Hyperloop is making progress | Hacker News Reader

Hyperloop is making progress

wired.co.uk

205 pointscoob140 comments

This evades most of the criticisms of Musk's Hyperloop plan by not being the Hyperloop that Musk proposed. Specifically, and most importantly, it doesn't connect SF and LA, and instead chooses a route to fit the budget, instead of the other way around.

Musk's plan for the SF-LA Hyperloop was almost self-evidently fantastical, so much so that it's easy to read it as a political tactic to discredit California's HSR plan (which is also moving forward).

Well, that's fairly hyperbolic. It wasn't near self-evidently fantastical, unless you base that entirely on political willingness.

As for what you thought made it fantastical, I would love to hear a short list. My last understanding of it was that there wasn't anything specifically physical or technical that prevented it from being possible (albeit requiring more real-world testing), and there was at least some effort put into addressing the implementation details. If there are portions that are actually impossible rather than just unlikely I would rather know than remain ignorant.

No, it was fantastical. For instance: the cost estimates Musk provided were premised on advancements in tunnel drilling and elevated track construction costs that would have revolutionized all of civil engineering, not just hyperlooping.

"Ahlborn says, and Musk's cost estimate of $6-10 billion for a 400-mile stretch of Hyperloop is on point, based on the team's work."

Obviously this is a fluff piece, and he has incentive to not play up any problems with the budget, but it's stated there openly. You've stated the opposite, since I don't have evidence from either of you, why exactly should I consider your opinion more worthy than a group of many competent engineers?

http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy...

Musk's viaduct costs, for instance, were 1/10th those of California's HSR. His premise is that he can decimate the HSR cost.

Obviously that is a comparison that is relevant for LA-SF, but potentially not for Houston-Austin. Which I acknowledged upthread. As did the "many competent engineers" in this piece.

> Musk's viaduct costs, for instance, were 1/10th those of California's HSR.

ISTR -- and I may be mistaken -- that a significant portion of the underestimation there wasn't engineering-related, but real-estate related, in that costs of acquiring the land for the footprint was low-balled or ignored.

I also seem to remember that, and I believe Musk attributed so much savings to it because there was very little right of way that needed to be worked out, he was going to put it in the median of I-80. That reduces the theoretical cost quite a bit.

I think that's the goal of the company doing this, to test the feasibility of the design in more detail. It's also why I'm inclined to give them some weight in their assessment of the costs. But not too much. If I was an investor in some of this testing, I would want to go over their cost assessments with a fine toothed comb. It does seem this is one of the biggest unknowns in the proposal, and it's also one of the things that could change the most depending on where it's implemented, making it hard to make definite statements about.

> I also seem to remember that, and I believe Musk attributed so much savings to it because there was very little right of way that needed to be worked out, he was going to put it in the median of I-80.

A casual glance at a map of where I-80 runs might suggest that that wasn't quite right.

That's right, it was I-5. For some reason I often confuse them, even though it's obvious one is north/south and one is east/west. I'm on portions of I-80 about once a month, but I-5 generally no more than once a year.

Yes, it was I-5 of course. Also it is easier to acquire rights to land when you don't divide the land but rather have pylons.

It's tough to seem to remember something about a source that is contradicted in the source itself. I think you should start by reading the link, and then opine on it.

No, it's not tough to seem to remember anything, human memory is very fallible. That's why I prefaced the statement with that bit, because I was in no way sure. That said, my memory wasn't that bad. Here's what I was slightly misremembering from the proposal:

By building it on pylons, you can almost entirely avoid the need to buy land by following alongside the mostly very straight California Interstate 5 highway, with only minor deviations when the highway makes a sharp turn. [1]

So it's I-5, not i-80, and it's beside the highway, not in the median. I'm not sure how either of those mistakes affect the point I was trying to make to the degree it's not worth addressing, so I'm unsure why you used a rhetorical tactic instead of just correcting (since you obviously knew it was incorrect) and addressing that point, but that's your prerogative.

1: https://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/...

You're not addressing the source I provided; in effect, you're affirming the consequent in this argument.

We are talking at cross points. My, and I believe others, issue with the source you posted is that after stating that the actual central-valley land is cheap, it ignores the rights-of-way costs, which is where many believe a lot of the cost savings really are. It's hard to be definitive with the sources I've seen so far, because while they are all happy to post numbers for costs, few seem willing to break those down into what the cost is for, and since we are talking about different types of structures, it's hard to say whether the comparisons apply well.

As an example, your source states that the tube weight (for the larger plan) would be up to twice a train weight and thus would not cost less to build, and links to his own listing of train weights which are, as he states "To the best of my ability, I've tried to give dry weights, without passengers." That seems to imply that this is also without cargo. To my knowledge, most rail in the Western U.S. is built to handle cargo, and I imagine that's much heavier than commuter trains, and that could greatly affect building cost (to be clear the hyperloop could move cargo as well, but the relative dynamic weight of the cars to the static tube weight is much lower, yielding a smaller weight range). That leaves me without enough information to assess whether this is even a fair and valid comparison to make. There are other important factors as well, such as the weight of the hyperloop cars traveling through the tube that would need to be addressed if the tube weight was more favorable to train weight.

What this comes down to is that with respect to building cost, your source leaves me less that assured that it has done more that a cursory review of the information and applied possibly inaccurate numbers and assumptions. There's just too many details that are left out to know. At the same time, the original hyperloop proposal was lean on specifics as well. I guess the difference is that I don't see this situation as painting either stance as "fantastical," there's just not enough concrete information presented for me to know either way.

1: http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/table...

> "To my knowledge, most rail in the Western U.S. is built to handle cargo"

Definetly true.

> "and I imagine that's much heavier than commuter trains"

Also definetly true. A double-decker Amtrak passenger car clocks in at around 70 tons. Freight cars can be an order of magnitude heavier.

This is addressed, at least somewhat, in the source I just cited.

a) the HSR is a political boondoggle that California will suffer with paying for decades even if it does get done.

b) if Musk is so confident on his ability to deliver, let private industry take the risk and put it up.

Its bad enough we have to foot the bill for political showmanship and braggarts, we don't need to be footing the bill for untested technology by private interest who profess extreme confidence, but seemingly not enough to back with their own money. If he will, more power to him. Love Space X, don't care for this idea other than the out of this world feel

Please describe in what way CAHSR is a boondoggle.

Pedantic, but decimate is to reduce by one tenth, not reduce to one tenth, as it is more commonly used.

Pedantic, but "decimate" has the primary meaning of "reduce by a large percentage", based on the historical reference to a particular Roman practice of killing 1 in 10 of a group as a means of collective punishment; it does not generally (i.e., outside of the context of that specific historical practice) mean to reduce either by or to one tenth.

This is all my fault and I accept and will now wallow in my wrongness.

That's what you get for italicizing words!

That's lovely but your post isn't really contributing. bmelton was pointing out an actual misuse* . "Decimate" can mean either large percentage or the traditional 10% drop, it does not mean 90% drop. Your post moves into pointless word argument territory.

* or perhaps a pun masquerading as misuse in a way that invites 'correction', an utterly terrifying category of pun I hadn't even considered before

> That's lovely but your post isn't really contributing.

To the extent that is true, I kind of thought I addressed that with the first word of the post.

> bmelton was pointing out an actual misuse

And I was pointing out an actual error in bmelton's description of the actual misuse (which -- see below -- is repeated in your description.)

> "Decimate" can mean either large percentage or the traditional 10% drop

No, it can't. It can mean reducing by a large percentage, or it can be reference to actually killing 10% of a group of people as a form of collective punishment. It does not mean reduce by 10% in any general sense any more than it means reduce to 10% in any general sense (though the latter is more likely to be within its general meaning than the former.)

> Your post moves into pointless word argument territory.

Well, I would say that tptacek's point was entirely clear despite the misuse, and that both bmelton and my responses were provided with accurate warnings by their submitters as being pedantic ("overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning.")

That may be, but the parallel emphasis in tptacek's specific usage make it pretty clear that he was using the term literally.

While I acknowledge, and generally believe in the evolution of language, I refuse to succumb to the trend of colloquial usage coming to mean the opposite of a word's original intent.

To illustrate the point better, "literally" has now also been defined to mean "figuratively" in the common parlance, which means that, sadly, there is no appropriate word for literally that is unambiguous.

Similarly so with decimate. Its originalist intent is to reduce by one tenth, so, colloquial adoption aside, I reject any definition that resembles its polar opposite.

Clearly, the colloquial usage, as tptacek has done, is acceptable to many, but if words are intended to actually mean things, instead of just send an appropriate contextual vibe, then there should be some degree of rigidity to language that pushes back against its less meaningful and more ambiguous adoption.

Look, we can all just let Garner kill this silly discussion for us:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/igqynqcdqrj86mk/Screenshot%202014-...

I shouldn't have used the word. It's a dumb word. Direct ire my way.

No malice intended with the correction, nor any ire as a consequence of its use.

I'm just that special kind of internet-goer that appreciates correction, and expects others to do the same. Apologies for having belabored the point.

I apologize for using the word. :)

If we're talking about ancient Latin then yes. If we're talking about modern English then no. As well argue that "beef" refers to the entire cow rather than just its meat.

The cost to build one mile of 6 lane interstate in an urban area is estimated at 11 million dollars per mile. If you look at the estimated cost for the hyperloop, it seems to come out at around 25 million per mile. This isn't outside the realm of possibility at all, just a little more than twice that of traditional methods.

The hyperloop isn't a 6-lane interstate. It's an elevated track, some of it tunneled through rock.

The point I was making is that considering the huge upside, merely double the cost of a traditional highway seems like a very reasonable price.

It's not "double the cost". Nobody knows how much it's going to cost, but we know it costs more than Musk says it does.

11 million dollars per mile does not seem accurate. They recently widened the Turnpike in NJ from 6 to 12 lanes over a 35 mile stretch, and it cost $2.3 billion. That's $65 million per mile. And that was considered a successful project.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/nj-turnpike-widening-set-to-...

So, it's not fantastical, it's ambitious... Fantasy implies an impossibility.

Once again: I chose the word fantastical somewhat carefully and think the evidence bears it out. It's not an ambitious cost estimate; it's simply unrealistic.

A), ambitious and unrealistic are not mutually exclusive. It was ambitious and unrealistic to attempt a moon landing in under a decade.

B) Again, I believe fantastical implies a rational person would think it highly improbably. I'm a rational person, but so is Elon Musk; what appears fantastical to me appears ambitious to someone with a better understanding of the situation. I suspect this would apply to you, too.

> A), ambitious and unrealistic are not mutually exclusive. It was ambitious and unrealistic to attempt a moon landing in under a decade.

That's absolutely not true. It was ambitious and totally realistic to attempt a moon landing in 10 years.

Kennedy only selected that goal after von Braun said that it could be done "by 1967/68". He even added an extra two years of padding, just in case von Braun was being optimistic.

Anyone who knew anything about space flight knew that Kennedy's goal was achievable. In fact, some thought that von Braun was gold-plating the program unnecessarily. McDonnell did some engineering studies for landing one man on the moon using Gemini and a Saturn C-3 (about half the payload capacity of a Saturn V).

If 90% of civil engineers would say in 2013 that Elon Musks hyperloop plan was realistic, then it would be where the moon landing was in 1961. But they wouldn't. In comparison to the moon landing, Elon Musk's hyperloop was wildly unrealistic.

"Because Elon Musk" isn't a real argument, but as this thread shows, it is routinely mistaken for one.

"Because consensus" hasn't been terribly great either, thought it is routinely mistaken for one. IMHO fantastical implies that it directly contradicts rationality, not common knowledge.

The "some effort" included a 3-stage FEA that I accomplished in less than one semester of study. And I'm a computer engineer, I don't even have a real mechanical or civil-engineering experience and I could tell that the FEA proposal in the paper was a complete joke.

You say there wasn't real world testing. I go further, there wasn't even a serious theoretical analysis of the proposed Hyperloop system.

1. Don't see the point of economic class vs first class pods when the whole point is to get you to your destination so fast you won't be in the pod for very long. Mid-class pods for all makes more sense.

2. Please don't emulate the airport model and build over priced malls within a "security zone". A Hyperloop is supposed to get you from point A to point B quickly. Following the airport model will add two hours to every trip.

1. The purpose of higher priced classes is to give people who are willing to pay more the opportunity to do so.

The need to follow the airport model is one of the unaccounted-for costs of the Hyperloop, particularly on travel time. Because of the inevitable catastrophe implicated in any passenger attack on an 800MPH elevated train, it will absolutely have TSA-style security.

Why bother with a passenger attack when the whole route is exposed?

Or did you mean "TSA-style security" as completely ineffectual?

This is an incoherent argument, in that TSA-style security delays are just as likely to be eliminated from air transit as from a "hyperloop". As long as airports have them, any US "hyperloop" is also going to have security lines.

So yes, TSA-style security theater.

Yes:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jzp8htjdwj7htyn/Screenshot%202014-...

What's your point?

The cost differentiation is probably to help subsidize economy class fares, or even if it's not for that I think it would do that in practice.

The Hyperloop remains a well-designed proposal that solves a problem a Shinkansen/TGV model system solves, only it uses technologies that aren't proven or evaluated.

Silicon Valley thinking at its finest.

The issue I would most like to see progress on is thermal expansion of the the tube. The best solution I have heard is slip joints at the stations but if we're talking miles of slip, I still have a hard time imagining how that would work.

They'll keep the tube at a constant temperature by piping Silicon Valley hot air through an insulating layer around it

The world's only unlimited energy source

This. Thermal expansion is the show-stopper. Unless and until they solve this problem (and I don't see any practical solution) everything else is moot.

Thermal expansion is also a well known property and something that is dealt with in buildings and structures all the time. It would be a challenge, I agree, but I don't think it will be an intractable one.

There's 2-3 orders of magnitude difference in the scale of ordinary structures and the scale of the hyperloop. There may be a solution, but so far AFAICT no one has actually come up with even a plausible-sounding story. You can't simply say, well, we've solved the problem for small structures so surely we'll be able to solve it for larger ones.

Restrict the pipe from heating up, I'd say. Maybe hardened, temperature-isolated glass could be used for building them?

And for the remaining bit of expansion it might be possible to let the pipes slide upon/inside the pillars and make even the terminals moveable.

Oh, so now we not only have hundreds of miles of a near-vacuum being maintained... but also hundreds of miles of a near-vacuum being maintained at a specific temperature.

    And for the remaining bit of expansion it might be 
    possible to let the pipes slide upon/inside the pillars
    and make even the terminals moveable.

So you want a hundreds-of-miles long vacuum sealed tube that is composed of movable, sliding joints.

Please tell me, what kind of magical sliding joints are you familiar with that are cheap to produce and also able to hold a near-perfect vacuum?

The hyperloop is an incredible idea. One could travel, theoretically, 400 miles in a little under 5 minutes with reasonable, constant acceleration and no maximum velocity in a straight line (so, unreasonable). That means I could make it to NYC in a pinch and be back by dinner.

But I don't think the idea of an air rocket is one that will work. The cost will be incredibly prohibitive. The concept of a "stop" on the hyperloop seems to make the solution far more complex, and the cost of a single stop on the route (assuming in the middle of the trip) is almost 50% additional travel time.

The article says "800 mph". Meaning it would be around 30 minutes. Not including accel/decel. No? It takes a flight hour to hour and a half from LA <> SF.

Yes, I was assuming constant acceleration. I mentioned that this was unrealistic.

+1 for correct (even if inadvertent) use of the word "incredible".

I don't understand why there is so much focus on doing this in California where they have tons of development and the huge issue of earth quakes. Surely there's somewhere else that could reap the benefits of fast travel. Off the top of my head I would suggest doing this through the midwestern states which are incredibly flat and mostly void of development for hundreds of miles. You can pay ranchers and farmers for the right to build the support towers on their land. You'd have to worry about tornados and hail storms though. I'm not sure how much concern that would be. If this this is all steel and concrete it should be strong enough right?

This is something the midwest desperately needs. Unfortunately, we tried high speed trains during the stimulus, but the GOP governors of Wisconsin and Indiana didn't want to play ball with Obama's policies.

Imagine a fast line or a hyperloop between Chicago > Des Moines/Indianapolis/Madison/Cleveland/Memphis, etc.

We've got the flat land, maybe the money, but we don't have the political will. On a more positive note, the 300 mile Chicago > Columbus line is funded and happening:

http://thelantern.com/2014/10/plans-for-train-connecting-col...

>The high-speed train would make the Chicago-to-Columbus travel time three hours and 45 minutes, compared to an almost six-hour drive.

Not bad. No hyperloop, but if this is the begining of high-speed rail in America, it will be a game changer. Shame guys like Musk can't figure out ways to make traditional high-speed rail cheaper. I suspect that's just too unsexy of a problem for him.

You don't need guys like Musk. Here's how to make high-speed rail cheaper:

- Remove or upgrade all level crossings.

- Allow passenger trains to have priority over freight trains.

That's it. It's literally just two things. You don't need elevated tracks or magnetic levitation or airtight tubes. You just need to be able to accelerate the train to its maximum speed and not have to slow down until it reaches its destination.

Currently, Amtrak travel sucks due to the fact that when you board the train, no one can guarantee when or where you will be able to get off. Every passenger route passes over tracks owned by a railway company that makes far more money on moving coal or cattle than on people. And the freight trains may not have a regular schedule. So every time a passenger train leaves a station, it might be stuck on a siding for hours in the middle of nowhere, waiting for higher-priority freight to pass.

And all those tracks cross automobile roads, where an unnervingly large fraction of the level crossings don't even have warning signals. The trains still have to slow down for them, even if there are no cars in a 100-km radius, because at high speed, colliding with a smaller object, like a deer or cow, could cause a derailment.

There are no technical problems. They are all political and financial. As such, guys like Musk can't really help. He could spend his entire fortune and talk until his vocal cords snap, and still never make a dent. It's not just unsexy, but soul-crushing.

There's at least two caveats to those completely reasonable points: freight also is terrible, and cities build around trains. I won't touch the freight one, other than it seems to be abysmally unreliable compared to a semi.

But a high speed thoroughfare is great now, but soon someone's going to cheat and try to lay road across one of those tracks. The high speed lines really need to be separated with no outside interference.

I had a weird feeling a maybe ten years ago talking with a friend who is a surveyor. He noted that rail lines often take precedence in disputes, since they almost always predate any other landmarks, including roads. And over the intervening years, in the manufacturing towns I've been in it looks like we put all those rails in the most inconvenient places... Unless we actually just did the opposite and plopped our towns next to all the rail lines. And considering how vital rail was before the highways and cheap fuel, I think that's just what happened.

Anyhow, just my two cents on it. I think we sorta painted ourselves into a corner with this whole mess. It's certainly a political problem, but the solution really would involve positively stupefying amounts of capital, either to make bypass rail or to make those silly roads all overpasses. I say it's worth it, but, well, I'm biased.

Freight currently makes better use of US rail infrastructure than passengers do, because freight is less time-sensitive than passengers and the geography of the US makes that a problem for rail. It does not make sense to penalize the most efficient user of a resource to benefit one of its least efficient users.

Last time I was on an Amtrak train, for a 1000 mile trip, I was delayed by 24 hours. The published timetables advertise the trip at 18.25 hours. That was a grand total of 42.25 hours. By car, the trip is 14.5 hours. By plane, 2.5 hours. A competitive bicyclist with a crew van could have beaten that train to its destination that day.

The last Amtrak trip I made before that added 4 hours to a 5 hour trip. The same trip takes 3 hours by car or 1 hour by air.

From the anecdotes gathered from someone I know who used to make Amtrak passenger rail reservations, every last timetable is complete BS. Every single passenger route not on the east coast experiences a long delay, nearly every time it makes the trip. Sometimes, the train doesn't even get there at all, and the passengers are transferred to coach buses to be dropped off in a place that may be rather distantly removed from their intended destination.

The tickets themselves are not cheap, either.

I would say it doesn't make sense to have passenger rail at all, without some tracks completely dedicated to time-sensitive passenger traffic. In that sense, the freight lines are already being penalized.

Government shouldn't optimize for "users" (esp. when it's not human) but instead it's constituency. Is the country best served by timely transport of goods (which, at-best, fares poorer to trucks) or by timely transpiration of people?

Goods. Goods don't care if they arrive in the middle of the night, or if the trip takes a (predictable) couple hours longer than driving or way longer than a flight. They also don't need to be schlepped into the center of heavily populated areas at high speeds; in fact, they'd usually prefer not to be. People do: they have better options. Trains are a good way to move goods long-distance in the US, and a bad way to move people.

Businesses care about predictable logistics; they care about throughput (and jitter), but not latency. People are different.

The Federal Rail Authority ALREADY requires priority for passenger traffic. It's just not doable due to congestion from freight.

The current rail system is already being used optimally for freight. We need a separate right of way, with modern, HSR ready stock and pantograph ready lines for passenger traffic only. Good luck trying to make that happen!

Agreed about the issues with Amtrak. But in most locations, your 'two things' requires a completely separate right-of-way for authentic high-speed rail. That is exactly what happened with California HSR: Originally they planned to use freight rail corridors, but ended up with a plan which is only somewhat nearby existing rail.

That 3:45 travel time seems pretty unlikely. According to the feasibility study, it's based on the idea that trains with a 130MPH maximum speed will run at an average of 110MPH. The Acela Express maxes out at 150MPH, but averages only ~80MPH --- and that doesn't factor in service outages and other transient delays, which are common.

An HSR line between Chicago and Columbus would probably in the best case be competitive with driving. Which is itself an achievement, one supposes, given how much worse trains are than driving currently.

The Acela shares track with commuter and freight trains, as well as running on regular tracks, as opposed to tracks designed for HSR which is why it averages only a paltry 80 MPH. In comparison, the TGV in France averages 157 MPH (its top speed is 357 MPH), and Japanese bullet trains average somewhere in the neighborhood of 162 MPH.

The 'thelantern' link provided above doesn't go into detail if the plan involves laying all-new tracks to properly support HSR, or if existing tracks to be re-used.

Even then, parity with driving is an achievement. Drivers in traffic have this annoying habit of texting or worse while driving, even when illegal. I can put up with sitting next to someone texting on the train since they're not doing so while weaving in and out of traffic.

I looked this up a week ago on another thread and the numbers I got for average trip speed were lower: Paris-Lyon 140MPH, and Japan in the 140s-150s as well. The Columbus-Chicago route would involve upgrading existing tracks; the route times they're providing can safely be assumed to be best-case scenarios.

I only did a little bit of research, and the average speed was hard to find, with most official sources preferring to concentrate on highest speed achieved. I'm willing to accept your numbers, but I am curious as to your sources. It's a moot point to me though, as high speed rail, at 140 MPH or 150 MPH or even only 100 MPH will not come to California any time soon, and even then, it's not likely to positively affect the commute up and down the SF peninsula.

This really made me mad. Minnesota and Illinois were willing to pay for the whole project from Minneapolis -> Milwaukee -> Chicago (granted WI would need to pay recurring maintenance) and they refused...

Walker's rejection of WI HSR was based on the nearly $1Bn of federal dollars allocated to Wisconsin, in addition to the federal dollars that would have gone to the other states. Some portion of all those dollars came out of the pockets of WI residents. As would a portion of all the subsequent federal spending the WI HSR plan would set a precedent for.

I'm in favor of Chicago-MSP HSR, of infrastructure spending in general, and not a fan of Walker, but it's worth getting the argument right.

I think you also need the population density and a population that wants/needs to travel from A to B regularly to make it viable.

Musk proposed LA->San Fran as a commuter route - i.e. people would take it both ways 5 days a week.

How many people want/need to zip across the midwest both ways 5 days a week?

And while I could see that as a neat trick (I think Elon was going more for the comparison to the High Speed Rail boondoggle) it would be much more interesting if it could do something like Reno/SF or maybe Boise/SF so that folks could live in a nice place and work in a trendy place. But the whole notion of 'tasked' cities (living cities vs working cities) is still not well developed.

This is, perhaps, the most obvious Jetsons-suburb style future we can attain. It's so alluring and outlandish. I tend to work in plants, but I end up commuting just to stay away from the soul crushing industry. (Or soul-crushing industry, depending...) To be able to live in a nice garden village and then take a 40 minute ride out of state to my plant would be an utter joy.

Chicago to/from any city is great for freight and possibly commuters.

But the hyperloop isn't really targeted at freight, and would probably be a poor fit except for the most express of express freight. For general freight, Chicago already has plenty of railroad lines.

So yea, he 'designed' it basically for himself (SpaceX in LA, Tesla in the Bay). Who else would do this commute daily (because it will certainly prohibitively expensive for just daily commuting)?

People are using the Eurostar train to commute between France and London, apparently:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/f26fe984-943a-11dc-9aaf-00007...

Well yea... "Also, the cost of Eurostar itself is not inconsiderable. There is a frequent traveller service that provides benefits, although not on price and there is no equivalent of a season ticket. Return tickets start at £59". Frankly I've rarely seen tickets under 150-200$. Doing this DAILY for a commute would add up, unless you're ridiculously wealthy (which I then suggest just getting a second home at your place of work for during the week).

Also commuters with the capacity to pay for expensive tickets - this thing isn't going to be cheap, at least not initially.

That's a chicken and the egg sort of question. We've developed pretty separate east and west coast economies and cultures since the travel times preclude much else. If they didn't I think we would see a lot of demand come from it that we don't see the need for yet.

I would suggest China. They have already demonstrated their affinity for HSR by laying 10,000 miles of track. A couple weeks ago they opened 32 routes in one day.

http://qz.com/308791/china-flexes-its-high-speed-rail-muscle...

If the idea is to develop and prove the technology, China can accomplish this in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost. Building the second one is always less of a risk.

The distance between Shanghai and Beijing is 800 miles, so the 1hr travel time should be very appealing.

You said it yourself, nobody lives in the midwest. By contrast, LA-SF is the second on third busiest passenger air route in the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_passenger_air...). Moving all those people by plane is hugely expensive and inefficient, and the 5 cannot handle any more car traffic. By some accounts, this is the biggest unsolved public transportation problem in America.

That is news to the residents of Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus, Milwaukee, Louisville, OKC, Nashville, Memphis, Detroit, and Indianapolis, which are some of the largest cities in the country.

Also: moving people by plane is probably more efficient than by high speed rail.

Freight boast some positively incredible efficiencies, so I'm assuming high speed rail simply loses it by holding the pedal to the metal the whole way, so to speak?

It's a cool comparison to me: you can either slam the accelerator/brakes for the duration of a trip or you can fight about 7 miles of head. Both are so extreme I don't really have much of an intuition on it, but I think it'd be fun to find out.

The total population of all of those cities barely exceeds the number of people who fly between LA and SF each year. Really.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=total+population+of+chi...

That is a weird apples-oranges comparison, because the total population of those cities is also a multiple of the combined population of LA and SF. CHI-MSP is the 6th busiest route in the US (LA-SF is the 2nd). Do you think the combined air passenger stats for the cities I just listed would be lower than that of LA-SF?

If you add up the trips that people take between all of those cities then sure, eventually you can make that number as large as you like. But that problem is not solvable by mass transit--you need O(k^2) direct links to get everybody efficiently between any pair of k cities. Meanwhile, here in California, we've got a graph with two nodes, one edge, 8 million people on one end, and about 32 million on the other. Which problem seems more straightforward to you?

That's not the argument you made. You said "nobody lives in the Midwest". Clearly that's not true. Meanwhile, a single midwestern city pair is the 6th busiest air route in the US.

This is my final comment in this thread. Yes, I was obviously being facetious, although having burned by the internet's ability to pick up on that in the past, I should have known better. Perhaps a better way to put it would be that in terms of population density (which is what really matters when we're talking about mass transit) the middle of the country loses out to either coast by a considerable margin. (Sorry.) I can't think of a simpler way to put it than the map on p. 24 of this PDF (http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/reports/c2010sr-01.pdf). You're looking for clusters of dark-blue squares arranged on a line. I see two (three if you count Milwaukee-Chicago but at 100mi. people will just drive.) One of them has a well-developed rail, bus, and highway infrastructure, and the other does not. End of argument.

The distance between Chicago and STL or Chicago and Indy is lower than the distance between SF and LA, which is about the same as the distance between Chicago and MSP. Lines of blue? The route between Chicago and MSP would be fed by MKE and Madison. I literally have no idea what this map has to say about rail or how it supports your argument.

Even though you have declared the preceding comment your last on the thread, I will do you the courtesy of replying if you choose to reply to this comment.

Just a note on city populations: the only reasonable way to compare different regions (on just about any metric) is (at the very least) at the level of the MSA. The Chicago MSA's population alone is a number larger than the total you've reached.

In terms of energy usage, transporting people by plane is not that efficient compared to alternatives:

http://adl.stanford.edu/aa260/Lecture_Notes_files/transport_...

I think you hit the nail on the head.

LA-SF is the busiest air route in North America, and it's one of the busiest air routes globally regardless of how it's ranked. On the number of seats flown per month it ranks comparatively low (number 18), meaning there's a bottle-neck being demonstrated. Either driving is too viable an option, or the airports can't handle extra flights.

The US is also notorious for having poor passenger rail. Seoul-Jeju carries a lot more passengers, a couple million, but they already have high speed rail, which makes the run in a time comparable to a flight. So being able to shave a half-hour off a commute isn't going to be commercially viable when implementing an entirely new infrastructure and design. Many routes out of Tokyo carry comparable numbers to LA-SF, but again Japan also has high speed rail - I think the time saving on the Tokyo-Okinawa (1500km distance) would be the only one capable of competing against high speed rail, but Japan is highly populated so likely not suited for massive and unproven new infrastructure projects.

The next option is in Brazil, is a slightly shorter route, but the issue being the economy is less likely to be able to support such a project, and the risk of corruption and embezzlement there could tank the entire project with cost overruns.

There's really no other credible short distance option in North America. New York to Florida (Miami 5.5mil + Orlando 3.7mil) would be a credible option, NY-Miami is a 2,000km run, passes by Orlando at the 1,750km mark, and the ticket price is almost triple that of the LA-SF run.

So if LA-SF isn't an option it's "Go Big or Go Home". Crossing states would be a big issue. So we're likely going to see this proven small scale on commuter routes in and out of big cities.

The bigger problem with the Tokyo-Okinawa route as a hyperloop candidate is that Okinawa is an island far away from the main islands of Japan (kind of like Hawaii). Not a great candidate for land-based transportation.

Well, actually that's not a massive problem. The spans between the individual islands isn't huge. The longest bridge in the world is 164km long and built for high speed rail.

The issue is Japan is earthquake prone, and big bridges in tsunami areas is probably a bad idea.

Yeah I'm thinking more like connect some of the major cities. Maybe Denver to Chicago to Austin? I'm not an expert on the geography between those places though. I'm just spitballing. The Hyperloop doesn't really make stops. Its designed for long distance end to end trips.

As much as I love California, countries/regions need to compete to be the first place where Hyperloop will be built.

Maybe it will be in USA (California, Texas, East Coast), maybe somewhere in Asia (China) or Europe.

Building innovating infrastructure requires huge resources: land, money and political will. I'm not optimistic that there is some place where government would take a leap of faith, but that would require a lot of convincing in many places even to get one committed state.

Musk's businesses are split between LA and SF. He and his employees travel back and forth and he wants to use it.

I doubt hail storms would be a problem, but tornadoes are another story. Maybe instead of the tube and pylons being exposed, they were covered in such a way that a tornado would go over top rather than through it.

> At some point, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will likely have to shift from this work-when-you-can-but-don't-expect-money model to something a bit more conventional with, you know, employees.

People need to understand that money is not the goal there, the goal is to improve transport standards. I'm sure the best CEO and investors understand that money is just an abstract measure, you can't dismiss money, so you must insert money in your strategy, but it's just to make it compatible with the current economic model. People in companies work not to say "look at my paycheck" but rather "look at what I made".

The goal is to make something better. Who cares if the business model is shaky or out of the box or unconventional, the goal is keeping research and improvement makings going. Nobody likes to be an employees, but I don't see everyone knowing enough engineering and having the initiative to design some new technology like that.

> People in companies work not to say "look at my paycheck" but rather "look at what I made".

People also work in order to, you know, pay bills and put food on the table.

These aren't mutually exclusive when the labor market is sufficiently hot, as it is right now for engineers of most specialties. The SpaceX guys are making less than they could at boring Boeing, but that still comes out to a respectable sum.

well that's also what people would do in the soviet union and in 20th century China

money is a mean, not an end.

How can someone claim they successfully improve transport standards without keeping cost-effectiveness in consideration?

Anything is possible in a press release.

Well oil was cost effective, until it was not.

Who knows, maybe there will be no breakthrough in battery design, maybe electric cars will always more expensive than conventional cars because of batteries. Is investing in new technology really cost effective ? Nobody knows, it's a risk, and politically you have to make that risk.

Cost effectiveness is just a measure. You don't ask an accountant to see if a technology is cost-effective, you let engineers design something that do more with less, and do a proper use of levers. Cost-effectiveness will be the mean, not the end.

> People need to understand that money is not the goal there, the goal is to improve transport standards

Which is the really cool thing about Telsa and SpaceX - Elon has said many times if you want to make a quick buck, don't buy Tesla because that's not what they're trying to do.

They're trying to advance the world's knowledge and ability to design and build all-electric cars - making a profit is not the goal, nor is it even important. As long as they break even, they can keep going.

I look forward to a future where more and more companies have the goal of making the world a better place, not the goal of making ever increasing profits.

> nearly all of them have day jobs at companies like Boeing, NASA, Yahoo!, Airbus, SpaceX, and Salesforce.

> A lot of the work is being done by 25 UCLA students.

Huh? So at least 25% of the group are students, but "nearly all" are employed by name-brand companies?

Maybe it's 25 students + 100 working professionals?

I thought so too, but then there is also this line:

So no one is actually full time.

I'm thrilled to see people working on this, but the article seems like a mess.

The "nearly all of them have day jobs" seems to clearly refer to the 100 engineers mentioned earlier in the paragraph. I think trose's description of them as working professionals is probably correct.

The 25 students would not be considered engineers -- in fact, it doesn't even sound like they're studying to be engineers.

It was my understanding that those 25 UCLA students work at the UCLA lab mentioned in the text and are essentially just an out-sourced free design agency. In addition to the 100 "engineers etc":

Hyperloop should be a freight system before a human system; makes everyone happy; tis the season!

Also, tube transport in rivers would be nice...

awesome.

so commuting from the east bay to palo alto or SF will take longer than travel to LA.

instead of extending BART around the bay, full circle and across in more places, let's invest billions in hyperloop.

There's nothing exclusive about the two. Good systems should be self-justifying.

But if you want decent travel times the current BART can't provide them. You'd need something like Personal Rapid Transit to get good trip times at the intra-urban scale. But the same argument you are making here - envy of something that doesn't even exist - is why we keep getting the same transit systems that are hard to grow because they don't provide enough benefit to enough people.

There is very little chance that BART would be faster than Caltrain on the Peninsula. Caltrain has a good right of way that could host 4 tracks. I would focus on Caltrain here, not BART.

I have the same sentiment, but for Boston. As someone who can sometimes walk the 3 miles to work faster than public transit (or private bus) can take me on a bad commuting day, its frustrating.

Like highway off ramps built communities, communities will spring up around train station stops.

Is anyone else bothered by the idea of being enclosed in a tube with no possible way out for hundreds of miles?

I guess it's no worse than an airplane but for some reason it makes me feel claustrophobic?

Perhaps there's a way to add an escape hatch every mile or five?

From the original Alpha Document

4.5.3. Capsule Stranded in Tube "If a capsule were somehow to become stranded, capsules ahead would continue their journeys to the destination unaffected. Capsules behind the stranded one would be automatically instructed to deploy their emergency mechanical braking systems. Once all capsules behind the stranded capsule had been safely brought to rest, capsules would drive themselves to safety using small onboard electric motors to power deployed wheels. "

http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-201...

That doesn't answer mrfusion's question about being in a stranded capsule for 100's of miles before the nearest exit or escape hatch.

How long does it take that electric motor to drive the stranded capsule 100's of miles to safety? With the stranded passengers stuck in a small capsule with no bathroom facilities or other amenities.

It's be first thing I thought about when the hyperloop plans were first revealed.

That still doesn't make me feel better.

Not LA <-> Vegas again. An LA <-> Vegas monorail was proposed in the 1950s. A maglev was proposed in the 1990s. All so morons can go to Vegas on weekends to push the buttons on slot machines.

Maybe they can talk Google into funding a 1 mile link between Google HQ and Google's private airport, Moffett Field.

Las Vegas is the 38th largest economy in the US, and the 30th largest population center. The economy of LV is larger than that of NOLA, of SLC, of OKC, of Memphis, and of RTP. It's an easy lowbrow dismissal to talk about slot machines, but an LA-LV line probably makes as much sense (cost-adjusted) as SF-LA.

One point that's easy to miss is that big-city smaller-city pairings can be uniquely economically productive. For instance, an actually-functional HSR between Chicago and STL would allow companies to easily set up satellite offices on either side of the line, taking advantage of the lower cost of living on the smaller side and the larger market and commercial network on the larger side.

> It's an easy lowbrow dismissal to talk about slot machines

According to Wikipedia "The primary drivers of the Las Vegas economy are tourism, gaming and conventions, which in turn feed the retail and restaurant industries."

So people traveling to LV to gamble is a big part of what makes it the 38th largest economy.

I have anecdotal experience that might confirm the economic plausibility of a LA-LV line. Driving south on I-15 from LV on a Sunday will likely drive you absolutely up. the. wall.

I've always thought a good enough high speed transport is a scheduled flight that leaves every hour on the hour and you can buy tickets right before the flight.

As i understand it, transporting humans via air is largely infeasible without fossil fuels. It think the main benefit of a hyperloop is that it seems possible to stick with it as we make the energy switch

EDIT: pretty convenient that it would benefit from batteries and solar, huh? ;)

I'm a big Elon Musk fan and I think one of the best things he's got going for him is marketing acumen. I think of the Hyperloop as fundamentally a marketing story- doesn't matter whether it works or not, it gets the story out that the person running Tesla/SpaceX is some sort of whiz. Very well played IMHO

That's silly. The fuel and operation costs are way too high.

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I don't know John Smith, and I assume his idea is poorly thought out and crap. Musk has a positive reputation, and proven experience doing hard things. That gives us a shortcut on the credibility analysis. We're starting from 5 out of 10 rather than 1 out of 10.

Hearing other people's ideas is not a free process. There's an opportunity cost for it, John Smith's idea is more expensive.

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