We’re twenty years from a workable hyperloop. And it will always be so.
I was a fan of the 70s TV pilot film Genesis II, where in the near future (150 years, not 20!) a system of vacuum subterranean tunnels and shuttles could take you at high speed to places all around the globe.
But, this was a post-apocalyptic future. Even as a kid, I was like “what happens if a car breaks down in the middle of the Pacific tunnel?” Forget 200 miles, how about 2000 of vacuum.
Good point.
I mean I agree that hyperloop is a flawed concept, and I also thought so all along.
But even if it was practical, nothing much would happen in 10 years in most countries. And what progress would happen would go massively over budget.
I lived in China, and the modern subways, and high-speed rail between major cities, made such a difference to how people commuted, socialized and holidayed.
It’s all most countries really need, and it’s tried-and-tested tech. But it’s just not that easy to roll out to most places.
I remember visiting Shanghai and Beijing over 10 years ago, and was amazed at what the country had built in such a short time. But I would call it the “La Guardia Effect” - when you start from nothing, it’s easy to get motivated to build what’s needed. When you already have a half-assed solution (like La Guardia from the 1950’s) it takes a long time to admit it’s time to rebuild, and even longer to accept the disruption the construction will take.
I think hyperloop (or Boring Company) will prove its value in areas where traditional techniques can’t work as easily - tunnels under existing infrastructure, small to minimize disruption. I’ve seen suggestions that future transit options would be Musk’s Tesla robotaxis. Create a network of Boring company tunnels, accessible only to the robot fleet. They then pop up to the surface exits for the last half mile on regular city streets. A spiderweb of tunnels allow point-to-point travel outside of city congestion with computerized traffic control to allow high speed traffic in the tunnels. Speed would be simpler with no cross traffic or obstructions, weather problems, etc. It would be like the old web of rural railroads -with proper control, no need for twin tunnels on the less busy routes, etc. You summon the taxis and they deliver you to your destination like the elevators in a building. Popular destinations might even have basement loading zones away from street traffic. The same concept could extend its reach further and further into the suburbs and surrounding communities.
I would think the ideal for hyperloop vacuum tubes initially would be a set of high traffic point-to-point flows. Between the assorted NYC airports (and downtown Manhattan) comes to mind. next, LAX to Vegas seems the sort of starting point for cross-country, or the Boston-NYC-Philly-Washington corridor. The point would be, once the first line is built, creating side branches would expand the total utility of the whole system since each transport capsule could be custom-routed - plus multiple loading points in a destination would increase total capacity. It just seems to me that issues like Y junctions and sealed loading stations are non-trivial engineering exercises, as are the safety problems.
Note the design of the Chunnel - two parallel travel tunnels with regular access to a utility tunnel between them, because the same problem occurred to those designers - “what if someone is stranded halfway?” My design concept would be parallel tunnels with regular high-speed cross-overs. If a section of tunnel is compromised, then travel is limited while the remaining segment is time-shared; much like what happens during highway construction with a set of flagmen. if both segments are compromised, well- it’s like a landslide closes a road. I would suggest there would not be a transPacific tunnel so much as a Bering strait tunnel, with the same design - a full pressure tunnel with a regular access between the two vacuum tunnels, for emergencies. Assorted routes - Bering, Korea or Russia to Japan, Malay to Jakarta, Newfoundland, Ireland(Belfast) - few require individual tunnels over 25 miles. Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Iceland, Cyprus - may require better tech further future.
The bigger problem I see is time. LAX to Shanghai via the Bering strait is over 11,000km and at Mach 1 1000kph that’s still an 11-hour journey. It doesn’t improve on air travel, especially if the proposed new generation SST works. Hyperloop’s forte would be more like NYC-LAX, where 4hours, 4,000km could compete favourably with air travel - or much shorter intercity travel. The key to this, like high speed rail is downtown to downtown, being able to bypass the time to go to airports and the TSA line up.
As for leakage - who cares? these aren’t old-style light bulbs. If there’s slight leakage due to slip-fit expansion joints would it significantly alter the efficiency of the system of the pressure were 10 or 50 millibars instead of 0? Simpler to have vacuum pumps always running along the way. (We have hydraulic actuators and they don’t spew oil everywhere - why would a seal vacuum expansion joint leakage be significantly worse?)
This is little surprise:
Hyperloop One, the futuristic transportation company building tube-encased lines to zip passengers and freight from city to city at airplane-like speeds, is shutting down, according to people familiar with the situation.
See Post 5
There are few things I’m comfortable in predicting. This was one of the things I had no problem with broadcasting it would not come to fruition.
First, consider capacity vs. contingency…
Assuming “failure” means a vehicle has to stop mid-trip. (I.e. let’s say, melt-down in the on-board transport system). Assuming we don’t experience RUD (Rapid Unplanned Disassembly) it’s still blocking the tube. (Insert Internet tubes joke here) How crowded is that tube - how many other vehicles? How fast can they stop? How far back to an alternate pathway? (Is there one?) What’s the evacuation process? How long a segment needs to be pressurized to remove the occupants of the stranded vehicle? How far apart are emergency exit hatches? How vandal proof are they? What’s the process if a vehicle experiences a pressure leak during a long voyage?
What if the tube leaks? How easily can it be repaired while not being out of service? How much vaccum pumping would be required to keep pressure low? How do you find leaks while the tube is in use?
Simple physics suggests that the potential speed cannot be realized in an urban area, it takes too long a distance to reach airline speeds unless acceleration is drastic. For inter-city, then we start to look at the issues with building hundreds of miles of tubing. Above ground? underground? Tunnelling vast distances is expensive, and makes repairs expensive. Above ground, why not go with MagLev trains at one tenth the hassle for half the speed and a lot less intrusion on the landscape. Design the track to use smaller trains not unlike the Hyperloop capsules, without the air pressure issues.
Where these options would shine is in the shorter, heavily travelled corridors - SF-LAX-Vegas, the northeast seaboard (Boston to Washington). It’s why trains excel in Europe, and are the volume carrier most efficient for commuters.
All in all, Hyperloop was a neat idea, but the devil is in the details. I see a brighter future for hydrogen-powered aircraft. Inside cities, I suspect the transit of the future is TART - Taxi Area Rapid Transit, where robotaxis can dip into a network of computer-controlled driving downtown tunnels at high speed, emerging onto the regular roadway for the last mile in less densely populated suburbs.
I have to agree with all these points. The cost/benefit ratio is very bad.
“We hope you enjoyed the ride!”
Stranger
I guess in the future, batteries will still burst into flames. 
In any future involving Arnold Schwarzenegger, many things explode, often spontaneously. Also, interpretations of Shakespeare have a lot more automatic weapons fire.
Stranger
Alternatively, same as hyperloop - if they ran maglev “rails” across the eastern USA, presumably they could run it like the old Greyhound system - a bus every hour from NYC to Chicago, say. If ticket sales reached a certian point, they would put on a second bus. For the maglev, start with a smallish unit - say 10 seats. As ticket sales increase, the scheduled run would be switched to a bigger unit or more units. Perhaps some units would only go as far as Pittsburgh or Columbus.
The problem with “trains” is they were built to be pulled by a locomotivewhich included a full crew, whereas a maglev would need magnetic propulsion/repulsion in every unit. Plus, no need to aggregate units, since traffic is controlled by computer so it can run much more densely.
Smaller units, with fewer people, could be set up to minimize destinations, only stopping where necessary (like an elevator) rather than stopping and going, fully loaded, at every station. While a trip NYC to Chicago might take 2 hours at 350mph it would also avoid taxiing and gate delays, the trip to the airport and back (delivering you to downtown) and could more frequently service lesser destinations. (I.e the route would go NYC-Philly-Pittsburgh-Columbus-indianapolis-Chicago, or also from Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Detroit-Chicago.
The problem with any such setup - Amtrak, maglev, hyperloop - is that you are spending taxpayer dollars to compete with the airlines; or else asking a private consortium to take a leap of faith.
Definitely a classic; already he was aprodying the action movies he was known for. (as if they weren’t funny on their own)
A train or ‘maglev’ pod moving at 350 mph at or near ground level would produce a lot of noise and sidewash, would pose a hazard to anything that happened to cross the tracks, and getting the right-of-way to lay such a system in a way that wasn’t near existing urban areas or suburbs would be enormously expensive on top of the expense and complexity of trying to run a maglev system. It’s the kind of ‘solution’ that would end up being more of a problem than the issue it is trying to solve.
Stranger
I don’t know about outside, but on a MagLev going 430km/hr it was dead quiet, you felt like you were sitting still. Then look out the window, and the whole world is tilted - but you feel level - because you’re going around a curve.
The Chinese solved one problem by putting the whole route on an elevated track; probably the pillars were the least expense for a track that includes a series of electromagnets. The existing railroads already have full right of way across the countryside; I guess the only issue is curves that may be too tight.
At 1g of acceleration it would take 500 seconds (8.3 minutes) to reach 500 mph and about 75.5 miles to achieve. Doesn’t seem terrible and, I assume, it could accelerate faster comfortably.
But yeah, nitpick, Hyperloop has so many other problems (many you noted).
22.8 seconds at 1 g (9.81 m/s2) acceleration…assuming, of course, that your passengers are fine with being pushed back into their seats at their full weight, and you don’t mind any loose items being flung rearward through the cabin at the same rate as if you dropped them off of a cliff.
Stranger
By way of comparison, the G’s you feel when taking off in a passenger jet is around 0.5.
Heh…I asked Bard (Google’s AI). My bad.
Actually, for a typical commercial airliner with a fully load it is around 0.25 g to 0.35 g in the initial climb; You may experience >0.5 g on landing if the pilot fully reverses thrust on the engines due heavy lateral winds or a short runway. I have been on research/freefall aircraft that have approached ~0.8 g on the climb which really shoves you back into your seat.
So much for the claim that these chatbots are capable of doing complex mathematics and understanding the results. I know I like to put my trust in a system that will provide confidently wrong results and isn’t accountable for the consequences of error.
Stranger