I remain skeptical that this can be constructed on a large scale in the real world in an economically sensible way. Interesting to see how it develops though.
Arriving on the site in the desert 40 miles north of Las Vegas, you can immediately see this is a costly operation to run. A 500m (1,640ft) test track, or Devloop, has been constructed and a workforce of 300, including 200 high-calibre engineers, has been assembled. They have run a number of tests, propelling a pod through the tube at speeds of up 387km/h (240mph). So far, however, they have not put people on board.
Leading the engineering team is a fast-talking space scientist Anita Sengupta, recruited from Nasa where she helped develop the Mars Curiosity rover. She predicts that the project will have passed through safety certification and be ready to launch a commercial operation by 2021, which seems insanely optimistic.
It is the job of the chief executive Rob Lloyd to sell the Hyperloop to the commercial and government partners who will make it a reality. But when we met him at the giant CES tech show in Las Vegas, he appeared to think that the viability of the technology was a given, wanting to talk instead about an app that would connect future Hyperloop passengers with other modes of transport on arrival.
"You could build a Hyperloop between Gatwick and Heathrow and move between those two airports as if they were terminals in four minutes," he explained. Creating one giant seven-terminal airport without the huge cost and controversy of building a new runway might seem attractive. Sir Richard Branson, who now chairs the project, told us "a fast link between Heathrow and Gatwick would make a lot of sense". But it also sounds fanciful. The cost of tunnelling from Heathrow to Gatwick or the planning nightmare of running several tubes across the Sussex and Surrey countryside would surely make building a third runway seem like a piece of cake.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42730916
It'll never work.
ReplyDeleteI don't fancy going round one of those expansion loops/bends at 700mph
quora.com - Why do oil pipelines that transfer oil long distances run in a zigzag manner?
Thunderf00t has several videos on it. He was even there to see the operation on person. Conclusion: won't work. Ever.
ReplyDeleteThermal expansion is the main problem.
I don't exactly trust Thunderf00t's judgment, but it may indeed be that this sort of infrastructural megaproject needs government funding for economic viability.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see which of these wins. Virgin or http://et3.com/.
ReplyDeleteOne could presumably beat thermal expansion by going underground or perhaps with fancy materials... which would be expensive. What I don't see is how you get the cost per mile down to anywhere near competitive with rail, especially given real-world problems of obstacles, different materials to tunnel through, etc. I don't believe ET3's claim that you need less material per unit length than rail.
ReplyDeleteTo my knowledge ET3 started before both Branson and Musk. I suppose the fact that they're not as far along says something.
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor: Are you familiar with the ways clockmakers used to beat thermal expansion of pendulums?
ReplyDeleteAndres Soolo I am not. Do tell !
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor: A classic example of 18th century high tech is the gridiron pendulum, in which rods of different metals are joined in such a way that as the temperature changes, the different thermal expansion curves cancel each other out.
ReplyDeleteBy the time the Metre Convention began to meddle in other units, invar got invented. Its low thermal expansion is due to what's essentially a gridiron at the crystal structure level.
Andres Soolo there's another solution they used, the mercury pendulum. As the pendulum warmed and grew in length a channel of mercury would rise up the centre and lift the centre of mass.
ReplyDeleteOliver Hamilton: Indeed, but this only works against gravity. Its usefulness for building vacuum tunnels is limited even if you ignore the poisonousness of mercury.
ReplyDelete