News: Elon Musk's Hyperloop

• Musk thinks that high-speed trains are too expensive, and too slow. He wants a system that's faster and cheaper.

• Musk says the Hyperloop is best for distances of 900 miles. Beyond 900 miles, he thinks you're better off in a supersonic jet.

• Musk shoots down previous ideas about how something like a Hyperloop could work. He says vacuum sealed tubes running on magnetics wouldn't work because it's too hard to vacuum seal a 700-mile tube. One leak, and you're toast. Pneumatic tubes wouldn't work, either, because "the friction of a 350 mile long column of air moving at anywhere near sonic velocity against the inside of the tube is so stupendously high that this is impossible for all practical purposes. "

• He proposes "a low pressure (vs. almost no pressure) system set to a level where standard commercial pumps could easily overcome an air leak and the transport pods could handle variable air density would be inherently robust."

• He wants people to sit in pods that whip through giant steel tubes. "Sealed capsules carrying 28 passengers each that travel along the interior of the tube depart on average every 2 minutes from Los Angeles or San Francisco (up to every 30 seconds during peak usage hours)."

• An in-depth explanation: "Hyperloop capsules will float above the tube’s surface on an array of 28 air bearing skis that are geometrically conformed to the tube walls. The skis, each 4.9 ft (1.5 meters) in length and 3.0 ft (0.9 meters) in width, support the weight of the capsule by floating on a pressurized cushion of air 0.020 to 0.050 in. (0.5 to 1.3 mm) off the ground. Peak pressures beneath the skis need only reach 1.4 psi (9.4 kPa) to support the passenger capsule (9% of sea level atmospheric pressure). The skis depend on two mechanisms to pressurize the thin air film: external pressurization and aerodynamics."

• There is danger in his approach, because: "Whenever you have a capsule or pod (I am using the words interchangeably) moving at high speed through a tube containing air, there is a minimum tube to pod area ratio below which you will choke the flow. What this means is that if the walls of the tube and the capsule are too close together, the capsule will behave like a syringe and eventually be forced to push the entire column of air in the system. Not good. "

• His solution to this problem: "Mount an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel. This is like having a pump in the head of the syringe actively relieving pressure."

• He believes the Hyperloop will cost $7.5 billion at most. The $7.5 billion estimate for a pod+cargo version. For just passengers, he thinks it's only $6 billion.The pods and linear motors will cost hundreds of millions. The tube will cost billions. For comparison, the California high-speed rail project is projected to cost $70-$100 billion.

• It will be built above ground on pylons, and the prefabricated sections can be dropped into place. By building it above ground, it can mostly follow I-5, and it won't take up too much land. He actually suggests putting it in the median of I-5.

• It will be self powered. It can have solar panels of top of the tube which will generate electricity. He also says, "The energy could also be stored in the form of compressed air that then runs an electric fan in reverse to generate energy, as demonstrated by LightSail."

• It will carry 840 passengers per hour, taking them from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and vice versa. He says, "the current baseline requires up to 40 capsules in activity during rush hour, 6 of which are at the terminals for loading and unloading of the passengers in approximately 5 minutes. " (Um, 5 minutes for unloading?)

• He also has a model for a passenger + car version of the Hyperloop pod. It could take people plus three cars.

• Inside the pods, Musk says the chairs will be super comfortable, and a "beautiful landscape will be displayed in the cabin and each passenger will have access their own personal entertainment system."

• You can only travel with two bags per trip, and the total weight can't be above 110 pounds.

• He plans on having TSA-like security checks, but hopefully faster and less intrusive.

• What happens if you have a heart attack (or some less serious illness) on the Hyperloop? The train conductor calls ahead and alerts the station. You'll be at the station in 30 minutes, so hang on!

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-hyperloop-plan-2013-8#ixzz2brAcARZb

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20InchChrome said:

We need more people like Elon Musk in the world. He dreams things that will revolutionize the world and goes ahead and creates them or comes close to creating them.

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20InchChrome said:

I laugh at all the consumer-muppets out there that worship Steve Jobs as a genius but who was "pee-wee" league compared to Musk.

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Big Pat said:

Well, I'm not an iMuppet, but his products did change society as a whole - who could have guessed that mobile handheld devices would seriously hurt TV and Radio?

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20InchChrome said:

Steve Jobs and Apple didn't create the "smartphone" or phones that had extra capabilities like playing music, taking pictures or browsing the internet. Those phones were already in their infancy before the 1st iPhone. Apple just evolved the cellphone with a touch-screen, made it pretty and marketed the shit out of it.

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99jipy99 said:

Liens en francais pour ceux comme moi qui ont de la misere avec l'anglais
http://roulezelectrique.com/est-ce-que-lhyperloop-delon-musk-sonnera-le-glas-du-projet-de-monorail/
BTW projet vraiment fou!

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Big Pat said:

It doesn't matter if they invented it or not - by marketing the shit out of them, it made the iPhone an object of desire (or is it cult?) and it allowed it to enter the mainstream rather than the geekdom.

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Esti_de_Panda said:

Si ca se fait sa va etre d'ici 25 ans peut-etre.. Merde y'a un truc qui vient de me frapper intense. Quand je vais mourrir je vais etre décu de pas voir ce que cette technologie ( voir le monde dans lequel on vivra dans 50 ans ) va devenir.


M. Musk, can you please find a way to be immortal ? I would like to see a lot of your ideas being real.

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20InchChrome said:

Well I don't see the mass market success of product as an event that "changed society" as you said in your previous post.

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-Mike- said:

^^^this

On en verra pas un financierement viable de notre vivant...

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