MIT Students Win Contest To Design Hyperloop

The good news is that at 700mph, you won’t even have time to scream if something goes wrong.

…Massachusetts Institute of Technology was named the winner on Saturday after a competition among more than 1,000 college students at Texas A&M university in the city of College Station. The Hyperloop is a high-speed ground transport concept proposed by Musk to transport “pods” of 20 to 30 people through a 12-foot diameter tube at speeds of roughly 700mph (1,127km/h).

I would get behind this if it means I can get to distant locations Futurama style without having to suffer the horrendous congestion on our pitiful highways. I just want all the bugs worked out first.

If the earth never changed, maybe, but even the best freeways/trains have variations. Never expect to see it work.

So basically like everyone said "Elon has no god damn clue how this thing could work, now brightest minds in the country make it work!"

I would not ride in this shit.

"The Zip Line just ... grew ... up"

The betting agencies now have Trump at 51% odds for winning the presidency, for the first time over 50%, and he's been talking about how he's embarrassed that everyone in Europe, Japan, and even China have these beautiful high speed smooth maglev trains, and we have dick.

Unlike an airplane, you can't really hijack a train, and so security is quick and easy on and off.

Weight is slightly less of a concern, so you can afford roomier more comfortable seats than airlines.

And of course trains are far more energy efficient especially once they are up to speed and can be diesel-electric or other technologies, avoiding the massive pollution of take-off for mega jets.

There is no reason we can't at least one-up China, and have every major city connected by a high speed rail line, so I could travel Houston to Dallas in about an hour relatively inexpensively.

I really hope he wins, as I don't see any other candidates pushing for a interstate national rail upgrade project like Trump. *crosses fingers*

A hyperloop could really bring prestige to the United States, as that would far surpass the maglev that other nations have had for years.

Ducman69 said:

There is no reason we can't at least one-up China, and have every major city connected by a high speed rail line, so I could travel Houston to Dallas in about an hour relatively inexpensively.

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Well, one reason would be the enormous cost of doing so. Just look at California's high speed rail project, and say what you will about political cluster fucking involved with it, but you'll see something similar elsewhere as well, bottom line is private individuals own the land between cities, and it won't be cheap to procure, even if eminent domain is used. With China, they basically take whatever they want and little cost, forcibly relocate any inhabitants, and then they got the cheap labor force. Not to mention their maglev train is basically from the airport to a city some less than 20 miles away, so Trump is just making himself look like an idiot by saying he's embarrassed by all the fancy maglevs that everyone else has, because they really don't. it'd be like other countries being jealous of our monorail technology because they see at Disneyland.

sfsuphysics said:

Well, one reason would be the enormous cost of doing so. Just look at California's high speed rail project, and say what you will about political cluster fucking involved with it, but you'll see something similar elsewhere as well, bottom line is private individuals own the land between cities, and it won't be cheap to procure, even if eminent domain is used. With China, they basically take whatever they want and little cost, forcibly relocate any inhabitants, and then they got the cheap labor force. Not to mention their maglev train is basically from the airport to a city some less than 20 miles away, so Trump is just making himself look like an idiot by saying he's embarrassed by all the fancy maglevs that everyone else has, because they really don't. it'd be like other countries being jealous of our monorail technology because they see at Disneyland.

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Very true. That being said, I don't know about maglev specifically, but the HSR between Tianjin and Beijing is is ~100 miles and runs up to 217 MPH.

But yeah in general, building any connected system, highway, rail, laying fiber, is expensive as shit in the developed world, because there is a bunch of expensive stuff already built there, or private citizens who actually have ownership (and emotional attachments) of their property.