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Hyperloop - LA to SF in 30 mins - Elon Musk to announce alpha design Aug. 12th

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nickcv

Member
Because they will not know they are traveling that fast, no windows. :D Nobody gets sick of the car accelerates from 0 to 100kmh [60mhp] in 15 seconds. With same acceleration, you can reach 1500kmh in less than 4 minutes.

what about claustrophobia than? =P
 
thesimpsons-margevsthemonorail_1157690485.jpg
 

DieH@rd

Banned
motion sickness! =D

Rift will showcase only demos where you are sitting, strapped in into a chair. That eliminates 99.999999999% of motion sickness.

Until someone creates demo with spiders/snakes, climbing slowly over your sitting body, with you unable to fight against them. :D :D :D Then, motion sickenss will be the last of our problems.
 

efyu_lemonardo

May I have a cookie?
Again... there is no possible way to lay 700+ miles of track and infrastructure for MAGLEV (in a vacuum at that) for less than $10 billion USD in California. If Musk needs a rail like infrastructure then his cost figures are way off.

you don't need all 700 miles to be maglev, you can reach the speed of sound at an acceleration of 1 G in less than 4 miles. After that you could continue in low pressure tubes with some kind of air cushioning (or airbag cushioning) around you, slowly decelerating for tens of miles or more before you'd need to be re-accelerated.

It's possible only a small percent of the entire track would need to be maglev or complete vacuum.

Him saying there are no wait times makes it sound like there isn't a pod or car to get in. Even if it's this vacuum tube thing that sounds like there would at least still be something you get into that naturally you'd have to wait for, unless you just get into the tube Futurama style.
He probably means a single pod will carry a very small number of people, perhaps as little as the size of an average family, so waiting times would be negligible.
 

Skunkers

Member
Again... there is no possible way to lay 700+ miles of track and infrastructure for MAGLEV (in a vacuum at that) for less than $10 billion USD in California. If Musk needs a rail like infrastructure then his cost figures are way off.

Which raises another interesting question: turns. I have never been to California, but I have to imagine the terrain is much less ideal than say, the Great Plains. Either there will be a lot of tunnelling through existing hills/mountains or this track will have to follow the coast. You can't exactly have tubes making anything but extremely gentle curves at 800+mph; going over a hill or around a sharp curve at that speed would generate tremendous G-forces. Guess you're gonna have to wear shoulder restraints on this thing.
 
I could only imagine the feeling in my stomach, it would probably feel like a 30 min roller coaster :/

Um... people travel at speeds close to 700mph in standard civilian aircrafts like 747s, 777s, A380s, ect... for upwards of 5 hours. And long haul flights at those speeds push it to 10-12 hours. The speed doesn't matter. It's the acceleration that makes people uneasy.
 

Vyroxis

Banned
Either he has some above amd beyond technology in mind that is borderline impossible, or he's lost his marbles. Either way, should be interesting.
 

Divvy

Canadians burned my passport
Man is a genius. He deserves the benefit of the doubt since of all people, he's one that might actually make something like this happen.
 
Always interested in seeing new infrastructure tech, but I can't imagine there's much hope of anything like this happening in California within the next 15 years.

I'll be impressed and surprised if they manage to make the high speed train happen within 10 years.
 
This CNN piece thinks it's a vacuum tube train. I hope Musk isn't thinking of simply vacuum tube travel. No way you can maintain the budget he claims with a large ground infrastructure needed.
 

Polari

Member
This CNN piece thinks it's a vacuum tube train. I hope Musk isn't thinking of simply vacuum tube travel. No way you can maintain the budget he claims with a large ground infrastructure needed.

From the ET3 website they claim because the vehicles are so light only 1/20th of the materials needed to build rail are required. No idea whether this could be true or not.
 
Uh... when they announced the Segway. Basically the whole thing was hyped to hell in advance.

As for the feathers ruffled, if the announcement delivers fully on his self-aggrandising promises, I will retract my statement. Happy?
The guy built a viable electric car and puts rockets into space. He can aggrandize all the fuck he wants.
 

Gallbaro

Banned
These things will be 3d printed and his next project will be printed food.

Not in California. Why would you build something without inefficient labor? Think of the jobs!


This guy has been the closest guess yet. Maglev to start and stop. Then riding on air for most of the trip.

eVWFALN.gif


https://twitter.com/John_Gardi/status/356798172842049536

edit: Musk also isn't going to head this project, he's open sourcing it and hoping someone runs with it.

Pipelines are cheap. 100,000 per inch/mile.
 

spock

Member
How can one hate on Elon...The dude is straight OG through and through. He knows it, acts it and lives it. Some folks just cant handle that.
 

cdkee

Banned
Strangely... that's what I'm thinking. Without much ground infrastructure the laws of physics dictate that you're going to LEO and back down to achieve that "30 minute" claim. But getting to LEO isn't cheap... or that safe. At least not yet.

Edit:
Perhaps some sort of Space Elevator?

I think it's going to be something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_loop

In any case it blows my mind that if this is affordable, I could live in San Francisco and go to work in LA.
 

Yamauchi

Banned
Sounds like ETT (evacuated tube transport) to me using maglev technology, very similar if not identical to what is detailed at http://www.et3.com/

The difference, of course, is that the guys at et3.com just have a concept, whereas Musk is a billionaire with a proven track record of implementing bold ideas.

Edit: As an avid follower of transport technology developments, I should give credit where it's due. I've known people who have been pushing for ETT/vactrains since the 90's at least. I'm not belittling them. And if Elon Musk really is just creating some kind of open source variant of ETT rather than implementing it himself, then I don't think he deserves much attention. But if he has a vision for real-world implementation, then I'm very excited.
 

Zaptruder

Banned
Uh... when they announced the Segway. Basically the whole thing was hyped to hell in advance.

As for the feathers ruffled, if the announcement delivers fully on his self-aggrandising promises, I will retract my statement. Happy?

... what does the Segway have to do with Musk? Segway was invented by Dean Kamen, one of the most respected inventors in the world (or was until the Segway - but he's not like discredited to the extent where it's reasonable to call the guy a dickhead or anything).

If there's a reason that Elon Musk is a bit of a dick, it's because he founded Paypal. But he sold that a long time ago - and didn't really preside over Paypal turning into a bit of a dick to work with payments if you're receiving them...

So the real dick is you.
 

lexi

Banned
... what does the Segway have to do with Musk? Segway was invented by Dean Kamen, one of the most respected inventors in the world (or was until the Segway - but he's not like discredited to the extent where it's reasonable to call the guy a dickhead or anything).

If there's a reason that Elon Musk is a bit of a dick, it's because he founded Paypal. But he sold that a long time ago - and didn't really preside over Paypal turning into a bit of a dick to work with payments if you're receiving them...

So the real dick is you.

Dickception.
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
"Oh no, you can't crash it, but it can get derailed, and there can be mechanical failures, and extreme weather conditions can cause the magic tubes to crack open and fling you out at 800 mph."
Hollywood movie scripts write themselves.


SpeedLoop a Speed reboot right there.
 

equap

Banned
I know someone who knows him. Yeah, from what I heard, he is. Obviously, that's second hand, but at least it's not third or fourth hand.
just like how Steve Jobs was a dickhead?

whatever man. these guys are super busy with tons of shit going on in their heads and calenders. Just because they don't nod back at you in the hallway doesn't make them a "dickhead".
 

coldfoot

Banned
It's a tremendous engineering challenge to build 700 miles of tube without air leaks. Musk just may overcome them but this is no easy task, not even close.
 
It's a tremendous engineering challenge to build 700 miles of tube without air leaks. Musk just may overcome them but this is no easy task, not even close.

If you built the base out of concrete (think raised highway onramp) it could be possible to build a machine that can "crawl" and 3D print a tube on the frame.
 

duderon

rollin' in the gutter
It's a tremendous engineering challenge to build 700 miles of tube without air leaks. Musk just may overcome them but this is no easy task, not even close.

He's not going to build it, just source the idea for someone else.
 

Vilam

Maxis Redwood
Can we cancel that shitty useless money pit of a bullet train, regardless of the hyperloop hype?
 
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