Any zigzags at 700 mph would flatten the contents of the car, not to mention exceed the materials strength of any wall system. So, Ghost of Willie, the whole concept of this being economically feasible is absurd.
Posted on 02/04/2015 6:02:52 AM PST by smokingfrog
AUSTIN — Elon Musk is the successful inventor who played a role in the creation of PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. In 2013, he made national headlines by proposing an air-tube transit system.
Called Hyperloop, it was essentially a futuristic-looking train that traveled through a pressurized tube similar the ones you use at the drive-through of your local bank.
As described by CNN, the Hyperloop would be powered by “a series of electric motors.” Solar panels on the top of the tube would provide the energy necessary to keep things moving.
While the concept may sound bizarre, it’s believed to be economically feasible. Musk claimed the Hyperloop tube could safely transport people at nearly the speed of sound. For example, a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco would take about 30 minutes.
According to a recent CNN.com report, Hyperloop is still very much a possibility. Musk was in Texas for a transportation forum when he announced that he’d be building a Hyperloop test track. He said the track would probably be located in Texas.
(Excerpt) Read more at ksl.com ...
I’m not really accepting the 21st Century all that well so far. (I was barely functional in the 20th. Those who know me well think I got displaced from the 19th in a time warp.)
Pretty sure I won’t be marking time when the 23rd rolls around.
According to a recent CNN.com report, Hyperloop is still very much a possibility. Musk was in Texas for a transportation forum when he announced that he’d be building a Hyperloop test track. He said the track would probably be located in Texas.
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What’s wrong with California?
In 50,000 words or less?
If he wants to spend his money, I say go for it but I suspect like Tesla he will be getting government subsidies.
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Subsidies are part of the game. And I’d rather see them go to a successful innovator like Musk, than a crony. And to top it all off, Musk is the country’s most successful African American.
I guess as long as the locks work correctly you could make one long tube where the train never actually goes backward, just loop around into the tunnel going the other way.
Then you can pay my subsidies since I think this whole concept is a boondoggle
“Economics, really? Do the math before you make such a ridiculous statement.”
The math has been many times over. We’ve been building transcontinental oil and natural gas pipelines for several generations now. They too involve controlling plenum pressures. Perhaps you need to revisit the subject of costs, and you need to look at the alternatives to the fantastically more expensive tunneling through rock. There are proposals for building such tube transports at the surface to avoid most of the horrendous costs associated with tunneling. Some of the proposals use burial to stabilize the tube systems.
See also:
Vactrain
A vactrain (or vacuum tube train) is a proposed design for very-high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev (magnetic levitation) line using evacuated (air-less) or partly evacuated tubes or tunnels. The lack of air resistance could permit vactrains to travel at very high speeds—up to 4,000–5,000 mph (6,400–8,000 km/h), which is 5–6 times the speed of sound—using relatively little power.[1] Vactrains might use gravity to assist their acceleration. If these trains achieve the predicted speeds, the trip between Beijing and New York would take less than 2 hours, surpassing aircraft as the world’s fastest mode of public transportation.
However, without major advances in tunnelling and other technology, vactrains would be prohibitively expensive.
[....]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
In other words you haven't done the math. IT ISN'T DIFFICULT. Look up the costs per mile of commuter rail as a starting point, and then adjust for inflation, multiply by the number of miles and multiply by a factor that takes the complexity of a couple of rails to a completely enclosed tube. A cross country tube would run over a trillion dollars.
Musk is just getting the groundwork laid to suck up a big wad of taxpayer dollars. As near as I can tell thats the whole point of this anyway.
I’m all for his contract work with NASA but its really not private industry till it operates on its own for its own free market goals.
Lots and lots of government (taxpayers) subsidies.
That would allow more people to get to the floors they want quicker than having to wait for one of the larger elevators, and then getting stuck on a floor to floor milk run.
If that works, then they could start creating intracity tubes, then maybe intercity tubes.
But going for the Hail Mary pass from LA to SF or LA to NY suggests this is more Barnum and Bailey than a real idea.
“A cross country tube would run over a trillion dollars.”
The completely enclosed tube of the Keystone Pipeline ran way over budget to the tune of 5 billion dollars for a key segment. Of course, an oil pipeline cost cannot be directly compared to a maglev vactube transport. However, the cost of a surface maglev tube transport system is magnitudes of difference lower than trying to tunnel deep underground through rock as the original and expensive proposals projected. If you had bothered to read the article I gave you at the link, you would have noticed the article reported the concept was not built because of the exorbitant 1 trillion dollar projected cost. You also disregarded how I noted there have since then been proposals floated that do not tunnel deep underground and thereby avoid those exorbitant costs and reduce them closer to the cost of the oil pipelines costing billions or tens of billions of dollars, not trillions of dollars.
You also ignore the tremendous costs associated with the original construction of the Interstate Highway System and the reconstruction of that highway system from the subgrade up currently underway. Creation of a freight tube system could remove a massive volume of truckers from the Interstate highways and drastically reduce the cost of maintaining the Interstate Highway system that is going to be costing us trillions of dollars in the future as well.
So, you cannot reasonably dismiss the proposal of such technologies out of hand even though they are likely to be as costly as the Interstate Highway system. Thisis especially so when you take into account the vastly lower cost for alternative methods of constructing such systems versus the original proposed tubes deep underground in the bedrock.
I see you're channeling Willie Green. We already HAVE the interstate system and not the slightest need to replace it.
Where to begin? I was just calculating the cost of a single cross country tube to be somwhere over a trillion, and BTW the Keyston pipeline doesn't exist, but the transalaska pipeline is only 48 inches in diameter. Pipelines can make sharp bend and go up steep grades which 0bama crony Musks bullcrap idea can't so using the cost of a pipeline is naive at best and disingenuous in this context. How big around would this boondoggle have to be?
So, you cannot reasonably dismiss the proposal of such technologies out of hand
Of course I can. IT'S TOO EXPENSIVE to be practical by orders of magnitude. I believe it's just another soylandra designed to transport taxpayer dollars form the the taxpayers to a Democratic big donor's pocket.
Any zigzags at 700 mph would flatten the contents of the car, not to mention exceed the materials strength of any wall system. So, Ghost of Willie, the whole concept of this being economically feasible is absurd.
They have a bullit train. Besides, the enviros would probably block it
What a BS article.....The concept was derived from a guy at a drive-in bank. Yes, air pressure can move a small canister from your car-side terminal to the teller but “neara Supersonic speeds through a tunnel. I want off that train now!
“Don’t need a vacuum. Just blow at one end and suck at the other.”
Then this train in a tube should be very expensive to operate since San Francisco blows and Los Angels sucks just leave both ends of the tube open.
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