Hyperloop One Raises $50M, Hires Former Uber CFO
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The proposals aren't even all that similar to the original Hyperloop proposal. Gone is the ducted fan setup and instead they're just building high speed rail in a tube. And the cost estimates still make no sense whatsoever. I will be frankly shocked if any of these companies ever lay anything more than a short test track somewhere.
Dubai Ports World might build a system between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The route is flat and empty. and not too long. Dubai already has two monorail systems and a metro rail system, all beautiful and underutilized.[1] It may cost too much, but that probably won't be a problem.
A maglev doesn't need the tube below 200MPH or so. One way to build a useful system might be to run in a vacuum tube for long, straight runs, and switch to open track in congested areas. This would allow bringing the tracks much further into cities. Musk's original plan called for ending the LA-SF system in Fremont, near Tesla's plant.
(There are a surprising number of operating monorail systems in the world now. The US is way behind in this. The few in the US are airport systems or tourist attractions, but Japan and China, and now Brazil, have city-sized systems.)
I wouldn't worry about this - I've never ridden a monorail I liked. They always seem slower and much bumpier than a traditional track - see something like the Bangkok BTS SkyTrain for the type of system you really want.
Now, I don't know that much about the Hyperloop design, but I imagine that the earthquake-induced deflection in the tube may render it unusable for some amount of time. However, the the example goes to show that somewhat similar infrastructure can be built to withstand large seismic events, as long as the faults are known about ahead of time (which is the case in southern California but not everywhere on earth).
So what was that exactly? And where does that 0.5 to 1.3 mm height come from?
[1] http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-201...
If you want to talk manufacturing and vehicle dynamics, he also founded Telsa, an electric vehicle company, and SpaceX, a Spaceship company. Anything about those two vehicle manufacturing companies that might lend you to believe he knows something about manufacturing and vehicle dynamics?
He undoutably doesn't have the concept fully sorted, but at least vilify the man for actual faults, not ones you want to make up.
Musk gave Series A funding to Tesla. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla.
At best, Musk bought Tesla really really early. But he wasn't one of the original founders.
> SpaceX
I'll give you that one. But Musk doesn't get Tesla in my eyes.
So I'm not sure what exactly it takes to count as an aerospace engineer, but it seems like he has both the bit of paper, and the employment history.
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/hyperloop-one-lawsuit-bambroga...
i wonder why such animosity toward Moller. His approach on the last incarnation of the car has some technical mistakes which made it a dead end, yet looking into his history and the overall history of VTOL i wonder how people may see that as a scam. It is pretty obvious today that we will have human carrying 8/12/16-copters in the next few years (we actually already have them as actually flying prototypes today) and that is pretty much where Moller was in 198x-199x just adjusting for the non-availability of modern hardware and electronics back then (so he went for complicated double-engine-same-shaft design with minimum of controlling electronics - the approach which doomed the last incarnation. I do fail to see a scam here.)
Moller was trying to build a VTOL powered by Wankel engines. His company was trying to build Wankels with much better power to weight ratios than usual. As usual, this resulted in much reduced engine lifespan. (Classic tradeoff, as everybody in drag racing knows.) He's been able to build a vehicle that can get off the ground, and hover a bit, tethered from a crane, for 2-3 minutes.
Pure-thrust VTOL is quite possible with jet engines. The aircraft that do it, such as the Harrier and the F-35, are fighters, which are mostly engine anyway. It can be done, but not at low cost or high payload or high efficiency.
Jet engines remain expensive. Despite many attempts, small, cheap, reliable jet engines remain out of reach. Below 6-passenger bizjet size, reliable engines don't seem to get much cheaper. There are cheap high-powered small jet engines with model aircraft levels of reliability and a life of 100 hours or so. That's how the Flyboard Air does it.[2] Not being stupid, they always fly this over water at low altitudes.
[1] http://www.downside.com/scams/moller/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEDrMriKsFM
50+ years and $100m in R&D no viable prototypes might have something to do with it.
Maybe the approach was doomed from the start, but that didn't stop Moller from promising that you would be commuting to work by air in 10 years for decade after decade.
tell this to fusion guys :)
>no viable prototypes
i find this for example as looking very viable back at the time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MwxVAZuFOs
and actually if you add more props (possible with electric today not so much with gas engines back then) and much-much better control electronics you'll get the modern multi-copters :
volocopter prototype https://youtu.be/L75ESD9PBOw?t=97 and pre-production https://youtu.be/VAEy0NltoFQ?t=78
>Maybe the approach was doomed from the start, but that didn't stop Moller from promising that you would be commuting to work by air in 10 years for decade after decade.
only the last one, m400 was doomed as i mentioned above (and it wasn't actually that clear from the start, m400 was actually pretty logical and reasonable move forward - only after first tests one could see it clear). Put yourself at his place at any point in the history of his flying car development and those 10 years would look like a reasonable estimate. I personally actually say today that in 5 years we'll have the Volocopter likes flying around.
> tell this to fusion guys :)
Drop the "50+ years" and tell it to every other SV startup these days... ;).
Plus, they would spend most of the time in the shop anyway. Moller's big idea was to design an engine that was cheap, lightweight, had a very high power to weight ratio, efficient, and extremely reliable. For some reason he has had trouble making an engine that ticks all of the boxes.
https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/a-wheel-revolution-in-transpo...
This says that they are using passive magnetic levitation rather than air pressure, so it is a change from the original design, but not as drastic as you suggest.
https://m.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hyperl...
look, it might be technically possible but it in no means is viable. it does sound really cool though.
Thunderf00t's video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk
Debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hype...
Also debunked: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly...
Thinking through this a little more. In basic terms, you just need a tunnel big enough combined with low enough pressure that at speed, the train has significantly less air to push out of the way. I'm sure it is some complex math, but someone who understands the math could figure it out.
Just running a tube between two cities of different elevation might allow for zero energy transport of small pods.
Zero pressure(perfect vacuum) is impossible to do in life. So what these articles/videos mean by vacuum is sufficiently low pressure that can reduce drag and that is essentially impossible to do across a tube of any meaningful size.
If your goal is low pressure, low cost, and high speed then build an airplane. No tracks required, no vacuum pumps required, no permitting required.
The terminal length offset seems unrelated at first. It seems they have more options to handle this.
ps: I wonder if, even a public mode of transport fails, it could be interesting for objects; smaller diameter and less security issues.
The tensile stress at the ends of a hyperloop track would be orders of magnitude higher if you tried this approach. I haven't done the math, but I'd suspect you'd need an anchoring system comparable to what you see on large suspension bridge cables, if not more. Not only that, but I suspect you'd start to reach the limits of what steel can structurally sustain. With this solution, you've got a O(100km) long tube that is not only under vacuum but now also under enormous tension. Before this can be considered a viable solution someone needs to do the math on that, and AFAIK no one has.
So I still want my put options.
Because space has extremely low density thermal radiation doesn't really work very well... it's very hard for a vehicle in a vacuum to dump heat...there is no medium to receive the energy!
That's news to me. What do you think "cold" means if not a synonym for "low temperature"?
> Because space has extremely low density thermal radiation doesn't really work very well... it's very hard for a vehicle in a vacuum to dump heat...there is no medium to receive the energy!
No, that's completely wrong. It is very easy to radiate heat into space as long as your radiator is not pointed at the sun. What you can't do is convect heat away, which makes it hard to transfer heat from the hot part of a spacecraft to the cold part. But getting rid of the heat once you've transferred it to a radiator is really easy. In fact, some parts of a spacecraft need heaters to keep them warm if they don't get sun exposure.
This isn't true at all. The tube will still have air inside of it, you just need higher pressure behind the car than the air in front.
The cars themselves work a lot in the same way a cylindrical air hockey table would work.
People think high speed rail is expensive? Wait until you see how expensive Hyperloop is going to be per mile.
PS - And I haven't even touched on safety/evacuation problems with the concept. That quadupled the cost and size of the Eurotunnel for comparison, how can we assume it won't bloat the Hyperloop's size/cost/complexity?
You know what's expensive and was once unfeasible? Strapping thousands of tons of fuel to a rocket and launching it into space. And yet...
They're not trying anything at this point, they've raised enough money for at most 5km worth of high-speed tracks (proper 350km/h graded tracks) and no rolling stock.
We build massive dams to stop rivers and invest billions into complex rockets that need to carefully control explosions in order to get people and cargo into space.
If one company can build a simple 10 ~ 20km tube between two major travel points in some country, it will be an invaluable proof of concept worth way more than the initial investment.
Just because something is hard doesn't me we shouldn't try.
For example, one mile of Hyperloop or five miles of conventional high speed rail? One mile of Hyperloop or two miles of Monorail? One mile of Hyperloop or investments into more efficient aircraft?
Personally I don't think Musk is a "dummy" as you do, but I do feel sometimes his passion doesn't always address real world civil engineering limitations. The Hyperloop is technically very possible, thus isn't "dumb," it is just building it at scale (and addressing consumer safety, etc) that may be a challenge.
Remember, it's not enough to be smooth. You have to be:
1. Smooth (on the inside) and
2. Straight and
3. Strong (enough to bear the stress of having a multi-ton vehicle passing within a few millimeters at 700MPH) and
4. Long (300 miles at least) and
5. Airtight for that entire length, and
6. Cost-effective.
It is that combination of features that no one has ben able to even begin to tell a story about how they would make it work in the face of thermal expansion.
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-oil-pipelines-have-so-many-seem...
But this obviously won't work for the hyperloop. It has to be straight.
Space shuttles would have similar challenge (actually in reverse) - how to protect sealed air inside a closed cylinder from almost absolute vacuum outside in an environment where heat and cold are extreme; the cylinder being fabricated from overlapping conjoined pieces.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=45818300884035476...
No alarms on thermal expansion, structural integrity etc.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies [2] is approaching the problem with crowdfunding and crowd collaboration. Their pictures are quite pretty.
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop
> "To support this competition, SpaceX is constructing a test track adjacent to our Hawthorne, California headquarters"
Thunderf00t did a good job summarizing the problems:
e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hype...
Also from Hyperloop One employees here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly...
Except when you add the 'all points in between' it stops being high speed rail. The current CA 'bullet train' as planned is projected to be only marginally faster than standard rail over the majority of it's run - 80-100MPH.
Further, not every train has to stop at every station; there can be express trains.
The Cali bull*^% train isn't competing against rail - it's competing against cars and airplanes.
Also, you're forgetting about express trains. With sidings and in-cab signals, you can have high speed rail that stop at ever stations and others that pass intermediary stations for morning/evening commuters.
It takes 3 to 5 airplanes departing per hour to get near that capacity.
The point is that each plane costs around 300 million. A single modern high-speed train costs less than 100 million, and has over 5 times the capacity of a single passenger plane.
Yes, the more I've thought about this, the more I agree. Moreover, I don't think the hypothetical shockwave would last all that long. As it moves down the tube, it has to drag an increasingly long column of air behind it, all of which is likely turbulent and definitely causing friction with the inside of the tube. This would slow and weaken the shock front considerably to the point that at some distance down the tube, the pressure would rise not suddenly, but slowly and evenly.
If you're going 650 Mph in an airplane and hit a bump (air pocket), the plane can bounce 5-10 feet. So the acceleration is spread over a long time / distance.
If you're going 650 Mph in a hyperloop and hit a bump, you have millimeters of room. So any minor bump is going to be a gigantic slam.
I've ridden TGVs in Europe. At 250 Km/h (~150 Mph), it's bumpy enough that I have a hard time doing anything other than stare out the window.
The hyperloop will be 4x faster than that. If it does work, I'd probably want a padded interior, and a face mask with attached vacuum aspirator for vomit...
This is the total opposite of my experience, I've ridden the TGV many times in France and I'm always amazed how smooth the ride is, without looking outside I wouldn't even notice I'm moving. It's actually a weird feeling to look outside as you see the landscape moving so fast.
Sure, there are large stretches where it is straight and smooth. But when it's bumpy, it's really bumpy. In a way that a slow train just can't do.
Uh? The only problem you may feel is the pressure in your ears when you are in a tunnel. But the ride feels much less bumpy than a regular train on a classical line.
That's not how acceleration works. Maybe you mean force? Hyperloop cars are heavy enough that a small air pocket wouldn't be able to produce enough force to accelerate it substantially.
I'm talking about the tube pressurization, which is much much worse.
You might derail one train, if lucky, not every train on the track. We have defect detectors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defect_detector
Also trains, especially in the US, are much slower, and derailing one will probably kill a few passengers, but most will be fine. It's much more damaging to target bridges, which terrorists did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafiganj_train_wreck (130 dead)
Crashing a plane into a highway overpass will do even less damage, because cars can stop very quickly when they see a problem.
I also think you are overestimating the number of terrorists running around with RPGs.
EDIT: Of course, when all is said and done, the additional engineering requirements to make it safe may also make it economically unfeasible, in which case, your original point about the dangers would be essentially correct.
Terrorist with an RPG is just an example, it can be anything - a drone with C4, somebody throwing a long string of burning thermite, or just a gasoline canister set on fire.
This reminds me of the people who were very vocal about automated cars needing to be perfect before they could replace human drivers. They seem to have quieted down as the technology gets closer to actual deployment. I suppose that will also be the case here if the hyperloop becomes reality.
Also it's a much easier target. Planes are only reachable to the terrorists during takeoffs/landings. And even then, it's not exactly easy to hit a plane moving at 300mph with an RPG/truck/drone.
The rest of your argument about automated cars is the classic example of straw man.
And to address your original point in a horribly sarcastic way, if only someone had invented bulkhead technology...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSPi1JFx4_-Gz0Fm0qq2K...
Is it your assertion that of the 200 countries in the world, none of them will ever, under any circumstances, create a self-driving car lane with higher speed limits?
Because that seems like a crazy assertion to me. It doesn't even take a country... One county could do it. And boom, Personal Rapid Transport is not a joke.
If you are talking about Elon Musk, he might have other incentives to put forward something like this. Note that we are living in an age when anything can be made popular or credible despite its worth....
heavy rail is just too damn expensive for what it provides and there are what, two non subsidized systems out there? plus hundreds of billions in backlogged maintenance to many rail systems, not even counting the rail car maintenance that has been put off.
And yes, the only mode of transportation that is cheaper than rail with regards to cost per tonnage is sea transport. In passanger transportation, it really depends on the distances and on the speed of transportation. People tend to pay a premium for point-to-point speed, and although airway transportation is unbeatable in that regard the time to get to the nearest airport and required to board end up adding a travel time penalty between 1 and 2 hour. This means that high-speed rail tends to be, by far, the best mode of transportation between destinations that are distanced up to around 400km.
It's truly not a common occurrence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_State_Route_267#Dulle...
Consensys the blockchain company is in the accelerator as well as Sure Chill for cooling medicines, and an augmented reality for education startup, and potentially a concrete 3D printing company as well. There are allegedly 30 companies in the cohort although the list hasn't been made public.
I think the program has a huge amount of potential to rapidly scale up these technologies, I just hope that the companies are able to scale with the demand.
> Neither of these is possible for the Hyperloop because the high speed of the capsule zooming along inside it means the pipe curves have to be very gentle. How, I wondered, is Musk going to solve the thermal expansion problem?
> The answer turned out to be simple: he didn’t. There’s some hand waving and, possibly, a complete misunderstanding of how thermal expansion acts, but no actual solution.
The rest of the article is a deep dive into the problems with the earlier Hyperloop proposal.
People can just get in using their own privately-owned certified compliant electric cars. And then take a nap as the autonomous driving takes over for safe high-speed travel. No traffic jam slowdowns, no slowpokes in your lane. Road-embedded power can wirelessly beam energy so there is no need for refueling stations. Traffic control manages vehicles entering and leaving the roadway. Read the news or take a nap. SF-to-LA in 2hrs, and you arrive rested and with your car.
Not the hyperloop, but drastically cheaper and leveraging technology that's coming anyway. The novelty is drastically higher speeds, bumper to bumper driving, continuous fueling.
I think it's a great start, but it's still super early to know if this can even work.
Innovation and disruption are better than just incremental improvements to make some existing technology fit your bill.
It is a bit different, you know. Investing in proven tech vs investing in vapourware..
It is situated above ground. This means the tubing is exposed to all and everyone. In other words, it is vulnerable to homemade explosives which can perhaps obstruct the path the vessel transverses. Sounds far-fetched, but the lengths extremists go to can not be undermined as we have learned time and time again throughout history.
I am interested in the security protocols more so than anything else.
Thus making it a monorail, rather than a Hyperloop.
On Mars, you don't need the top half of the hose because it's already low-pressure, so the ramjet hovercraft could run in an open-air trough.
Honestly though, this whole idea smells like technofuturism to me. High-speed trains are hard, and this is being sold as being easy and sexy and futuristic. However, if you do the math out, the capacity isn't nearly as good as modern trains - which is literally the entire point of a train. That means Hyperloops are sort of like making a really cheap airplane that doesn't fly. The whole world is not the web, and there are legitimately difficult problems out there, particularly in transportation.
The hype around the idea is absurd, and it sounds like at least 1 of the companies that took money to work on it was a scam.
Or: if we can't get SpaceXplode into space, we'll get space down to earth
Maybe something like imperial Roman conspicuous construction instead of conspicuous consumption.
Just for a change.