Hyperloop is making progress

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-12/19/elon-hyperloop

by coob • 12 years ago

205 138 12 years ago

wired.co.uk

pjungwir2• 12 years ago

nearly all of them have day jobs at companies like Boeing, NASA, Yahoo!, Airbus, SpaceX, and Salesforce.
A lot of the work is being done by 25 UCLA students.

Huh? So at least 25% of the group are students, but "nearly all" are employed by name-brand companies?

trose3• 12 years ago

Maybe it's 25 students + 100 working professionals?

pjungwir2• 12 years ago

I thought so too, but then there is also this line:

At some point, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will likely have to shift from this work-when-you-can-but-don't-expect-money model to something a bit more conventional with, you know, employees.

So no one is actually full time.

I'm thrilled to see people working on this, but the article seems like a mess.

th0br0• 12 years ago

It was my understanding that those 25 UCLA students work at the UCLA lab mentioned in the text and are essentially just an out-sourced free design agency. In addition to the 100 "engineers etc":

jokoon3• 12 years ago

At some point, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will likely have to shift from this work-when-you-can-but-don't-expect-money model to something a bit more conventional with, you know, employees.

People need to understand that money is not the goal there, the goal is to improve transport standards. I'm sure the best CEO and investors understand that money is just an abstract measure, you can't dismiss money, so you must insert money in your strategy, but it's just to make it compatible with the current economic model. People in companies work not to say "look at my paycheck" but rather "look at what I made".

The goal is to make something better. Who cares if the business model is shaky or out of the box or unconventional, the goal is keeping research and improvement makings going. Nobody likes to be an employees, but I don't see everyone knowing enough engineering and having the initiative to design some new technology like that.

vinkelhake• 12 years ago

People in companies work not to say "look at my paycheck" but rather "look at what I made".

People also work in order to, you know, pay bills and put food on the table.

fludlight• 12 years ago

These aren't mutually exclusive when the labor market is sufficiently hot, as it is right now for engineers of most specialties. The SpaceX guys are making less than they could at boring Boeing, but that still comes out to a respectable sum.

jokoon3• 12 years ago

well that's also what people would do in the soviet union and in 20th century China

money is a mean, not an end.

grecy2• 12 years ago

People need to understand that money is not the goal there, the goal is to improve transport standards

Which is the really cool thing about Telsa and SpaceX - Elon has said many times if you want to make a quick buck, don't buy Tesla because that's not what they're trying to do.

They're trying to advance the world's knowledge and ability to design and build all-electric cars - making a profit is not the goal, nor is it even important. As long as they break even, they can keep going.

I look forward to a future where more and more companies have the goal of making the world a better place, not the goal of making ever increasing profits.

pweissbrod• 12 years ago

How can someone claim they successfully improve transport standards without keeping cost-effectiveness in consideration?

debacle3• 12 years ago

Anything is possible in a press release.

jokoon3• 12 years ago

Well oil was cost effective, until it was not.

Who knows, maybe there will be no breakthrough in battery design, maybe electric cars will always more expensive than conventional cars because of batteries. Is investing in new technology really cost effective ? Nobody knows, it's a risk, and politically you have to make that risk.

Cost effectiveness is just a measure. You don't ask an accountant to see if a technology is cost-effective, you let engineers design something that do more with less, and do a proper use of levers. Cost-effectiveness will be the mean, not the end.

erikpukinskis• 12 years ago

The issue I would most like to see progress on is thermal expansion of the the tube. The best solution I have heard is slip joints at the stations but if we're talking miles of slip, I still have a hard time imagining how that would work.

jarek• 12 years ago

They'll keep the tube at a constant temperature by piping Silicon Valley hot air through an insulating layer around it

moocow01• 12 years ago

The world's only unlimited energy source

lisper2• 12 years ago

This. Thermal expansion is the show-stopper. Unless and until they solve this problem (and I don't see any practical solution) everything else is moot.

mschuster91• 12 years ago

Restrict the pipe from heating up, I'd say. Maybe hardened, temperature-isolated glass could be used for building them?

And for the remaining bit of expansion it might be possible to let the pipes slide upon/inside the pillars and make even the terminals moveable.

TrevorJ4• 12 years ago

Thermal expansion is also a well known property and something that is dealt with in buildings and structures all the time. It would be a challenge, I agree, but I don't think it will be an intractable one.

trose3• 12 years ago

I don't understand why there is so much focus on doing this in California where they have tons of development and the huge issue of earth quakes. Surely there's somewhere else that could reap the benefits of fast travel. Off the top of my head I would suggest doing this through the midwestern states which are incredibly flat and mostly void of development for hundreds of miles. You can pay ranchers and farmers for the right to build the support towers on their land. You'd have to worry about tornados and hail storms though. I'm not sure how much concern that would be. If this this is all steel and concrete it should be strong enough right?

grecy2• 12 years ago

I think you also need the population density and a population that wants/needs to travel from A to B regularly to make it viable.

Musk proposed LA->San Fran as a commuter route - i.e. people would take it both ways 5 days a week.

How many people want/need to zip across the midwest both ways 5 days a week?

rpedela2• 12 years ago

Chicago to/from any city is great for freight and possibly commuters.

nedwin• 12 years ago

Also commuters with the capacity to pay for expensive tickets - this thing isn't going to be cheap, at least not initially.

ulfw2• 12 years ago

So yea, he 'designed' it basically for himself (SpaceX in LA, Tesla in the Bay). Who else would do this commute daily (because it will certainly prohibitively expensive for just daily commuting)?

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

And while I could see that as a neat trick (I think Elon was going more for the comparison to the High Speed Rail boondoggle) it would be much more interesting if it could do something like Reno/SF or maybe Boise/SF so that folks could live in a nice place and work in a trendy place. But the whole notion of 'tasked' cities (living cities vs working cities) is still not well developed.

TrevorJ4• 12 years ago

That's a chicken and the egg sort of question. We've developed pretty separate east and west coast economies and cultures since the travel times preclude much else. If they didn't I think we would see a lot of demand come from it that we don't see the need for yet.

rpedela2• 12 years ago

I doubt hail storms would be a problem, but tornadoes are another story. Maybe instead of the tube and pylons being exposed, they were covered in such a way that a tornado would go over top rather than through it.

drzaiusapelord• 12 years ago

This is something the midwest desperately needs. Unfortunately, we tried high speed trains during the stimulus, but the GOP governors of Wisconsin and Indiana didn't want to play ball with Obama's policies.

Imagine a fast line or a hyperloop between Chicago > Des Moines/Indianapolis/Madison/Cleveland/Memphis, etc.

We've got the flat land, maybe the money, but we don't have the political will. On a more positive note, the 300 mile Chicago > Columbus line is funded and happening:

http://thelantern.com/2014/10/plans-for-train-connecting-col...

The high-speed train would make the Chicago-to-Columbus travel time three hours and 45 minutes, compared to an almost six-hour drive.

Not bad. No hyperloop, but if this is the begining of high-speed rail in America, it will be a game changer. Shame guys like Musk can't figure out ways to make traditional high-speed rail cheaper. I suspect that's just too unsexy of a problem for him.

tptacek26• 12 years ago

That 3:45 travel time seems pretty unlikely. According to the feasibility study, it's based on the idea that trains with a 130MPH maximum speed will run at an average of 110MPH. The Acela Express maxes out at 150MPH, but averages only ~80MPH --- and that doesn't factor in service outages and other transient delays, which are common.

An HSR line between Chicago and Columbus would probably in the best case be competitive with driving. Which is itself an achievement, one supposes, given how much worse trains are than driving currently.

logfromblammo2• 12 years ago

You don't need guys like Musk. Here's how to make high-speed rail cheaper:

- Remove or upgrade all level crossings.

- Allow passenger trains to have priority over freight trains.

That's it. It's literally just two things. You don't need elevated tracks or magnetic levitation or airtight tubes. You just need to be able to accelerate the train to its maximum speed and not have to slow down until it reaches its destination.

Currently, Amtrak travel sucks due to the fact that when you board the train, no one can guarantee when or where you will be able to get off. Every passenger route passes over tracks owned by a railway company that makes far more money on moving coal or cattle than on people. And the freight trains may not have a regular schedule. So every time a passenger train leaves a station, it might be stuck on a siding for hours in the middle of nowhere, waiting for higher-priority freight to pass.

And all those tracks cross automobile roads, where an unnervingly large fraction of the level crossings don't even have warning signals. The trains still have to slow down for them, even if there are no cars in a 100-km radius, because at high speed, colliding with a smaller object, like a deer or cow, could cause a derailment.

There are no technical problems. They are all political and financial. As such, guys like Musk can't really help. He could spend his entire fortune and talk until his vocal cords snap, and still never make a dent. It's not just unsexy, but soul-crushing.

rjbez17• 12 years ago

This really made me mad. Minnesota and Illinois were willing to pay for the whole project from Minneapolis -> Milwaukee -> Chicago (granted WI would need to pay recurring maintenance) and they refused...

jakozaur• 12 years ago

As much as I love California, countries/regions need to compete to be the first place where Hyperloop will be built.

Maybe it will be in USA (California, Texas, East Coast), maybe somewhere in Asia (China) or Europe.

Building innovating infrastructure requires huge resources: land, money and political will. I'm not optimistic that there is some place where government would take a leap of faith, but that would require a lot of convincing in many places even to get one committed state.

dogprez• 12 years ago

Musk's businesses are split between LA and SF. He and his employees travel back and forth and he wants to use it.

hyperbovine4• 12 years ago

You said it yourself, nobody lives in the midwest. By contrast, LA-SF is the second on third busiest passenger air route in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_passenger_air...). Moving all those people by plane is hugely expensive and inefficient, and the 5 cannot handle any more car traffic. By some accounts, this is the biggest unsolved public transportation problem in America.

tptacek26• 12 years ago

That is news to the residents of Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Milwaukee, Louisville, OKC, Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, and Indianapolis, which are some of the largest cities in the country.

Also: moving people by plane is probably more efficient than by high speed rail.

electromagnetic2• 12 years ago

I think you hit the nail on the head.

LA-SF is the busiest air route in North America, and it's one of the busiest air routes globally regardless of how it's ranked. On the number of seats flown per month it ranks comparatively low (number 18), meaning there's a bottle-neck being demonstrated. Either driving is too viable an option, or the airports can't handle extra flights.

The US is also notorious for having poor passenger rail. Seoul-Jeju carries a lot more passengers, a couple million, but they already have high speed rail, which makes the run in a time comparable to a flight. So being able to shave a half-hour off a commute isn't going to be commercially viable when implementing an entirely new infrastructure and design. Many routes out of Tokyo carry comparable numbers to LA-SF, but again Japan also has high speed rail - I think the time saving on the Tokyo-Okinawa (1500km distance) would be the only one capable of competing against high speed rail, but Japan is highly populated so likely not suited for massive and unproven new infrastructure projects.

The next option is in Brazil, is a slightly shorter route, but the issue being the economy is less likely to be able to support such a project, and the risk of corruption and embezzlement there could tank the entire project with cost overruns.

There's really no other credible short distance option in North America. New York to Florida (Miami 5.5mil + Orlando 3.7mil) would be a credible option, NY-Miami is a 2,000km run, passes by Orlando at the 1,750km mark, and the ticket price is almost triple that of the LA-SF run.

So if LA-SF isn't an option it's "Go Big or Go Home". Crossing states would be a big issue. So we're likely going to see this proven small scale on commuter routes in and out of big cities.

trose3• 12 years ago

Yeah I'm thinking more like connect some of the major cities. Maybe Denver to Chicago to Austin? I'm not an expert on the geography between those places though. I'm just spitballing. The Hyperloop doesn't really make stops. Its designed for long distance end to end trips.

melling• 12 years ago

I would suggest China. They have already demonstrated their affinity for HSR by laying 10,000 miles of track. A couple weeks ago they opened 32 routes in one day.

http://qz.com/308791/china-flexes-its-high-speed-rail-muscle...

If the idea is to develop and prove the technology, China can accomplish this in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Building the second one is always less of a risk.

The distance between Shanghai and Beijing is 800 miles, so the 1hr travel time should be very appealing.

debacle3• 12 years ago

The hyperloop is an incredible idea. One could travel, theoretically, 400 miles in a little under 5 minutes with reasonable, constant acceleration and no maximum velocity in a straight line (so, unreasonable). That means I could make it to NYC in a pinch and be back by dinner.

But I don't think the idea of an air rocket is one that will work. The cost will be incredibly prohibitive. The concept of a "stop" on the hyperloop seems to make the solution far more complex, and the cost of a single stop on the route (assuming in the middle of the trip) is almost 50% additional travel time.

deadfall• 12 years ago

The article says "800 mph". Meaning it would be around 30 minutes. Not including accel/decel. No? It takes a flight hour to hour and a half from LA <> SF.

debacle3• 12 years ago

Yes, I was assuming constant acceleration. I mentioned that this was unrealistic.

thrownaway24242• 12 years ago

+1 for correct (even if inadvertent) use of the word "incredible".

pinaceae• 12 years ago

awesome.

so commuting from the east bay to palo alto or SF will take longer than travel to LA.

instead of extending BART around the bay, full circle and across in more places, let's invest billions in hyperloop.

acomjean• 12 years ago

I have the same sentiment, but for Boston. As someone who can sometimes walk the 3 miles to work faster than public transit (or private bus) can take me on a bad commuting day, its frustrating.

Like highway off ramps built communities, communities will spring up around train station stops.

erispoe• 12 years ago

There is very little chance that BART would be faster than Caltrain on the Peninsula. Caltrain has a good right of way that could host 4 tracks. I would focus on Caltrain here, not BART.

ianbicking• 12 years ago

There's nothing exclusive about the two. Good systems should be self-justifying.

But if you want decent travel times the current BART can't provide them. You'd need something like Personal Rapid Transit to get good trip times at the intra-urban scale. But the same argument you are making here - envy of something that doesn't even exist - is why we keep getting the same transit systems that are hard to grow because they don't provide enough benefit to enough people.

tptacek26• 12 years ago

This evades most of the criticisms of Musk's Hyperloop plan by not being the Hyperloop that Musk proposed. Specifically, and most importantly, it doesn't connect SF and LA, and instead chooses a route to fit the budget, instead of the other way around.

Musk's plan for the SF-LA Hyperloop was almost self-evidently fantastical, so much so that it's easy to read it as a political tactic to discredit California's HSR plan (which is also moving forward).

kbenson7• 12 years ago

Well, that's fairly hyperbolic. It wasn't near self-evidently fantastical, unless you base that entirely on political willingness.

As for what you thought made it fantastical, I would love to hear a short list. My last understanding of it was that there wasn't anything specifically physical or technical that prevented it from being possible (albeit requiring more real-world testing), and there was at least some effort put into addressing the implementation details. If there are portions that are actually impossible rather than just unlikely I would rather know than remain ignorant.

tptacek26• 12 years ago

No, it was fantastical. For instance: the cost estimates Musk provided were premised on advancements in tunnel drilling and elevated track construction costs that would have revolutionized all of civil engineering, not just hyperlooping.

dragontamer2• 12 years ago

The "some effort" included a 3-stage FEA that I accomplished in less than one semester of study. And I'm a computer engineer, I don't even have a real mechanical or civil-engineering experience and I could tell that the FEA proposal in the paper was a complete joke.

You say there wasn't real world testing. I go further, there wasn't even a serious theoretical analysis of the proposed Hyperloop system.

Animats• 12 years ago

Not LA <-> Vegas again. An LA <-> Vegas monorail was proposed in the 1950s. A maglev was proposed in the 1990s. All so morons can go to Vegas on weekends to push the buttons on slot machines.

Maybe they can talk Google into funding a 1 mile link between Google HQ and Google's private airport, Moffett Field.

tptacek26• 12 years ago

Las Vegas is the 38th largest economy in the US, and the 30th largest population center. The economy of LV is larger than that of NOLA, of SLC, of OKC, of Memphis, and of RTP. It's an easy lowbrow dismissal to talk about slot machines, but an LA-LV line probably makes as much sense (cost-adjusted) as SF-LA.

One point that's easy to miss is that big-city smaller-city pairings can be uniquely economically productive. For instance, an actually-functional HSR between Chicago and STL would allow companies to easily set up satellite offices on either side of the line, taking advantage of the lower cost of living on the smaller side and the larger market and commercial network on the larger side.

seanflyon• 12 years ago

It's an easy lowbrow dismissal to talk about slot machines

According to Wikipedia "The primary drivers of the Las Vegas economy are tourism, gaming and conventions, which in turn feed the retail and restaurant industries."

So people traveling to LV to gamble is a big part of what makes it the 38th largest economy.

saturdayplace• 12 years ago

I have anecdotal experience that might confirm the economic plausibility of a LA-LV line. Driving south on I-15 from LV on a Sunday will likely drive you absolutely up. the. wall.

transfire• 12 years ago

1. Don't see the point of economic class vs first class pods when the whole point is to get you to your destination so fast you won't be in the pod for very long. Mid-class pods for all makes more sense.

2. Please don't emulate the airport model and build over priced malls within a "security zone". A Hyperloop is supposed to get you from point A to point B quickly. Following the airport model will add two hours to every trip.

dia80• 12 years ago

1. The purpose of higher priced classes is to give people who are willing to pay more the opportunity to do so.

tptacek26• 12 years ago

The need to follow the airport model is one of the unaccounted-for costs of the Hyperloop, particularly on travel time. Because of the inevitable catastrophe implicated in any passenger attack on an 800MPH elevated train, it will absolutely have TSA-style security.

kbutler2• 12 years ago

Why bother with a passenger attack when the whole route is exposed?

Or did you mean "TSA-style security" as completely ineffectual?

kbenson7• 12 years ago

The cost differentiation is probably to help subsidize economy class fares, or even if it's not for that I think it would do that in practice.

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

Is anyone else bothered by the idea of being enclosed in a tube with no possible way out for hundreds of miles?

I guess it's no worse than an airplane but for some reason it makes me feel claustrophobic?

Perhaps there's a way to add an escape hatch every mile or five?

lando2319• 12 years ago

From the original Alpha Document

4.5.3. Capsule Stranded in Tube "If a capsule were somehow to become stranded, capsules ahead would continue their journeys to the destination unaffected. Capsules behind the stranded one would be automatically instructed to deploy their emergency mechanical braking systems. Once all capsules behind the stranded capsule had been safely brought to rest, capsules would drive themselves to safety using small onboard electric motors to power deployed wheels. "

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-201...

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

That still doesn't make me feel better.

jeffwass• 12 years ago

That doesn't answer mrfusion's question about being in a stranded capsule for 100's of miles before the nearest exit or escape hatch.

How long does it take that electric motor to drive the stranded capsule 100's of miles to safety? With the stranded passengers stuck in a small capsule with no bathroom facilities or other amenities.

It's be first thing I thought about when the hyperloop plans were first revealed.

niche• 12 years ago

Hyperloop should be a freight system before a human system; makes everyone happy; tis the season!

Also, tube transport in rivers would be nice...

thrillgore2• 12 years ago

The Hyperloop remains a well-designed proposal that solves a problem a Shinkansen/TGV model system solves, only it uses technologies that aren't proven or evaluated.

Silicon Valley thinking at its finest.

mrfusion3• 12 years ago

I've always thought a good enough high speed transport is a scheduled flight that leaves every hour on the hour and you can buy tickets right before the flight.

patcon• 12 years ago

As i understand it, transporting humans via air is largely infeasible without fossil fuels. It think the main benefit of a hyperloop is that it seems possible to stick with it as we make the energy switch

EDIT: pretty convenient that it would benefit from batteries and solar, huh? ;)

visakanv• 12 years ago

I'm a big Elon Musk fan and I think one of the best things he's got going for him is marketing acumen. I think of the Hyperloop as fundamentally a marketing story- doesn't matter whether it works or not, it gets the story out that the person running Tesla/SpaceX is some sort of whiz. Very well played IMHO

awolf• 12 years ago

That's silly. The fuel and operation costs are way too high.

Hyperloop is making progress

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