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Transportation Science Technology

University Students Made a Working Model Hyperloop 154

Posted by Soulskill from the hyperloop-me-that-pencil,-would-you dept.
derekmead writes: Elon Musk's Hyperloop gets people excited. Promise the ability to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than an hour, and you're going to get people salivating. But for as much as we've heard about it, we've had scarcely little to see—until a team of students at the University of Illinois decided to build their very own miniature hyperloop.

Mechanical engineering students at the university built a functioning 1:24 scale model of the Hyperloop, a "fourth mode of transportation" that sends pods through a partially pressurized tube at very high speeds, as part of a senior design project. It was designed to test some of the key components of Musk's design, which was outlined in a much-read, open source whitepaper (PDF) published in August of 2013. That said, there are several key differences, which keep this from truly being a proof-of-concept as to whether or not the Hyperloop will ultimately work.
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University Students Made a Working Model Hyperloop More

University Students Made a Working Model Hyperloop

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  • the ability to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than an hour

    I am exceedingly skeptical this would be survivable by humans.

    Suddenly I'm picturing Garfield plastered to the car window.

    It just seems like the forces involved in accelerating and stopping would pretty much result in "puree". :-P

    • Re:Sure ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by bv728 ( 943505 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:16PM (#49997253)
      Planes generally average around 500mph, and the average plane flight time between SF and LA is... roughly 57 minutes. You'd have to hit much higher speeds to not be survivable. You're just going to be spending the last 15 minutes slowing down gradually.

      • Re:Sure ... (Score:5, Informative)

        by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:20PM (#49997317) Homepage

        LOL ... well, I'll accept my being a moron as the problem here ... despite reading it, and knowing where those cities are located ... my brain was treating that as a "coast to coast in an hour", like New York to LA.

        You are utterly correct.

        • Re:Sure ... (Score:5, Informative)

          by Burdell ( 228580 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:40PM (#49997511)

          Coast to coast still wouldn't be that big of a deal. The SR-71 Blackbird flew from LA to Washington DC in 64 minutes 20 seconds.

        • Re:Sure ... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:44PM (#49997549)

          NY to LA is 2448 miles - at an acceleration of 1g (~22 (Miles per hour) per second) it would take 102 seconds (1.7 minutes) to achieve a speed capable of going from LA to NY in an hour. As long as there aren't any sharp curves, or things to hit along the way, there aren't any forces that would prevent a 1hr trip from LA to NY. Hell the SR-71 made the trip from NY to London in 1hr 40 minutes, and that's 1000 miles farther at ground level - let alone at the 80k - 90k feet the SR71 flew at.

          • Re:Sure ... (Score:5, Informative)

            by bondsbw ( 888959 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @05:13PM (#49998795)

            For that matter, at 1g for the entire duration of the ride (1g acceleration halfway, 1g deceleration the other half) it would only take a bit over 21 minutes.

            And if we want to talk about human survivability, Wikipedia tells me that humans can generally tolerate up to 5g before blacking out. At that rate it would take about 9.5 minutes one way.

            And if we're just looking to get there in an hour, 1/8 g would do the trick.

        • Re:Sure ... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26, 2015 @03:04PM (#49997729)

          Good lord a correction that didn't descend into mudslinging on the internet. It really *must* be a new era.

        • New Zealand is about 20000km from where i currently live. at 0.2g max acceleration you can cover that distance from stationary starting to stationary stop in less than two hours (6300seconds). So your idea of forces involved for high speed are quite false. Of course in this example top speed would be 6232m/s, or about 15% below orbital speed. quite impractical for a plane, or even this concept. But it illustrates the point.

          In short your top speed is what matters. There are no inherent forces that kill yo

      • But planes essentially go straight except for the very beginning and ending of the flight. They don't have to dodge the Mountains of the Southern Coast Range. And they aren't doing it at Mach I.

        So you wouldn't be plastered to the back windows, but the side windows would be a wee bit of a problem.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          Their proposed route never exceeds 0.5g in any direction, and the capsules can bank.

          • Reference please. All I have seen is a mention of following I5.

            • Re:Sure ... (Score:5, Informative)

              by bws111 ( 1216812 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @03:08PM (#49997765)

              Their whitepaper [spacex.com], starting on page 39.

              • That is not much detail at all. Those two page do not show a detailed route or investigations into any of the trouble spots along the way. Drawing a line on a map is very easy. Here is a quote from the article;

                This can be achieved by deviating from the current highway system, earth removal, constructing pylons to achieve elevation change or tunneling.

                That sounds a lot like "we'lI think about it later". think they will be deviating from the current highway system a lot.

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by bws111 ( 1216812 )

                  Read more than 2 pages. Pages 44-50 show the details, including the turning radii and the deviations from I-5.

                  • I finally did read the rest but it never states how much land outside the I5 right of way it would need.

                  • Dude, if they're on the I5 Right of Way the are turning in 3D too much. It's got a legendary "grapevine grade" [ca.gov] in Kern County.

                    If they take over a lane, or the median, and build a viaduct a couple stories high, they may be able to beat things like the Grapevine Grade. But then they have to deal with mountains and hills the I5 tunneled through, overpasses, etc. And it's kinda easy to say "we'll take over the median," but I suspect the supports for the huge towers you'd need to make the grapevine grade surviva

                    • What if the replacement viaduct took the i5 over the grapvine grade as well as the hyperloop?

                      There are a lot of roads where a viaduct over a valley would save considerable time, money and fuel over the current norm of terrain-following. Just because that's the way stagecoaches did it doesn't mean that it's appropriate for newer technologies.

                    • Viaducts never save construction money. The reason is pretty simple: the road-bed you build on the viaduct has to be equivalent of the one you'd build on the dirt, which means the only way to save money is on digging the hole the road-bed would go into. And that's only cheaper if you're in a magical place with easily diggable dirt patches located precisely where you need them.

                      In the long-term they tend to save money as manageable grades reduce fuel consumption and the need for specialized equipment, but Hyp

    • "LaForge to bridge: Captain, the inertial dampeners are offline. Do NOT drop out of warp."

    • It just seems like the forces involved in accelerating and stopping would pretty much result in "puree". :-P

      Let's do the math. To travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in an hour requires an average speed of 166 m/s. Accelerating at 1 G (9.8 m/s), it would take 17 seconds to reach that speed. If that's too much acceleration for you, do half the acceleration for 34 seconds. Either way, no puree.

      • My issue is with turn radius. Using your example and constraining the maximum perceived gforce to 1.5 we come up with the following.

        With a downward force of 1G the maximum centripetal acceleration would be 1.1G. 1.5^2 = 1^ + x^2.
        The equation for centripital acceleration is A = v^2/R. Therefore 1.1 = (166)^2/r Therefore r = (166)^2/1.1 = 25km. That is a very big turning radius. To put it another way, it would take 4.3 Km of tube to change direction 10 degrees. Interstate 5 turns a lot sharper than that so I

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          I think your math is off. According to their whitepaper, the turning radius at 1220km/h (339m/s) is 23.5km. Plugging that into your formula gives a centripetal acceleration of 4.9m/s^2, or 0.5g.

          While they are mostly following I-5, they deviate when necessary to smooth the turns. That is one of the reasons it is built on pylons.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 )

          Now that I look at it more, that math is a big WTF. The 'A' in that formula is not in units of 'G's, it is in m/s^2. Since 1G is about 9.8m/s^2, the correct formula is 10.78 = (166)^2/r or r=(166)^2/10.78, or 2.5km.

          Instead of just assuming you know what they are doing, and using bad math to prove them wrong, why not actually READ the document and see what they are ACTUALLY proposing?

          • I made a mistake. Sorry. The document is still pretty vague. I would like to be able to actually see how far from the right of way the proposed route actually is. The map is not detailed enough for that.

        • I can slow down for the sharper corners. Like High speed rail does you know. Since its a v^2 term you don't need to slow down much.

        • Unlike rail, the hyperloop vehicles are able to bank inside the tubes so that cabin gravity is always apparently floorwards. (In fact if the CoG is low, then the banking comes for free, assuming a cylindrical profile.)

          That in turn allows much tighter bend radii than rail where the limitations are mechanical stresses on the tube from passing pods and how much vertical G forces you're prepared to subject your passengers to (3G for 30 seconds is quite tolerable from my own experience deliberately spiral diving

          • The banking thing is interesting, but you totally destroy your credibility with the 3.0 Gs thing.

            Hyperloop is not supposed to be a mode of travel grandma can't use. 0.2G is roughly what the competition is doing [theverge.com], and Musk's proposed 0.5 G would actually be comparable to a roller coaster.

            This is an idea that'll work great and be near or under cost at scale, but that's because people won't be in it. I am not saying it's a bad idea, or that it's not possible that we'll be zipping our way around on Hyperloops in

            • > you totally destroy your credibility with the 3.0 Gs thing.

              If you want to mess about with aircraft there are planes you can do this in, and places you can have the altitude to do it. It's harder to lift your arms but not intolerable. In general, unless the passengers are warned in advance it's best not to exceed 0.5G in banked turns and exceeding 2G may pull the wings off some models of light aircraft.

              > actually be comparable to a roller coaster.

              Roller coasters are deliberately designed to repeatedl

              • I didn't say you couldn't do 3.0 Gs. I said that your credibility is destroyed when you bring that into a discussion of mass transportation. Mass transportation is not supposed to be that jerky because mass transportation is supposed to be used by all the people you specifically agreed you weren't when you signed that contract before the pilot took you up.

                As for your comparison to current modes of transport, you're not comparing a current hi-spoed transport system with other current hi-speed systems. You're

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by PIBM ( 588930 )

      How long does a plane take to travel between both places ?

      There's barely 560 km between both locations. An hyperloop device accelerating at the same speed a Tesla P85D does (lets say 33 km / h / s) would reach 600 km/h in 18 seconds. And a Tesla does't tend to splatter it's occupant on acceleration. If the environment is stable and safe and the vacuum is tight and the suspension is magnetic, it's easy to think about 2 minutes of acceleration, cruise and rotate the seats, 2 minutes of deceleration (which wou

    • Actually it's very achievable.
      I'm going to use metric system because I'm most used to it.
      Distance between SF and LA is 644 km.
      An object accelerating constantly for 1800 seconds which would travel half the distance (322 km) in 1800 seconds only needs an acceleration of 0.2006 m/s^2 (0.02046g). It needs to decelerate constantly by the same rate for the rest of 1800 seconds to make the whole trip in 1h.

    • >>>> travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than an hour
      >> I am exceedingly skeptical this would be survivable by humans.

      Turn in your geek card. Here's an easy back-of-the-envelope calculation for you.

      Let's start with a gentle rate of acceleration and deceleration at 1mph/sec (e.g., "zero to sixty in 2 minutes"). That means that the vehicle is at a maximum speed of 420mph in 7 minutes, during which time it travelled about 24 miles. The distance between SF and LA is about 400 m

    • And guess what ? You should know better than to rely on time or speed to make such a guess. You should rely on force and acceleration. 1 G is perfectly survivable by human , and within 1 minutes you are already at 60 meter per seconds, and in 10 minutes 600 meter per seconds or about 2160 kmh. At that sped you do paris new york in 2 and half hour and the 400 miles between los angeles and san francisco in about 15 minutes. Naturally the speed we are talking about are not even 1/4 of that, and the acceleratio

  • Vacuum tubes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Pretty sure my bank has one of these. How is this news?

    • But this one is HyperExpensive . . . I wonder how they will maintain breathable air inside the vehicle which is in a near vacuum ?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by PIBM ( 588930 )

        I wonder how they will maintain breathable air inside the space station which is in a near vacuum ? Oh yeah they are already doing it =)

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The keyword is "HyperExpensive"

          How much do you think it costs Nasa to maintain the air in the space station?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fatboy ( 6851 )

        But this one is HyperExpensive . . . I wonder how they will maintain breathable air inside the vehicle which is in a near vacuum ?

        CO2 scrubbers?

    • I have seen designs from the 1950s (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The "Hyperloop" concept - putting a capsule with seats in a tube and having it speed between cities - has been around for decades. I have seen concepts for it in old engineering books from the 1950s. Somehow, this becomes "new" and Musk gets his name on it.

      I really don't get this cult of personality around Musk. He must have a god for a publicist.

      • Because they didn't come with instructions, just a picture. He had a bunch of engineers come up with a rough draft of instructions and a method that was plausible. We had people thinking we'd be shooting people into space with a cannon, that doesn't mean we can't celebrate the Apollo missions.

      • It was costed in the 1960s-70s as running into the trillions, but such designs were full vacuum linear motor systems

        Hyperloop makes a number of pragmatic/practical changes (such as allowing enough air in to provide air bearings, which in turn reduces engineering costs of suspending the capsules dramatically). Whether it's fully economic to do so is another matter.

        My personal belief is that it will prove uneconomic for passengers unless longhaul freight is also carried and that in turn requires large tube di

  • Is one of the key differences that it is twenty-four times too small?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Is one of the key differences that it is twenty-four times too small?

      Mr. Burns: To the plant! We'll take the spruce moose! Hop in!
      Mr. Smithers:...But sir.
      Mr.Burns: -pulls out a gun- I said...hop in....

  • It must have been fun and I'm sure the students learned a thing or two, but this model uses physical roller bearings, instead of air pressure. So there is one problem with the model straight away. The second is they built it into an oval shape, which is another challenge the hyperloop faces: how to negotiate deceleration through a sharp corner, yet still maintain a high rate of speed to make this a viable mode of transit. I understand these design flaws are limitations imposed by the scale of the model, bu
  • I was pretty surprised when I heard about Tesla or SpaceX's half-scale test track. It seems like a much better idea to start off at a smaller scale like this. If I was in charge, I would start off with whatever scale I could source the cheapest components for. Like, start at 1/32 scale, then go to 1/16, then 1/8, etc. That way economies of scale will help make the cost of the prototypes negligible.

    • I think that the scale itself is one of the biggest engineering challenges. It's difficult to keep a tube depressurized when it's that large. So building a very small-scale model doesn't give you any useful information about one of the most important aspects of the project.

      • "It's difficult to keep a tube depressurized when it's that large"

        Pumps capable of handling that already exist, as does the materials science to make tubes capable of handling the crush pressure (which incidentally also makes them pretty much immune to onboard bombs - the overpressure pulse isn't enough to overcome the pressure differential.)

        The most important aspect of the project is financial. Tunnel boring and building viaducts doesn't come cheap and the USA political system is so corrupt that a project

  • We'll lead as two kings! (Score:4, Funny)

    by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:30PM (#49997405) Journal
    The Second Decree: No more pollution. No more car exhaust or ocean dumpage! From now on, we'll travel in TUBES! Get the scientists working on the Tube Technology immediately! [youtube.com]

  • Idea from the sixties (Score:3)

    by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:30PM (#49997415)

    When I was little, I found a book in our bookshelf about the future. The book was from the early sixties. All with floating at sea nuclear plants, automatic farming, synthetic meet, maglev trains, and trains running through tubes. Propelled either by a propeller at the back or by magnets in vacuum. So Elon Musk just had a similar book in his youth and now tries to build the stuff. Some is great, but that tube thing sucks. It is expensive, it will require a lot of resources even compared to bullet trains.

    • Floating at sea nuke plants? Fukushima came pretty damn close, eh? Not to mention all those nuke subs and carriers. Maglev trains are out there. Some of them even run through tubes (and/or chunnels). And synthetic meet? Kids these days just call it "social networking."

    • Why is it that slashdot seems to be incapable of seeing the difference between something being in SciFi books, and something being actually designed and implemented by engineers?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Where do you think those engineers got their ideas?

  • I don't mean to be a grump, but... (Score:3)

    by coldsalmon ( 946941 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:31PM (#49997421)

    ...isn't this basically just a model train in a tube? It sounds like the only thing from the hyperloop they are actually using is the "electromagnetic motors." It's using roller bearings, and the tube is not depressurized. As far as I know, those are the two most important things about the hyperloop, which speak to the goal of increasing speed by reducing drag. The speed is 160mph, which is less than half the speed of the fastest trains currently operating. Using electromagnetic acceleration is pretty cool, but I remember riding on roller coasters that used this method of acceleration back in the 90s. I don't fault the students for doing a cool engineering project, but the headline chosen by the journalist is more than a little disingenuous.

  • And how do they deal with the G-Forces? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NicBenjamin ( 2124018 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:38PM (#49997489)

    When the damn thing turns. Maglev trains for people are actually slower then the ones for freight because the freight trains don't have to worry about grandma surviving the trip. If they were going straight the whole way that wouldn't be a problem, altho there's some time for slower acceleration and deceleration they the hyperloopies don't seem to add in. But to get from LA to San Fran you can't go straight, you have to go up and down hills, around mountains, over rivers, etc.

    A big part of the reason for Hyperloops cost advantage on rail is that Musk insists that a Hyperloop track can be cheaper. He says it would be more analogous to a oil pipeline then a rail track, and have cheaper construction, more abrupt bends, etc., which leads to higher G-Forces; this is a an even bigger problem problem for actual implementation of the idea then it would be for alternatives.

    Mark my words: every trial of this will be successful until they put people in it. By the time they've smoothed out the turns, upped construction standards to virtually eliminate accidents, and reduced speed to something grandma can survive it will probably cost more then rail. It's brand-new technology and first generation check is never cheaper then the stuff it's replacing. I suspect there will be significant energy savings, and possibly some speed advantage, due to the fact that a hyperloop operates in a vacuam and there's no wind resistance, but the price advantage ain't gonna last.

    • Of course it's going to cost more than rail. Rail isn't dead in the US because it's expensive, it's dead because the US does not like it.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by fiore42 ( 145493 )

        Rail is not dead in the US. Passenger rail is pretty dead in the US. Freight rail in the US, which is a much, much better use of resources, on the other hand, is top of the world.

        • Re:And how do they deal with the G-Forces? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Applehu Akbar ( 2968043 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @04:48PM (#49998557)

          " Freight rail in the US, which is a much, much better use of resources, on the other hand, is top of the world."

          Except for our umpty-ump brazillion grade crossings. If we could only get these separated, we would be able to increase freight speeds enough so that a few passenger trains could be sent through on each route with realistic, competitive run times.

          If the government wants to help the railroad business, let it build grade separations, a type of construction that governments on all levels are already used to. Then let railroad men invest in improving the railroads.

      • Outside of the Northeast Corridor, passenger rail in the US makes no sense whatsoever. The distance between viable markets, even with high-speed trains, is simply far too large to make the extensive capital costs worth it.

        • Um, 25 percent of the US population lives within 100 miles of the I-5 highway corridor in the West.

          I think it does make sense. Just not in the tax-subsidized empty states.

        • Re:US Passenger Rail makes no freakin' sense (Score:5, Informative)

          by Cochonou ( 576531 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @04:04PM (#49998247) Homepage
          From Los Angeles to San Francisco: 559 km
          From Paris to Marseilles: 660 km, 16 high speed trains per day.

        • Re:US Passenger Rail makes no freakin' sense (Score:4, Interesting)

          by NicBenjamin ( 2124018 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @04:19PM (#49998339)

          Ever heard of Scotland? It has worse population density then the US East of the Mississippi. Sweden actually has a population comparable to NYC spread out over a land mass comparable to Cali. Finland's population density is more comparable to Alaska then any other US State. They don't all have record-breaking high-speed rail systems, but they all have rail systems connecting every major City.

          Look at it this way: let's say we implement Hi-speed rail in a state with a highly concentrated and relatively large population. Michigan has 9 million people, 58% of them live within two counties of Detroit. Anywhere you're likely to go is within an two hours of Detroit by car, which means means the train has to stop every 20 miles, which makes it very hard to use the high speed, all the construction is somebody's house, so it's very expensive to build, etc. The rail system that makes the least amount of nonsense for the state would probably be circa-1940 speeds from Detroit to Toledo, Gary, and the Wisconsin border, with stops in major cities on the way, and an extensive streetcar system also using 1930s tech.

          Let's say, OTOH, you just put a hi-speed rail line across the middle of Montana east-to-west. The low population density makes it incredibly useful because people're likely to be driving for hours and hours across the damn state otherwise. Now it's true there wouldn't necessarily be a whole lot of riders, but if the line actually goes from Minnesota to Seattle...

          Rail makes sense when it goes from one major population center to another through ranch land that's cheap to get right-of-way through.

      • No, it's pretty much the cost. Rail is a way better way to travel than air for travel between cities, but it's way overpriced.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bws111 ( 1216812 )

      Where do they claim it can do sharper turns? The route they lay out in their whitepaper is designed so there are no sharp turns, and no g-forces greater than 0.5g, which can be 'banked'.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by NicBenjamin ( 2124018 )

        In every press release anyone has ever written on why Hyperloop is better they all say it's cheaper, and they base those cost estimates on the construction costs of gas pipelines. Pipelines are incredibly cheap partly because you can make the damn things do corkscrews if you want. If there's a random hill in the middle of your route you can just go around it, or above it, or use those corkscrews to get to the top of the hill, build a flat piece till you get past the peak, and then corkscrew downward. You do

        • Re:And how do they deal with the G-Forces? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by bws111 ( 1216812 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @05:12PM (#49998773)

          Someone else who didn't bother to read the proposal, but knows all about it. The references to gas pipelines are about construction techniques, not layout. The thing is proposed to be built on pylons 20 to 100 feet tall. All those dips and valleys and hills and streams just went away. There is a tunnel through a mountain that is too high.

          • The thing is proposed to be built on pylons 20 to 100 feet tall. All those dips and valleys and hills and streams just went away.

            Except for the 4000-foot mountain range [wikipedia.org] that surrounds Los Angeles.

          • See, this sentence is really the reason that I sincerely doubt any of hyperloopies has any clue how much this will cost.

            To use the tunnel Hyperloop will have to a) come to the ground (which means that the Hyperloop's vacuum tube is no longer protected from car crashes by being 20 ft above them), and b) convince the government of California to give it a lane through the mountain. Neither is a trivial task. And you're just assuming they'll both happen.

            For free.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by bws111 ( 1216812 )

              First, I am not assuming anything, I am just reading their document.

              It seems there are some recent developments you may not have heard of. These are called stairs, ramps, elevators, and escalators. These new technologies allow places like Chicago and Disney World to have magical transportation systems 20ft in the air, without having to ever come to ground level. Other cities are even starting to use these amazing new things to put transportation systems under the ground! You should check it out.

              Also, in

              • Dude, the document isn't the problem. It's its relation to the real world.

                In the real world there is not currently a tunnel through that mountain 20-100 ft in the air above the highway. To get through the mountain they either have to bore a completely new tunnel, 20 ft above the existing tunnel; or they have to bring the Hyperloop down to highway level. Neither is trivial.

                Eyeballing the cost of the tunnel, $700 million should be enough to bore a new tunnel through the mountain, but that's about it. The http [wikipedia.org]

  • several key differences (Score:4, Informative)

    by kuzb ( 724081 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @02:43PM (#49997533)

    They didn't design a hyperloop. They designed something that tested some aspects that would get used by a hyperloop.

    Do editors even work here?

  • What a bunch of naysayers (Score:3)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @03:18PM (#49997863)
    I'm glad you people weren't around when the Wright bros were doing their thing. Or the Panama Canal. Or the Hoover Dam.

    Eventually, this will be a viable project. Decades at the very earliest, before the first shovel full is dug. And then decades later before the first mile mile is complete. Gotta let the enviroweenies have their say.
    But one of these will be built. Eventually.

  • In theory, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with the idea of a hyperloop. Pneumatic-powered transportation has been in the prototype stage for a very long time (a century or so, IIRC.)

    But a line like this between SF and LA? The finances required for such construction are daunting enough with "simple" high-speed rail line. Constructing hundreds of miles of something far more finicky and complex? I suppose if one wanted to construct such a line across the great plains (not exactly a high-demand market) t

  • I'm impressed (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday June 26, 2015 @03:38PM (#49998029) Journal

    University Students Made a Working Model Hyperloop

    Cool. When I was at university, all I made was a bong out of a half-gallon milk bottle.

    It was a pretty sweet bong, though.

  • I want SkyTran: http://www.skytran.us/ [skytran.us]

  • Foreseen difficulties (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26, 2015 @03:53PM (#49998147)

    An hour to get from New York to San Francisco, an hour and a half to get through the TSA inspection and baggage handling. An enclosed tin can would be a perfect environment for a terrorist attack, and even if it wasn't the TSA would want to stick their noses in for the sake of empire building.

    Also in Musk's published photos, they'd have a hard time fitting in the disabled access and public toilets which would be demanded by regulators and pressure groups.

    Depending on cost and energy requirements, the Hyperloop may be better suited to goods transport. High acceleration and deceleration forces would not be a problem for goods shipments.

    Godel_56 posting anon. due to mod points.

  • As we all know, humans are not capable of traveling at speeds faster than 30 mph. It was common knowledge in the 18th Century.

    Obviously hyperloops can't work either.

  • Scale is off.

  • ... surely these people know we've used pneumatic tubes before, no?

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