[peripato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', '[')b]Revealed: Elon Musk Explains the Hyperloop, the Solar-Powered High-Speed Future of Inter-City Transportation

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')lmost a year after Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla Motors (TSLA) and SpaceX, first floated the idea of a superfast mode of transportation, he has finally revealed the details: a solar-powered, city-to-city elevated transit system that could take passengers and cars from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. In typical Musk fashion, the Hyperloop, as he calls it, immediately poses a challenge to the status quo—in this case, California’s $70 billion high-speed train that has been knocked by Musk and others as too expensive, too slow, and too impractical.

In Musk’s vision, the Hyperloop would transport people via aluminum pods enclosed inside of steel tubes. He describes the design as looking like a shotgun with the tubes running side by side for most of the journey and closing the loop at either end. These tubes would be mounted on columns 50 to 100 yards apart, and the pods inside would travel up to 800 miles per hour. Some of this Musk has hinted at before; he now adds that pods could ferry cars as well as people. “You just drive on, and the pod departs,” Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek in his first interview about the Hyperloop.

Musk published a blog post detailing the Hyperloop on Monday. He will hold a press call later in the day to go over the details.

[Keith_McClary]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peripato', 'W')ho would actually need to travel between San Francisco and LA in 30 minutes? And what the f#@k for?

[peripato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peripato', 'W')ho would actually need to travel between San Francisco and LA in 30 minutes? And what the f#@k for?

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Keith_McClary', 'A')nd would you have to arrive 2 hours early for TSA probing?

[Timo]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peripato', 'O')k, I'll bite...

Who would actually need to travel between San Francisco and LA in 30 minutes? And what the f#@k for?

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('peripato', 'W')ho would actually need to travel between San Francisco and LA in 30 minutes? And what the f#@k for?

[Graeme]

Here's Musk's full 57-page report published in Scientific American:

We Could Make Elon Musk’s Hyperloop Real

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')n August 12, after a self-professed all-nighter, Musk unveiled just what in the heck he had been talking about as the Hyperloop—with a little part-time help from engineers at Tesla and SpaceX. It turns out to be a clever kludge of ideas that have been floating around since the 19th century—all designed to take people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes. Take a pod that would carry passengers all in a row and put it in a tube where it can be accelerated to high speeds like a bullet in a gun. Don’t make the tube a vacuum, however, since it’s all too easy to mess up a vacuum-based system given nature’s general abhorrence and whatnot. Nor should the tube be normal pressure either, like the pneumatic mail tubes of yesteryear, given that pushing all that air around would entail too much energy when expanded over hundreds of kilometers, not to mention an absurd amount of friction on the tube walls.

Musk’s solution was to cheat: make the pair of steel tubes low pressure, roughly 100 Pascals or “1/6 the pressure of the atmosphere of Mars,” he wrote in the proposal outlining the Hyperloop concept posted online. And, to get around that little problem of airflow, have the pods come equipped with a hole and a battery-powered fan and compressor so that the air in front is sucked in and then used as the traveling cushion—think air hockey—underneath the pod’s 28 skis. Oh, did I not mention the Inconel skis? These struts, made from a superalloy more commonly found on spaceships and nuclear power plant steam generators—which should give you some idea of the kinds of temperatures and pressures the supermetal can withstand—help the pod glide along the tube at 1,220 kilometers-per-hour, with a boost every 110 kilometers or so from the kind of linear induction motors Tesla uses to make its amazing cars go, flattened along the walls of the tube. Those motors, and the batteries aboard the pods, would be charged up by all the efficient photovoltaics laid out atop the tube’s roof, producing an estimated 57 megawatts-worth of power, or nearly three times as much as Musk calculates the Hyperloop would need to operate. “You’d have to dump the power somewhere,” Musk noted in a 30-minute conference call with reporters to discuss the big idea.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')on’t make the tube a vacuum, however, since it’s all too easy to mess up a vacuum-based system given nature’s general abhorrence and whatnot... make the pair of steel tubes low pressure, roughly 100 Pascals or “1/6 the pressure of the atmosphere of Mars

[Graeme]

Yeah, Just about as loony as drilling for oil these days. Wait, let's trash the planet instead.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'Y')eah, Just about as loony as drilling for oil these days. Wait, let's trash the planet instead.

[Graeme]

Well, isn't it about time we stopped drilling for oil? It only enriches a few and now it's use is threatening civilization. As the Economist said recently, it's yesterday's fuel.

If you're worried about safety, then don't drive a car or fly in a plane because they may crash. Let's hide under the bed coz it's safer. In the 50's, flying to the moon didn't have any "merit" either. As for this project, Musk points out that it is cheaper than the high-speed rail that is planned. You're behaving like a Luddite. Let's just see what happens. It may not get built.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'W')ell, isn't it about time we stopped drilling for oil? It only enriches a few and now it's use is threatening civilization. As the Economist said recently, it's yesterday's fuel.

[Graeme]

It's not a pipe dream. If you actually read Musk's report, you will see on page 52 where he says that the "Hyperloop is intrinsically safer than airplanes, trains or automobiles".

In the NewScientist article, he says this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')usk has released the plans as an open-source project. He stated last week that he did not have time to devote to the project at present, but in a conference call yesterday, he said that he was coming around to the idea that one of his existing, or future, companies could take it on. "I'm tempted to make a demonstration prototype," he said. Musk estimates that it would take one or two years of dedicated work to build the prototype, and another four to five years to deploy a full-scale version between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Graeme', 'I')t's not a pipe dream. If you actually read Musk's report, you will see on page 52 where he says that the "Hyperloop is intrinsically safer than airplanes, trains or automobiles".

[Graeme]

No, he is not going to build it himself; it's one of his companies. You can be sure that he will be informed of progress every step of the way. And I said that he has yet to build the prototype, which is not the same as going into production.

If successful, you can also be sure that this mode of transport will provide competition for autos, air and train travel. But we are not there yet. Is this the reason you are so against it?

[Timo]

Musk has already suggested that he'll have very limited involvement with this particular project brecause #1, the technology isn't quite there yet for actual construction (hence, it's open source design with no patent, available for everyone to tweak and improve), and #2, he's already hyper (no pun intended) busy with Tesla and SpaceX. As for cost to build it, one of my college professors told us that the greatest single asset this nation has in terms of a functional resource for the future is the Interstate Highway system. ALL of the land is already available, and designed according to the shortest, most efficient routes between every last major metro area in this country, and everyplace in between. Railroads also could stand to have a HUGE benefit from commercial applications for this technology. Berkshire Hathaway has no shortage of money for designs and improvement for the basic hyperloop concept. FedEx could offer same-day delivery! To the other side of the planet!!! As Tanada was suggesting the other day in another thread, nearly all major technological gains humanity has achieved over the past 200 or 300 years have resulted from refinements applied to existing technologies. The hyperloop is not "new" technology, but is simply a more efficient and different application of an existing technology. Musk is not taking any credit for inventing this concept. But, he is entrepreneurial to the extreme, and he's been frighteningly successful in nearly every venture he's ever started. He's also broad-visioned enough to recognize the application and development of a different technology that could result in profound improvements for the rest of humanity. The hyperloop is the most prominent example of that ethic. Until he fails, i'll presume he'll succeed. Not tomorow, but unlike nuclear fusion, i do believe we'll live to see the functional use of the hyperloop. I'm sure Dyson is salivating right now, just thinking about the possibilities.

[Graeme]

Analyzing the Hype of Musk's Solar-powered Hyperloop Transportation System

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')f course, a tech entrepreneur's political commentary isn't newsworthy either, and there has been rampant speculation as to whether Musk — or anyone — could successfully build the contraption. Pneumatic transportation is not novel, and similar — if much slower — versions of pneumatically-propelled people pushers have been envisioned, and even deployed, long ago. Paris and New York had air-powered public transit in the 1870s. The vacuum-tube variation Musk is currently proposing has recently been explored in China and in Switzerland. So how does the concept stand up to technical scrutiny?

Hyperloop's cost-per-kilometer would be as revolutionary as its speed. California high-speed rail's high cost per kilometer is as much a consequence of political and environmental issues as the technology, and those concerns would likely dog Hyperloop, too. Musk proposes an elevated, high-technology solution that would indeed address issues like land use, but such systems are if anything even more expensive: the Shanghai Pudong monorail cost $1.3 billion to build and is 30 km long ($40 million/km), while the Airtrain monorail in NYC cost $1.2 billion for just 12 km of track ($100 million/km). One way to defray the cost might be co-locating the route with other state-spanning infrastructure. Using the same right-of-way for a natural gas pipeline or energy transmission lines with PG&E, fiber-optic cable (which are routinely co-located inside city sewers) or water could be part of the calculus.

The passenger pod's cousin, Tesla, could supply on-board power technology. On-board batteries are not a technological hurdle, because the initial acceleration (and subsequent boosts) needs would be met by external, stationary linear electric motors and their energy sources. The on-board batteries would then be used primarily for powering a large electric compressor fan at the front of the Hyperloop. The resulting battery would likely be on the order of 200 kWh – about three Tesla Model S's worth of energy storage capacity, which can be engineered using today's battery technology. Moreover, these batteries would contribute only a sliver — less than 0.1 percent — to the overall cost of the Hyperloop, being dwarfed by infrastructure like pylon construction and land permits.

Even in sunny California, the solar-powered system would need backup storage. While Musk's plan assumes the energy requirements of the system could be met by solar energy — perhaps he is hoping that SolarCity will get the installation contract — solar panels would need grid storage to operate at the expected utilization rate. So while solar power will help, the larger energy storage opportunity would be in the stationary batteries required to operate the Hyperloop's linear electric motors at night or in poor weather.

The open-source model is an open invitation to rail system manufacturers like Bombardier, Siemens, and ABB. Siemens test-drove crowdsourcing by opening up its engineering software to the Local Motors crowd, with the now-available Rally Fighter vehicle a testimony to its success. As with other "big innovations," the spinoffs of R&D on Hyperloop would benefit adjacent technologies, and advance the process of collaborative design. Manufacturers of other high-performance transport vehicles, such as automotive, aircraft, and spacecraft — like Musk's SpaceX or the NewSpace community — should join the Hyperloop crowd.

[Timo]

Here's an interesting question, just for the sake of starting a stupid debate. How much would construction of a NY to LA Hyperloop cost vs the cost of the Keystone XL Pipeline? Which project would create more value to humanity? Which would create more jobs? Which would have less potential damage to the environment and atmosphere? Which would be more worth building?

[Keith_McClary]

This "Walkability and Good Transit" blogger
http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress ... repreneur/
tears into Hyperloop and Musk.

[Keith_McClary]