Russia Jumps into the Race to Build a Hyperloop
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The advantage over Musk's original idea, is that Halbach array levitation doesn't require the tight clearances that air bearing levitation would require. Apparently, the cost of manufacturing linear arrays of aluminum coils is cheaper than ensuring tight tolerances.
The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even recent! The pneumatic mail system in NYC was in use between 1897 and 1953. What's new is that in the 1950s the energy economics made it cheaper to replace pneumatic tubes with automobiles. Fast forward 60 years and the energy economy has been turned on its head, thus hyperloop.
The pneumatic tube system in New York operated at substantially reduced fractions of the speed of sound, did not have an air-cushioned (or maglev'd) self-propelling capsule, did not operate in a partial vacuum, did not have human-sized capsules, and carried cargo with substantially different tolerances to acceleration.
This may be old technology but if you're stringing it together in radically different ways you need to do serious integration work and expect to run into problems. Pointing to the pneumatic tube system of early New York as a "demonstration system" is facetious.
Edit: Though it's worth noting that both those transitions were achieved in less time than since the original NYC pneumatic tubes and now.
- hyperloop uses underpressure; pneumatic systems typically use overpressure.
- in hyperloop systems, the intention is to not move the air (employing a fan to sort-of hide the fact that the capsule moves through the tunnel); in pneumatic systems, the air must move, as it is what drives the capsules.
- because of the above, hyperloop capsules cannot completely seal of the tube they move through; pneumatic systems should.
- hyperloop (cl)aims to reach significantly higher speeds.
...or even works.
It's quite clear that all this hyperloop hype is a publicity scam targeted at states with deep pockets and whose governments are gagging for some propaganda talking point. The people behind hyperloop dedicate themselves to one thing only: generate hype around the project and jump from publicity stunt to publicity stunt.
The end goal is to get a government to shelve a wheelbarrow full of hard cash for them to waste the money building a prototype for propaganda purposes.
In short, it's the Simpson's monorail episode.
Would you please tell us plebs what the fatal flaw is?
Hyperloop reminds me of the Simpson's monorail episode in many ways.
I'm not smarter than the rest of us. I just happen to be a researcher in the field of railway engineering, specifically in the design of high and very high speed tracks for conventional high-speed rail.
> Would you please tell us plebs what the fatal flaw is?
The main issue with very high speed rail is the cost required to build and maintain infrastructure that must meet such precise tolerances to keep the transportation system safe and reliable and the track usable for human transportation. Technology is still far away from providing a solution for speeds below 400km/h, and the solutions that are currently available are simply cost-prohibitive.
The problems associated with this project are further compounded by the uncertainty of the whole vehicle solution.
Then there are the physics problem. Just for a brief glimpse on the true nature of the problem, in moderately stiff soils a vehicle traveling above 700km/h triggers a response from the soil that is much like the sonic boom triggered by supersonic planes, but with Raileigh waves. This phenomena is already a major problem in some railway lines operating at lower speeds (in Sweden, for example, where a high-speed track crosses an unusually soft soil), and manifests itself in vibrations that are measured in centimeters. Currently, the only available solution to this problem is essentially reducing the traveling speed on regions where the soil stiffness is low. Yet, in hyperloop's case these issues aren't rare: they are the norm.
Adding to the problem, speeds above 700km/h mean that the vehicle clears a span of around 200m in 1 second, which means that even with the vehicle's load the entire section must have an elevation delta in the milimeter range just to limit the vertical acceleration alone. This level of precision is unheard of in civil and railway engineering, and is something that is very expensive to pull off. Now, consider this issue while adding to the mix issues such as natural changes in the region's relief. These levels of precision require a straighter line with lower inclinations, accompanied with larger turn radii. This means bridges and tunnels for hundreds (if not thousands) of kilometers.
Meanwhile, even high-speed railway has serious feasibility problems, to the point where only a hand-full of high-speed railway lines manage to turn a profit ( Paris-Lion for example).
Meanwhile, in the real world the hyperloop hype competes with air travel, which doesn't require trillion-dollar infrastructure construction and maintenance costs, is very flexible, and is far cheaper to operate.
The investment in high-speed railway lines for travel speeds between 300 and 350km/h only rarely makes sense. That's the main reason why today only a few operators have spent money on that sort of infrastructure, and the vast majority of those operators did only so for political and propaganda reasons. Increasing the infrastructure bill a few orders of magnitude to get the exact same thing that are offered today by conventional rail and air travel is simply unheard of.
All their recent tech projects have been disastrous, either technologically or financially, or the funds were simply stolen.
Edit: If however this leads, by some longshot, to a functional maglev system in Cali or anywhere else in the US? Yes, I'd change my tune then.
What market exactly are you talking about?
Definitely this, it's far more likely to be a project to spread the national budget among Putin's cronies than to actually result in anything.
So why do you think it would end like nanomachines? Simply Russian politics?
This isn't true.
The concept of a moving load travelling over the rayleigh wave speed on heterogeneous soils is something that's very new, very problematic, and very expensive to deal with.
Let's put it this way: the french currently hold the conventional high-speed railway speed record for just bellow 600km/h, and yet they are only able to operate their TGV trains on the record-breaking track at 320km/h. They can't push it any faster due to all the maintenance problems caused by very high speed travel, although SNCF is one of the leading rail companies and the track is brand new.
If there were no technical issues to be resolved, they wouldn't be capping their circulation speeds at around half their speed record.
This is one of the many technical issues. But then there are the multitude of economic problems which hyperloop is entirely unable to offer any solution, yet alone make a case.
Strapping a rocket on a short stretch of track is not a technical solution. It's just a marketing trick.
So I just wanted to say it's an engineering issue at this point. But as far as I can tell that's still true maybe I just didn't convey that very well initially though I'm certainly not an expert at this so I concede I could certainly be wrong as well.
Perhaps my comment doesn't add as much to the conversation as I thought it would. Oh well.
It's far more than a mere engineering issue. It's primarily an economic issue. The engineering issues are mitigated by throwing cash at them, but in the end for an infrastructure project to make sense the payoff must be greater than the investment.
Meanwhile, air travel is already cheaper than conventional high-speed rail, is far more flexible to manage, and operates on a cruise speed that is at least equivalent to the best case scenario sold by hyperloop's salespeople.
Any airline is able to transport hundreds of people at a cruise speed between 800 and 900km/h with an investment of around 200 million dollars. Hyperloop's salespeople are selling a concept whose cost is some orders of magnitude higher, takes longer to build, and competes with ticket prices that are somewhere between 100 and 200 dollars a ticket. While an airline needs to rely on those 100 dollar tickets to pay off their 200 million dollar investment, how do hyperloop's salesteam expect an operator to amortize a trillion-dollar investment by competing in a market based on those ticket prices?
Furthermore, essentially airlines only need to maintain their planes and pay airport costs. An hyperloop operator needs to maintain, in addition to the vehicle, hundeds of kilometer of experimental track sections. Where's the business case?
There's a good reason why hyperloop's salesteam only invest in marketing and propaganda, and in spite of being backed by a savvy scifi-inclined billionaire with a long history of investing in amazing projects we don't see him opening his wallet to fund a real-world project. Instead, the project is focused on convincing others to foot the bill.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-de...
Isn’t teleportation more practical than a Hyperloop? It doesn’t require the land, nor the power to make and sustain the vacuum…
Apparently enough people here buy this as this is the top rated comment.
But he is still sponsoring that “research” and “development”.
So my comment is still relevant.
In a thread about the Hyperloop (transportation device for physical objects) you attempt to ridicule Putin with your comment suggesting that he plans to have teleportation ready by 2035 even though Putin never said that (that much you have already conceded) and that the type of teleportation in question is about a quantum effect that could be used to send information. (how is that related to a transportation device for physical objects like the Hyperloop?)
You do understand that I was criticising ridiculing persons based on manufactured nonsense and lies?
This is exactly what you did here. The problem that I see is that no amount of good arguments or open discussions with you will ever change your smug disregard for truth and honesty.
You just believe you are on the right side of history and politics and this is why you are still insisting that your comment was relevant even though it clearly has no value whatsoever regarding this thread and is just an attempt to spew hateful ridicule against a person.
In a thread about Russia’s plan to build a Hyperloop, I reminded about very recent Russia’s plan to build a teleporter.
> that the type of teleportation in question is about a quantum effect
Officials never said anything about quantum teleportation, only lenta.ru reporters did. Officials were referring to sci-fi movies, not to quanta.
> You just believe you are on the right side of history and politics
Strictly speaking what I [not] believe is off topic here, but I’ll comment anyway.
I believe it’s not good behavior to annex foreign territories by force, support international terrorists, poison political opponents with radioactive substances, or e.g. shoot down civilian planes off the sky.
I can’t imagine any mentally healthy person, regardless on his/her political or historical views, can say that were good or at least acceptable things to do. It’s about moral and ethics, not politics.
If Putin really said this it would be all over the largest media in Russia.
Edit: The article you link to doesn't even state that Putin said this, why do you even link it here?
Edit 2: The only teleportation mentioned in the article is using a quantum effect to "teleport" information, not physical objects.
> If Putin really said this it would be all over the largest media in Russia.
Pretty much all "largest media" in Russia are state-controlled.
Didn't know that, thanks
> Pretty much all "largest media" in Russia are state-controlled.
I know, this is a problem. But when we are talking about what Putin actually said or did not say these media are very accurate. Much more so than our Western media.
A person from some state-controlled organization talks about the teleportation in more details. He refers to “a 20 years old sci-fi movies”. Can you recall a 20 years old sci-fi movie featuring quantum teleportation of elementary particles?
I'm not going to engage in that kind of discussions, sorry.
However Russia would not be a good place to do this, the level of corruption is astonishing and the number of local interests one will have to satiate would be enormous. And the manufacturing culture is not that great, which means most of things will need to be imported and assembly will have to be very tightly controlled, and even then screwups will happen a lot. So I would estimate the probability of success as very low.
BTW: I wasn't aware there was a "race". Who exactly is racing?
Wasn't it downgraded to maglev at some point?
Maglev in vacuum or near-vacuum is not a new idea; it's been discussed for decades. The question was always whether the vacuum tube was worth the trouble. The Shanghai airport maglev reaches 250 MPH right now in normal operation, and air resistance isn't the limiting factor on speed. The Japanese L0 Shinkansen reaches 375 MPH in tests, with an operational speed of 315 MPH. The main problem with maglev is that the track costs too much.
The main claim for Hyperloop is that the tube is cheap. The original cost estimates assume using someone else's right of way and unreasonably cheap tunneling. Also, to get the straight right of way, the endpoints have to be somewhere inconvenient, well outside major urban areas.
There was one company that was proposing building an ETT between Chattanooga, TN and Atlanta, GA in the US; reducing the two and a half hour drive to less than twenty minutes. It never really got past the environmental planning phase (plus Chattanooga didn't want Atlanta commuters, because the South and anti-progress).
A successful tube transport system could be technologically ground breaking. Theoretically they'd be faster than airplanes and use a fraction of the fuel/energy (once they're constructed of course; not counting development costs).
But they have all the same design problems of monorails (the worst and least expandable form of public transportation). Difficult to switch lines and difficult to extend. Also you get the additional difficulty of turning, which apparently is very difficult in ETTs.
The track would also be far more expensive to operate and build than high-speed rail in pretty much any aspect of the project, the tolerances that need to be complied with for safety reasons are orders of magnitude smaller than the ones in high-speed rail, and it's impossible to ensure a human-tolerable ride.
It appears that everyone is caught in the romantic vision of the future that the Hyperloop salespeople are dedicated to sell to the public, but rarely are the fundamental problems even mentioned.
There are plenty of good reasons why maglev hasn't caught, and the concept being sold by Hyperloop's sales team is far more limiting and expensive to pull than the maglev concept.
I see the fan group for monorails has a response on the switches http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/switch.html - what are they missing?
I imagine large urban areas will spring up around wherever a hyperloop endpoint is built. The builder might even be able to subsidize themselves by purchasing large radius of land around the endpoint prior to building it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002862-the-evolving-urba...
Result: You can't create a truly vibrant city in an arbitrary location. You might be able to manage a bedroom community or suburb though.
An example like Shenzhen from a centrally-planned economy would tend to have limited applicability to the US, but this one is interesting because it's the exception that proves the rule. Shenzhen would've been an "important" place regardless, due to its being the first place in "mainland" China north of Hong Kong. Before 1980, the aforementioned central planning kept it from developing as fast as it probably would have otherwise. When they opened it for foreign investment, it took off like releasing a slingshot, hence the high growth rate.
It makes more economical sense to build a hyperloop between cities that already exist and can sustain it, than to think the world works like Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
[0] http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha.pdf
Note in this context high vaccume is hard, low vaccume is cheap. http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/what-do-high-vacuum-and-...