 miles, and it's all day, and it drops you off at the beginning of Florida, which is a very long state, most are going to Ft Lauderdale/Miami, that's still another 500 mile drive IN Florida to get to.. In short, the auto train is a failure, for most people. Elon's concept would be much better.

This works very well with Eurotunnel (UK to France) and there are various places, esp. Switzerland where you load your car onto a train to traverse a mountain range via tunnel. One is at Andermatt, north end of Gottard tunnel.

 

[kevin99]

Is there a recording for today's session on hyperloop?

 

[gym7rjm]

Or you recover the extra cost by charging more to transport cars.

I understand your "efficient" transportation part - but transporting cars is just such an appealing idea, that might make the whole project more feasible.

I agree. It would be a mistake to make the "Passenger Only" smaller tubed design. For just 25% more money you get more capsules (50 vs 40) and you have the flexibility to move passengers, cars, and cargo. The larger system just seems more future proof. I think building a system that could handle more is always prudent... especially when it's still a fraction of the cost of the "bullet" train proposal.