Hyoerloop pods are smaller, so less lives are at risk.
And most importantly of all. It's not gonna be explosive, unless you rip the thing open with a bomb and you're right next to it.
Even if you rip the tube in half, the air is going to take some time to fill it up. A few miles from the hole there will be a much more harmless pressure gradient already.
Sure it might shake your capsule, but you're not gonna get shredded.
And that's precisely what makes it unworkable with regards to safety. Burying the tubes is an option but by that point you would be looking at rail instead.
They will get 1 passenger car. Which is what? 8 People?
The tube will slowly fill with air, everybody else evacuates safely at a slower speed.
I'm willing to bet on those odds. Compared to the number of car accidents, it'a a no brainer.
That does not mean anything.
The weight of a 1 cm² column of air is 1 kg. So 1 ton for 1 m². Let's say a square profile hyperloop tunnel 1 m high decompressing will be the equivalent of dropping one tonne for each meter. The shock will propagate at the speed of sound.
If you make small fins at the top of the tube you can even exagerate the effect and introduce turbulence, which further reduces flow rate.
There is a reason why pipelines need pumping stations every couple miles, to keep the fluid at speed.
Sure the wave might propagate at the speed of sound but that doesn't matter much if its pressure gradient is slow enough.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagen–Poiseuille_equation#Po...
Edit: To give a good analogy: Electricity also travels at the speed of light through a cable, however due to resistance you will get different current reading depending on where you measure.
Edit2: I reread your argument, and there is also a flaw in your energy calculation. The energy per time is not proportional to the length of the tunnel, but proportional to the size of the inlet.
Your calculation would be if you remove the entire top of the tunnel at once, over it's entire length.
Turbulence on the phase of what comes after the near vacuum.
The plug essentially plugs itself from resticted airflow.
If you want to be extra safe you could even add small tesla valve style fins around the border of the tube, to increase turbulence.
Hyperloop is a nightmare!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagen%E2%80%93Poiseuille_equ...
Edit: To give a good analogy: Electricity also travels at the speed of light through a cable, however due to resistance you will get different current reading depending on where you measure.