San Francisco to L.A. in 30 Mins. With Proposed New Transportation System | Hacker News Reader

San Francisco to L.A. in 30 Mins. With Proposed New Transportation System

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Honestly, I'm tired of that kind of articles..

Don't get me wrong I would love to read how hyperloop will work and I'm really excited about it.

Instead I see on HN tons of badly written speculations about what was said a long time ago. Especially those from news sites don't add any new information or analysis.

It just an attractive title to get some page views. It's missing the point, Elon Musk said explicitly that it's not evacuated tube. There are blog post which are superior to this article.

I'm glad to see all the top comments being of this nature. This is why I love HN. It is a very frustrating article to read, and I'm surprised to see this submission got so many upvotes on the front-page.

Agreed. Why are we paying any attention to this if there are no details? Musk will eventually tell us what it is, or he won't. Either way, speculation is pointless and dumb.

I would say speculation is meaningful and exciting.

Very self absorbed perspective. The whole world isn't as informed as you. For most people reading the article, this is probably the first they've heard of the Hyperloop. And it's really fucking exciting for them.

But the article is factually incorrect, Elon who coined the term hyperloop says its not a "evacuated tube" but this article suggests it is.

Pointing out a poorly researched article is not being self absorbed, maybe the writer should have done more than 2 minutes of research.

No, it is not factually incorrect. I agree that the article is confusing in regards to the 'evacuated tube' bit, but that is due to poor writing structure, not a poorly researched article. The article does not suggest that the Hyperloop is an evacuated tube. Here's the explanation of the Hyperloop in the article:

> The Hyperloop has been vaguely described by Musk as a "cross between a Concorde, a rail gun, and an air hockey table." A better description might be an elevated tube system with a magnetic levitation system similar to high-speed bullet trains. The kicker would be the enclosed tube, which would provide a nearly friction-less surface for individual capsules to travel in.

That's a description of an evacuated tube.

That's a description of a magentic tube. They say nothing about pulling a vacuum on that tube.

People should re-read this article carefully. There is an insinuated connection between Musk's Hyperloop plan and the company ET3 and their evacuated tube design, but there is none.

In fact, Elon Musk has said that the Hyperloop is not a vacuum tunnel[0].

[0] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/224406502188916739

Now that I think of it, did he meant "not a vacuum tunnel"?

Or did he meant "not a vacuum tunnel"?

The comparison to an air hockey table indicates the opposite to a vacuum. Air hockey tables elevate the puck by blasting streams of air up from the table surface creating a cushion of air for the puck to glide on. Perhaps by saying it is not a "vacuum tunnel" he meant it is an "air tube". :)

FTA: "In theory, this elevated tube system"

So, yeah. Not a tunnel.

My first thought was "Oh, so it's the thing he said it wouldn't be, just above the ground.", too. :P

But then again, he also said he'd publish something about it within 4 weeks. Of July last year.

Thanks. The article is deeply misleading. I skimmed it and linked to it on Facebook, but I deleted it because it's so disingenuously written. They start off by describing Elon Musk's hyperloop idea, and posting a photo of Musk, then seamlessly switch over to talking about this ET3 company's unassociated project for the rest of the article. Awful journalism.

Not journalism, it's a marketing fluff piece. The author is clearly trying to pump an unsuccessful company with a blurb and thin connection to a rumored Musk project.

Thanks for clarifying. I was under the impression ET3 was a stealth company he set up that has been working on Musk's idea. The article doesn't make it clear that the two are not connected.

Particularly frustrating because Musk has stated over and over and over that his hyperloop idea is not an evacuated tube system.

Yeah, I was about to reply this. The article actually recycles all the stuff we know, and insinuates on one theory that it might possibly be. I first took the 6 seat capsule thing as a given feature for Musk's design, but you need to read the article carefully to find out this is just a hypothesis based on another type of design, which Musk previously stated this is not a vac-tube.

Agreed. I noticed that as well and found it kind of scummy. I've read about ET3 and the hyperloop before separately and knew they weren't related.

There's no way you can get people from LA to SF in that timeframe without some combination of massive tunnels and viaducts due to what's known as minimum vertical curve radius.

If he's going to build this for one tenth the cost of a predominantly at-grade high speed rail system, then the real breakthrough isn't his don't-call-it-a-vacuum evacuated air hockey tube, it's a magical ability to lay massive amounts of concrete and bore hundreds of miles of tunnel for several orders of magnitude less money than is currently required.

If he's figured that out, the resulting company would be worth far more than tesla, SpaceX and any asteroid mining venture he could conceive of combined.

I don't think he's figured that out.

>bore hundreds of miles of tunnel

It's elevated, not below ground. But I think most of your point stands. Just getting through the politics alone would be impressive.

The Tejon pass (grapevine) is over 4000 feet. Minimum vertical curve radius on Britain's High Speed Two, with a top design speed of 250mph, is 56 kilometers. This thing will need to operate at an average speed several times that.

As you make the train faster and faster, the route must asymptotically approach a straight line. A straight-ish line that goes over the mountains between LA and the central valley would either require viaducts hundreds, if not thousands of feet tall, or it will require tunneling, or it will require a mixture of both.

But it is not a train. It is a short, tube-shaped vessel inside of another tube and magnetically elevated. I am assuming that the magnetic "elevation" is all around the vessel which would prevent it from slamming side-to-side or top-to-bottom. I'm not saying there won't be problems but I don't think it will need the curve radius like you are thinking for a train.

It has nothing to do with the ability of the train to stay on the tracks, it has to do with the ability of the passengers to keep their lunch in their stomachs.

ah. I understand that. thanks for clarifying.

>it's a magical ability to lay massive amounts of concrete and bore hundreds of miles of tunnel for several orders of magnitude less money than is currently required.

He isn't boring tunnel but building it above ground. Not that that changes your other points. The devil is in the details and we don't have enough details to evaluate it.

See my reply to IanDrake, building it entirely above ground at those speeds would require viaducts so tall that boring tunnels would be cheaper.

You must have skimmed the article, this isn't miles of tunnel that he's proposing.

Elon Musk. Every time I hear about him, the more fanboy-ish I get. Gotta be one of the most inspiring people alive today. He has a vision to make the world a better place (or a vision to fucking dominate, whatever you want to call it) and he's executing on it. He's ripping industries apart and creating new ones. He's unstoppable.

I've never had a mancrush or role-model on someone, but Elon Musk fits the bill. I would allow Elon to have sex with my girl if he would save the cuddling for me.

That is absolutely innapropriate for HN. You should have at the very least offered to have Elon's babies as well.

Hahaha you got me there. Indeed, I'm sure people would pay a hefty sum for some of his "genetic material".

Of course, if such a thing were ever built, you'd wait so long in security and lines to pay off every mouth in the national security theater pork barrel trough that it'd have been faster to drive.

The best thing about driving in the USA is that oil companies, manufacturers, the UAW, the AAA, the AASHTO, and the rest have established a lobbying network that can blow down even the most sensible limits on driving. They whine like a toddler even at tiny inconveniences that would benefit them in the long run like raising the gas tax enough to keep highways and bridges from falling down. And the government bows and submits and the motorcar industry gets even steeper outrageous subsidies while high speed rail, public transit, and air travelers get whacked with a bat in the teeth. Usually it's the national security complex that wields the bat but it could just as easily be an overpaid transit union.

I'm a fan of subsidizing green electricity generation (and I include nuclear power as green) and electric cars with a progressively increasing tax on gasoline. Most (not all of course) of this nation's towns have been engineered around roads and cars. You can't just add a light rail or a subway and expect instant adoption.

You can, however, gradually change the nature of the cars and the fuel that powers them. I would expect such a plan to go absolutely nowhere for the same reasons you outline above.

Not sure that raising gas taxes will get you your desired result. Here in California we have the highest gas taxes in the nation at 71.9 cents per gallon plus state and local sales tax added, and we have some of the worst roads I have seen in the US.

>established a lobbying network that can blow down even the most sensible limits on driving.

Last time I was in the states, they had rather slow limits on the Freeways. Has this improved yet?

Depends on the state. Some states have lower, or higher speed limits within their borders. For example, I-10 West of San Antonio, in Texas, has a speed limit of 80mph (by necessity, I'll say!), and State 130 between Austin and San Antonio has a speed limit of 85mph. Utah has some highway sections at 80mph, and most states in the central-west region of the US have highway limit at or around 75mph.

With the addition of Hyperloop, Elon Musk is basically transforming transportation in all possible ranges:

- Short-range (in-city, cross-city): Tesla

- Medium-range/long-range (cross-state, possibly cross-country & cross-continent): Hyperloop

- Ultra-long-range (cross-planetary, possibly cross-galactic): SpaceX

"possibly cross-galactic"

Hyperbole? Or do you know something about the physics of cross-galactic travel that the rest of us don't?

Bring back Project Orion and generation ships to alpha centauri become feasible, just hard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...

I don't know of anyone that is seriously looking at Orion anymore though. I suspect that whatever will eventually take us there will be to Orion as the Flying Scotsman is to Hero's Engine.

A trip to Alpha Centauri would be decidedly intra-galactic; the distance from the Sun to the edge of our galaxy is on the order of 4300 times the distance from the Sun to Alpha Centauri.

Yes, calling it "cross" galactic would certainly be stretching the definition of "cross". Though I suppose a "cross country" race is across the "countryside" though not across the country. ;)

Interstellar?

What is the best term for inter-solar-system travel? (Or, is that the best term?)

"Interstellar" probably. Between the stars.

I agree. I think I actually meant to ask about "intra-solar-system" travel.

Judging from the last two space operas i have read, the fashion is sending transhumans on single generation ships ( and playing with internal clocks to manage the subjective boredom).

And there are certainly a few people looking at interstellar travel. A great blog about this is

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/

Charles Stross's (HN: cstross) Accelerando has a nice treatment of this.

I think Orion ships are something that we could attempt to start building today though, no need to wait until the singularity.

I would be more intrigued how Hyperloop would play as a competing technology vs Tesla for short range commutes say SF to San Jose. Would hyperloop be discouraged for such "short-range" routes because Tesla could then pick up the slack? Or would they assume that those who used Hyperloop were probably never going to buy a car?

I don't think Tesla would worry for Hyperloop in the case of SF-to-SJ type commutes -- BART and Caltrain would probably be the ones who should worry. In fact in the US, I don't think there'd be a case where Tesla would worry about Hyperloop at all, as it's pretty car-driven culturally and architecturally -- people in general are walking-averse and still need cars to get to places that are between "stations". It might be different in other places like Europe or Asia though.

I am not quite getting the connection between Elon Musk and ET3, besides some similarities in goals.

As far as I can tell, this is not Elon Musk's idea/company, the article is only written to imply but not actually say that it is.

ET3 website: http://et3.com/about-daryl-oster

There was always a shred of truth to tube transport in Futurama and the Jetsons. While it may not work exactly like that and may require attendants to ensure safety similar to airplanes, it's amazing how fast you can go without air resistance in a vacuum.

It doesn't have to be a large hadron collider, just good enough to get you to LA in 30 minutes. It can also be done economically; as the article points out, the high speed rail system may be obsoleted by this as well as flying. Imagine eliminating the great uncertainties of safety in flying at Concorde speeds.

Perhaps those cartoons scared people away from this technology :)

Something not unsimilar has been tried in the past:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pneumatic_Despatch_Comp...

In the 1860s there were a series of pneumatic tubes built under London, they were primarily built for cargo but it was perfectly feasible for people to travel in them (engineers working on the system did so).

It's a shame there hasn't been more technological progress on cargo transit. A HyperLoop equivalent for sending goods could be a big deal; trucking is ridiculously inefficient economically and ecologically, at least relative to the possibility space.

>> "ET3 has already built mock-ups and prototypes and is planning a 3-mile test run by the end of 2013."

Every time I've heard Musk talk about this I thought it was something that we wouldn't see for another 10-20 years. A test this year would be fantastic. Of course with regulation/law no matter how quickly they build it we might not see it in use by the general public for a long time.

As we don't know many details I can't be sure but could this be Musk's answer to long-distance green travel? He already has the solar panel company (providing green energy to buildings etc.), Tesla (green cars), ET3 (green airplane replacements). I'm not sure if this was his aim but owning each of those markets would be pretty amazing.

Edit:

It might take some convincing to get people to use this though. My first thought when it said it could travel at 4000MPH was "if anything goes wrong with this I'm dead". A lot of effort/cost will need to be put into maintaining the system as at that speed even a minor flaw will most likely cause fatalities.

"If anything goes wrong with this I'm dead" does not deter people from driving 100 mph on free ways and boarding planes.

Both those things offer a chance of survival (just look at the number of uninjured survivors in the SFO crash a few days ago). And in a car you also have control of the speed. At 4000MPH I don't think there is any possibility of survival and the kind of mistake needed to cause an accident at those speeds is probably very small. It may not sound completely rational but I think it's something that a lot of people will think about.

Counterpoint: many people will find going 4000mph unbelievably cool (just as with planes, I suppose).

Just as in fighter jets, wouldn't 4000 MPH put a tremendous strain on the body?

It's not the speed that puts strain on the body, it's the _change_ in speed (i.e. acceleration). You are currently going ~67062 MPH around the sun and probably didn't notice. If you suddenly slowed down to 4000 MPH around the sun, you would definitely notice that. ;-). (http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=356)

Cars can drive around obstacles. Planes don't have set paths. But if some terrorist asshole blows up the tube, your are screwed. Heck even if it's just punctured, the compression wave of air pushing into the evacuated tube might be enough to kill you, no crash needed.

That said, it would be awesome for nonvolatile freight.

a 20 seconds full stop (as mentioned on their website) combined with compartments in the tubes which automatically close if the vacuum is breached would reduce that risk.

When the first cars came out in early 20th century people thought exactly the same thing. The mindblowing speed of 20 mph was far too dangerous for common man!

In fairness, if something goes wrong at 100MPH you're probably dead too, so beyond that point the difference isn't that important.

I understand that but most people don't think that logically :)

Yeah, I suspect that's going to be the problem.

I saw the possible mock-ups of such a tube system (where everybody has to be seated) and had only one question: Where is the restroom and how do you stand up to walk there?

I hope Elon has considered this.

It's probably in the same place as the restroom in a car.

As the pods seem to be quite small, for longer journeys, it's probably possible/practical to request for your pod to be dropped at the next station on demand if you need to go. For shorter journeys, just hold it.

It goes down the tubes when it gets to the terminating station :) I'm sure they can design it like an airplane or bus cabin with regard to disposing of human waste, a small lavatory will probably be OK.

If you can't hold your urine for 30 minutes you shouldn't be commuting in the first place.

You have to think about children and older people who don't have the degree of self control we adults do.

Or the car itself will become the toilet.

P.S. Wondering who downvoted my above, and quite legitimate, comment. Somebody mustthink I don't like Elon Musk or something, when nothing could be further from the truth.

I have yet to see a restroom on a New York City subway train. Trips on those can take upwards of an hour depending on where you're going. Old folks and children seem fine. I don't think a lack of bathrooms is a very significant problem; I'd say it's not even a problem worth considering.

Or you just wear diapers like other people with that disability...

Did Elon ever publish his promised paper with the details of the proposed Hyperloop idea?

Didn't he say ~three weeks ago that he would do so in ~four weeks?

Last year?

I can't find evidence for any link between Musk and ET3. The article states:

"ET3's Hyperloop-like project already has a number of schematics and plans already in place."

Which doesn't suggest to me that they're affiliated.

> In theory, this elevated tube system could be built for a tenth of the cost of high-speed rail and a quarter the cost of a freeway.

How are they planning to build evacuated tube with magnetic rails for 1/10th of a price of railway?

It's not an evacuated tube, Musk has said so explicitly on more than one occasion.

Also, the Hyperloop system is still extraordinarily expensive, characterizing it as "1/10th as expensive as a railway" is misleading. It's, potentially, 1/10th as expensive as the ludicrously expensive California high-speed rail system which comes in at an astounding $68 billion just to connect San Francisco and LA. Which might be more than the entire TGV system cost to construct, for that matter. It's certainly several times the cost of the channel tunnel, for example.

Yeah, I've been following the project and have noted this as well. Curious that they calling the project Evacuated Tube Transport, though...

The hyperloop is a different concept than the one used by ET3, which Musk is not affiliated with.

Why is it so expensive?

Land rights. High-speed trains cannot travel in tight turns, so to build SF<->LA requires pretty specific right-of-way purchases.

Nope.

Total cost of lease/purchase of all land in the right-of-way is estimated at $1.5 billion for the initial operating section and $4 billion (inclusive) for the full phase 1 system (this is only about 6-7% of the total cost), by far the biggest expenditures are for construction and in operational overhead.

California politics.

The article doesn't do a good job of making the distinction, but there's a big difference between an evacuated tube and an excavated tube. In the first case, you lay a tube along the ground and suck all the air out. In the second, you have to dig a tunnel underground.

Also as mentioned by others, Musk is apparently not talking about an evacuated tube, but it looks like ET3 is. (Unless the quote from Musk was actually that it's not a tunnel, in which case maybe he was making the same distinction.)

The idea you can bore tunnels and seal them with vacuum for cheaper than high speed rail is totally bonkers. I assume hyperloop involves flinging vehicles through the air and thus avoiding the biggest expenditure.

One problem with rail is that there are established companies (often with highly-unionized workforces) that build them. And, at least in some juristictions, lots and lots of rules and safety standards, some of them dating back a long time.

Building something that doesn't have to fit within railway rules, and which you can build yourself using workers you've hired and trained de novo might well end up looking quite attractive on paper, even if the resulting system isn't fundamentally better than a "normal" railway.

The political feasibility of such a project is another matter.

How much do (surface level) large-bore oil/gas pipelines cost? There's not necessarily a requirement to place it underground.

The biggest saving over rail is probably the much lighter weight of the capsules, which should require much less ground prep and foundations than laying rail that can support tens/hundreds of tons.

Correction: bore tunnels through earthquake territory.

I took one look at this ET3 picture and I thought "C'mon, Musk is smarter than this."

There is much discussion over this NOT being an evacuated tube. If there is air in a closed loop tube, why not accelerate it as well? Thus providing a "tail wind" giving even greater speed over a friction-less vacuum - which is presumably more difficult to create. Though, I can't even imagine the technical difficulties of creating and containing a 4,000 mph wind speed.

The first thing that leapt to my mind: failure modes. I can imagine many, and none of them are pretty.

This link was in the comments on that article with some speculation on how it might work http://bentilly.blogspot.de/2012/11/speculating-about-hyperl...

So how does one propose to get around negotiating land usage permission in all the podunk districts between SF and LA? That's what kept BART from circling the Bay 20 years ago and I suspect it has a great deal to do with the ridiculous price and schedule for the HSR.

If you are confused like I was after reading all the comments. This clarifies what is currently known. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

Thanks, that was useful. I'm very surprised by the "it leaves when you arrive" bit in the second quote in that article. Is it something like an evacuated moving walkway, then?

Does anyone know the status of the current plans for the CA high speed rail? Last I heard, its not going to be convenient or even high speed.

How about we produce a decent public transportation system in L.A? Oh....

So it would take 9 minutes at 1-G to get to 4000 MPH?

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