First passengers travel in Virgin's levitating hyperloop pod system

Ether_Snake · Nov 9, 2020

I do wonder what gets people to invest in this. I guess for Virgin, it's just marketing, so they can put a picture of an Hyperloop pod in the shareholder section of their website.

Edit: According to the loop site, they got $400M so far. See the FAQs section https://virginhyperloop.com/pegasus
Main backer is "DP Trade"

DP is an international network with a local presence in many countries, providing a complete range of services related to steel trading.

Basically, when evaluating the feasibility of Hyperloop, don't think about human transportation at all.

DP World Cargospeed
is a global brand for hyperloop-enabled cargo systems operated by DP World and enabled by Virgin Hyperloop technology. These systems will deliver freight at the speed of flight and closer to the cost of trucking for fast, sustainable, and efficient delivery of palletized cargo.

The focus would be on high-priority, on-demand goods – fresh food, medical supplies, electronics, and more.

With DP World Cargospeed, deliveries can be completed in hours versus days with greater reliability and fewer delays. It will expand freight transportation capacity by connecting with existing modes of road, rail, ports, and air transport, and will provide greater connectivity with manufacturing parks, economic zones, distribution centers, and regional urban centers. This can shrink inventory lead times, help reduce finished goods inventory, and cut required warehouse space and cost by 25%. DP World Cargospeed networks can also enable just-in-time, agile manufacturing practices.

The Virgin Hyperloop is unique in that it doesn't need to be passenger-only or cargo-only. We are designing a mixed-use system that fully utilizes system capacity while maximizing economic and social benefits. However, it is possible to run cargo commercial operations while certification and regulation are still ongoing for passenger use.

Many infrastructure projects succeed or fail based on right-of-way issues. We are designing a system that requires only about half the right-of-way as high-speed rail and can more easily adapt to existing right-of-ways. At high speeds, the VHO system has a 4.5 times tighter turn radius compared to high-speed rail and can climb grades that are 6 times steeper, reducing the disturbance at crossings. Portals will be purposely integrated into and support existing communities and landscapes. Low noise levels will expand opportunities to build hyperloops closer to the city center.

Paperboywriter · Nov 9, 2020

this looked pretty disappointing

Ocean Panda · Nov 9, 2020

bonesawisready5 said:
I hope this works. Could transform worldwide travel, ideally make it more affordable, and less environmental impact. Imagine waking up in TX at home and taking a 30-45 min trip in one of these to work in NYC. Jesus.

I really hope hyperloop and long-haul flights on Starship become commonplace in my lifetime. Being able to get anywhere in the world within a couple of hours is basically teleportation. It's mind-blowing.

Jasup · Nov 9, 2020

Mivey said:
Might be the best chance to get Americans on board with. It's not like running everything on cars, and avoiding any kind of normal public transport is some super practical policy, it's clearly based on weird ideas of freedom and how anything with "public" in its name must be bad.
So yeah, maybe an overly expensive, privatized, novelty train system with a fancy name might get Americans to drive less with cars? Just make it sound more American, like you get a free gun when you ride it 100 times or something.

Eh, I don't think so. Vast majority of car trips are relatively short ones: daily commute to work, shopping, leisure etc. With these trips flexibility is the key, you want to have a system with as many stops as possible near the destinations people want to go. And because these are usually popular destinations in populated areas, you need a system with enough capacity to move huge amounts of people around. Hyperloop is not suitable for this at all.

If we look at existing High Speed Rail systems, the reality is that they're not really competing with car traffic but rather short haul flights. So they're not really taking cars off the roads but taking planes off the air. Hyperloop, as imagined, would be competing with medium to long haul flights, which would have even less of an effect in decreasing car traffic.

Jom · Nov 9, 2020

Wait this thing isn't even faster than the shinkansen? What's so cool about it then? I thought this was supposed to be some kind of crazy future tech?

Banderdash · Nov 9, 2020

How does it maintain a vacuum in the tube if you're constantly adding and removing pods?

Ether_Snake · Nov 9, 2020

Jom said:
Wait this thing isn't even faster than the shinkansen? What's so cool about it then? I thought this was supposed to be some kind of crazy future tech?

It's supposed to be able to go like three times faster than Shinkansen.

EYEL1NER · Nov 9, 2020

OfficerRob said:
Giant money pit, nothing more

Okay, but now imagine a giant pit that when you throw money into it, it gets propelled by magnets and slams down to the bottom at 600 mph. That'd be one of the fastest ways to physically throw money away ever. Impressed yet?

Jom · Nov 9, 2020

Ether_Snake said:
It's supposed to be able to go like three times faster than Shinkansen.

Ah I see so the test wasn't testing the full capability.

Deleted member 48991 · Nov 9, 2020

Ether_Snake said:
Unrelated, but felt like posting it:)

Thanks for posting that video, amazing that they were able to realize that in 1901.

It's sad that the pace of improvement in transportation is so slow. We had faster than sound commercial airplanes in 1970. Japan had the shinkansen since 1964. Today we should fear for the future of air travel as we know it (due to covid-19 and environmental concerns), EU still doesn't have a high speed rail network covering the entire continent, US infrastructure projects seem to be moving in glacial pace...

Even the Hyperloop concept mainly seems to benefit shipping companies and the likes of Amazon...

RagnarokX · Nov 9, 2020

CountAntonio · Nov 9, 2020

Kenstar · Nov 9, 2020

This is a textbook Gadgetbahn

blodtann · Nov 9, 2020

Volimar said:
It was just a test. The hyperloop would be capable of speeds around 600 mph or more.

Now imagine trying to make a turn at that speed and what radius that turn needs to have not to make you get squeezed. Hyper loop is just dumb. Build trains instead. I lol at the ideas of running 100s of miles of vacuum tubes. Just... stop...

Ether_Snake · Nov 9, 2020

sNtd said:
Thanks for posting that video, amazing that they were able to realize that in 1901.

It's sad that the pace of improvement in transportation is so slow. We had faster than sound commercial airplanes in 1970. Japan had the shinkansen since 1964. Today we should fear for the future of air travel as we know it (due to covid-19 and environmental concerns), EU still doesn't have a high speed rail network covering the entire continent, US infrastructure projects seem to be moving in glacial pace...

Even the Hyperloop concept mainly seems to benefit shipping companies and the likes of Amazon...

This is because infrastructure is not an environment that favors progress. Whether it's the government or the private sector, the name says it, it is structural, not flexible, it doesn't change easily because it supports society. When it comes to transnational or international infrastructure, you have a lot of political implications to take into account as well. Infrastructure is also at the mercy of changing habits, as we see now with the sudden shift to WFH, this is going to put a lot of transportation projects into question. And wherever there is a lot of money involved, there's a lot of corruption.

It's easy to find great infrastructure projects when we can pick projects all over the world, but that's ignoring all the same problems you find in every country. Also, the US has favored air travel, it's not as easy to point to but it's part of its infrastructure.

blodtann said:
Now imagine trying to make a turn at that speed and what radius that turn needs to have not to make you get squeezed. Hyper loop is just dumb. Build trains instead. I lol at the ideas of running 100s of miles of vacuum tubes. Just... stop...

According to the FAQ

Many infrastructure projects succeed or fail based on right-of-way issues. We are designing a system that requires only about half the right-of-way as high-speed rail and can more easily adapt to existing right-of-ways. At high speeds, the VHO system has a 4.5 times tighter turn radius compared to high-speed rail and can climb grades that are 6 times steeper, reducing the disturbance at crossings. Portals will be purposely integrated into and support existing communities and landscapes. Low noise levels will expand opportunities to build hyperloops closer to the city center.

Note that I don't favor Hyperloop, I don't know enough about it. But again, don't expect Hyperloop to actually transport people, that's for marketing/funding.

julia crawford · Nov 9, 2020

But you can't look at the view...

PanickyFool · Nov 9, 2020

Rover said:
So what makes this any more feasible than existing trains that the US refuses to build?

We do not refuse to build stuff. Our government and its civil servants just suck at building. Compare USA the Italy or Spain. $3 billion per mile tunnels vs. $200 million per mile tunnels. The problem is our institutions not money.

Trouble said:
Mag-lev trains have the potential to be much faster and more efficient than rail based trains.

Not hyperloop. Passengerkm/hr is significantly lower than a medium speed rail system.

GillianSeed79 said:
Our public transit system is a joke, though. There are third world countries that have better public transportation.

In a perfect world, we would be leaders in public transportation and there would be no such thing as the urban/rural divide, because everybody could hop on the train and commute to the city in a hour.

I live two to three hours from probably no less than three to five major metro areas/cities, but it would take me 4-6 hours to drive to any one of them and trains outside of cargo trains no longer exist where I live.

Public transit is intracity not intercity.

Angelus Errare said:
America has a worship of privatization and racism. So a barely there railway system is all we get.

They best passenger railroad in North American and the only one expanding at sane costs is the privately operated and built Brightline in FL.

Kenstar said:
This is a textbook Gadgetbahn

Yup and that is the primary reason these different modes never "take off" :P .

The fact of the matter is that the most expensive piece of any infrastructure project is typically city center construction, decreasing as you get further away to "green field." The key benefit with US Standard Rail gauge is that the most expensive bits are typically a shorter portion of the ROW and already built in the city center. So just route your train on the existing "slow speed rail."

Pororoka · Nov 9, 2020

Obligatory:

Deleted member 12323 · Nov 9, 2020

Well that model does not seem like it has those with wheelchair needs taken into account

darkwing · Nov 9, 2020

isn't a vacuum tube hundreds of miles long a bit dangerous?

Crispy75 · Nov 10, 2020

darkwing said:
isn't a vacuum tube hundreds of miles long a bit dangerous?

Not especially. A) It wouldn't be a perfect vacuum; pumps at regular intervals would reduce the air pressure locally B) Any leak would manifest as wind in the tunnel, not implosive compression. The dangerous bit is running into a broken-down pod ahead of yours. Maintaining a safe breaking distance at such high speeds means limiting Hyperloop to very low throughput. You'd have to scale it up to full-size trains holding 1000 people for it to compete with air/road travel.

Psychotext · Nov 10, 2020

Crispy75 said:
Not especially. A) It wouldn't be a perfect vacuum;

The problem with that, is that without near vacuum they aren't getting anywhere near 1000km/h. Even with that setup you'd still have these issues...

For starters, the radial thermal expansion of the steel tubes under direct sunlight will result in pipeline distortions between joints. And, over a 100km pipeline, the longitudinal thermal expansion could be as much as 50m, meaning that a huge number of flexible joints would have to be in place. With so many moving joints, over such a distance, all under vacuum: it's a maintenance nightmare in the making.

Then there are questions about whether the steel is strong enough to withstand normal atmospheric pressure when it's internal pressure is so drastically reduced. Atmospheric forces acting on the outside of the structure would be around 10 tonnes per square metre, with almost nothing pushing back on the vacuum sealed inner structure. It makes sudden and catastrophic buckling a very real potential hazard. The pipeline would also have to take the vibrational and centrifugal forces of the pods – thought to weigh between 10 and 15 tonnes fully loaded – travelling at close to the speed of sound. The steel pipelines wall thickness will almost certainly need to be greater than the current test pipelines of just 20mm.

So you basically end up with something like what we can already do with the fastest maglev tech we have.... except much, much, much more expensive.

Sanka · Nov 10, 2020

Why do americans loathe public transportation so much. Just build those damn trains.

Kenstar · Nov 10, 2020

Sanka said:
Why do americans loathe public transportation so much. Just build those damn trains.

but dont WANT to have to sit next to the masses

Deleted member 2809 · Nov 10, 2020

Grunge_Hamster said:
Passengers at 965 Km/h in a HyperLoop

The earth rotates around the sun at 107000 km/h

CosmicGP · Nov 10, 2020

Sounds so cool and scifi-like but so scary once you think about what can go wrong.

Arta · Nov 10, 2020

Kinda seemed like they were bracing for the jolt and laughing it off "wow that was cool". Hope the departures in the finished system are much smoother.

UnluckyKate · Nov 10, 2020

I don't believe one second in the laege scale use of this tech

At best this will be short ride shuttles like airtport to citt center connections.

Irminsul · Nov 10, 2020

samoyed said:
My "hate" comes from a rudimentary understanding of economics, engineering, physics and psychology.

You design complicated systems around failure states, not success. Think about how resilient this tech is to failure, and you can quickly see the problems.

I think the research that comes out of this will be valuable but the system itself is stupid and nonviable. I'd love to be proven wrong, it would teach me more about the world, but everything I've learned so far about anything tells me this is a bad idea.

All of this, basically. I mean, sure, it's sad that you can't cheaply build a mode of transportation that's much more environmentally friendly than planes while being similarly fast, but that's just the way it is.

To further the points made in the post I quoted, think of this: China basically didn't have high-speed rail some 20 years ago. Now, during that time, a faster way than "traditional" trains already existed in the form of mag-lev trains. But China still didn't build mag-lev trains everywhere. No one does. Because even the relatively mundane mag-lev train (compared to things like the Hyperloop) is just not worth it. Or worth it only for a few select cases.

It's definitely not an idea you'd implement on a widespread basis if, say, you were a big country without good (non-plane) mass transport. There's trains for that.

sNtd said:
Thanks for posting that video, amazing that they were able to realize that in 1901.

And you can still take a ride on it, it's just an "alternative subway" in a way. But there's also a reason why there's not more of them everywhere, because it has a lot of downsides compared to a subway (no switches, for example). It's just that for that city, subway construction would have been much more expensive than elsewhere (lines mostly parallel to a river, which was already densely populated at the time), so they opted to do this.

It's sad that the pace of improvement in transportation is so slow. We had faster than sound commercial airplanes in 1970. Japan had the shinkansen since 1964. Today we should fear for the future of air travel as we know it (due to covid-19 and environmental concerns), EU still doesn't have a high speed rail network covering the entire continent, US infrastructure projects seem to be moving in glacial pace...

Well, there's two different things here: speed just hits a certain point where it's no longer economically viable to go any faster. Yes, you should get older lines up to speed (literally), but there's no sense in going ever faster.

But yeah, HSR should be much more extensively available than it is. There's lots of reasons for it (a lot of old infrastructure that would have to be upgraded, NIMBYism, little interest for at least some decades in the past), but yeah, there should be much more happening in that regard.

el jacko · Nov 10, 2020

Irminsul said:
All of this, basically. I mean, sure, it's sad that you can't cheaply build a mode of transportation that's much more environmentally friendly than planes while being similarly fast, but that's just the way it is.

To further the points made in the post I quoted, think of this: China basically didn't have high-speed rail some 20 years ago. Now, during that time, a faster way than "traditional" trains already existed in the form of mag-lev trains. But China still didn't build mag-lev trains everywhere. No one does. Because even the relatively mundane mag-lev train (compared to things like the Hyperloop) is just not worth it. Or worth it only for a few select cases.

It's definitely not an idea you'd implement on a widespread basis if, say, you were a big country without good (non-plane) mass transport. There's trains for that.

I bet you know this already, but China actually already does have a maglev line connecting part of Shanghai to its airport. They built that line, realized it wouldn't scale, and built an HSR network based on global best practices using the 100+ year old rail technology.

And both Japan and Germany have tons of different, very weird, types of rail and monorail systems in different cities but their interstate systems are all almost exclusively traditional rail.

the US really doesn't have any need or purpose in "innovating" their way to a "better" solution when we're already behind developing countries in terms of the technology.

CosmicGP · Nov 10, 2020

samoyed said:
I think the research that comes out of this will be valuable but the system itself is stupid and nonviable. I'd love to be proven wrong, it would teach me more about the world, but everything I've learned so far about anything tells me this is a bad idea.

Hopefully it'll lead to portable rail guns, and launching pods into outer space.

Marcus Aurelius · Nov 10, 2020

Flint still needs clean drinking water. Fuck your Hyperloop, go back to basics.

DeadJoshWalking · Nov 10, 2020

Aren't the pods just small because you'd need a much bigger test facility to test a bigger pod? Why couldn't a hyperloop carriage be the same size as a train?

Jasup · Nov 10, 2020

Ether_Snake said:
According to the FAQ

Note that I don't favor Hyperloop, I don't know enough about it. But again, don't expect Hyperloop to actually transport people, that's for marketing/funding.

Oh shit, stations are called "portals"? That's incredible.

Psychotext · Nov 10, 2020

DeadJoshWalking said:
Aren't the pods just small because you'd need a much bigger test facility to test a bigger pod? Why couldn't a hyperloop carriage be the same size as a train?

Because the tubes would have to be absolutely fucking massive.

For Elon the whole point is having his boring company machines doing all the tunnelling for it (it's no co-incidence the original spec of the tunnels is exactly the same as the bore provided by his mini tunnellers).

PanickyFool · Nov 10, 2020

Psychotext said:
Because the tubes would have to be absolutely fucking massive.

For Elon the whole point is having his boring company machines doing all the tunnelling for it (it's no co-incidence the original spec of the tunnels is exactly the same as the bore provided by his mini tunnellers).

You realize the tunnel boring machines they use are entirely off the shelf?

Psychotext · Nov 10, 2020

PanickyFool said:
You realize the tunnel boring machines they use are entirely off the shelf?

Edit - Just checked, and they're not off the shelf, they only started that way.

TBC has iterated through three generations of TBMs – Godot (off-the-shelf TBM), Godot+ (50% faster than Godot), and Prufrock (pictured above).

Each TBM was developed to further increase tunneling speed and reduce tunneling cost.

Prufrock has been designed to launch directly from the surface and will achieve speeds of more than 10x faster than Godot.

Doesn't really change the original assertion though... They're expecting most of the work doing the tunnels for any eventual hyperloop systems.

(It's literally one of their "products")

Ovaryactor · Nov 10, 2020

Marcus Aurelius said:
Flint still needs clean drinking water. Fuck your Hyperloop, go back to basics.

Yeah this seems silly in regards to innovation and climate/govt. issues.

Ryno23 · Nov 10, 2020

PanickyFool said:
You realize the tunnel boring machines they use are entirely off the shelf?

This isn't accurate. When they first were tinkering around they used off the shelf but they are on like their third or fourth iteration of the boring machine now. They now are electric using tesla batteries, turns out not burning diesal is not only much faster but also much cheaper.

finfinfin · Nov 10, 2020

In theory I'm in favour of this fabulously expensive machine paid for by and designed for the purpose of killing billionaires at extremely high speeds, but in practice they'd "pay" for it while getting trillions in tax breaks and eminent domain, destroying or uprooting millions of lives, causing several large-scale disasters, and relegating it to minimal cargo and sex slave use when it turns out they don't like it.

Euler007 · Nov 10, 2020

Ryno23 said:
This isn't accurate. When they first were tinkering around they used off the shelf but they are on like their third or fourth iteration of the boring machine now. They now are electric using tesla batteries, turns out not burning diesal is not only much faster but also much cheaper.

At the speed these machines move why not run them off 600V AC and skip out the expensive middleman.

Ryno23 · Nov 10, 2020

Euler007 said:
At the speed these machines move why not run them off 600V AC and skip out the expensive middleman.

Yeah after I posted i realized I mixed up what they were using to haul the dirt out, that's the tesla connection, with the actual boring machine but they did retrofit to make electric

samoyed · Nov 10, 2020

CosmicGP said:
and launching pods into outer space.

PanickyFool · Nov 10, 2020

Psychotext said:
Edit - Just checked, and they're not off the shelf, they only started that way.

Doesn't really change the original assertion though... They're expecting most of the work doing the tunnels for any eventual hyperloop systems.

(It's literally one of their "products")

Ryno23 said:
This isn't accurate. When they first were tinkering around they used off the shelf but they are on like their third or fourth iteration of the boring machine now. They now are electric using tesla batteries, turns out not burning diesal is not only much faster but also much cheaper.

I am corrected. Musk seems to like targeting industries that are highly wasteful either through direct government subsidies or terrible government oversight.

Why Tunnels in The US Cost Much More Than Anywhere Else in The World

Why is tunnel construction more expensive in the United States than anywhere else in the world? And how can the cost be reduced?

tunnelingonline.com

First passengers travel in Virgin's levitating hyperloop pod system

Chicken Chaser

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Took the red AND the blue pills

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