Hyperloop Bankrupt and Busted.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

I'm sorry but how does that contradict what I said? He wanted it canceled so he pushed and lobbied for a competing project he knew was bullshit, or at the very least wasn't well thought out. Insisting that it would cost less than $10 billion is either an intentional lie or evidence he had no idea of even the ballpark cost of something like this (again, existing maglevs without the vacuum tube have costs in the tens of millions per Km, never mind the fact that the original "idea" was an even dumber concept with people driving their teslas into the tubes which would have been completely impractical). You can either believe him on his given reasons for doing this or suspect that he did it to avoid a viable public transport alternative to buying electric cars, but either way the fact remains that sabotaging california's high speed rail project was his stated goal. This is just from reading the text in the image, not the poster's interpretation.

He never "admitted to it was just a way to delay and sabotage california high speed rail".

That's how you interpret things by reading between the lines, but it's not what he actually says in his own words.

 

Your interpretation might be right, but it's not what he actually is saying.

That's all I wanted to point out.

 

 

I also think it's worth pointing out that California is still building its high-speed rail system. So even if this was a plan for Elon to undermine railroads then it failed. But the impression I get is that he doesn't have anything against trains, and specifically had issues with the proposed train solution that was being planned in California. Issues like it being worse than the trains other countries have and are building.

Although if the numbers I am seeing are to be believed then the California high-speed train sounds pretty state of the art. I am not sure if the plans were changed or if Elon got his numbers wrong when he said it would be mediocre compared to other countries' high-speed trains.

 

Edit:

Just to be clear, since Elon is a very controversial topic and people are extremely quick to go full-tribal mode and categorize people as "Elon bootlicker" or whatever.

I really like high-speed trains and think they are great. I've had the pleasure of riding some in Japan and was blown away by the speed and especially the comfort. I think the hyperloop seems like an overcomplicated solution.

[CarlBar]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Yea, I was just looking around for some passenger per hour estimates rather than my out of my ass numbers just to see what some kind of cost would be like. I didn't really expect my numbers to be all that accurate, in any case I'm highly dubious on the order of 1000 per hour could be achieved, certainly not in the first few years of operation.

 

A lot of these projects put on rose tinted glasses to justify them and get funding, they never turn out all that close to the claims.

 

I just can't see any better than many minutes per "train", people just won't be that orderly getting on and off. It's like people talking about how they can herd cats, technically you can but... good luck.

 

In that same article they gave an estimate around the same price as a plane ticket or likely a little more. So it's probably not going to be unreasonable but that's only if they can actually get people to use the damn thing.

 

Airports have one or two runways, vastly more complicated loading requirements and can get down to a few minutes between takeoffs, (i'd need to dig through Mentor Pilots youtube channel for a specific video to find the maximum value allowed, it varies between the US and Europe too). Yes they're never going to hit the exact timeframes to the second, but it's perfectly reasonable they'd reach a much higher rate than your initial suggestion.

 

The reason they where projecting such high seta costs is simple. The person that wrote that knew how much it would actually take to develop. a 13000km High Speed rail line is allready over 100 billion USD. A hyperloop discarding tooling and development costs would be high by a significant margin, and those tooling and development costs, unlike with a railway, can't be spread across multiple projects by different entities, so they all go into the final price of the first hyperloop. I'd be shocked if you could build a first run 1000km+ Hyperloop for less than 500 billion USD. And it may well cost quite a bit more.

 

This is the problem with every attempt to replace traditional standard gauge railways. the tooling and infrastructure to build existing systems can often be repurposed for new higher speed designs with minimal work meaning your using tooling and development thats has allready been paid for in the form of past less ambitious projects.

 

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Yes, you got me, I care about things being feasible in real life.

 

And if this discussion started with me discussing the economic feasibility that would be fine. I jumped in because some people where claiming the laws of physics forbid it from being possibble. They where saying you couldn't ever make the concept work regardless of the money because it was inherently impossible. That is what i've been addressing from the start.

 

if you want me to get into the economics side and all the problems a Hyperloop would face in more detail i can, but that was never the primary point i was getting at. Sadly if your looking to slot in somwhere between high speed rail and air travel there's some pretty big factors working against you that have nothing to do with deign or concept problems and everything to do with underlying supply type economics.

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

But a hyperloop would also have these costs (most likely much higher) on top of the base infrastructure so that's irrelevant to the conversation. I took nord stream 2 as an indicator of what it might cost just to lay the tubes, compared to complete high speed rail tracks a train could already run on. All the control infrastricture would also be present, and likely be much more expensive, on a hyperloop system.

 

Yes, but those other costs are so much greater than the Nordstream example that they completely bury them, it's going to increase the final price by a few tens of percent raw by default. (Now get into the tooling and development costs that have to be passed along that are seperate from the raw building and manufacturing costs and it';s completely different).

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

This assumes seatbelts and you facing forward. Normal train carts don't do that because it would cost them capacity and passenger comfort. Also again this assumes a system reaction time of a handful of seconds, which is no guarantee in case of partial system failure, which is the hypothesis here. You have to immediately detect that the train has stopped or is slowing down significantly and send the emergency brake signal to all following trains. Again a case of something that may not be completely impossible but definitely complex and extremely expensive.

 

Also bear in mind the required system-wide power surge to brake multiple trains at the fastest speed a human can tolerate.

 

Not that I actually believe a system like this could operate with such low time tolerances, you can't expect dozens of people to reliably exit and board a train in less than a minute. You'd get extreme congestions following even the slightest delays.

 

Giving the speeds it's moving at and the accelerations that make sense for normal operation and the fact that it is in some aspects hybridising aspects of air and train travel i wouldn't take it as a given it would resemble a train. In fact from several aspects besides satey having the passengers have to remain strapped in their seats makes perfect sense.

 

And no it doesn't assume a reaction time of a handful of seconds, my estimates gave 60 seconds of reaction leeway, in reality depending on the severity of the problem a much lower breaking could be used.

 

The power surge is an issue, (assuming you use regenerative braking, i'd expect for an emergency stop you'd use several systems including the increasing air pressure acting as drag).

 

Congestion i addressed above.

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

An airliner is not flying in a vacuum. It also only needs to descend to reach a breathable atmosphere. The hyperloop would need to pump air in the tube at a sufficient rate to fill it quickly but not fast enough to risk damaging the integrity of the tube itself or the train.

 

No pumps needed, the negetive pressure will suck air in, yuo just have to open valves. How fast is a matter of how much valve area you have per km of track.

 

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

In case of sudden, total loss of cabin pressure in a vacuum you're looking at a really bad embolism in seconds. IF your lungs don't burst.

 

I've never been clear how low they want to go in pressure, it seemed to vary with every source i saw. Airliner altitude pressures would allow 350MPH for the same energy cost as a regular high speed train for example. And a third of that, (equivalent to what Concorde had to deal with so again presumably not instantly severe), is equivalent to upper end normal speed rail energy use. Not sure where the limit is beyond that.

 

As a realistic point internal tube lower pressure would either be limited to the lowest safe value, or some additional requirements to minimise breech chances to well below airliner levels would be required.

 

If you've got a source on that timeframe i'd love to see it btw, and no not a "give source" i genuinely want the info to read for future discussions.

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

I've never argued that it's completely impossible. If you make the walls thick enough you can probably make an arbitrarily large vacuum chamber. That doesn't mean it's feasible in practical terms, and in engineering the cost of a solution is part of the parameters. My point is that it's impossible to make it a viable solution and that much was obvious from the start.

But Sauron all we need is an ideal matterial stronger than steel and much lighter.  Then having a tube meant to resist a large pressure difference isn't a problem. 

 

You just have to be visionary and intelligent enough to see how it would workout.

 

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

He never "admitted to it was just a way to delay and sabotage california high speed rail".

That's how you interpret things by reading between the lines, but it's not what he actually says in his own words.

 

It's not just some guy tweeting.  It is a journalist who spoke to Musk's biographer.  The person hired to have candid conversations with him and write his life story.  This is how leaks happen of information powerful people don't want to get out.   There is a tendency here or was to take the words of powerful people and institutions over journalistic reports.  While those words, their denials should be reported and considered so should the leak.   

 

Silicon Valley's Push Into Transportation Has Been a Miserable Failure - Gizmodo

Quote

Marx: I think it also goes back to what I was saying earlier in terms of the distraction that Elon Musk has achieved really effectively. To try to distract from real solutions to the problems that the automobile has created and things that would require less car dependence and to actually offer people alternatives to the car and to instead kind of intervene and say, no, actually, I have these ideas that are going to be even better than that, and we should pursue those instead to try to sap energy from alternatives. So the Hyperloop, for example, he admitted to his biographer that the reason the Hyperloop was announced—even though he had no intention of pursuing it—was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project and to get in the way of that actually succeeding.

This one part hits home since Musk had proposed an express "loop" or hyperloop that would take passengers from O'Hare Airport to Downtown Chicago.  Would've likely followed under/next to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Expressway (90/94 to out of towners) and the Blue line L.  So right of way wouldn't've been an issue. 

 

Quote

I would say the Boring Company just kind of slides in there as a way to distract from efforts to improve public transit and have a greater focus on transit as a means of solving these problems with the automobile. Instead of, say, building subway systems he could say, look we’re going to build these really cheap tunnels, you’ll be able to take your car into it. And later he said, why also make it so people who don’t have cars can use it, too. And that promise doesn’t exist any longer either. And that’s really good for him as an automaker.

 

The results were NOTHING and a lot of cars driving for Uber from O'Hare to downtown.  Elon Musk’s plan for express transit to O’Hare went nowhere, but Boring Co. says concept could happen in Vegas --Chicago Tribune    Elon Musk's Bait-and-Switch Transportation Company Valued at $5.6 Billion -- Gizmodo

 

It's all VAPORWARE.  Transportation VAPORWARE.  

 

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

 

And if this discussion started with me discussing the economic feasibility that would be fine. I jumped in because some people where claiming the laws of physics forbid it from being possibble. They where saying you couldn't ever make the concept work regardless of the money because it was inherently impossible. That is what i've been addressing from the start.

 

Don't put words in my mouth.  Quote where I said they "forbid" this.  

The laws of physics forbid some things and those things just don't exist.  Things that push the boundaries of known physics have a way of exploding or being crushed into twisted metal.  Hyperloop is in that catetory.  

But sure go ahead assume we have a supply of Adamantium to build it out of and Vibranium to make the pods out of and propell them inside the Adamantium pipe.   Then discuss the economics.  Just at this point don't act is if it would be easy.  It's been tried HARD.  500 million doallars have been spent on it by one company.  Billions if we consider all the other companies.  If this was something easy ... then the burden of proving that is on those who claim it is easy to demonstrate that.  Not on those of us who have been telling people for a while that it won't be easy, and may be impractical verging on impossible. 

 

Another bit of vaporware I have been thinking about for a while is the Linux Phone.

(Yes in my OP I thought we could also talk about vaporware in general it is a big problem in tech.  So this isn't a derail. lol.) 

 

I mean GNU Linux ecosystem derived Linux Phones in the sense that they'd run something like Ubuntu Touch or KDE Plasma Mobile.  This is vaporware for one simple reason.  So far the developers have had no interest in making it available on a wider variety of phones.  In principle any Android phone could be a Ubuntu Touch or Plasma mobile phone.  They all run a Linux Kernel already.  All that would be needed is to turn the UI and display server/compositor into Plasma mobile or Ubuntu Unity with Wayland but keep the underlying goodness of Android.  That would go a long way to bringing the goodness of such a system to a wider audience.  Such a system would even be able to bring the converged phone-desktop to more phones.  Right now only Samsung Dex does that.    It is very useful from time to time. 

Now that's just software that should be easy.  It's basically running Linux on phones that use a flavor of Linux.  

Maybe I should learn C++ and Rust and do it myself.  Probably isn't so easy.  That said, there are many bits of FOSS Vaporware out there too.  Projects that feel like they are made just so ubergeeks and show off their supreme king/queen of the geeksness.  That is my observation of using Linux since 1997 or 1998. 

[Sauron]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

I also think it's worth pointing out that California is still building its high-speed rail system. So even if this was a plan for Elon to undermine railroads then it failed.

It still extracted money from the state which could have been invested in finishing the HSR project sooner. Although yes, ultimately it did not succeed in having the project scrapped.

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

He never "admitted to it was just a way to delay and sabotage california high speed rail".

That's how you interpret things by reading between the lines, but it's not what he actually says in his own words.

 

Your interpretation might be right, but it's not what he actually is saying.

That's all I wanted to point out.

I was certainly paraphrasing in that he didn't use the word "sabotage", however the meaning of what he said seems in line with that description to me.

 

Regardless I don't think it makes much of a difference... he campaigned against a public project using a counterproposal he never really intended to build, using numbers pulled out of his arse to support it.

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

Airports have one or two runways, vastly more complicated loading requirements and can get down to a few minutes between takeoffs, (i'd need to dig through Mentor Pilots youtube channel for a specific video to find the maximum value allowed, it varies between the US and Europe too). Yes they're never going to hit the exact timeframes to the second, but it's perfectly reasonable they'd reach a much higher rate than your initial suggestion.

This is completely incomparable. Individual passenger planes require at a minimum a couple of hours between a landing and a subsequent takeoff, generally longer. Airports are able to deal with the traffic because the plane does not remain on the runway while it's loading or unloading. Further, while a large airport may have overall throughputs like you describe, they include planes going in completely different places. It's not like there are planes departing for, or arriving from, the same destination every couple of minutes.
 

For a correct comparison you need to look at subway systems. The train arrives, it simultaneously unloads and loads some passengers, then departs without ever leaving the track. If another train arrived before the previous one was able to depart they'd collide (or rather, the oncoming train would be stopped to avoid disaster). That's the promise here. If you're just going to build a gigantic train station with dozens of parking tracks for the trains to move to during load and unload you're "cheating"; you get much faster turnover with regular trains as well when you do that. A normal passenger train going multiple stops only waits at any given station for about 5 minutes anyway, and it's mostly to allow passengers to enter and exit.

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

A hyperloop discarding tooling and development costs would be high by a significant margin, and those tooling and development costs, unlike with a railway, can't be spread across multiple projects by different entities, so they all go into the final price of the first hyperloop. I'd be shocked if you could build a first run 1000km+ Hyperloop for less than 500 billion USD. And it may well cost quite a bit more.

 

This is the problem with every attempt to replace traditional standard gauge railways. the tooling and infrastructure to build existing systems can often be repurposed for new higher speed designs with minimal work meaning your using tooling and development thats has allready been paid for in the form of past less ambitious projects.

I don't agree that it's just the development cost. No matter how streamlined you make the process it's absolutely impossible to make a vacuum tunnel with a maglev rail for a cost in the same order of magnitude as standard rail. I consider the 100 million / Km (without even accounting for inflation!!!) of existing maglev to be the absolute lower bound for this if you want to make it safe and anywhere near as fast as promised.

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

And no it doesn't assume a reaction time of a handful of seconds, my estimates gave 60 seconds of reaction leeway, in reality depending on the severity of the problem a much lower breaking could be used.

Still a very small margin.

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

No pumps needed, the negetive pressure will suck air in, yuo just have to open valves. How fast is a matter of how much valve area you have per km of track.

Figure of speech, but my point is that you need to control the airflow to avoid structural damage. Just opening the flood gates would not end well.

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Airliner altitude pressures would allow 350MPH for the same energy cost as a regular high speed train for example.

I'm skeptical of that number considering you need to levitate the train.

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

If you've got a source on that timeframe i'd love to see it btw, and no not a "give source" i genuinely want the info to read for future discussions.

https://www.space.com/how-long-could-you-survive-in-space-without-spacesuit

Quote

"Within a very short time, a matter of 10 to 15 seconds, you will become unconscious because of a lack of oxygen," according to Stefaan de Mey, a senior strategy officer at the European Space Agency (ESA) charged with coordinating the strategy area for human and robotic exploration.

[...]

"The oxygen starts expanding and rupturing your lungs, tearing them apart — and that would cause boiling and bubbling of your blood, which immediately will cause embolism and have a fatal impact on your body," de Mey said.

it says "immediately" here so maybe my estimate was too generous

[Lightwreather]

3 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Airports have one or two runways

Amsterdam Schiphol:

/jk

[Uttamattamakin]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

It still extracted money from the state which could have been invested in finishing the HSR project sooner. Although yes, ultimately it did not succeed in having the project scrapped.

 

Let me play the other side of this.  Suppose we have the Adamantium for the tunnels or the vibranium for the tracks and energy delivery. 

OR

 

Assume as I pointed out post ago that we built it on the Moon.  No air resistance so no need to sustain a vacum.  Much lower gravity so we can levitate the train on a mag-lev system much more easily.   Solar power, much easier to build in space.  In fact the whole purpose of colonization and industrialization of the moon could be to collect solar power on a scale and in a manner that would have basically no environmental impact on earth.  (Transmitting the microwaved power from the Moon To Earth could/would.)   So energy isn't an issue.  

 

No need for new materials, no need for high vacuum.  Possibly not even need for superconducting magnets for the tracks.  I have not ran any numbers but Id wager the Moons gravity is so low that regular old magnets would be enough there. 

 

There "hyperloop" would work.  Hyperloop there would just be a regular mag lev.  Then then a regular train made of regular tracks would also work almost as well and be less likely to fail and leave you stranded on the surface of the Moon. 100's of KM away from any other lunar colony and breathable air.    

Then the economics work it's just a train operated in a place where the environment that allows for "hyperloop" to be viable and not a mass casualty event waiting to happen. 

 

Here's some other transport vapor ware that likely won't work on Earth,  space elevators.   Even with carbon nanotube cables, but could work on the Moon.  These were a huge Sci fi soon to happen deal when we first discovered carbon nanotubes. 

 

 

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, CarlBar said:

but it's perfectly reasonable they'd reach a much higher rate than your initial suggestion

Oh well yea, my dumb ass forgot you make it a loop so it's not back and forward down the same track section lol

 

7 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Airports have one or two runways, vastly more complicated loading requirements and can get down to a few minutes between takeoffs

Airports also connect to very many other ones, have lots of taxiways along with huge amounts of ground crew and traffic control to achieve that. I don't think something we have been doing for decades is all that comparable because I also think being able to achieve that kind of efficiency would require too large hyperloops stations to do it.

 

Plus you are comparing something where you generally turn up 1 hour or more before you can even board let alone actually start to travel. Even if you went with zero luggage allowed and tried to rush people on to planes the time require to get ready would still be very long and since it's more passengers per plane than a hyperloop train the boarding time per person would actually be better most likely for the plane, if it was asses on seats only service.

 

I just really don't see the benefit in trying to do something that is only 3x faster than a high speed train, at best, while moving vastly less people and costing vastly more to actually do it TCO wise. If it were actually cheaper to build than rail then sure it's worth looking at, but since it's not cheaper that makes it not worth looking at.

[CarlBar]

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

For a correct comparison you need to look at subway systems. The train arrives, it simultaneously unloads and loads some passengers, then departs without ever leaving the track.

 

This isn't realistically possible with the Hyperloop concept, you have to pass it through some sort of airlock to allow for loading and unloading as trying to et every carriage perfectly positioned to mate an extensible airlock sounds like a nightmare to do. Each end will have to have a plethora of stations, (in the same way an airport has a plethora of gates for planes to load and unload), and they will have to be at normal atmospheric pressure. 

 

Also for bi-directional operation you have to be able to pass the carriage from the up tube to the down tube as to run more than one train per tube you have to have seperate tubes for each direction.

 

All that means that when a carriage arrives at one end it will have to be passed out of the tube via some kind of airlock and onto a section of pressurised track where it can go through what amounts, (in terms of what it's controlling), to a railway points system to send it to a track leading to an unoccupied station. Actual rail stations, and more commonly storage depots, that function like this actually exist on rail networks today.

 

If you were really 100% wedded to the idea of never having the carriages leave the tub you could build a smaller number of stations and add several areas of track length between the stations and the operating line that can hold carriages when a delay at the station occurs. Which is another normal railway trick at busy stations.

 

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

Still a very small margin.

 

It might sound it but it really isn't. On a railway in the UK the minimum distance at full speed is 3 block segments, or 3300m. At 200km/h (the upper speed limit), thats a gap of just 60 seconds between trains and they take a lot more than 15 seconds to stop. Even at a much tamer 120Km/h it's only a 100 seconds.

 

I can only assume your imagining watching a CCTV monitor set for signs of anything going wrong or relying on a conductor radioing a message. In reality they'd be watching readouts of speed, seperation, internal carriage pressure and temperature, tube temperature and pressure, carriage locations, and so on. A system like that will display a problem in seconds. In fact the only reason you even have humans in the loop is as a final backup in case the software glitches, but if they ever need to get involved it's going to result in a big investigation and a lot of drama and probably fines for a defective automatic system. If something goes wrong that would require a hard stop and no one notices it for several full minutes it's likely allready too late to do anything for the affected carriage. The speed and pressure safety factors mean reactions have to be very fast.

 

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

I'm skeptical of that number considering you need to levitate the train.

 

I wasn't factoring that in as i don't have enough knowledge of the details to do it. I was just calculating the difference in drag a lower pressure makes and what that amounts to in terms of allowable increased speed for the same drag. Technically for 350mph it doesn't have to be a maglev design, though anything else carries it's own headaches and hurdles, (not insurmountable or exceptional, it's just a different set of challanges and may be easier than maglev).

 

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

Figure of speech, but my point is that you need to control the airflow to avoid structural damage. Just opening the flood gates would not end well.

 

Actually yes and no. The speed of sound in air puts an upper limit on how fast air can flow in through an opening, so long as the opening size relative to the tube diameter is low enough you can just throw the valves wide open and get a rapid fill without a dangerous pressure wave because the innate opening diameter controls the flow.

 

But thats why i said it's something thats going to take a fluid dynamics engineer and a good bit of math to work out. Finding the right balance between fill speed and peak pressure waves is tough. You only need to get it upto about 0.66 atmospheres of pressure before the air becomes breathable without an oxygen mask, as thats the altitude planes with cabin breeches have to descend to, (before then of course landing as soon as possibble). And as i noted it's equalising that last little bit that is slow without forcing air in. The emergency exits would have to be designed to account for this, (they'd have to be very basic equalisation pressure airlocks).

 

As a practical matter the fill time is a matter of the amount of valve area per square mile of track length, (but again i can't calculate specifics, only go through basic first principles for you), and the intensity of any experienced pressure wave peak will be dependent on the spacing between valves along the track, longer spacings raise peak pressure waves that can be experienced.

 

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

Oh well yea, my dumb ass forgot you make it a loop so it's not back and forward down the same track section lol

 

 

Honestly i just assumed two tubes, one going each way from the start.

 

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

Airports also connect to very many other ones, have lots of taxiways along with huge amounts of ground crew and traffic control to achieve that. I don't think something we have been doing for decades is all that comparable because I also think being able to achieve that kind of efficiency would require too large hyperloops stations to do it.

 

Plus you are comparing something where you generally turn up 1 hour or more before you can even board let alone actually start to travel. Even if you went with zero luggage allowed and tried to rush people on to planes the time require to get ready would still be very long and since it's more passengers per plane than a hyperloop train the boarding time per person would actually be better most likely for the plane, if it was asses on seats only service.

 

I just really don't see the benefit in trying to do something that is only 3x faster than a high speed train, at best, while moving vastly less people and costing vastly more to actually do it TCO wise. If it were actually cheaper to build than rail then sure it's worth looking at, but since it's not cheaper that makes it not worth looking at.

 

I touched on the boarding stuff above. Realistically i'd expect it to look like a hybrid of a plane and a train in most respects, but closer to the plane than the train IMO.

 

Like i said from a passenger PoV it makes very little economic sense. The issue isn't just the costs, but the lack of market. There's far more people who want to short journeys than 1000km+ ones.

 

Cargo's a different beast, you don't have the onboarding problems and there's a lot of stuff that would love somthing faster than a slow ass freight train but cheaper than air-freight, and a Hyperloop system really could deliver that in theory. You'd have to build multiple loops crisscrossing the service area, but it has genuine potentiol economically speaking.

 

19 hours ago, Sauron said:

I don't agree that it's just the development cost. No matter how streamlined you make the process it's absolutely impossible to make a vacuum tunnel with a maglev rail for a cost in the same order of magnitude as standard rail. I consider the 100 million / Km (without even accounting for inflation!!!) of existing maglev to be the absolute lower bound for this if you want to make it safe and anywhere near as fast as promised.

 

The lower bound for maglev trains is hit by the same problems, it's a small scale system not widely deployed so the development and tooling costs for it are spread over a very small run length.

 

I don't think the raw development costs would be completely excessive, probably a bit more than the apparently 50 billion SpaceX is expecting Starship to take. And a large chunk of that is going to eb the sheer land area for building your development track run. Assuming you want a normal acceleration, 60 seconds of full speed running, and then normal deceleration using the kind of values i've talked about earlier your going to need a run of 37.5km. Call it a round 40km. Thats a long, (albeit narrow), stretch of land and it needs to be somwhere relatively accessible for shipping stuff in for the development work, so you can't necesserially go for the cheapest bit of land you want.

 

The real problem is that once you have a final track segment design you have to mass produce it. That requires tooling up a factory  to produce it, but different parts of the tooling have different lifespans. Some stuff like drill bits, dies, cutting wheels, e.t.c. is a consumable item you go through at a steady rate. But there are plenty of items thats potentially good for decades of continuous production. Those are the really expensive things, and the more novel or unusual the project the less of those items cannot be reused by someone else for a different purpose. That means if your only doing a relatively limited production run, (like a single bi-directional hyperloop), your left at the end with a lot of large expensive items you've barely used.

 

Conversely traditional rail uses up enormous amounts of track per year, the factories producing it can run 24/7 for as long as the equipment lasts. This means the cost to setup the production line is paid back over a larger number of track segments for traditional rail. A theoretical Hyperloop wouldn't be able to spread the cost across anywhere near as many km of track, driving the price up. Existing Maglev tracks have the same problem, thats why they cost 1000 million per km. It's less that thats the actual price and more that there's a whole lot of stuff, (in manufacturing, but also in laying the track out side of things), that has an expensive up front cost but is used much less than comparable items in traditional railways track manufacture and construction. 

 

[LAwLz]

21 hours ago, Sauron said:

I was certainly paraphrasing in that he didn't use the word "sabotage", however the meaning of what he said seems in line with that description to me.

I think you're being very generous when using the word "paraphrasing" here.

 

He never said the hyperloop was a stupid idea. That's something you're adding, probably by injecting your own beliefs.

What he said was that it made sense for certain links but it would be impractical in scenarios where it would require thousands of miles of tubes. That's VERY different from saying "Musk knew it was a stupid idea".

 

He also never said anything even remotely close to "admitting it was a way to sabotage California high speed rail". 

What he said was that he thought the high speed rail wasn't good enough because it would be "the slowest bullet train in the world at the highest cost per mile", and that at best it would still be so slow people would prefer taking planes. He wanted to see some other solution instaed, and said he didn't think the hyperloop was it.

 

Again, nothing in that text is even remotely close to "Elon admitting the hyperloop was just a way to sabotage the California high speed rail".

The text is in no way shape or form an admission of guilty for anything you accuse him of.

 

 

Look, I don't particularly like Elon but what I dislike more than him is people mischaracterizing what other people say. What he said, and what you claim he said are two very different things. The problem with doing what you're doing is that it makes it very hard to actually trust anything being "cited", because there is a big chance that words are being put into someone else's mouth to mischaracterize them and cause anger. It's contributing to a very unhealthy discussion.

There are a ton of reasons to hate Elon Musk, and he has said a bunch of stupid shit. There is no need to come up with fake quotes to make him look even worse.

 

 

With all that being said, I feel like it is important to once again say that I am pro high-speed trains in general and think that the hyperloop sounded like a bad idea.

I am also completely open to the idea that the hyperloop was an attempt by Elon to undermine the construction of the high-speed rail. But what I am very much against is claiming that he admitted it was just that, because he never admitted that. What he did was say some things that if applying very unfavorable interpretations of his words and adding in some own ideas could perhaps be perceived that way, but that's very different from actually saying it.

 

 

 

  

22 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

It's not just some guy tweeting.  It is a journalist who spoke to Musk's biographer.  The person hired to have candid conversations with him and write his life story.  This is how leaks happen of information powerful people don't want to get out.   There is a tendency here or was to take the words of powerful people and institutions over journalistic reports.  While those words, their denials should be reported and considered so should the leak.   

Not sure what you mean. I am talking to Sauron and his way of interpreting what was being said.

 

Also, Marx isn't some journalist talking to the person who wrote Musk's biography. Marx just read a book and voiced his opinions about it. It really is just some guy tweeting about it. 

 

By the way, I think it's funny that you are saying others "take the words of powerful people and institutions", and then suggest we should take the word of "journalistic reports" instead (which in this case is a tweet about someone reading a book). I would argue that's just as bad. How about we try and limit the amount of interpretations we let others do for us and instead try and get as close to a primary source as possible? In this case we have extracts from the book itself that we can read and interpret. 

 

But no, we absolutely should not just take the word of some journalist blindly, even if they say something you might strongly believe or agree with.

[Uttamattamakin]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

But no, we absolutely should not just take the word of some journalist blindly, even if they say something you might strongly believe or agree with.

You think journalist have power?    Maybe large newspapers do. But individual reporters ... on their Twitter... are more likely to tweet something someone powerful does not like and lose their job for it. 

 

 

[Sauron]

4 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Conversely traditional rail uses up enormous amounts of track per year, the factories producing it can run 24/7 for as long as the equipment lasts. This means the cost to setup the production line is paid back over a larger number of track segments for traditional rail. A theoretical Hyperloop wouldn't be able to spread the cost across anywhere near as many km of track, driving the price up. Existing Maglev tracks have the same problem, thats why they cost 1000 million per km. It's less that thats the actual price and more that there's a whole lot of stuff, (in manufacturing, but also in laying the track out side of things), that has an expensive up front cost but is used much less than comparable items in traditional railways track manufacture and construction. 

Even if you laid millions of KM of maglev or hyperloop they could never reduce the cost per km of a bunch of giant electromagnets to anywhere near the price of laying two steel beams, wood planks, gravel and copper wire. Just the raw resource costs would far exceed the total costs of traditional railway construction, whereas I suspect the cost of laying traditional railway mainly comes from the labor required.

[CarlBar]

36 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Even if you laid millions of KM of maglev or hyperloop they could never reduce the cost per km of a bunch of giant electromagnets to anywhere near the price of laying two steel beams, wood planks, gravel and copper wire. Just the raw resource costs would far exceed the total costs of traditional railway construction, whereas I suspect the cost of laying traditional railway mainly comes from the labor required.

 

Oh  i' not remotely arguing that, just pointing out the figures for maglev or a pilot Hyperloop would be inflated compared to rail figures due to additional factors, and large scale use of them would be significantly cheaper ;). But obviously not equivalent to regular rail. And it's that high cost for early adopters thats kept maglev from taking off, or any other rail alternatives.

 

As an aside your almost certainly correct on the labour aspect, i did some more digging on gas piplines and even there it's now the majority cost apparently: https://www.gem.wiki/Oil_and_Gas_Pipeline_Construction_Costs 

[Uttamattamakin]

42 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Even if you laid millions of KM of maglev or hyperloop they could never reduce the cost per km of a bunch of giant electromagnets to anywhere near the price of laying two steel beams, wood planks, gravel and copper wire. Just the raw resource costs would far exceed the total costs of traditional railway construction, whereas I suspect the cost of laying traditional railway mainly comes from the labor required.

Counterpoint the issue there might be economy of scale.  One can buy steel on the commodities market at the lowest possible cost.  There isn't a commodities market for magnets (I don't think ... but if they actually trade Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice, and they do, there could be.)  IF Maglev systems were built at the scale of regular railways the production of magnets needed for this would go up, increasing supply and lowering price.    

It might not be as cheap as steel but if it can lead to trains that go 500 MpH that can zip people up and down the east and west coast or from Denver to Detroit then it can be worth it.  The question then is what value do people put on taking a train at  500 MpH VS taking a plane at 500 MpH.  Planes also need not infrastructure between points.    Which also has a certain value.  A plane can follow the shortest path between points over environmentally sensitive places with almost 0 impact. 

 

Here's another transportation vapor ware to consider. 

Airships. 

 

Those have had a century or so to try and become a thing again.   Even though they'd in theory have obvious advantages in carrying large bulk cargo from point to point without needing to invest in rails or roads or have impact on the ground.  We already know how we can make the electrically propelled and perhaps even solar powered.  Yet nothing.  No one seems interested in trying to replace say trucks from the harbor to a given city with a stream of airships.     The likely reason being that Helium is actually quite scarce and Hydrogen ... well... if not handled right ignites easily with a flame that is invisible to the eye.  (You'll see what's burning in that flame though.) 

[RejZoR]

20 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Counterpoint the issue there might be economy of scale.  One can buy steel on the commodities market at the lowest possible cost.  There isn't a commodities market for magnets (I don't think ... but if they actually trade Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice, and they do, there could be.)  IF Maglev systems were built at the scale of regular railways the production of magnets needed for this would go up, increasing supply and lowering price.    

It might not be as cheap as steel but if it can lead to trains that go 500 MpH that can zip people up and down the east and west coast or from Denver to Detroit then it can be worth it.  The question then is what value do people put on taking a train at  500 MpH VS taking a plane at 500 MpH.  Planes also need not infrastructure between points.    Which also has a certain value.  A plane can follow the shortest path between points over environmentally sensitive places with almost 0 impact. 

 

Here's another transportation vapor ware to consider. 

Airships. 

 

Those have had a century or so to try and become a thing again.   Even though they'd in theory have obvious advantages in carrying large bulk cargo from point to point without needing to invest in rails or roads or have impact on the ground.  We already know how we can make the electrically propelled and perhaps even solar powered.  Yet nothing.  No one seems interested in trying to replace say trucks from the harbor to a given city with a stream of airships.     The likely reason being that Helium is actually quite scarce and Hydrogen ... well... if not handled right ignites easily with a flame that is invisible to the eye.  (You'll see what's burning in that flame though.) 

You can haul trucks in very windy, rainy conditions. Airships, not so much. And they can't really carry that much weight compared to 40 ton trucks whose only limitation are wheels and legal limits.

[Uttamattamakin]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

You can haul trucks in very windy, rainy conditions. Airships, not so much. And they can't really carry that much weight compared to 40 ton trucks whose only limitation are wheels and legal limits.

That can all be true but we must consider the whole system, as done with rail, or hyperloop.  40 ton trucks in isolation are great.  Consider the infrastructure needed to make them work.  

We need good roads able handle those trucks that connect cities to cities and even small towns.  Those have a certain cost in money to construct and maintain and also environmental impact.   Flight does not have those same cost.  Flight just needs an airfield at each point. 

 

The question is do we value the low impact of lighter than air flight  in terms of infrastructure and pollution over the increased capacities of trucks?    Compare the impact of two solar powered air ships VS one truck.   

Possible vaporware but there has been work on hybrid air vehicles for cargo from time to time.  With capacities ranging from 10 tones for the more conventional designs to 160 for the more out there proposals. 

https://www.wearefinn.com/topics/posts/the-airships-promising-a-new-era-for-cargo-delivery/

 

Note these would not be speed demons they would be more for sending cargo that is not very time sensitive which is most of it.  Basically something one could attach to a cargo container and move it at lower environmental impact. 

 

 

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

You think journalist have power?    Maybe large newspapers do. But individual reporters ... on their Twitter... are more likely to tweet something someone powerful does not like and lose their job for it.

You're moving the goalpost, and you're going on some weird tangent that wasn't related to what I said. You pretty much brushed over 90% of what I said and then focuses in on a single sentence... You're missing the forest for a single tree.

Are you going to respond to what I said or are we done here?

 

I can't believe I have to argue for thinking for yourself and not blindly trust what someone else tells you to think.

And I bet you don't even follow your own advice, because I am fairly sure that you only think we should blindly trust journalistic reporters when they say things you want to be true or agree with, not when they say things you disagree with or don't believe to be true.

It's just an appeal to authority argument. It's a logical fallacy. Just because someone is a journalist doesn't mean they shouldn't be questioned, and that we should always assume they speak the truth.

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, CarlBar said:

Honestly i just assumed two tubes, one going each way from the start.

Yea, I was just considering that as too expensive but you can dual track in a single "tube" and switch directions/sides at a station.  Wasn't the smarted of assumptions haha

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

...

You said things that are based on a false premise and I responded you your premise.

 

11 hours ago, LAwLz said:

By the way, I think it's funny that you are saying others "take the words of powerful people and institutions", and then suggest we should take the word of "journalistic reports" instead (which in this case is a tweet about someone reading a book). I would argue that's just as bad. How about we try and limit the amount of interpretations we let others do for us and instead try and get as close to a primary source as possible? In this case we have extracts from the book itself that we can read and interpret. 

 

 

But no, we absolutely should not just take the word of some journalist blindly, even if they say something you might strongly believe or agree with.

Your premise was that journalist are powerful and untrustworthy.  That "primary sources" are more trustworthy. There are numerous counter examples.  Numerous examples of journalist being fired (or fired upon) if their coverage gives offence to those who have money and power.     

What I did not respond to because I thought it was so clearly false  is . 

 

Quote

instead try and get as close to a primary source as possible?

So you think a corporate press release is a reliable primary source?   How many tickets on a 737-Max 9 right at the same seat and door that had a problem should I buy you?  I understand Boeing will issue a press Realses telling us how safe they are.   Primary sources are good but you have to approach them with some skepticism because they are close to the situation.  They have a reason to put the best spin on things.  When it comes to tech of any kind the corporate press release will always say. 

We knew there was a problem already and took care of it.  The MCAS system is not at fault.

It was user error when that 12VHPWR connector melted. 

The Titanic was unsinkable. 

The Carbon Fiber Sub was designed with NASA technology and is totally safe.

 

Come on.   Sometimes I don't respond to every part of a post not to gloss over it but so as to not somehow be mean. 

 

[Kisai]

12 hours ago, Uttamattamakin said:

That can all be true but we must consider the whole system, as done with rail, or hyperloop.  40 ton trucks in isolation are great.  Consider the infrastructure needed to make them work.  

We need good roads able handle those trucks that connect cities to cities and even small towns.  Those have a certain cost in money to construct and maintain and also environmental impact.   Flight does not have those same cost.  Flight just needs an airfield at each point. 

 

The question is do we value the low impact of lighter than air flight  in terms of infrastructure and pollution over the increased capacities of trucks?    Compare the impact of two solar powered air ships VS one truck.   

Possible vaporware but there has been work on hybrid air vehicles for cargo from time to time.  With capacities ranging from 10 tones for the more conventional designs to 160 for the more out there proposals. 

https://www.wearefinn.com/topics/posts/the-airships-promising-a-new-era-for-cargo-delivery/

 

Note these would not be speed demons they would be more for sending cargo that is not very time sensitive which is most of it.  Basically something one could attach to a cargo container and move it at lower environmental impact. 

 

 

I'd imagine dirigible aircraft being used for cruise-ship type of travel for passengers and cargo lifts to places that are exceptionally expensive to build rail or road links to. Think about all the mountain-top locations and isolated islands that are typically only open during summer because winter travel is too hazardous.

 

Like there are all the arctic locations in Alaska and Northern Canada which are extremely expensive to ship things to, that goods have to be sent by aircraft already.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/food-insecurity-funding-firstnations-1.6743020

You know things are bad when actually going hunting and fishing is cheaper than buying food. Most of the rest of the country, people do that for hobby/sport, and it costs them 10x more to buy the equipment to do so for that half dozen times a year they can be bothered to do it. 

 

I'd think some kind of "EV" dirigible would make it far more economical to bring food/supplies to remote communities since it would not require roads, and the dirigible wouldn't require a runway for an aircraft.

 

But again, there is a lot of inertia to overcome to build, let alone operate such vehicles. Figuring out how to build one that doesn't require helium or hydrogen as a lift gas and not become another hindinberg. Not an insurmountable challenge, but still one that might dissuade people from wanting to fly on one, let alone drive it.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/flying-whales-airships-hnk-spc-intl/index.html

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/canadian-north-signs-deal-to-launch-airships-in-the-north-1.6899363

 

 

[CarlBar]

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

Yea, I was just considering that as too expensive but you can dual track in a single "tube" and switch directions/sides at a station.  Wasn't the smarted of assumptions haha

 

Nah it's fine, typical brainfart thing. And yeah, honestly construction wise i'd expect it to be a bit like most sub designs where you have an outer pressure tube, an inner tube containing the running track, (on a sub this would be crew spaces), and the gap between them would hold a bunch of equipment, likely including the emergency pressurisation distribution manifolds, emergency tunnels, (not somthing you'd find on a sub obviously), and so on.

 

Honestly i wish i had the knowledge to do the detailed math stuff so i could grab a free cad program and actually hash out a basic first draft detailed design. Sadly my engineering education had to stop at the college level due to IRL reasons and the necessary knowledge is university level stuff. I go through this thought process actually anytime i come across a cool concept that catches my attention. As it is i'm limited to gross engeneriging stuff and basic first principles, enough to work out some basic parameters, but not enough detail to get down to a complete design.

 

 

16 hours ago, RejZoR said:

You can haul trucks in very windy, rainy conditions. Airships, not so much. And they can't really carry that much weight compared to 40 ton trucks whose only limitation are wheels and legal limits.

 

Depends on the airship design, they really shouldn't be anymore limited than an aircraft, which isn't much more limited than a truck.

 

The real problem is the same as running maglev or hyperloop around. There's a lot of R&D, infrastructure, and other costs associated with building out the first airships and terminals and maintenance hangers. And all of that is so expensive tat getting someone to fund it is nearly impossible. Especially given that as a new tech it would be seen as a high risk item and big investors tend to be very risk adverse.

 

It's another item i'd love to throw together a basic detailed design on, but alas.

 

 

@Uttamattamakin I took a break from replying to you as that last exchange threw my frustration level way too high, (made worse by some unrelated IRL factors). Sorry if i was a bit snappy and as an FYI depending on how frustrating things are i may be slow to reply in future here.

 

I had to take a step back and do some digging and thinking to spot the explanation i needed to explain the difference between a sphere and a tube to you. The formulas and principles i was taught are about how to use material parameters, measures of stress and basic object shapes to determine those stresses. They almost never covered the raw underlying physics from which those principles derive. So i had to dig to get an explanation that hopefully will answer your question.

 

 

Simply put the ability of an object to handle strain in a given single axis increases with the amount of material in that axis that is available to bear the strain in that axis.

 

In a sphere because the strain is uniform in all axis, for a hollow sphere with a fixed wall thickness the amount of material available to bear the strain in a given axis increases approximately with the radius of the sphere. But as you yourself allready noted the stress increases with the square of the radius. 

 

In a length of pipe of fixed radius though if you double the length you double the amount of material available to bear the strain, and you also only double the amount of strain. So the amount of strain any given bit of material has to bear is unchanged.

 

Now increase the pipe diameter without changing the wall thickness and the amount of material in any of the relevant axis increases faster than the amount of material available to bear it does, (in fact when done using the industry standard formulae for a thin walled pipe the amount of material available to bear it is equivalent to the wall thickness so an unchanging wall thickness means no change in material to bear the strain).

 

A nice image of the formulae for you for a pipe or cylinder btw:

 

 

[wanderingfool2]

On 1/16/2024 at 2:00 AM, Sauron said:

I've never argued that it's completely impossible. If you make the walls thick enough you can probably make an arbitrarily large vacuum chamber. That doesn't mean it's feasible in practical terms, and in engineering the cost of a solution is part of the parameters. My point is that it's impossible to make it a viable solution and that much was obvious from the start.

On 1/16/2024 at 7:06 AM, Uttamattamakin said:

But Sauron all we need is an ideal matterial stronger than steel and much lighter.  Then having a tube meant to resist a large pressure difference isn't a problem. 

We've already created such things that can withstand vacuums, it's called spacecraft.

 

To @Uttamattamakin that's the most misleading thing ever comparing it to OceanGate, OceanGate went down to over 400 atm...to hold a vacuum you only need something to withstand -1 atm.

 

Also, there are varying degrees when people refer to vacuum; everyone always assumes that a system like this seems to refer to a high vacuum instead of ones like a low vacuum.

 

It's a actually pretty easy to pull a partial vacuum and trains going through the system would then greatly benefit at high speeds.

 

 

Do I think a hyperloop would work practically for what most are intending it for?  No, not really, but there's no point in regards to assuming points that aren't purposeful.

 

The reality is that it could become practical if lets say the infrastructure is all underground tunnels (e.g. if the chunnel was built today with that concept).  It has it's use cases, specifically stops between massive distances...but that would be literally a 100+ billion dollar project at that point.

 

Again, I'm not saying this will ever happen, but it shouldn't be a concept that is strictly thrown away as a failure as reducing the passageway to a low vacuum state could enable higher efficiency.  The biggest fault that I think arises from this though is where does the heat go from the motors?

 

On 1/16/2024 at 2:00 AM, Sauron said:

How do you propose emergency exits would work in a vacuum tube? If you exit the train, you die - even assuming there would be enough space around the train for you to reach the nearest exit. You'd have to repressurize the tunnel before anyone could exit the train, which could likely not be done quickly enough. Oh, and you'd have to be able to act and stop the following train within a few seconds to avoid a catastrophic crash, if the numbers you gave were real.

To address the trains crashing into each other, there would be the concept of block brakes.  Just like on roller coasters, how do they prevent trains from crashing into each other despite some having like 10 - 12 cars on the track at the same time.  I think there is a term for it in the railway already but I only know the roller coaster term.

 

As for emergency situations, what happens when the modern systems catch fire and the train is disabled.  In many instances they ask you to still stay aboard, or even if you enter the tunnel you hit the issue of smoke inhalation.  At a partial vacuum, I assume they would be able to have relief points that could close and repressurize quickly...at a partial vacuum it wouldn't take too long (it likely would take longer assessing the situation).

 

On 1/17/2024 at 5:04 AM, LAwLz said:

What he said was that he thought the high speed rail wasn't good enough because it would be "the slowest bullet train in the world at the highest cost per mile", and that at best it would still be so slow people would prefer taking planes. He wanted to see some other solution instaed, and said he didn't think the hyperloop was it.

Honestly, I think his biggest thing that he had a point about was tunnels.  If you could dig tunnels at an economical price point it could alleviate so much of the traffic in that you don't have the nagging cross points.

 

At least where I live the infrastructure is built do stupidly, and I think it's that general concept that makes people glom onto ideas of more efficient commuting.  We built a rail system, which does operate mostly underground and a couple of the stations were designed to just fit the train...the system that was meant to not hit capacity for like 10 years hit capacity in like 2 years; and we can't increase the length of the trains because of the corners it takes and we can't add another passenger cart to it because 1 or 2 stations were designed too small.

 

It's things like that I think which highlight how broken some of the current designs can be.

[Uttamattamakin]

7 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

We've already created such things that can withstand vacuums, it's called spacecraft.

 

To @Uttamattamakin that's the most misleading thing ever comparing it to OceanGate, OceanGate went down to over 400 atm...to hold a vacuum you only need something to withstand -1 atm.

 

Also, there are varying degrees when people refer to vacuum; everyone always assumes that a system like this seems to refer to a high vacuum instead of ones like a low vacuum.

To see why you need to consider again the definition of pressure.  Force divided by area. 

F/A    Newtons per square meter   Pounds per square inch. 

 

So This means we can in theory make an object that will withstand any pressure IF we make it small enough.   Reduce the area, reduce the total force it must withstand. 

 

The easiest shape to toy with to think about this is a sphere.  Double the radius of a sphere and you quadruple the area.    This is why the type of craft one takes to the challenger deep is spherical.  At least the pressure hull is. 

 

The hyperloop tunnel would be a cylinder basically.  The same basic law holds.  Increasing the area, increases the total force that must be withstood.https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/surface-area-of-cylinder    As @Sauron pointed out to @CarlBar we can make the tube out of thicker and thicker stuff to try and be 99% sure it will not leak for say 100 years.  This actually makes certain problems worse. 

 

Thermal expansion issues.  Materials would expand in every direction. 

The total mass of the material, would add up and become a problem in and of itself. 

 

Low vacuum does not save it either.  Since that has almost the same problems as high vacuum along with air resistance.  Not having to deal with air resistance is the whole point of any vacuum at all.  The same savings can come by making your pods more aerodynamic and having them run on rail (high speed rail) or making them very aerodynamic and travel up where there is less air (like a Boeing 737 Max  Ok bad example).  

 

13 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

@Uttamattamakin I took a break from replying to you as that last exchange threw my frustration level way too high, (made worse by some unrelated IRL factors). Sorry if i was a bit snappy and as an FYI depending on how frustrating things are i may be slow to reply in future here.

 

 

The problem with your pipe model and your thinking based in your experience with pipe lines is that they carry internal pressure.  Hyperloop wouldnot.  That false premise that wrong basic assumption invalidates all the reasoning you gave that flows from it. 

 

As Thunderf00t who is a physicist who specializes in vacuum physics explained in his videos vacuum of even 1 ATM makes a huge difference.   

 

As I used a sphere it wasn't because I don't know the difference.  It is because spheres are easy to think about. 

 

As the old physics joke goes.  Ask a physicist why did the chicken cross the road... what will they say?  

"Assume a spherical chicken"

 

I used a sphere as an example because of it's simple geometry it is easy to think about.  As I stated above the same basic problem applies to a evacuated cylinder.  As you increase the size you increase the area.  As you increase the area the total force that must be resisted by it increases in a non linear way.  

The Diagram you have has vectors for pressure inside it.  For Hyperloop to work it has none of that.  You keep talking about systems that have internal pressure.  Of course pipes etc work.  Those simply are not what hyperloop is.  The things you know from working on such systems GREAT awesome wonderful... they are fundamentally different than hyperloop due to the lack of internal pressure. 

You don't have to believe me after all who am I and what have I done.  I think at this point you have to believe Thunderf00t.  He's a published and incontrovertible expert on high vacuum.  He's made tons of videos.   You are free to not believe me, not believe him, and also not believe the company that just went Bankrupt and Busted trying to make it work. 

Maybe I am just a fool who knows nothing and thunderf00t who has publications in this specific area also knows nothing.  EEV blog also called BS on it.  I guess he's also a fool? 

 

[Uttamattamakin]

13 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

...

Don't want to believe me and my break downs fine.  I'm an idiot anime waifu in a corset.  Thunderf00t he's an idiot though he is a PhD'd publish vacuum physicist, eev blog he's a cornball. 

How about this person.  A well known published fundamental physicist.   I am not appealing to her authority but to the fact that all of these people explain the same problems just the same way I did for you.  F/A  Increase A means you increase total F.  When there is no internal pressure as is the case with hyperloop.  It's that simple. 

 

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

We've already created such things that can withstand vacuums, it's called spacecraft.

That is the inverse situation though, you are containing a high pressure in a low pressure environment. Hyper loop is containing low pressure in a high pressure environment so the force acting on the structure is not the same. A spacecraft wants to "explode" and a hyperloop wants it "implode".

 

It's why SpaceX can use carbon fibre just fine while other recent example could not. Although even SpaceX is ditching carbon fibre for their really big stuff.

 

52 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

Low vacuum does not save it either.

 

52 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

travel up where there is less air (like a Boeing 737 Max  Ok bad example).  

Low vacuum is the same thing as high altitude, so it does help. The whole point and the reason to fly higher is lower air density increasing efficiency. Any amount of vacuum or low air pressure will increase efficiency which you can use to either go faster for the same energy or use less energy.

[CarlBar]

57 minutes ago, Uttamattamakin said:

The Diagram you have has vectors for pressure inside it.  For Hyperloop to work it has none of that.  You keep talking about systems that have internal pressure.  Of course pipes etc work.  Those simply are not what hyperloop is.  The things you know from working on such systems GREAT awesome wonderful... they are fundamentally different than hyperloop due to the lack of internal pressure. 

 

Let em unpack this for you.

 

1. A complete vacuum in a pipe still applies a force vector. That vector just has a value of 0, (and if the formulae is optimised for vacuum use the relevant value will be removed from the formulae as it's a null value). This is really basic physics formulae usage. I'm pretty sure i was taught this in high school.

 

2. All going from pressure inside to vacuum outside does from an engineering and physics standpoint is change the load from a tensile one to a compressive one. it's an identical problem in fact, it's just the final load vector that changes.

 

3. No Hyperloop concept is an actual complete vacuum, the all still have some small amount of pressure in them. In fact this applies even to very high end vacuum chambers and outer space. The pressure is so low you can treat it as zero in calculation but true absolute vacuum doesn't really exist as far as we know.