Hello,

I came accross an article of spaceX about the hyperloop:
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop

Bertus

 

Hello,

I came accross an article of spaceX about the hyperloop:
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop

Bertus

The project would be expensive to build and to acquire the land. Also, vacuum pumps take lots of energy especially when there are leaks.

Now, would you get into a pressurized pod (like an airliner) but have that airliner put inside of a 900 mile long steel tube under vacuum? Even if there are exit doors on the pod, how far apart would the exit doors be on the tube? How could you escape the pod. If you would, what would a rescue suit look like that survives vacuum. If you plan to re-pressurize the system to allow escapes, how long would that take? What if there is a fire in the pod? How do you extinguish it?

The biggest evacuated tube is the Large Hadron Collider. Most of the cost was in design and civil engineering. It cost nearly $200M/km. The Hyperloop would be 1500 km and, at the same cost per km, would be $300B. No magnets, but bigger diameter steel. Above ground makes it cheaper but a completely different safety conncept would be required if you are propelling a pod full of California citizens at supersonic speeds. Section 4.5 is pretty light on safety features and details - almost laughable. Once the airline industry gets wind that this could be competition, they would force safety features into the system that would break the bank.

I admit that the price of the Large Hadron Super Collider kilometers is a bit extreme, resulting in a $300B pricetag. However, the paper estimates the project at $6M. I view that as being extreme. Another random construction project, for comparison in that price range is the Freedom Tower in NYC. It came in with a $3B price tag. The expectation (according to the paper) is that the system for hyperloop will cost about $500/cubic meter of volume (assuming 1500 km x 9 m2 cross section = 13M m3). Whereas the freedom tower will occupy 1.1M m3 at a pricetag of about 2500 - 3000/ cubic meter. I would guess that the hyperloop team is off by a factor of 5 to 10 by the time everything is done.

 

 

No
https://news3lv.com/news/local/repo...-richard-branson-technology-high-speed-travel

 

Why did it take so long to put the Hyperloop concept down?

That one you could see coming for miles...

 

Proving once again that something must not only be possible, but practical.

 

Why did it take so long to put the Hyperloop concept down?

That one you could see coming for miles...

OtherPeoplesMoney

Hyperloop One raised more than $450 million in capital since its founding in 2014 to launch its project.

That's why California 'high speed's rail project is still being built. OPM

https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/22/hyperloop-one-elon-musk-high-speed-rail/

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html
Now, as the nation embarks on a historic, $1 trillion infrastructure building spree, the tortured effort to build the country’s first high-speed rail system is a case study in how ambitious public works projects can become perilously encumbered by political compromise, unrealistic cost estimates, flawed engineering and a determination to persist on projects that have become, like the crippled financial institutions of 2008, too big to fail.