Musk Hyperloop New York-DC?

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Why the heck does this forum delete quotation marks?
Were they so called "smart" (directional) punctuation? If so they will be lost in the posting process. I believe they're not actually deleted and will show up again if you try to edit the post. They just won't be visible after posting. Seems to be some sort of bug or technical limitation of IP.Board forum software.
 
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To paraphrase Stanley Kubricks Dr. Strangelove: it is not technically difficult- it requires only the will to do so.

Hyper loops are more easily constructed in the BosWas because the biggest issue with HSR is acquiring adequate amounts of continuous relatively straight rights of way above ground in such a dense area. Hyperloops operate primarily with underground tunnels. Go sufficiently far beneath the ground and easements become easy.
What is keeping us from simply building HSR underground or elevated like is done almost everywhere else in the world? That is hardly an argument in favor of Hyperloop per se.
 
Seems to me that the only advantage of the vactrain ("hyperloop") is that you'd get airline-like speeds on the ground. But we already have technology that can give us airplane-like speed. They're called "airplanes." And airplanes only require complex infrastructure at the airports, they don't need to build hundreds and thousands of kilometers of vacuum tubing engineered to high tolerances, separate tube systems for intermediate stops, with very restricted grades and curvature. An airline system is completely flexible, the "airplanes" can fly between any two airports on the planet, so an airline company can change routes to meet changing demands immediately (as has happened to me several times during my travels when flights have been cancelled on me at the last minute.) If you want to travel thousands of kilometers across the continent, or across the oceans between continents, in a timescale of hours, there's really not need to develop any new technology.

For distances of less than 1,000 km, I can't see any intrinsic advantage of vactrains over high speed rail. For distances of less than 350 km, I don't even think high speed rail is needed, just something like the Northeast Regional can be competitive with airlines when you add travel time through airports, security, etc. to the time it takes to fly.. (My experience is that it takes a minimum of 4 hours to fly anywhere, even if the flight time is 30 minutes.) Rail technology is every well understood and backwards-compatible with existing infrastructure. Why re-invent the wheel, or rather, why invent a wheel substitute, when the wheel works perfectly well?
 
Seems to me that the only advantage of the vactrain ("hyperloop") is that you'd get airline-like speeds on the ground.
Compared to modern passenger aircraft hyperloops would likely be much more energy efficient and be able to interconnect with commercial scale renewable power sources. Even the very latest passenger aircraft designs are extremely inefficient compared to land and water based transportation and they still aren't designed to fulfill their operational objectives with the energy density and power-to-weight ratio of renewable fuels. Those are advantages worth investigating, probably not here in the land of fossil fuel fanatics, but perhaps in other countries where the idea of experimenting with something new and different isn't quite so confusing and infuriating to average citizens.

But we already have technology that can give us airplane-like speed. They're called "airplanes." And airplanes only require complex infrastructure at the airports, they don't need to build hundreds and thousands of kilometers of vacuum tubing engineered to high tolerances, separate tube systems for intermediate stops, with very restricted grades and curvature.
I can only imagine what your grandfather had to say about passenger aircraft or your great grandfather had to say about the horseless carriage. The early days of airline travel were extremely risky and dangerous. Irrational concepts and cowboy logic ruled the day and people like you refused to participate and ridiculed those who did. But other people still kept investigating and correcting and redesigning until they eventually started to get some of it right. Over time more and more flaws in design and operation were resolved and eventually we managed to build one of the safest and most dependable methods of transit available. It's entirely possible that this whole hyperloop idea will simply peter out and die, but it's also possible it will find and address a problem that it excels at resolving. Personally I'm willing to withhold critical judgement until more of the technology has been built and tested.
 
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To paraphrase Stanley Kubricks Dr. Strangelove: it is not technically difficult- it requires only the will to do so.

Hyper loops are more easily constructed in the BosWas because the biggest issue with HSR is acquiring adequate amounts of continuous relatively straight rights of way above ground in such a dense area. Hyperloops operate primarily with underground tunnels. Go sufficiently far beneath the ground and easements become easy.
What is keeping us from simply building HSR underground or elevated like is done almost everywhere else in the world? That is hardly an argument in favor of Hyperloop per se.
Above ground still requires difficult easements and mobilizes NIMBYS in a way a deep small bore tunnel doesnt.

And obviously, HSR has a much larger loading gauge than these hyperloops. And I wont really go into the major issue in the form of PBQD and related corruption.
 
None of that has anything to do with Hyperloop. One could build smaller loading gauge stuff using whatever guide and propulsion technology one wishes. So I still call BS on that reasoning
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Also, consider that loading gauge and capacity are closely-related. The big issue with Hyperloop is that you either need big vehicles (lots of energy) or lots of little ones (which runs into spacing/safety issues).

On the other hand, the big problem with airports is that after a certain point they need lots and lots of space (witness how much land IAD/JFK take up; LGA/DCA are smaller, but they also have infamous capacity issues, and outside of something as sprawling as the LA basin having more than one "main" airport seems to cause consternation.
 
Seems to me like Mr. Musk isn't financing anything.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner here. Don't listen to the bloviation: follow the money.

If "Hyperloop", which has now been redefined repeatedly due to the ridiculosities of the original napkin sketch, ever turns into anything practical, it'll end up being a train. Conical steel wheels, steel rails, comfortably sized vehicles, long trains. If it's underground and has a novel propulsion system, fine, whatever. But you can't beat conical wheels on rails.

Oh. Also, Musk idiotically claims that he's going to save money on digging tunnels by making them "smaller diameter", following which he specified a diameter six inches *larger* than standard London Underground diameter. Which is not by any definition "smaller". He simply has not done his research here. But I think he's smart enough that he's not going to commit serious money without doing his research.

Once he actually does his research, which he hasn't done yet, it'll turn into a train. Conical steel wheels on steel rails.
 
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In my view the Hyperloop concept was always a distant side project compared Musk's core interests (space transport, electric vehicles, antonymous driving, energy storage). More of a vague hobby really. Something to seed to other groups that they could take and run (or fail) with.
 
That certainly seems like a scientifically researched article free of bias and bile. It also ignores that Amtraks capacity is what, maximum 1500 or so an hour on the corridor each way? So a 3300 capacity would allow for more than doubled ridership, and one minute headways would handle current ridership.

The vehicles need to be short to handle relatively tight curve radii, naturally. As for braking, the braking limit is not the machine, its the human body- reverse the polarity of the magnet and your car will stop cold. The occupants will be straberry jam, but the pod will be stopped.

Thirty seconds for stopping would be more than enough to stop the pod without injury to the passengers. I once stopped a friends Rhentech E7.2 (a W210 with a 7.2 liter V12) from 165 to zero in... I think it was a touch over 10 seconds. While it is an excellent demonstration of both the power of enormous twin caliper Brembo brakes and why one should never go that fast on the open road, it didnt even hurt. And that was a three point inertia reel, not a four point harness.

These objections, while sounding impressive, are just bloviation.
Yes, but presuming a certain specific bottleneck were resolved (the Hudson tunnels) Amtrak's capacity becomes a lot higher. Even on the current setup Amtrak were using all four of its slots at the Hudson and running 12-car trains for the Regionals and 400-seaters for the Acelas they could push capacity to about 2300 without that.

If you open it up to 10x hourly trains (I know a some bullet trains run 10-12/hour) then your capacity falls between 4000-4800/hour (for 400-seat trains) and 13-16k pax (for an N700 Series Shinkansen).
 
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