HyperLoop updates (800 mph mass transit)

[DocM]

Oh boy, here we go again.

Some details that have leaked are that it travels through an evacuated tube and the electric power is supplied by solar, most likely using panels from Musk's Solar City and storage cells using at least some of Tesla's techs.

http://usatoday.com/article/news/2521215

Tesla Motors CEO and co-founder Elon Musk started off his week on Monday by tweeting an announcement that, from anyone else, would have sounded like a tease for a bad sci-fi movie: "Will publish Hyperloop alpha design by Aug 12. Critical feedback for improvements would be much appreciated."

If you still think electric cars or rocket ships are cool, you haven't been keeping up with Musk. His "hyperloop" is a proposed "really rapid transit system" that he says will be able to get a passenger from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a half-hour. That would mean travel at 800 miles per hour, or about twice the speed of conventional aircraft.

He has been a little vague on how this works, except to say recently that the concept is "a cross between a Concorde, a railgun, and an air-hockey table."

Also, he says it will be impossible to crash, always available on demand, way less expensive than current travel options and, ideally, solar-powered.

Remember, this isn't Donald Trump talking trash. This is Elon Musk, who has already changed the nature of money, as a co-founder of PayPal, the electronic payments system.

Since selling PayPal to eBay, Musk has served as CEO of SpaceX, which is in the business of building rocket ships and spacecraft. The company, which he co-founded, is now under contract with NASA to service the International Space Station.

Of greater interest to today's investors, though, is Musk's role as co-founder, CEO, and CTO of Tesla Motors, the venture that is proving that building all-electric vehicles can be a profitable business.

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[SlimShady]

He says it won't crash physically, what about digitally? Current technology suffers from bugs in software too.

[DocM]

If it's a magnetically levitated "train" anything that goes abnormal causes it to lose levitation, which settles it to the guide track engaging at minimum the passive braking pads along the bottom.

[YouWhat]

800Mph... that is going to break sound barrier... also probably pull a couple of G's on the travellers, should be interesting to see though what and how they have come up with, and how they will overcome the effects of above....

[DocM]

G forces would only apply during stops/starts (controllable), turns and of course 1 downward G from gravity. G's from turns can be minimized by 1) designing in a long turn radius or 2) slowing before a shorter radius turn. From what's leaked the vast majority of HyperLoop runs would be in straight lines, gradually dipping underground as needed. Overall they shouldn't be an issue.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

do want

[DocM]

"Tinker" on Twitter proposed this, and Musk tweeted it was as close a guess as he'd seen.

http://twitpic.com/cw4pqb

[HawkMan]

So according to that the cars would after the accelerator move only by the air column on top of a magnetic or air cushion ?...

[DocM]

That's Tinkers interpretation, and knowing him from aerospace sites he's pretty sharp. It also fit's Musk's description a few months ago of a cross between a rail gun and air hockey table.

[Crisp]

 

When the California ?high speed? rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL ? doing incredible things like indexing all the world?s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars ? would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? Note, I am hedging my statement slightly by saying ?one of?. The head of the California high speed rail project called me to complain that it wasn?t the very slowest bullet train nor the very most expensive per mile.

The underlying motive for a statewide mass transit system is a good one. It would be great to have an alternative to flying or driving, but obviously only if it is actually better than flying or driving. The train in question would be both slower, more expensive to operate (if unsubsidized) and less safe by two orders of magnitude than flying, so why would anyone use it?

If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive. Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be:

? Safer

? Faster

? Lower cost

? More convenient

? Immune to weather

? Sustainably self-powering

? Resistant to Earthquakes

? Not disruptive to those along the route

Is there truly a new mode of transport ? a fifth mode after planes, trains, cars and boats ? that meets those criteria and is practical to implement?  Many ideas for a system with most of those properties have been proposed and should be acknowledged, reaching as far back as Robert Goddard?s to proposals in recent decades by the Rand Corporation and ET3.

Unfortunately, none of these have panned out. As things stand today, there is not even a short distance demonstration system operating in test pilot mode anywhere in the world, let alone something that is robust enough for public transit. They all possess, it would seem, one or more fatal flaws that prevent them from coming to fruition.

Constraining the Problem

The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart. Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper. With a high enough altitude and the right geometry, the sonic boom noise on the ground would be no louder than current airliners, so that isn?t a showstopper. Also, a quiet supersonic plane immediately solves every long distance city pair without the need for a vast new worldwide infrastructure.

However, for a sub several hundred mile journey, having a supersonic plane is rather pointless, as you would spend almost all your time slowly ascending and descending and very little time at cruise speed. In order to go fast, you need to be at high altitude where the air density drops exponentially, as air at sea level becomes as thick as molasses (not literally, but you get the picture) as you approach sonic velocity.

 

 

Source and more

[DocM]

JumpStart is a crowdsource entrepreneurial fund supported by MFS Investment Management.

https://www.jumpstartfund.com/hyperloop.html

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/9/26/4773368/former-spacex-director-signs-on-to-crowdfunded-hyperloop-project

Former SpaceX director signs on to crowdfunded hyperloop project

Ever since Elon Musk revealed his Hyperloop designs in August, the inventor has been coy about any plans to construct the device, leaving many to wonder when the innovative transportation system would see the light of day. But today brings good news for Hyperloop fans, as a new group has formed to develop Musk's designs, with the help of expert engineers and an innovative crowdfunding platform.

"A TRUE OPEN-SOURCE DEVELOPMENT."

The group comes out of JumpStartFund, a crowdfunding platform that lets users form proto-corporations around ideas they find interesting. Musk's Hyperloop designs were posted on the site in August, and after generating enough interest, the team received permission from Musk to develop the Hyperloop further. After today, the group will be led by Marco Villa, former director of mission operations for SpaceX, and Dr. Patricia Galloway, a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Musk had previously said that the SpaceX team was intimately involved with developing the concept, and Villa is confident that the plans are feasible. In a prepared statement, Villa said, "There do not seem to be any technical issues on this project that we can?t solve."

The team will begin raising funds for their designs soon, but at the moment they're still looking for more volunteers to sign onto the project in exchange for equity in the soon-to-be-formed corporation. As Villa told potential participants, "we look forward to receiving input and support from all the brilliant minds out there in the JumpStartFund community, to make this a true open-source development."

[DocM]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/31/hyperloop_crowdfunding/

Elon Musk's futuristic Hyperloop public transport system took a tiny step closer towards becoming reality today as a name was chosen for the company which hopes to start work on the superfast tube train.

Headed up by Dr Marco Villa, former director of mission operations at SpaceX, and Dr Patricia Galloway, a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the group is attempting to recruit people - and funding - to help it build Musk's untested transport technology.

Following a vote on JumpStartFund, a crowdfunding platform which allows users to form corporations to develop "interesting ideas", the firm has now officially been named Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT).

It has also reached deals with companies that will help develop the tech behind the Hyperloop - and, hopefully, build it. One of these companies, ANSYS has created an advanced computer simulation of the system which has "proved successful", according to HTT.

HTT has set out a four-stage plan for building the system which looks simple hopefully deceptively so starting with the basics (like an environmental analysis) and working all the way up to the construction of the Hyperloop itself. The group appears to ask for an initial $1m in funding and hopes to have "demos" of a scale model, we'd imagine ready by the first quarter of 2015. According to HTT's "milestones" page on JumpStartFund, Dr Villa and Dr Galloway will work together with volunteers on four project sections: "system", "capsule", "tube" and "manufacturing, integration and testing".

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"At ANSYS, we have already virtually tested an initial concept of the Hyperloop, using our highly mature simulation technology that is used today by major manufacturers of aircraft, rockets, trains and automobiles. We are excited about the Hyperloop project and are planning to make our software available to the development team at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc."

HTT has also reached agreements with GloCal Network Corporation, which has apparently been tasked with fleshing out the mechanics of building the ambitious transportation system, and SUPRASTUDIO, a graduate programme with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which will explore where stations could be placed in two different cities.

We jumped on this once in a lifetime opportunity to work with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, said Professor James Dimitrios Constantine Seferis, chairman of the board and executive director of GloCal Network Corporation. As a world leader in advanced materials and processes, our skill set is the perfect match to help the development team bring this project to life.

[Crisp]

The UK should use this guys desgines rather than the crappy HS2.

[DocM]

He means to revolutionize transportation. I can't wait to see his hinted at concept for an electric jet airplane.

[DocM]

There's also an independent group in LA working on HyperLoop

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/01/musk-says-hyperloop-test-track-coming-soon-texas-leading-candidate/

Musk says Hyperloop test track coming soon, Texas leading candidate

The track would welcome universities and research institutions to study it.

AUSTIN, TEXASSpeaking to a packed ballroom this afternoon at the Austin Hilton, Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk outlined Tesla Motors plans to reintroduce legislation during the 2015 Texas legislative session to allow the electric car manufacturer to sell direct to consumers. Musks trademark off-the-cuff style seemed to sit well with the audience, which applauded several times when Musk talked about how he believes allowing consumers to buy direct from Tesla was the right thing to do.

The session was topical but ultimately a reiteration of things Musk has discussed beforeTexas biennial legislative session means that Musk was restating a lot of the things hed said about Texas throughout 2014. However, the almost Steve Jobs-ian one more thing announcement that Musk chose to tack onto the end of the keynote seemed to garner the most attention: Musk plans to build a Hyperloop test track, approximately five miles long, and he plans to do it soon.

Musk originally put forward the idea of the Hyperloop in 2013, presenting a 56-page document that showed aluminum pods being shuttled between San Francisco and Los Angeles at 760 mph, through low-pressure tubes with magnets that are fed an electric current. The Hyperloop would be solar powered as well, Musk specified, and cost only $6 billion to build (which is a theoretical pittance compared to the projected cost of California's plodding High Speed Rail project). Still, after announcing the idea, Musk told reporters in 2013 that he had no time to execute the plan and would be open-sourcing it so other researchers might take it up.

Appropriate to the venue, Musk also said that Texas was the leading candidate for the location of the test track. The plan with the track, at least for now, would be to fund it privately, entirely with money from Musks ventures (though which corporate entity would provide the funding wasnt fully explained). Once constructed, the test track would be both a proving ground for the Hyperloop technology and also an open facility where universities and other research institutions could experiment with and iterate on the Hyperloop prototype technology.

Coming on the heels of a somewhat strained admission earlier in the keynote that Musk wouldnt have chosen Texas for his SpaceX launch facility if not for the tax benefits provided by the state, the idea of Texas being the leading location candidate for the facility is a bit surprising, especially considering the states infamously hostile attitude toward Tesla Motors direct car sales. However, assuming Musk is successful in the 2015 legislature, Texas feelings toward Tesla might be about to change especially with a new Hyperloop facility potentially on the way.