SpaceX: “Close, but no cigar. This time”
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The guy is pushing the envelope on perhaps the most difficult engineering/technological endeavor ever attempted by a private company - and he's making it look cool and futuristic.
As if that wasn't enough, he's doing this in two different industries simultaneously.
I'm not saying he can do no wrong, but I'm just flabbergasted that there are still so many armchair critics and naysayers when it comes to Elon Musk.
That's why you're a fanboy. Nobody is perfect, and Elon Musk likes to make fun of the competition quite publicly when they have an issue, while ignoring his project's own failures.
It is hard to even discuss the man on HN as anything that could even be taken as critical gets downmoded or flagged. Just look at yesterday's hyperloop discussions, nobody could say anything critical without being very actively attacked. By the way make sure "show dead" is turned on to see the full discussion.
Honestly his track record is very impressive indeed. His aspirations are also impressive. However his fans are insufferable as is HN's general attitude about the man. When someone is treated as if they're beyond reproach and their ideas are also, you're just asking to get led down the garden path.
The hyperhoop concept in particular is pretty bad, and the white paper leaves more questions than it does answers. The cost is too high and the value too low Vs. normal high speed trains (e.g. Japan). Plus there are massive safety issues surrounding it (as you can see from the thread yesterday, that were largely just ignored and downmodded).
Overall I'll be happy when people start acting rationally around the guy again. Currently I feel like I at a One Direction concert surrounding by a bunch of screaming teenage girls (on HN in particular).
PS - I wouldn't dream of criticising this rocket failure. Rockets are hard, the last 80 years have proven that again and again.
But the interesting part is some(more than some) people are actually trying trying to come up with a real world implementations of hyperloop and so far their verdict is 'it's doable' and they are working on it. And these people are engineers from reputed companies around the world.
I don't particularly like the concept of fan boy either, but like you said, this man has impressive track records. And that's absolutely brilliant.
The thing that intrigues me is in the new innovations he had in his rocket, and why NASA didn't have it before SpaceX.
Oh well. Everyone should dream once in awhile.
EDIT: So... is this incorrect?
And as others have already pointed out that the technical problem isn't as big as it sounds.
Also Elon Musk has announced to build a 5 mile test hyperloop track in Texas yesterday.
If you're planning on building a closed loop out of steel, and there's nowhere for the steel to go when it expands in summer, the plan may need some rethinking.
The best I can think of is some kind of inner lining, so that it has a segmented hull, like a caterpillar: https://www.google.com/search?q=caterpillar&tbm=isch
But it would need to be very strong lining in order to prevent any leaks between the segments. And any kind of a leak would need to be detectable and would shut down the hyperloop until it's resolved.
Between the wildly optimistic cost projections and the fundamental engineering difficulties, I'm much more inclined to call it a pipe dream than a perhaps-future-possibility.
> But it would need to be very strong lining in order to prevent any leaks between the segments.
The entire point of not requiring vacuum is to avoid having nearly as strict tolerances for leaks.
Regardless, the core structural engineering is the focus of the criticism, not whether it might leak. Also, since Space X's whole point is to compete on cost savings, it was a little strange to hear cost projections that were so optimistic.
Section 4.5.4 otherwise covers this, and does point out that for large leaks, braking would be required, but smaller leaks are intended to be dealt with as part of regular maintenance, with no indication that it'd need to affect operations.
> Regardless, the core structural engineering is the focus of the criticism, not whether it might leak.
That may be so, but most of the criticism I've seen of it appears to just ignore large sections of the whitepaper.
EDIT: For example, with respect to handling expansion/contraction, consider that the world has gas and oil pipelines that has to deal with far worse conditions without leaks.
Because the hyperloop cars are discrete (as opposed to the continuous flow in a pipeline), I'd expect them to cause a lot of stress on the pipeline walls if they had to run around the bends in an expansion loop.
Feel free to disagree with whether or not the approach outlined is feasible, but this is specifically covered in the whitepaper. See page 5, section "Earthquakes and expansion joints" as well as page 28, section 4.2.3 "Pylons and tunnels".
He doesn't properly address thermal expansion of the entire system. A long straight steel tube from SF to LA will expand a total of 300 meters over a 40C temperature change. Where does it go?
The tube will be supported by pillars which constrain the tube in the vertical direction but allow longitudinal slip for thermal expansion as well as dampened lateral slip to reduce the risk posed by earthquakes. In addition, the pillar to tube connection nominal position will be adjustable vertically and laterally to ensure proper alignment despite possible ground settling. These minimally constrained pillars to tube joints will also allow a smoother ride. Specially designed slip joints at stations will be able to take any tube length variance due to thermal expansion. This is an ideal location for the thermal expansion joints as the speed is much lower nearby the stations. It thus allows the tube to be smooth and welded along the high speed gliding middle section.
This seems like the key sentence:
Specially designed slip joints at stations will be able to take any tube length variance due to thermal expansion.
There are two stations, one in SF and one in LA: http://i.imgur.com/3TavjCY.png
(For simplicity, let's assume it's just the main route.)
That would mean each station needs to absorb 150 meters of thermal expansion. (Would anyone mind double-checking that tlb's calculation is correct?)
So it looks like the tube is resting on these things: http://i.imgur.com/srQjmps.png
and the plan is for the tube to expand due to heat, and the expansion will be absorbed at the two stations at the end.
Is that really feasible, especially given that different points along the route could have temperature differences? I drove along Highway 1 and saw how incredibly different the weather can get, and while that's south of where the route is planned, it's easy to imagine that part of the tube could be roasting in direct sunlight while the other is cooled by rain. Something like 90 degrees F at one part vs 70F at another part. That's a difference of 32.22C to 21.11C, or a total temperature difference of 11.11C.
The route from SF to LA is about 350 miles. If a tube of that length expands 300 meters, then we can divide 300 meters by 350 miles to get the total expansion over a single mile. So a variation of 40C would give an expansion of 0.85 meters within a single mile.
Since the variation in that scenario would be ~11C, multiplying the expansion by 11C/40C equals an expansion of 0.235 meters.
So I suppose the question is: Is it feasible for those things the tube is resting on to absorb a quarter meter of expansion without that expansion being pushed all the way up to the station? It's the temperature differential along the route that seems to matter, not necessarily the difference from summer to winter.
Judging by this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/wgUJqWr.png
... it seems like an expansion of 0.25 meters might be a big deal.
But I don't know what I'm talking about. Is all of that about right so far?
I'd also be curious whether the thermal expansion results in the tube becoming bigger in the circular direction, like a bigger "O", or if it expands parallel to the tube, like becoming a longer tube. Or even both.
It seems like the plan addresses this with the first part of that paragraph:
The tube will be supported by pillars which constrain the tube in the vertical direction but allow longitudinal slip for thermal expansion as well as dampened lateral slip to reduce the risk posed by earthquakes. In addition, the pillar to tube connection nominal position will be adjustable vertically and laterally to ensure proper alignment despite possible ground settling.
But again, where precisely does 0.25m of steel go? I'm having trouble visualizing how the pillars could "allow for 0.25m of longitudinal slip over 1 mile."
I realize that a temperature variation of about 10C over 1 mile is a little extreme, but we should examine how the system handles extreme situations.
For instance, you could have periodic sleeves that can slide over one another so you don't end up with the expansion on the final endpoints accumulated, the trajectory could be adjusted to allow for translation of some end-to-end expansion into a sideways expansion (much like what you see in long runs of heating tubing where they throw in the occasional U or loop to make sure the tubing stays put on the longer stretches) and so on.
There are a lot of really hard technical challenges involved in the hyper loop concept, I'm not sure why you'd focus on the thermal expansion as the major one, it's trivial in comparison to some of the others.
Btw, in railroads (that other long distance transportation method) the expansion is dealt with by putting a small gap between two adjacent rails. That's obviously not possible with the hyper loop as it is currently envisioned but I think that the answer is in there: don't allow the differences to accumulate over long stretches. We already have plenty of long pipelines, this one is just a big bigger in circumference.
Btw, in railroads (that other long distance transportation method) the expansion is dealt with by putting a small gap between two adjacent rails. That's obviously not possible with the hyper loop as it is currently envisioned but I think that the answer is in there: don't allow the differences to accumulate over long stretches.
If that's the case, then why does the plan assume each station on the endpoints is going to absorb most of the thermal expansion? Or am I misreading? They specifically say "the stations are the ideal points to absorb thermal expansion," and the stations are on the end, so it sounds like they're aiming for a long sleeveless steel tube.
Also, I was basing my criticism on Hyperloop Alpha. Obviously, their design can change in the future. But, as presented, what gives you the impression that sleeves could be incorporated into their design without causing problems for the pods?
I can visualize sleeves which expand into each other, and if they overlap into the direction of travel, so that the edges are pointing away from the pods rather than toward the pods, maybe that wouldn't cause any problems.
Still, the interior margin from pod to wall is very small: http://i.imgur.com/YsLDXBe.png
Also, consider this paragraph:
The Hyperloop travel journey will feel very smooth since the capsule will be guided directly on the inner surface of the tube via the use of air bearings and suspension; this also prevents the need for costly tracks. The capsule will bank off the walls and include a control system for smooth returns to nominal capsule location from banking as well. Some specific sections of the tube will incorporate the stationary motor element (stator) which will locally guide and accelerate (or decelerate) the capsule. More details are available for the propulsion system in section 4.3. Between linear motor stations, the capsule will glide with little drag via air bearings.
Sleeves would cause an edge to sort of "protrude outwards" into the path of the pod, wouldn't they? So it'd basically be a small speedbump. Again, the edge is pointed in the direction of travel, so that would basically be like the second half of a speedbump, basically a small "drop". Except since the pod is moving at 760mph, even a small drop can result in quite a lot of force, and can cause wear on the pod itself, couldn't it? And it might feel a little jarring to the passenger.
If the interior needs to remain smooth, what sort of design could fulfill that requirement? (Maybe that's a big "if", but if the pod is going to bank off the walls, then it sounds like that's the case.)
EDIT: Also, as someone else pointed out, pipelines that need to be straight might be a new concept. Many pipelines seem to use "U" bends, which can't be incorporated into hyperloop for obvious reasons: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/PipelineExpansionLoop/
Remember, the pod comes into direct contact with the wall while banking, so it's going to take the full force of any few-centimeter bump.
Depends on lots of things, such as the angle of incidence of the pod relative to the direction of the wall of the tube.
> I don't know how to calculate whether or not it would be, but I'm interested in knowing why you feel it won't cause problems.
I don't know how to calculate rockets landing on barges either, but SpaceX seems to be able to pull it off. There is nothing in the realm of engineering that says you can't make a bunch of tubes sliding over each other relative to the direction of travel for some vehicle to travel within that tube as long as you respect a couple of basics. One simply solution would be something like this:
seg2----- --seg1
----- ----------
0000000
That way there is no speedbump at all... It's not as if you're going to do right angle turns at the joint of two segments.
Anyway, I really think you're chasing a ghost here, the problems with hyperloop are not basic engineering.
Also, curves still result in a speedbump with that solution. The pod will be traveling directly toward the gap just below "seg2" if it's banking against the wall. You could make the edge a sharp edge, like a sword's edge, but that doesn't help because due to expansion that edge will still protrude out into the path of the pod.
I know it seems like it shouldn't be a hard problem, but it's looking like one. Remember, 300 meters of expansion over 350 miles is 0.85m of expansion per mile. Hold out your arms to the length of a meter and picture how much steel that is. That's what your proposed joints need to deal with: 0.05cm of expansion per meter. So if you have your joints every 20 meters, that's still a 1cm gap, which means a speedbump around curves. Wouldn't that make curves very unpleasant for the passenger and the pod? And you can't have them every meter without increasing the engineering complexity and weakening the structural integrity, right? Yet whatever solution they come up with would need to be placed less than every 20 meters, otherwise they'll get a 1cm gap.
The solution for the above is that you need to take into account the radius of curvature and you're clearly not doing that. The inside of that tube needs to be relatively smooth in the direction of travel, not perpendicular to it. You could also interleave to two segments if you wanted it to be even smoother.
So no, this is not a hard problem in spite of your continued insistence that it is because you can't solve it.
And I still don't understand how your solution wouldn't leak air into the hyperloop unless the steel sleeves were pressing very firmly into each other. Like the inner sleeve forcefully pressing into the outer sleeve.
I have no idea why you refuse to admit this is at the very least a nuanced problem.
I'm not on your payroll and you're stuck in a groove.
> But I have some strong words which, out of respect for HN's guidelines, I won't say.
Feel free, I'm not made of sugar. But you're arguing from a position that makes no sense to me, you're apparently entirely ignorant of the basics of mechanical engineering and you're going to tell the likes of Elon Musk and his band of merry engineers what they can or can not do. They just came within a hair of planting a friggin' rocket on a barge from space. Do you really believe they couldn't get a bunch of tubes to slide inside each other without overshooting their air intake budget? That's mostly a factor of 'how big are the pumps' and 'how many such sliding spots do we need' (a few hundred would do just fine) and how much room there is for additional seals (plenty).
> And I still don't understand how your solution wouldn't leak air into the hyperloop unless the steel sleeves were pressing very firmly into each other. Like the inner sleeve forcefully pressing into the outer sleeve.
No, you don't need that you can use regular seals for that, just like we do on high pressure air connections, fun fact, they work better when the difference is higher, go figure.
> I have no idea why you refuse to admit this is at the very least a nuanced problem.
Because it is a nuanced problem for you, but not for anybody that has the wherewithal to be hired on the engineering parts of a project like this. Just like my little brother would find assembly language a 'nuanced problem' and I find it relatively easy. It all depends on whether or not you're doing this (mechanical engineering) on a daily basis or whether you want to be back-seat driving nay sayer. Once you've decided on the latter any solution will be inadequate.
Best of luck to you. Keep making awesome things.
What else do you want? A blueprint? A cad design?
Thanks for the pieces you've provided so far. I'll bring up my objections elsewhere. Hopefully anyone who's been having my same concerns will be able to do the same.
You argue that something is impossible but at the same time you outline your ignorance. The normal position for being ignorant is to study the subject, not to argue that something is impossible.
It's like saying a moonshot never happened because you couldn't do it yourself. There are lots of things that each of us individually can not do, but collectively we can do amazingly complex things. The specialization required takes time and effort. If you're unwilling to put in the time and/or make the effort then you should not take up positions that tell those that did make that effort what they should not be able to do according to you.
If mechanical engineering interests you then maybe you should go and study the subject rather than to take up strong positions like these and to be rigid in your inability to shift on those positions.
> I'll bring up my objections elsewhere. Hopefully anyone who's been having my same concerns will be able to do the same.
Basically that says that you want to argue, not learn and that you'll only take what agrees with your viewpoint.
But no, actually, you smashing huge holes into my logic was exactly what I was hoping for, because that's how ignorance is transcended. I dislike both the peanut gallery and peanuts, so I think I came across wrong. Starting the conversation by vaguely disparaging your merry band of engineers probably wasn't great, but my mind's malleability is play-dough, definitely not steel.
Finding someone who agrees with my viewpoint is the most useless thing, both to me and to anyone that might be reading the conversation. Someone with an ability to point out why I'm wrong and to actually debate with me is both rare and valuable.
Please try to understand that some people find the basics interesting, so even though you're saying you don't, it's important to kindle that spark. (I still don't see how this is basic, since the entire SpaceX engineering team somehow missed your segmentation approach, or considered it and chose not to pursue it for some reason, but you're probably right. And I have other qualms about the approach, but I don't really trust re-opening this debate without some kind of mutual understanding that we'll focus on the ideas in the debate, not on the people involved.)
Classic case of personality clash! Don't be bummed out.
If you care to, check out the conversation that sillysaurus3 and I had down-thread. I would love to have someone experienced in MechE glance at my napkin math!
TL;DR it looks like simply pushing all the slack to the end stations is actually feasible, and it's easier to deal with there since the cars aren't moving very fast.
There are other alternatives too, such as allowing the tubing to move sideways a bit in a long curve. That would change the overall shape of the trajectory but the air cushion they talk about could take care of that.
If they do end up using expansion joints they could actually use the fact that some air might leak in to purposefully increase local air density to use that as an impromptu air bearing.
Anyway, there is plenty of challenging engineering in hyper loop, but the least interesting part is how to make a long metal tube, either in one piece or out of segments.
And of course even more challenging than the engineering will be the economics and the paper tigers.
I hadn't considered this strategy! Using the curves as a geometric asset instead of a liability makes a lot of sense.
What do you mean by the 'paper tigers'?
Right-of-way issues, liability. America loves its paperwork and setting up a new very large chunk of unproven infrastructure is going to be a total headache from a paper point of view.
Hyperloop has all the drawbacks of high speed rail and has unproven tech on top of that. It'll be a legal feeding frenzy.
Temperature differences would tend to cancel out, no? If one section is warmer than average and one section is colder, the overall change would be smaller.
>the tube becoming bigger in the circular direction, like a bigger "O"
Yep, by about 2 mm. No problem there.
>But again, where precisely does 0.25m of steel go?
It slides all the way to the station. There trains are moving slowly, so they could add rails to the "expansion section" between the tube and the airlock. The stationary rails slide along the inside of the tube (no seal needed). Wherever the tube ends, the pod is already on the rails!
Am I making any sense here?
Can that expansion really be pushed 175 miles north and 175 miles south simultaneously?
I'm not going to say that's impossible, because I'd imagine someone having similar objections to, say, the invention of A/C current. "Can pushing electrons back and forth really propagate thousands of miles?"
But if you visualize the implications of that, it's intuitively difficult to believe the expansion can be transmitted to the endpoints across the entire length of a solid steel tube 175 miles away. That would move an incredible amount of mass. Surely at some point the weight of the tube overcomes the steel's desire to expand, so the result would be the tube either scrunching up like an accordion or going in the lateral direction.
(Jacques said sleeves could be the solution so that thermal expansion can't accumulate, but it seems like sleeves would introduce problems for the pod, possibly severe ones. When a pod travels over a sleeve, it would feel like a jolt, if I'm understanding his idea of "sleeves" correctly.)
I'm so happy someone is actually engaging with the comment and tossing ideas around with me though.
You make a great point! I didn't quite grok it before.
>Can that expansion really be pushed 175 miles north and 175 miles south simultaneously?
>Surely at some point the weight of the tube overcomes the steel's desire to expand, so the result would be the tube either scrunching up like an accordion or going in the lateral direction.
Agreed. I have a feeling some sort of active control (basically just motorized rollers) will be needed every couple of miles to prevent "sun kinks". I haven't done the math on that though. It might be sufficient that a large hollow tube shape is much more resistant to buckling than a rail shape.
"Sun kinks": http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-warp-railr...
For a sense of scale, 60 mph travels one mile in 60 seconds, or 0.016 miles per second. Hyperloop goes 760 mph, which is 0.211 miles per second. (Jeez, that's fast.) So it only takes about 10 seconds for the car to traverse 2 miles, or in other words to traverse whatever effect such a motorized roller would have on the path of the vehicle. Like, if the roller causes the track to move "outwards," for example toward the ocean, by a little bit, then the pod is going to move "a little bit toward the ocean and then back" in 10 seconds.
That seems like it might be reasonable. But I suppose the question is whether a 7,700 lb pod travelling at 760 mph can tolerate, say, a 2-meter deviation in its trajectory in 10 seconds. Meaning, one meter toward the ocean, and then one meter back towards its original course. Can the pod bank against the walls by a displacement of 0.2m per second? If you hold out your arms to the length of a meter, 0.2m is pretty small, but it's not too small. And the pod would be going sideways by that amount per second.
1-meter deviation due to thermal expansion is extreme. 0.25m per mile might be a more realistic deviation. So that would be a 1-meter deviation total: 0.5m toward the ocean, then 0.5m back, which would still mean the pod needs to scrape against the inner wall by 0.1m per second.
I wonder what the limits on the banking are...
I agree, that would not work. I was suggesting that motorized rollers move the track longitudinally instead of sideways. Essentially they would take up the slack and actively push it to the end stations, counteracting the friction from the passive rollers. You could use thermometers and position sensors to model the stress on the tube.
That's an interesting idea, but are you sure that thermal expansion imparts enough force against 175 miles of steel in order to push it all the way to the station? 175 miles of steel would be incredibly heavy. It seems like the heating/cooling might even cause the steel to weaken enough such that, rather than rolling the tube towards the station, it would start to scrunch like an accordion. But I wish a structural physicist would step in with some calculations to prove whether or not 175 miles of steel on rollers could be pushed by thermal expansion without compromising hyperloop's structural stability.
Maybe we could ask /r/askscience?
EDIT: After re-reading your comment, I think you're saying the rollers would actually provide the force necessary to move 175 miles of steel, rather than letting the expansion passively push it. But those rollers would have to grip onto something in order to do that. They wouldn't be rollers so much as tank treads.
Hmm... Do you think that might work? Could 175 electric motors working in unison provide enough force to tank treads that bite into the concrete pillar below, and into the steel tube above, in order to successfully shift 175 miles of steel? And the system has to have temperature sensors every mile, and those sensors must not ever report incorrect readings or else the whole tube breaks. And those motors must never break down or run out of power...
I'm sounding pessimistic, but honestly I have no idea whether that would work.
EDIT 2: Ah, I think I've figured out why it can't work. It's not a straight tube. It bends all along the route. http://i.imgur.com/3TavjCY.png
So motorized rollers would actually need to bend the tube in order to successfully transmit the thermal expansion. In other words, when a piece of steel tubing is initially created, it's bent with a certain curvature. But if rollers are to transmit the expansion all the way to the station, the exact location of where the steel is bent needs to be dynamically defined at runtime, rather than statically assigned at compile time. Did I phrase that very clearly? It would help to be in-person, or maybe I could draw a picture if needed.
It doesn't seem like rollers could dynamically bend the steel all along the 175 mile track in order to carry the expansion.
Nope. That's why you may need to push it! :)
Assume the rollers have the Crr of a passenger train wheel (0.0020). If each section weighs 193 tonnes (23 mm thick by 2.23m diameter by 100' by 8 g/cm³), then each roller will provide ~400 N of friction. Over 175 miles (worst case) that works out to 3.56 meganewtons of resistance to motion.
For a thin-walled cylinder, buckling stress is modeled using the large deflection approximation[1] as:
σ_x = 0.238 Et/r
Where σ_x is the bucling pressure, E is the material's Young's modulus, t is the wall thickness, and r is the radius. Plugging in 190 GPa, 20 mm, and 1.125 m yields…
58 meganewtons, or about 16 times as strong as the predicted frictional force
I guess they may not need active control after all!
But what about curves? Won't it result in a lot of sideways force? Needs more calculations…
[1] The weaker of the two. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a801283.pdf
Basically, what do you think about the fact that it's not a long, straight tube? The rollers would need to dynamically bend the steel tube in order to carry the expansion all the way to the station, wouldn't they? Is that possible?
Even if there aren't any rollers, the tube still needs to re-bend itself somehow. But how? That would mean steel curves near the endpoints would move a whopping 150 meters in total. So it seems like part of the tube manufactured as a curve in summer would need to become a straight length of pipe by winter.
First yours, since it's much cooler. The minimum curve radius is 3.67 km, or a length difference of 18 mm between the left and right side over the length of one pylon.
Assuming that all sections start as straight tubes, how much sideways force would that apply on the pylon? For that we need to calculate the "flexural stiffness"[1], which for a hollow cylinder is given as:
EI = E pi/4 (D⁴ - d⁴)
Where E is Young's modulus, and D and d are the outer and inner diameter.
Therefore the bending moment[2] M is:
M = EIκ = E pi/4 (D⁴ - d⁴)κ
Where κ is the curvature, equal to 1/r.
Finally, muddling through the equations on the bending moment article (and treating the tube as a 200' beam with a load in the center) yields:
f = M / (100')²/(200') [not sure about this one]
A whopping 300 tonnes•f of lateral force on the pylons! Probably doable, but it means if your tubes are constructed straight your pylons are going to be buttressed at a ~60° angle. Also, note that this only applies to the slip distance (~150m, or three pylons), since the tube sections well within the curve will never move enough to be in a non-curved section of track, so they can be built curved from the beginning.
Also you can vary the curvature smoothly[3], which can substantially reduce the forces involved. For example, if you eased into the curve over 30 pylons and it only moved by 3, the sideways force would be reduced by 10x (since the curvature is always "about right"). Further calculations here are left as an exercise to the interested reader. :D
As for my own objection… Even on the sharpest turns successive pylons will only vary from straight line by 0.15°, so the lateral forces caused by expansion and contraction shouldn't exceed 9 tonnes force. Piddly by comparison.
[1] http://www.explorelifeonearth.org/cursos/CB-18%20simple%20st...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bending_moment#Example
[3] i.e. the curve doesn't start suddenly, but gradually; this is how actual tracks/roads are laid out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_spiral
TL;DR as long as you ease into the curves (which is good for comfort anyway), it looks totally doable even without motorized rollers.
Rail lines have more curves which can take up that slack, and the positional tolerances are much more forgiving. Because of its high speed operation the hyperloop is both incredibly straight and incredibly sensitive to kinking.
The new design requirements and constraints posed by the Hyper Loop concept just increase the complexity of the problem. Certain engineers love this kind of challenge.
Look up R.M. Salter at RAND:
"The Very High Speed Transit System" (August, 1972)
"Trans-Planetary Subway Systems -- A Burgeoning Capability" (February, 1978)
http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P4874....
http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P6092.html http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2009/P6092....
Similar / more: http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/6107059
so what is your point? that it's impossible? that it shouldn't be attempted? that it's not a problem worth working through?
"naysaying" doesn't mean "saying no". "naysaying" is the inability to see a little further into the future based on the knowledge we have today.
> "The steel expands in summer due to heat. Where does it go?"
a cliche example but- i'd love to be the anachronistic fly on the wall listening to all the "where will the hot metal go???" people talking to the Wright brothers.
Pharaoh: "Pyramids? Pffft, easy."
Watching the way HN reacts to SpaceX, in contrast to say, NASA, or the ESA makes me think those organizations should hire a charismatic frontman, too.
Edit: For example, see my sibling comment: "The thing that intrigues me is in the new innovations he had in his rocket, and why NASA didn't have it before SpaceX." (emphasis mine)
Well, yes, I think they should. People are drawing the completely wrong lessons from Jobs/Apple. "There's too much worship!" well, duh. Jobs inspired people, and that inspiration led to extremely dedicated fans.
Jobs made use of that in the tech sector, but where we really need it is in sectors which are highly affected by the good will of humans.
Charity. Science. Care of the planet. The development of the human race. Very-long-term thinking. All these need charismatic frontmen, people who inspire others to think about their own future and the future of others.
Absolutely, yes. Hell, look at what Chris Hadfield did for the CSA.
Musk's function isn't to design the rockets, it's to believe so totally in the idea, to commit so much of his own time and money to it, to overflow with passion, that a generation of engineers are willing to follow him down a path to either greatness or ruin. History is littered with failed rocket startups.
You have to be a little bit crazy to believe you're going to do that kind of stuff. Hell, even the smallest startups face impossible odds for success.
NASA could have a charismatic front man. I'd nominate Neil deGrasse Tyson. But here's the problem: NASA is ultimately run by Congress and the executive branch, not Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ultimately, his words would mean nothing because he can't back them up.
Musk, when he says he's going to build a Raptor engine, has the authority to make it happen.
The SpaceX Falcon 9/Dragon was designed by SpaceX, driven by Elon Musk's requirements. The part where the design matched what NASA wanted for the COTS program was a happy coincidence, but NASA were not driving the original design specifications.
Of course, the F9/Dragon was adapted to NASA standards, and is also an effective satellite launch vehicle.
In the case of the hyperloop the technology isn't too bad. We can likely build it without developing too much. Most of the technological problems are already largely solved in aircraft design.
In this case it is more a "this cost literally too many resources" problem. High speed rail is fairly simple, you clear land (expensive), flatten it, even it out, and then lay metal tracks with wooden/concrete sleepers.
With the hyperloop you're literally building a tunnel that has to withstand weather including extremes, withstand negative pressure internally without crushing, transfer the weight/internal/external forces down to pillars, and yet still you're left with the "clear land" problem as nobody wants to live under a hyperloop track, or have it blocking their natural sunlight.
Hyperloop might see some savings as it requires less land than high speed rail, but you'll easily offset that by physically how many resources go into the tunnel and pillars (and raising the tunnels into position and sealing them).
If all hyperloop was was a tunnel in the sky it might be easier to imagine the financials making sense. But then you add negative pressures within, and you're talking about aircraft skin the entire length of the thing, and then dealing with attaching these pieces of loop together on-site (so presumably double-riveting them like aircraft skins are, which is time consuming/expensive).
This seems pretty harsh. It's not like he went home, curled up in a blanket with a hot cocoa and told the engineers to figure it out by the time he came back to the office.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/527247155954610176
And his comment on their rocket being the butt of a joke, using engines literally made in the 1960s and stored in Siberia were true. It is upsetting, but still not as surprising that they suffered catastrophic failure having such an adversion to new tech.
The way I see it Elon is rising up to those around him not the other way around.
Sometimes -- and I'd argue often -- leadership consists more of both 1) getting out of the way of and 2) enabling those who Want To Get Shit Done.
I find the fanboiism somewhat tedious (I don't find the top comment of this thread all that insightful), but I do admire Musk for seeming to hit a number of remarkable goals. That said, I find Tesla and Solar City more impressive/promising than SpaceX (technical challenges and accomplishments notwithstanding) or the Hyperloop (ultimately an idea that's been rightfully junked in the past).
Given the history of US industry of doing just the opposite -- stalling and preventing needed innovation -- if I had to pick a single attribute of his that I find most encouraging it's his leadership in that regard.
Without SpaceX it's likely the business would have muddled along without putting any effort into reducing costs for decades.
There will be a time of reckoning for Elon, but this is not it.
By and large the BMW i3/i8 has received wide praise amongst motoring reviewers and has seen strong sales.
The sales of BMW's EV's are strong because of the brand, not because they are excellent electric cars.
Don't get me wrong, it is awesome that more players are entering the market. But for a little while longer, Elon can keep sniggering in his corner.
The "have you seen their car?" comment was from an interview with Bloomberg regarding BYD, not BMW.
He laughed when asked about BMW during the Q2 2013 conference call, but it was a chuckle followed by serious comments. It was only when the questioner began nervously laughing that he laughed for a significant time.
Compilation video containing both events (unfortunately with music, but I don't care enough to track down the individual sources): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gt6CAswSOY
So, the big criticism here is that… he's too forthright about competitor's products? I'm actually quite ok with that.
That was quite misleading on Elon's side. Engines were manufactured in 1970's (I believe in 1973-1974) after quite an extensive RND program - actualy, remake of similar engines, NK-15, which weren't nearly as good. NK-33 engines were tested as perhaps no others of theirs caliber - with tests like throwing metal chips (nuts?) into pumps, or running uninterrupted for ~4 hours (!) . Technical capabilities are also quite formidable - ok, Merlin-D has better thrust-to-weight, but worse Isp, and that's with the hindsight of ~40 years. Throttleable... relatively modest pressure by today's standards... And they were stored in Volga region, which is firmly Europe.
So, Musk's comment - intentionally or not - painted OSC's decision in less-than-objective color. Well, Elon is known for exagerrating... and sometimes quite grossly. We'll know the scale.
Limits of materials were pushed indeed. Some safety margins for materials were claimed as under 1.0 - i.e., 0.97 - that is, materials were pushed further than their limits. The idea was that since the engine is used once, we can use it in the manner that greatly reduces the life of the engine - and nobody would care, since a stage will be done with in a few short minutes. A lot of things were done quite unconventionally - remember SR-71, for example, or oxygen-rich pre-burners which were considered rather impossible.
NK-33 remains unsurpassed even today by many criteria. Now it includes even the ability to work after 40 years of shelf line - which probably left the trace on engines reliability.
SpaceX did this test with the Merlin engines too. http://www.airspacemag.com/space/is-spacex-changing-the-rock...
The chamber pressure (and therefore Isp) are both dialed back for the sake of reusability. They're stated multiple times that they're not running those engines anywhere near their physical limits.
Gas generator cycle in general doesn't allow reaching effective Isp as high as closed loop cycle. On the other hand, smaller pressure reduces stress and generally considered safer. NK-15 were single use engines, but NK-33 and most other modern engines are all reusable.
Some forms of criticism are useful but yelling out "Hey, it's 2300 meters to the bottom, be careful!" is not very useful.
People often know the negatives, it's just easier to do the task when you don't look down. Often this requires self delusion. Otherwise "Don't look down, or think of white polar bears" would work for everyone.
http://www.solarcity.com/company/team
(He appears 2/3 down the page)
Also consider, a lot of what happens in space is already accomplished through private companies. Lockheed and Boeing already launch most US military satellites. SpaceX really is just another launch company. They provide competition for government monopolies. That's probably a good thing.
NASA from a legislation and funding standpoint looks about as corrupt as automotive industry.
At this point, it seems like the only moves forward are going to come from disrupting entities like SpaceX or foreign governments.
Imagine if all that money from Saudi oil or from Carlos Slim went to space research.
Nelson Mandela.
... in technology - I would add. Otherwise I agree. But let's not forget that technology is a niche, there area many other achievements of mankind, literature, arts, civil organizations etc.
I wonder if the top of the rocket was at or very near the center?
Also you can clearly see the landing legs deployed, jeez they look tiny.
Must just tweeted "Next rocket landing on drone ship in 2 to 3 weeks w way more hydraulic fluid. At least it shd explode for a diff reason."
Not that it would have helped anyway in this case.
The last burn this thing does is often called a 'suicide burn' as there are a couple complications to landing it. First, it only has enough fuel left for a short burn. Second, it's not possible to run the single engine they use to land it at a low enough thrust level that it can hover. i.e. 1 of 9 engines at the lowest possible thrust it can operate at is more than enough to accelerate the empty stage body upward. As a result they have to 'blip' it just before landing and cut at the exact time needed to reach 0-ish velocity at landing. This means the thing is moving _fast_ just before the video starts.
I'm guessing that with the grid fins locked in an extreme direction 24 seconds before getting to the barge they still had a lot of influence over the flight path since it was still moving fast. This pulled the top to an angle. The engine fired and the vectoring capability of the engine tried to toss it back over the ship but it just couldn't correct the lean before hitting the barge.
You know, that started as a joke, but cut it in half with reusable stages and that's really not too far off for intercontinental overnight delivery.
Scene: ten miles over a major metropolitan city, an ICBM is racing in. Seconds later the nose cone is jettisoned and a cluster of small cones begin pouring out. Little grid fins pop out and they scatter out like dandylion seeds to the wind. Zooming on one, we watch it hurtle towards an enormous skyscraper. The cone's nose begins blinking from green to red, blinking faster as it approaches its target. Screaming closer and closer, we see the tower suddenly open a panel showing a large tank and the cone slams into it with an enormous splash. As it settles a platform gently captures it and raises it up to a crew of people with mail carts ready to distribute the packages.
The Economist had an interesting book review on a book positing a return to medievalism -- where the state does not have a monopoly of force -- and it's interesting: a little far-fetched and unlikely, but just this side of plausible. http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21638096-how-pr...
One notable bit was the incident where "a famous actress turned humanitarian [...] with various human-rights groups, wanted to hire Blackwater to set up safe havens in Sudan to protect civilians fleeing the janjaweed militia" but decided against it.
For example, if SpaceX can get e.g. the Dragon capsule to land with a reasonable accuracy on thrusters, and then put a warhead in it (or multiple warheads) , that's quite a capable weapons system right there. In fact, it's even capable of fractional orbital bombardment, which was considered so destabilizing during the Cold War that it was specifically banned in SALT II.
tl;dr - Elon Musk will, within a couple of years, control a system that can be adapted into an ICBM within a very short period of time and with minimal investment.
Since the US government has become so corrupt American companies have found it easy to use the power of the US government to coerce other countries, for example for intellectual property treaties. But it’s feasible that in the future companies might want their own military power to get their way.
Which, tangentially, is the model presented by extreme libertarians as the way of the future and how we can do away with government for good.
[NB: I thought about not posting this, because people who are paid to not have a sense of humor about these things almost certainly read HN, but fuck that, screw "chilling of speech"]
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/solar-powered-drone...
> The rocket engine they use is too powerful to hover and move towards the destination in a slow adjustment loop. And there is no throttle control on the engine, 70% minimum which is still too powerful
I've seen this a lot, and I've also read about how many times each engine can be re-lit. Can you talk a bit about why the engines have a limited number of times they can be lit?
If there were no limit on that, I'd want to just turn the engine on and off a bunch to get the right amount of thrust to hover.
The limited number of times the Merlin 1D can be relit is probably referring to the re-usability aspect (from memory they tested "cycling" the engine something like 40 times in qualification testing, but it's a little unclear exactly what a cycle entails). It's the associated "coking" of the engine with hot and sticky carbon/soot from the incomplete combustion of the kerosene that's been speculated to be a major hinderance to the long-term engines survivability.
Other than consumables, it's probably the high (and variable) latency in the switching time that restarting the engine in quick succession that would make it problematic, in addition to the engine damaging aspects you mentioned.
Hover-slamming a first-stage with a Merlin 1D has been heavily tested by F9R-Dev1/2 - it's a completely workable solution that minimizes engine restarts over the flight profile to 3 (boostback, re-entry burn, hoverslam).
While the switching the engine may be made to be workable solution which can effectively throttle the engines between 0% and 70%, a hoverslam with a vehicle with thrust/weight ratio > 1 gives less stress on the entire (~$40 million F9R first stage) vehicle to be reused.
The great thing is they've already fixed the problem for the next flight.
I wonder what actually exploded there? Part of the argument for why the landing was supposed to be relatively safe was that the stage would be mostly empty of fuel by the time that it landed, so there wouldn't be much to explode if something went wrong. So is that an explosion of the remaining fuel in the rocket, or something on deck?
Edit: no, you're right. I just mis-remembered. When I reviewed the video, it looks like the thing breaks open and I'd suspect the last remnants of fuel are spilling out.
The deck of the ship almost looked undamaged!
My guess would be the explosion was of the remaining fuel in the rocket engine and tank. Either that or it wasn't actually an explosion, just burning fuel-air mix spewing about after the rocket nozzle deformed too much.
We can't tell of course from the video if the barge was moving (by virtue of the camera being fixed to the barge it makes it appear to be unmoving in the video).
If you are reading this SpaceX, here is my suggestion for capturing more data in future flights. Install quad copters on the barge which launch once the barge detects the landing stage is inbound, have them position themselves using the GPS from the barge 100 yards out in four directions. Then have four reference lights on the corners of the barge (can be LEDs) to give you the ability to back compute angles from the video. Stream video from the quad copters back to a secure video storage facility in the barge which is designed to withstand rapid disassembly of the barge and float. Could make for some awesome videos too.
I'm sure they will do that - once the landings become predictably successful.
A landing stage will still have some fuel and oxidizer on board, to keep burning all the way to the deck, though not much compared to when full. But 1% of ~385,000kg of propellant is still enough to go bang. There's also a fair bit of energy in the pressurized tanks. (It's a turbo-pump engine, so the tanks are not kept at high pressure, but they still have 3-5 bar/40-70 psi and it's 70m tall structure.) That's what tears the stage apart.
Looks like it hit the fuel tank, so the pressurized kerosene was exposed to the atmosphere and a burning engine. Thus fireball. It would have been worse were the LOX tank ruptured at the same time. But it's not a very big explosion; doesn't even overexpose the camera for more than a frame.
The last few teaspoons of fuel it had left.
Is there ever a RSD (Rapid Scheduled disassembly) ?
You know we landed on the moon, right? I mean, this is cool, but from a sheer "fascinating achievement" standpoint, this is at least a few notches behind that.
Humans are pretty crafty, but it takes a special kind of craftiness to program a computer to do it as well as a person. :)
The first is a historic series of one-shots that really can't be repeated for any sane economic purpose. The second is an attempt to automate and ruggedize it.
It's sort of why the sky-crane landing on Mars was such a historic achievement, arguably far more complex than the Apollo work. Don't let that diminish the greatness of Apollo, though. Today we have tools bording on magic, while they literally used wax pencils and slide rules. But don't let that diminish the accomplishment here, where the tools are being properly leveraged to make LEO an everyday occurrence.
In short: there's plenty of awesome to go around!
I think they use fuel as the hydraulic fluid for the gimbaling of the motors, but not for the grid fins.
The rocket can also steer by "gimbaling" the motor (pointing it in different directions), but that has limitations; changing the rocket's orientation will also change its velocity (like balancing a broom on your hand).
In this case, the hydraulic fluid is used to rotate the grid fins and therefore keep the rocket upright. When the fluid ran out, the fins wouldn't work, which is why the rocket comes down tilted.
Hope that helps!
The hydraulic liquids were used to adjust the fins seen in the video on this page: http://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-problem-falcon9-crash-...
Elon Musk replied that the team had underestimated the amount necessary by 10%.
Here's the page for this phrase: http://jargonism.com/words/437
I would be interested to hear feedback from HN on what would be useful on the word page, in addition to a definition and an example?
> From the practice of giving cigars as prizes at carnivals in the US in the 19th century; this phrase would be said to those who failed to win a prize.
The problem with that kind of submissions (images, short videos...) is that they're quick to overtake more in depth articles because people upload it in seconds without 2nd thought. I don't want the front page of HN be overtaken by imgur posts, if you see what I mean.
Also, HN's obsession with linking to "original sources" means you often get a raw feed instead of commentary.
IIRC SpaceX's next generation of rockets will be designed so a reusable second stage will be possible.
IIRC, they are on record as wanting to eventually recover the 2nd stage as well. It's a much tougher problem though - the 2nd stage has much higher velocity at engine cutoff, its engine is a variant designed to operate in vacuum and reportedly can't be made to operate in the atmosphere easily, and any additional hardware added to the 2nd stage has a much higher penalty on the rocket's performance than on the 1st.
If I kick the rocket over those fins won't do any thing because they can't correct the force I applied to kick the rocket over. An active thruster (an attitude control system) can recorrect the force of my kick and reorient the rocket vertically.
I meant if there was some external force like a wind shear or grid fin/hydraulic line failure that pushes the rocket hard enough on descent to alter it's vertical orientation, those grid fins won't really do much to correct that force.
> Gravity and wind will do the job for you
You cannot control gravity or wind. You just have systems that manipulate those forces. Grid fins are a passive system in that they manipulate the fluid the rocket is in to steer it on course but not to correct drastic attitude alterations.
But again, if the updates to the hydraulic lines work out, then they won't need the active thruster system. Adding an active thruster system is just engineering for worst case scenarios.
The gimballing engines give attitude control at the bottom, as far as I understand
But I'm sure with the hydraulic fluid corrections a stronger control system won't be needed to fix large angles of attack but it would be nice to have as an emergency system.
"Have it and not need it/Need it don't Have it" really doesn't work with rockets because of the mass requirements
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoxiK7K28PU
The video's a few years old, so the hardware's changed a bit since then, but I think you'll get the idea. :)
He's not very popular on the internet for a variety of reasons, but I think that Edison is a better comparison. Not the first person I'd compare him to, but I'd sooner compare him to Edison than Tesla.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/laurene-powell-jobs...
At first, I thought you were asking if we were watching it in realtime.... and seeing rocket after rocket blow up on this barge.
> Musk splits his time between his two companies. He's at SpaceX's LA-based headquarters on Monday and Thursday, then he heads to Tesla (in the Bay Area) on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Friday he splits time between both. Tesla Design has offices in the same office park as SpaceX.
He lives in LA, so the schedule makes sense in that he flies LA -> SF Tuesday AM and then SF -> LA Thursday night.
But Spacex have already launched a rocket and landed it in a similar way as they are doing here.
Ok, so they are flying it somewhere else, GPS'ing, and landing it somewhere else.
I enjoyed the video but ... just seems like a small progression in the grand scheme of things.
Cool, but no cigar. This time.
Yeah, that was very close.
Grab a pushpin.
Start counting paces away from the post.
Stop when you're about four city blocks away.
Start running full speed towards the post.
Hurl the pin at the post as hard as you can when you're three city blocks away.
Pin glances off of one corner of the cardboard square.
Crowd yells, "epic fail!"
MRO's data confirms that Beagle landed just 5km from the centre of its targeted touchdown zone.
5km, and it was considered a bulls-eye accurate landing.
They practically had the thing hovering on the barge. All that failed was the angle!
I wasn't "in-the-know" about this being a return / landing until I got to this comment section.
HN when NASA screws up: "Wow, this shows how government can't do anything right. They should privatize everything and outsource it to SpaceX."
We get frustrated with NASA because we've gotten use to the idea of go fast break things. However http://www.nasa.gov/missions/schedule/index.html shows they are launching 3 new projects, they just aren't the sexy science right now so don't get all the cheering. You better believe there was a lot of ooo's and aaahhh's around the new Hubble photos. So they come out with something amazing like that, then you hear that the government (in 2004 mind you) is not willing to fund them enough to keep Hubble alive, combined with the feature of loss of human life from the 2003 Columbia disaster making them risk averse.
When we see SpaceX taking risks and making discoveries, or SpaceShipOne doing the same and exploding, but then the team keeps going, we cheer that, we rally around the against all odds determination to make space accessible.
NASA has done amazing things, but they are hamstrung by the government and their own bureaucratic growth. What once was a warm blanket in the space race is now being used to try and smoother them to death now that there isn't a commercial or war time payout.
</rant>
When I first heard of the hard landing I jumped online to see the vid. But no vid appeared. Then I realized what was happening. A vid of a crashing rocket is never a good thing for a spacelaunch company. It's just bad PR. Thinking back, we don't see many vids from SpaceX that aren't unqualified successes.
They surely had this vid withing minutes, of not seconds of the landing attempt. But they delayed its release until the media and the public were educated sufficiently to understand that, despite the flames, this landing was not a failure.
Usually when there's an error or a failure on a mission, there will be an immediate lockdown of all PR, videos etc to analyze the problems first and understand what happened before the official release of material. This might seem trivial but I'll type it anyway.
First off, if SpaceX released videos and didn't know what happened, the press would obviously speculate and SpaceX's brand would lose value somewhat. If the videos were released and the problem is a little harder to solve, well now you have a video of your error circulating and you don't even know what to tell the press what happened.
If you watch the Mission Control footage during Columbia's fatal reentry, when Houston realized the worst had happened, Flight Director Cain said over the intercom "G.C., FLIGHT, Lock the doors". This was meant figuratively and literally; He told Ground Control to lock the doors of Mission Control so no one could leave, and that all information regarding the incident would not leave that room. Not even the President could enter that room after Ground Control locked the doors.
Even without the video, several news sources jumped into calling the mission a failure, even though the actual mission of resupplying the ISS went perfectly, and the landing was a long-shot experiment. Those calls would only be louder with a flashy explosion video with no backing explanation on hand, ready to go out with the news of the landing failure. By the time more info was available, the story would be gone, and the explanation would be ignored. This would damage SpaceX's brand, ability to get Government missions and private contracts, etc.
It's also entirely plausible that they didn't bother to install a high-speed data link from the barge to the mainland for the purpose of getting the video instantly. It would probably be an expensive and finicky way for them to instantly distribute video that would more likely than not be damaging to their brand.