Hyperloop One Completes First Test

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Hyperloop One conducted an open-air test of its propulsion system today just outside of Las Vegas. This was the first full scale test to date with many more to come. The company wants to be shipping cargo by 2019 and passengers by 2021.
 
There's been a couple other (more?) of hyperloop type startup companies, I'm guessing Elon didn't trademark the term :D

But what exactly was tested? I know it says open air, but it looks like your standard sled on a rail test... which we already know works.
 
Wonder where all those people that said this would be impossible are? Good that this is progressing.
 
There's been a couple other (more?) of hyperloop type startup companies, I'm guessing Elon didn't trademark the term :D

But what exactly was tested? I know it says open air, but it looks like your standard sled on a rail test... which we already know works.

Musk open sourced the whole thing.

They were testing the propulsion system. It has to push the sled on the rail even when it does not touch the rail and there is very little air around, so it's a bit different.
 
LOL shit never going to be built. just all show. btw where is my flying car

Sadly, I agree. A bullet flying through a tube at 750 miles an hour for hours on end... what could possibly go wrong?

It's a sick idea, but I don't think they'll ever get these things safe enough.
 
What, you don't want to be propelled at 2.5Gs? :p

Is the sled touching the rail system? The Hyperloop whitepaper had an air gap to ensure there was no friction between the track and the sled.

The Hyperloop is a large pneumatic tube, similar to the system used by some hospitals to transport documents, samples and medications in a more efficient manner.

The media likes using this analogy (from the linked article), but the Hyperloop is not a similar situation at all...
 
Sadly, I agree. A bullet flying through a tube at 750 miles an hour for hours on end... what could possibly go wrong?

It's a sick idea, but I don't think they'll ever get these things safe enough.

Well, to be fair and slightly compare scary new technology.... The Saturn V rocket was a.. well... a modern marvel and worked pretty damn well. 7.5 million pounds of thrust just blows my mind. Hold on tight! :D
 
There's been a couple other (more?) of hyperloop type startup companies, I'm guessing Elon didn't trademark the term :D

But what exactly was tested? I know it says open air, but it looks like your standard sled on a rail test... which we already know works.
Yeah, this was only a test of the propulsion system. But that part is well-understood and the motors have been reliably used in applications like roller coasters for years.

The vacuum/low-pressure tube, the part that's hard, is still for the future.
 
Still a long way off, but nice to see that something isn't vaporware.
I wonder how long of a test track would be needed built to actually demonstrate it up to at least "highspeed rail" speeds and still make turns, accents and descents.
 
There's been a couple other (more?) of hyperloop type startup companies, I'm guessing Elon didn't trademark the term :D

But what exactly was tested? I know it says open air, but it looks like your standard sled on a rail test... which we already know works.

Not everybody knows how magnets work.

fuckingmagnets.jpg
 
Sadly, I agree. A bullet flying through a tube at 750 miles an hour for hours on end... what could possibly go wrong?

It's a sick idea, but I don't think they'll ever get these things safe enough.

it flies out the tube and explodes, like in The Running Man
 
Bring it on I just hope it has windows so I can see the landscape blaze by in a blur as I barf
 
Hyperloop One conducted an open-air test of its propulsion system today just outside of Las Vegas. This was the first full scale test to date with many more to come. The company wants to be shipping cargo by 2019 and passengers by 20121.

In the year 20121 20121, if man is still alive.....

We will probably have transporters.

Yea that first part was reference to a song.
 
What, you don't want to be propelled at 2.5Gs? :p

Is the sled touching the rail system? The Hyperloop whitepaper had an air gap to ensure there was no friction between the track and the sled.



The media likes using this analogy (from the linked article), but the Hyperloop is not a similar situation at all...

We like it when things fit it in nice, neat little boxes. Or, in this case, tubes.
 
Wonder where all those people that said this would be impossible are? Good that this is progressing.
Probably still here. This test doesn't disprove or prove the viability yet. They call it a full scale test but in truth, it was simply a test of the propulsion system at slow speed in the open air using technology that really already exists. This is a relatively small step.

The complicated stuff is still to come. I think the tests will be more interesting once they have the test track in the actual tube in the partial vacuum. How will it handle things like Earthquakes or other emergencies? What will the final cost be? There are any number of complicated questions yet to be answered.

I don't know where the 2019 to 2021 timeline comes from, their site and the article doesn't mention them, but If true, that is just not going to happen. It takes longer than that to build a 100 mile freeway. A High speed rail line takes 10 to 20 years, and that is with proven known technology. It would take longer than the 5 year time line to secure the required permits, acquire the required land and right of ways and other legal hurdles to get past before ground breaking.
 
What, you don't want to be propelled at 2.5Gs? :p

Is the sled touching the rail system? The Hyperloop whitepaper had an air gap to ensure there was no friction between the track and the sled.



The media likes using this analogy (from the linked article), but the Hyperloop is not a similar situation at all...
Yes, From what I understand, Hyperloop is closer to a mag lev train running in a partial vacuum to achieve lower resistance and higher speeds.
 
Sadly, I agree. A bullet flying through a tube at 750 miles an hour for hours on end... what could possibly go wrong?

It's a sick idea, but I don't think they'll ever get these things safe enough.

Do you think there will be more people killed in car accidents (fatal accidents per total drivers on road) than killed in the hyperloop (fatal accidents per hyperloop rider) ?
 
Unfortunately I have no hope of any meaningful transportation improvements coming to US infrastructure anytime soon if ever. It's not about the technology. There is lots of great proven technology out there right now that we're not using. It's about the politics, special interests, property rights, maintenance costs, and just general dysfunction that happens when you try to get 1000 people to agree on an idea.

In the DC metro area it took decades and billions and billions of dollars to build just 10 miles of subway track. If you can call it a subway because it's all above ground. Elevated rail is more like it. Tunneling was too expensive and complicated.

The only way to solve transportation problems is to live closer to your work/school/shopping/other interests. The only way to solve long commutes is to not have to commute at all.
 
One fatal crash in the year 2000 was all it took (or at least was the camelback-breaking straw) to retire Concorde starting in 2003.
There were multiple reasons why they retired the concorde. The bird accident was just a good scapegoat. It wasn't even allowed to fly above mach1 inland, only above international waters. It was more like the sports car of the airline business. It was brand builder, that by itself was costing them a lot of money, regardless of 5x priced tickets. And with the cheap airlines that started to crop up around that time, the big airlines like BA and AF were bleeding money out of their assess. So this was a good opportunity to shut down the service without too much opposition.

If all it took was one fatal accident ot shut down a certain plane type 90% (I'm guessing the number) of the current airlines would be grounded.
 
There were multiple reasons why they retired the concorde. The bird accident was just a good scapegoat.
. . .
If all it took was one fatal accident ot shut down a certain plane type 90% (I'm guessing the number) of the current airlines would be grounded.

Birds weren't involved in that Concorde crash at all, but rather it was a piece of debris on the runway that punctured a tire of the plane's landing gear during takeoff, and it wasn't the crash that was solely responsible for fatally tarnishing the brand's reputation, but its negative impact on the airline's future commercial prospects is pretty well established considering the British and French airlines cited that (a lot fewer passengers booked flights after the Air France Flight 4590 incident) as one of its reasons for retiring the brand.
 
Wonder where all those people that said this would be impossible are? Good that this is progressing.

I would hope no one said it was impossible. Cost effective, another thing. I can't see this being cheaper than a plane ticket. Not now and probably not a decade or two from now.

I wouldn't ride one of them for probably the first 5+ years of get going into service, whenever that is. Mainly cause those are the problem years. You know things where things just don't run right or break often. I'd hate to be stuck in a tube for hours on end, cause the tube loses vacuum or the propulsion system dies out. That or it breaks free from whatever stabilizes it and now I'm riding upside down in a tube.
 
Do you think there will be more people killed in car accidents (fatal accidents per total drivers on road) than killed in the hyperloop (fatal accidents per hyperloop rider) ?

Sadly, yes I do. And when they do inevitably crash, they'll not only kill the people, but they'll destroy the damn tunnel too.

it flies out the tube and explodes, like in The Running Man

1) That's a killer movie, I watched it a few months ago. 2) Can they even explode?
 
Well, to be fair and slightly compare scary new technology.... The Saturn V rocket was a.. well... a modern marvel and worked pretty damn well. 7.5 million pounds of thrust just blows my mind. Hold on tight! :D

I think the point everyone seems to missing in this thread is: NOT that they'll never make it safe enough. You can always make things safer.

It's that they'll never make things safe enough WHILE making the cost of operation competitive with existing options.

The Saturn V rocket had one clear requirement: get men to the moon and back. Now, let's take a look at the other rockets that fill that requirement...oh wait, it's the only one! So we took the risks and spent what we thought was necessary to make it safe.

But the Hyperloop has to compete with other modes of high-speed travel, and I'm not buying the low cost of build OR operation BS spread by their evangelists. The safety record will have to be the same as air travel, and I'm just not seeing it getting there without high maintenance costs. So, you'll be trading one high-cost means of transport for another high-cost means of transport - just because one saves money by going through vacuum on the ground doesn't matter if the maintenance and testing costs are higher.

I don't recall ANYONE using the "impossible" word for the tech, especially me. There is no such thing. But there is little possibility this will compete with existing transit.

After they test a full-scale model over a period of months and document the maintenance records, I expect they'll be put out to pasture. But for now I can see why people still get excited :D
 
I think the point everyone seems to missing in this thread is: NOT that they'll never make it safe enough. You can always make things safer.

It's that they'll never make things safe enough WHILE making the cost of operation competitive with existing options.

The Saturn V rocket had one clear requirement: get men to the moon and back. Now, let's take a look at the other rockets that fill that requirement...oh wait, it's the only one! So we took the risks and spent what we thought was necessary to make it safe.

But the Hyperloop has to compete with other modes of high-speed travel, and I'm not buying the low cost of build OR operation BS spread by their evangelists. The safety record will have to be the same as air travel, and I'm just not seeing it getting there without high maintenance costs. So, you'll be trading one high-cost means of transport for another high-cost means of transport - just because one saves money by going through vacuum on the ground doesn't matter if the maintenance and testing costs are higher.

I don't recall ANYONE using the "impossible" word for the tech, especially me. There is no such thing. But there is little possibility this will compete with existing transit.

After they test a full-scale model over a period of months and document the maintenance records, I expect they'll be put out to pasture. But for now I can see why people still get excited :D

If you don't change anything...nothing changes. Tell the kids to get off your lawn...you are getting old.
 
Elon is kind of a bulldog on most projects, there might be a reason he gave that one away, ya think :)

The magnet propulsion isn't new, of course.

It is really just as impractical as solar powered roads, IMHO.
 
If you don't change anything...nothing changes. Tell the kids to get off your lawn...you are getting old.

Just saying, as an old man I have some grasp of what's worth our time to study. This is a big waste of it.

Experience and perspective is worth more than all the blind faith you can bring to the table.
 
Just saying, as an old man I have some grasp of what's worth our time to study. This is a big waste of it.

Experience and perspective is worth more than all the blind faith you can bring to the table.

Youth isn't wasted on the young...wisdom is wasted on the old. Experience and perspective is all about learning from fuck-ups which completely colors your view of the world and limits your possibilities in it. Experience and perspective a long time ago said the world was flat and Columbus would fall off the edge of the world.

I don't care if musk will fail. Most ideas fail on their first pass. However, eventually something useful comes out of it. This "success oriented" attitude people have is completely not useful when trying to come up and develop new things. I'm glad you weren't Edison's boss.
 
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Youth isn't wasted on the young...wisdom is wasted on the old. Experience and perspective is all about learning from fuck-ups which completely colors your view of the world and limits your possibilities in it. Experience and perspective a long time ago said the world was flat and Columbus would fall off the edge of the world.

I don't care if musk will fail. Most ideas fail on their first pass. However, eventually something useful comes out of it. This "success oriented" attitude people have is completely not useful when trying to come up and develop new things. I'm glad you weren't Edison's boss.

I'm glad I'm not his boss either. Dude is a fucking thief who stole every thing he "invented" except the electric chair. Dude just formed a cult of personalty around him, and everyone believe he was amazing.

Try reading something besides the [H] sometime, it's good for you :D

Remember, True Believers are clouded by the faith. You need perspective to see the truth.
 
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Any idea just how LOUD a hyperloop type of train would be? The train cars are not running through a vacuum tunnel like in the Syd Mead style underground maglev trains of the future that appeared in futurist books and magazines several decades ago.

You have a front mounted fan where part of the fan blades could be spinning near or beyond supersonic speeds. There is all the displaced air that will be rushing through the fan duct or around the train car. Presumably air would be forced out of the non-airtight enclosure surrounding the track. The planned operational trans-Californian loop does not look like it will be in a completely remote part of the state 50-100 miles inland so people will be living near the loop path.

I am also curious to see how the hyperloop will include additional slack in the track to handle how different parts of the state are sinking at different rates, from inches to feet a year.
 
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