back to article First successful Hyperloop test module hits 100mph in four seconds

Spectators in the Nevada desert have witnessed the first public test of a Hyperloop test vehicle as it accelerated from zero to over 100 miles per hour in a few seconds before running out of track. The vehicle, built by Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies), is intended to show off that the technology publicized by …

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  1. corestore

    $6bn and that needs government money to fund it?

    The biggest technology project of the 1960s was Project Apollo.

    The second biggest technology project of the 1960s was the IBM System/360. IBM totally bet the company on it... bringing it to market cost IBM $5bn - and that IS in 1964 dollars! $35bn in today's money...

    1. TheOtherHobbes

      Apparently HS2 needs at least £20bn to run a fairly conventional choo choo train all the way from London to Birmingham - which is about a quarter of the distance of LA to SF.

      It could cost as much as £80bn to build both phases of the HS2 network.

      Hyperloop may appear bonkers but Musk has a history of Getting Shit Done, and I'd be inclined to throw some R&D money in his direction, just in case.

      1. bazza Silver badge

        Snake Oil

        "Hyperloop may appear bonkers but Musk has a history of Getting Shit Done, and I'd be inclined to throw some R&D money in his direction, just in case."

        Musk does not yet have a reputation for getting stuff done. He has a reputation for starting off a lot of stuff that might yet be really good, but it's still too early to tell if it's a commercial success. Both Tesla and SpaceX are losing a ton of cash at the moment (it's early days), and it's by no means clear yet that they can successfully turn a profit. Musk's Gigafactory for instance is extremely vulnerable to be rendered obsolete should someone else invent a battery more practicable than today's lithium-ions.

        Hyperloop Passenger Throughput

        Hyperloop is completely unrealistic. To be commercially successful public transportation needs high throughput. It doesn't matter how fast it is, if it can carry only a few hundred people an hour it's not going to pay for itself.

        Last I heard Hyperloop would carry maybe 20 people per pod. With pods travelling individually (they can't have a set of them joined together like a train), you'd be leaving a gap of at least, say, 2 minutes between pods for safety, so that's 600 people an hour.

        That's truly pitiful. A Shinkansen can carry about 1500 people, and there's one every 5 minutes between Tokyo and Osaka. That's 18,000 people an hour, 30 times more people. And they can run them more regularly than that if they have to.

        Is Even that Rate Achievable?

        To be honest I doubt that they could ever get Hyperloop working that regularly either. To launch it you have to get people into a pod (1 minute), strap them in (5 minutes), put the pod in an airlock (30 seconds?), pump down the airlock (5 minutes?). So that's a launch time per pod of about 12 minutes, meaning you'd need at least 6 launch stations to keep sending them once every 2 minutes. And then with the usual "hang on a mo I've got to kiss the girlfriend goodbye" type delays that schedule could be easily screwed.

        If they had a bigger pod they'd simply increase the loading time (more people, more air, more room for screw ups).

        And to make that schedule work at all you'd need airline style check in to make sure people are in the right place at the right time, or passengers would have to be queued up to ensure there's a ready supply of passengers to fill pods. Both are bad news for the passenger experience. What's the point of queuing for an hour in the hope of getting a pod, or checking in 1 hour beforehand for a 30 minute journey?

        Trains don't have this problem. A train pulls into the station, the doors are open for 1 minute, and you're away. 1500 people have got on and are on their way. It doesn't matter that people haven't sat down yet or put their luggage away because trains don't accelerate at Hyperloop's unnecessarily high rate. If demand increases you simply run longer trains.

        Emergency Braking

        And getting back to that 2 minute gap; to be able to go from near Mach 1 to stationary in 2 minutes requires a deceleration of at least 0.25G, though probably more given the signalling block sizes, etc.

        That's actually quite a lot; along the entire length of the tube a pod would have to be able to generate this much braking force for it to be deemed 'safe' to run a pod once every 2 minutes. Given that a pod has no wheels, or anything else like it, the only tractive force available is electromagnetic.

        But the whole point of Hyperloop is that the pods in the cruise phase have very little drive (which makes it cheap), so it would also have very little braking power.

        So where does that 0.25G braking come from? Does the tube also have to act as a braking surface for friction pads? Does that wear out? Can it be used again afterwards?

        There's so many technical barriers to safe and regular operation I can't see it happening. Increasing the inter-pod time makes the throughput even worse. Installing the necessary braking system makes the tube much, much more expensive.

        Just Build the Train

        In comparison to Hyperloop, high speed rail between LA and SF works commercially. It's approx 350 miles, which is 1 hour 45 minutes in a standard bullet train without stops. In that time you'd also have WiFi, 4G, a snacks trolley, etc. so the "extra" travel time isn't a complete waste. It's a good proposition for passengers.

        Putting any government money into the snake-oilesque hyperloop would be a waste and a travesty. The companies involved are putting forward the "hey isn't it cool" without doing the simple analyses that say whether it's commercially realistic.

        I notice that Musk himself isn't actually devoting much of his own money to the project, in effect licensing out the concept to others to do all the hard work. If that isn't a worrying sign about its lack of commercial viability I don't know what is.

        1. bazza Silver badge

          Re: Snake Oil

          Another aspect is stations.

          If you have a public transportation system that purports to bring economic benefit to towns and cities that it connects, it inevitably brings economic disadvantage to the places it bypasses.

          Governments don't like that. It causes them a lot of subsidiary problems.

          Trains and motorways and airlines are good because they can easily be made to bring benefit to all. You build a station, or an exit or an airport, none of which costs much and don't negatively impact the ability to operate an express train, drive straight past or run a direct flight. Build a high speed train line between LA and SF, and everywhere in between where there's a station also benefits.

          In fact train companies often make more money by buying up unused land next to a small town, building a train line and station to it, and then sell the land off for housing. The train company wins - they make a profit. The town wins - people now want to come and live there. The people moving there win - they've got somewhere to live at an affordable price that's within easy commuting of their place of work in the smokey city.

          [This can go a bit too far. In Japan, Nagoya and, to some extent, Kyoto and Osaka are becoming dormitory towns for Tokyo. Business is moving towards Tokyo, people are moving out. They're currently building a bonkers maglev between Tokyo and Nagoya, and eventually Osaka (Kyoto aren't happy at being missed out), which will exacerbate the change. Bonkers, because it's 70% tunnels and it will bankrupt the train companies leaving the tax payer to bail out the scheme.]

          In comparison Hyperloop only works at all if it bypasses everywhere in between LA and SF (it's not exactly station friendly). At best it's only ever going be the plaything cool ride for fools easily parted from lots of cash who happen to live in SF or LA. It's never going to be a mass transportation system. So why would the government be motivated to put a single penny into it?

          1. Suricou Raven

            Re: Snake Oil

            "This can go a bit too far. In Japan, Nagoya and, to some extent, Kyoto and Osaka are becoming dormitory towns for Tokyo."

            Half of the southeast UK is becoming a dormitory for London - the city provides a huge number of jobs, but very few people can actually afford to live there.

            1. bazza Silver badge

              Re: Snake Oil

              @Suricou Raven,

              "Half of the southeast UK is becoming a dormitory for London - the city provides a huge number of jobs, but very few people can actually afford to live there."

              Yep, it's crazy. That'll happen anyway to some extent whether or not train lines get built. No population / government / state / civilisation anywhere in history has ever solved this problem. I fear that's just how we (i.e. this species) are built.

              1. The Indomitable Gall

                Re: Snake Oil

                @bazza

                "That'll happen [increasing movement of work to capital city] anyway to some extent whether or not train lines get built. No population / government / state / civilisation anywhere in history has ever solved this problem."

                West Germany did a pretty good job of keeping economic activity geographically diverse. The rail network in the former West is a true network, unlike in former East Germany, where it takes on the hub-and-spoke form around Berlin, the same form that France has with Paris at the centre, and Spain has with Madrid at the centre (and a secondary hub at Barcelona).

                Germany rode out the big recession pretty damned well compared to the rest of the continent, so I don't know why we're all still modelling the French approach rather than the German one.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: Snake Oil @ The Indomitable Gall

                  Germany rode out the big recession pretty damned well compared to the rest of the continent, so I don't know why we're all still modelling the French approach rather than the German one.

                  Germany rode out the great recession so well because (as a result of the Euro project's flaws), they joined the Euro with an undervalued entry currency. That kept their manufacturing exports relatively cheap and highly competitive. The corollary of the deutschmark being undervalued was that in Southern Europe (and to an extent France) they joined with over valued currencies (largely for vanity reasons), and that made their exports uncompetitive, and is a major contributor to their moribund economies and appalling youth unemployment rates. And the catastrophe in Southern Europe helped avoid the Euro skyrocketing on FX markets, and that locked in the German export advantage when dealing with non Euro markets.

                  This had precisely diddly squat to do with the layout of their rail networks, and everything to do with the fact that nobody in their right mind would pay the (UK) £25k starting list price for a weird and frangible Citroen C5 when that's the same starting list price for a BMW 3 series.

              2. NomNomNom

                Re: Snake Oil

                "No population / government / state / civilisation anywhere in history has ever solved this problem. I fear that's just how we (i.e. this species) are built."

                No population / government /state /civilization anywhere in history has ever put me in power.

                1. Mass building program of free residential areas. Just churn them out. That money we spend on trident or on HS2? Spend it on building underground accommodation units throughout cities and towns. They are small, but people can apply to live there and the rent is dirt cheap, like £20 a month.

                This will collapse the rental housing market and cause house prices in general to plummet all over the country. A whole bunch of people will no longer be wasting large amounts of their paychecks on rent or long commutes, because they can very easily move into accommodation in the city they work in. People could even rent units in different cities, or choose to live in different place at the weekend.

                Traffic all over the country will plummet, because there is less need to travel.

                2. Abolishment of the 9-5 working day. Make it law that employees can choose the times they work, where applicable, including being able to choose to work 4 day 10 hour day weeks. I don't care what the repercussions are really, employers will adapt. A lot of the current system is about employers not trusting their staff which is really the employer's failure. Having a fixed working day is like fixing prices in an economy, it's stupid. If employees are left to decide on their hours they will naturally move to avoid things like rush hour, such that rush hour will greatly diminish. It will also combat the current stupidity of shops opening in the week while people are at work and cannot use them.

                The amount of money and time wasted through the rent based housing system, mortgage slavery, and commuting is ridiculous. If people have more money to spend - and more time to spend it - on other areas of life those other areas will boom. All the bars and pubs and shops will likely be boosted and improve. Rather than in our current economy all the money flows through landlords, banks and train companies.

            2. BurnT'offering

              Re: southeast UK is becoming a dormitory for London

              True - they work all day in London, and then sleep standing up in mobile dormitories that move slowly back and forth along rails radiating out from London. It's a very effective solution to the housing crisis

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Snake Oil

            No, you can't really mix high-speed trains and "slow" ones on the same line. You won't have many intermediate stations along an high speed line, because they may also require the train to slow down while passing by for safety reasons. Nor you can have an high-speed train make many stops.

            There's a benefit because on the old lines there are less express trains and they can be better used for local traffic - but high-speed trains are designed to connect major cities only along dedicated lines.

            While an highway exit may be not expensive, airports, even smaller ones, are. Especially if they have to accept airlines planes and thereby require a full air traffic control and instrumental landing infrastructure, plus all the maintenance, safety and security requirements. And the less you use an airport, the more expensive it becomes.

            1. corestore

              Re: Snake Oil

              "You won't have many intermediate stations along an high speed line, because they may also require the train to slow down while passing by for safety reasons"

              Not so - in Japan they often have this on Shinkansen lines. Four lines through the station; two next to the platforms for stopping trains - and two in the middle for non-stop services that blast through at full line speed. Quite a sight!

          3. Roland6 Silver badge

            Re: Snake Oil

            In comparison Hyperloop only works at all if it bypasses everywhere in between LA and SF (it's not exactly station friendly). ... It's never going to be a mass transportation system. So why would the government be motivated to put a single penny into it?

            Well... given high-speed transport in general needs longer distances between stations to show any worthwhile benefit, there is one use case that Hyperloop could fit, namely, connections where there is little need or possibility of intermediate stations and benefits in having a short transit time, for example a line between Scotland and Norway under the North Sea. But then flying is probably still going to be quicker and cheaper end-to-end...

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Snake Oil

              @Roland6

              > "...for example a line between Scotland and Norway..."

              That's a bit harsh on Norway. Couldn't we just use a cannon and fire them westward into the Atlantic?

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Snake Oil

                "...for example a line between Scotland and Norway..."

                That's a bit harsh on Norway. Couldn't we just use a cannon and fire them westward into the Atlantic?

                Fantastic idea. Aim for Rockall with the beggars. It'd be like throwing tomatoes at a wall.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Snake Oil

              > connections where there is little need or possibility of intermediate stations and benefits in having a short transit time

              90 minutes from New York to Paris...

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Happy

              Re: Snake Oil

              The Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, Hurrarh!

          4. Charles 9

            Re: Snake Oil

            " They're currently building a bonkers maglev between Tokyo and Nagoya, and eventually Osaka (Kyoto aren't happy at being missed out),"

            I strongly suspect the reason for this connection is due to the fact the route connects quite a few of the major airports in Honshu: Haneda, Narita, Nagoya Centrair, and eventually Kansai. Such a route would also likely put Kobe within reach. Kyoto can complain, but they don't have nearly as much pull.

          5. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Snake Oil

            "In fact train companies often make more money by buying up unused land next to a small town, building a train line and station to it, and then sell the land off for housing."

            Substitute "more money" for "more money than ever made from operating the railway line" in most cases.

        2. jb99

          Re: Snake Oil

          Yeah sounds hard. Might as well give up now.

        3. Greg D

          Re: Snake Oil

          They are all valid points, but dont you think a little negative in light of potential benefits? Not an attitude I quite agree with, basically saying don't build it, you'll fuck everything up that we already have and some already rich people will be less rich.

          This is Elon Musk we're talking about here, he built Tesla and SpaceX out of nothing. They may not be entirely profitable at the moment, but that is primarily because they are a paradigm shift in each respective industry. How does one expect humanity to progress? Very stagnant attitude.

          Had a look on the oil companies job sites? They could use someone like you to stop the hydrogen revolution.

          1. bazza Silver badge

            Re: Snake Oil

            @Greg D,

            "They are all valid points, but dont you think a little negative in light of potential benefits? Not an attitude I quite agree with, basically saying don't build it, you'll fuck everything up that we already have and some already rich people will be less rich."

            What positive benefits? 600 people an hour per tube at the very best (and even that is in doubt)? It's not significantly better than laying on 3 extra 737s between SF and LA, and they'd be massively cheaper. It's not better than laying on corporate jets for paying passengers, and they'd still be cheaper...

            Th only thing it has going for it is that it'd be a wild ride and techno-geeky cool. But that's not a transport solution, that simply limits the customer base to people who like roller coasters served with their morning commuting latte.

            As for it being a cock up, how many taxpayers would welcome their tax dollars being lost on such an obviously fanciful scheme. One also has to hope that pension funds aren't investing in it...

          2. Eddy Ito
            Facepalm

            Re: Snake Oil

            @Greg D

            It isn't Elon Musk we're talking about. Sure, he came up with the idea and unleashed it upon the world but it's not him doing any of this. There are multiple competing companies working on it. The one in the article is Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Tech). The other main company in the LA area is Hyperloop Transportation Technologies which is largely a crowdsourced cooperative effort and is trying to put up a test track near I-5. Elon Musk is not directly involved in either of these ventures nor is he involved with other players like TransPod.

            Ok here's a general concept for "BlastPast" that has cars linking up into a train on the freeway in the "Blastpast" lane. The system would allows individual cars to dynamically link and unlink at their respective exits to reduce the aerodynamic drag and efficiency of the whole while allowing higher speeds. It benefits from using existing infrastructure and would require only minor tweaks to existing vehicles for anyone who wanted to use it. There, I've defined almost as much of "BlastPast" as Elon Musk has defined for Hyperloop now I should be able to kick back and take all the credit for the work the entrepreneurial minions will undertake to make BlastPast a reality.

          3. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Snake Oil

            Greg D, Musk took over Tesla Motors from the founders, he didn't start it. All three of his main enterprises are seriously in the red, Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City. The question is which one is going under first. None of them are paradigm shifts. Tesla Motors might be the closest, but that's because the established manufacturers were too conservative to introduce an alternately power luxury vehicle that costs as much as a home in many area of the US. I could open a rocket company next week, since it's Friday already, and offer launch services in a couple of years for half of what SpaceX charges. I definitely wouldn't be making any money at it and that's the big issue, making a profit. Most major rocket technology was developed in the 50's and 60's by the US, UK and USSR. Pick up a copy of "Rocket Propulsion Elements" by Gary Sutton, understand the contents and you are well on your way to designing your first rocket motor. There are tons of NASA publications that go deep into all sorts of different fuels and oxidizers. The computers and electronics have become much better and lighter then they were in the sixties and new materials have made better designs feasible. From a top level perspective, SpaceX isn't doing anything new, They're just refining some bits and pieces along with a different approach to running the business end. They would be unique if they're main headquarters, test facility and launch site were all within 500 miles of each other.

        4. Richard 31

          Re: Snake Oil

          The vacuuming process for any pod need not take much time at all. No need for it to ever leave the tube.

          Consider if it works more like the London Underground on the stations where they have barriers and doors to stop people falling or jumping onto the track. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Pec4GvDwQ ) for example

          The pods door aligns with a platforn door, the platform extends a boom onto the pod and the door can open into normal atmosphere. It could easily be the similar to the ingress exits used for jumbos at airports.

          Slow the acceleration and it would be easy enough to have straight regular tube seating.

          No need to evacuate the whole system for maintenance either. Each section just needs a doors that can seal off a section. Would be simple enough to add sensors to automatically shut doors and stop trains at the next emergency exit door.

        5. streaky

          Re: Snake Oil

          To be commercially successful public transportation needs high throughput. It doesn't matter how fast it is, if it can carry only a few hundred people an hour it's not going to pay for itself.

          If this were true nobody would fly anywhere, which my understanding is exactly what hyperloop is initially designed to compete with anyway - both on price, cost and speed.

          I see some serious technical issues that will need to be sorted through but I don't see capacity as one of them. As for your 2 minute rule, it sounds pretty nonsense, assuming they're automated you should be able to fling them seconds apart and I see no technical issue with running them in a train just there's no benefit to doing that; there's little drag to contend with which is the entire point and drag/air resistance reduction is precisely where trains benefit.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Snake Oil

            > As for your 2 minute rule, it sounds pretty nonsense, assuming they're automated you should be able to fling them seconds apart

            So you'd be happy with aeroplanes flying nose-to-tail a few seconds apart?

            I believe the minimum distance at speed is typically 5 miles (so at 550mph that's about 30 seconds).

            But planes have the ability to move in three dimensions: even if the plane in front of them stopped dead in mid air, they'd probably still be able to manoeuvre around it.

            1. Vic

              Re: Snake Oil

              I believe the minimum distance at speed is typically 5 miles

              Without prior agreement, minimum lateral separation is typically 3 miles under radar observation.

              By prior agreement, aircraft can fly much closer together than that. Flying within 20ft[1] of another aircraft does concentrate the mind...

              But if these things can accelerate to 100mph in 4 seconds, there's no reason why, in an emergency, they couldn't decelerate in the same time. This could leave capsules traveling approximately 5 seconds apart.

              Vic.

              [1] My CFI claims I don't fly close enough. His argument - and it is well-founded - is that the closer you fly, the less you are affected by turbulence, since all aircraft move together. But I don't have the balls for that :-)

        6. Robert Helpmann??
          Boffin

          Re: Snake Oil

          While you make some good points, there are some holes in your arguments. To address one:

          "But the whole point of Hyperloop is that the pods in the cruise phase have very little drive (which makes it cheap), so it would also have very little braking power. So where does that 0.25G braking come from? Does the tube also have to act as a braking surface for friction pads? Does that wear out? Can it be used again afterwards?"

          Why would anyone assume a maglev vehicle would use friction as its primary method of braking? As a backup method, it might make sense, but turning all that momentum back into electricity is a better approach. It is used in electric cars and - shocker - maglev trains.

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Snake Oil

            "Why would anyone assume a maglev vehicle would use friction as its primary method of braking? As a backup method, it might make sense, but turning all that momentum back into electricity is a better approach. It is used in electric cars and - shocker - maglev trains."

            You just push it back into a Shipstone.

        7. 100113.1537

          Re: Snake Oil

          Thanks for the sober reflection. I could envisage a door system to allow passenger entry without an airlock for the pod, but that doesn't really change the throughput issues significantly. I think that this is a freight only technology unless you are going to run very long distances. And is there that much money in freight?

          I was also wondering about stopping - the PR test had a water brake which looks fun the open air......

        8. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Snake Oil

          The throughput can easily be solved with more tubes, there needs to be two anyway - one for outward and one for return journeys, so if they are laying 2 why not four? the costs wouldn't double as you would already have the holes in the ground and the man power on site when laying them (Obviously the costs would go up, just not double) the added benefit is that you can switch the lines based on demand.. more people going in one direction than the other? Lines 1-3 head TO SF and the remaining one handles the return journeys.

          Also this is still a work in progress, there may be ways found to increase capacity in future versions.

          All of the above said, I still think that its a bit daft, the Japanese have (as you pointed out) nailed maglev, its fast clean and safe, I really don't see the need for HyperLoop - but its cool and I like cool things so let them build it.

        9. teknopaul

          Re: Snake Oil

          There is no reason "pods" can't be as large as planes. Or trains. Or chained together.

        10. Sgt_Oddball

          Re: Snake Oil

          But, But it's the new monorail!!

          1. d3vy

            Re: Snake Oil

            "But, But it's the new monorail!!"

            Stopping at Shelbyville, ogdenville and north haverbrook?

        11. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Snake Oil

          California is also know for earthquakes and lots of faults. A break in the tube and, Whoosh, the air comes rushing back in creating a serious aerodynamic load. Are the pods going to be built to take that. In the other direction, if the pod gets cracked, all of the air rushes out and you are left with a sticky mess. The sensitivity of the operating environment is a bit issue and leaves the systems indefensible to terrorist attacks or just plain mad bombers.

          What happens in the case of fire? Power outages? How can you re-introduce air into the tubes manually and allow people to evacuate the tunnels? I'll just drive, thanks.

          Economically, it may be the same as the high speed rail that California is throwing money at and that will have to be ultimately scrapped after billions of dollars are wasted. The cost is so high and growing that it's cheaper to take a portion of the high speed rail budget and just give away plane tickets. The HST will never pay for itself from the fare box, serves too few communities and isn't needed. "Faster" train service would be a better solution. Amtrak (passenger service) shares the same tracks as freight trains at a lower priority. Just paralleling some additional tracks exclusively for passenger trains would speed up the service considerably. If one factors in all of the hassle of showing up at the airport hours early with minimal baggage, the strip search and other time wasters, a train trip from LA to SF isn't that much more time. 5 1/2 hours for the train vs. 4 hours all-in to fly. Trying to go faster with Hyperloop doesn't make any more sense than a private company doing a stunt flight to Mars. (Hmmmm, ring any bells)

      2. bazza Silver badge

        @TheOtherHobbes,

        "Apparently HS2 needs at least £20bn to run a fairly conventional choo choo train all the way from London to Birmingham - which is about a quarter of the distance of LA to SF."

        Land isn't cheap in the UK, and the ground is not very suitable (too soft) for building a high speed railway so we may have to lay down concrete foundations for big chunks of it.

        But it's still probably worth it. The land in Japan isn't very good either (mountains, mud planes, requiring a lot of tunnels and a lot of elevated concrete track), but it didn't stop them and the resulting benefit to Japan is incalculable.

        One big difference in Japan; the rest of their transport network is up to the job of feeding passengers to the Shinkansen lines, airports, etc. The density of metropolitan railways in Japan is unbelievable, meaning hardly anyone needs to drive anywhere at all (at least not in the major towns). Even their buses are really good.

        In contrast in the UK the buses are poor and it's only really London that has an widespread metropolitan railway network. The result is a lot of us will have to drive to the high speed train stations. No one wants to spend and hour or two on buses to get a 45 minute train to London. If we have to jump in our car to make the journey time sensible, why not just drive the whole way?

        So I think that whilst HS2 is a good idea, there's a hell of a lot of work to do beyond that.

      3. Rocket_Rabbit
        Facepalm

        That's because in the UK, we are world leaders in red tape and NIMBYism. If HS2 was being built in China, it be done in 2 weeks and cost £500. The real kicker is that it'd work!

        1. BurnT'offering

          Re: The real kicker is that it'd work!

          With the odd head-on collision

      4. Bill Stewart

        California's $80B HSR "Plan"

        A few years back Californians got to vote on the early version of High Speed Rail funding. We were asked to approve $10B in bonds to fund a $30B rail project (SF-LA and beyond to SD and SAC), with the rest of the funding being magic money that would appear from the sky, and $55/ticket SF-LA, cheaper than Southwest Air on sale. Immediately after it was approved they said "Oh, ooops, we'll have to pay interest on bonds! Ok, it's $40B." After a while it was "$70-80B, $110/ticket", and recently it's "Oh, apparently ridership will depend on ticket price, who could have guessed that? So maybe we'll need to subsidize it more to get ridership up!"

    2. bazza Silver badge

      Hyperloop will do us no favours!

      @corestore,

      "$6bn and that needs government money to fund it?

      The biggest technology project of the 1960s was Project Apollo."

      The feats of the 1960s were truly amazing and, I think, surprisingly cheap. Considering what they set out to do Apollo came in amazingly cheap I thought, and had incalculable knock on benefits.

      I also like the story behind Lockheed's Skunk Works. The F117 was a truly revolutionary aircraft (not just for its stealthiness), yet they got 2 flying prototypes working for only Only Only ONLY $30million (1970's millions), and the cost:benefit ratio for the production version was very good indeed. Even the A12/SR71 was astonishingly cheap for what it did.

      It goes to show what you can achieve with government funding and a band of trusted engineers.

      Hyperloop Will Do Us No Favours

      One of the truly awful things about Hyperloop is that it will do the community of engineers no good whatsoever. There's a bunch of loon engineers pushing a "cool idea" that will inevitably fall flat on its face and will cost investors all their money and deliver nothing. That puts the whole engineering community in a poor light. It makes it harder for us sensible engineers to be believed by investors, etc.

      1. Trumpet Winsock IIIrd
        Pint

        Re: Hyperloop will do us no favours!

        Great commenting.

        I often find that the comments on articles can be more informative than the article itself.

        Have a rec and a Pint Bazza.

        1. Known Hero
          FAIL

          Re: Hyperloop will do us no favours!

          @snake oil proclaimers,

          Your probably right lets just give up now, everything is fine, we don't need to strive for more.

          Seriously, yes they may be potential flaws with the system, but think back they built the underground with steam trains !!! WTF is that all about.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The fun part for is is imagining what would have to be done When Things Go Wrong.

      I'm not sure if you can tach a maglev failure with wheels and brakes, but I guess that's not a new problem and probably already solved in Japan. Where it gets entertaining is humans locked in an air filled tube, inside a tube with as little air as possible, with possibly another pod already on its way.

      I'm not sure this may happen at all, but if it does I reckon we will have solved a lot of problems for when we ever get to colonise the moon or even Mars. Maybe that's the real win of this project: new engineering patents..

      1. BurnT'offering

        Re: When Things Go Wrong.

        You get traffic jam - and you need a big spoon

    4. Annihilator

      "$6bn and that needs government money to fund it? The second biggest technology project of the 1960s was the IBM System/360. IBM totally bet the company on it... bringing it to market cost IBM $5bn - and that IS in 1964 dollars! $35bn in today's money..."

      Yes, but IBM would have been confident in there being much more than $5bn in direct benefits to IBM.

      The problem with big infrastructure projects like this is that they don't usually generate benefits back to the company that builds the thing (particularly once you factor in running costs). Infrastructure projects generate economic benefits (well, they're meant to) which usually points at the government to fund.

  2. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Los Angeles to San Francisco route comes in at $6bn

    Underestimate. How much for the land and 'right of way'? Embodied resources.

    How many passengers per hour? Doesn't scale. Make a list of all city pairs.

    What happens when it fails, and passengers are trapped in a vacuum with the next car hurtling towards them at Mach 1? How long does it take to plasma cut them out? How much energy to evacuate the tube after maintenance?

    Conceptually, it's one advantage and then a long list of nonsense.

    1. jphn37

      Re: Los Angeles to San Francisco route comes in at $6bn

      There may be problems. That's what the startup are for: to iron out the problems with the tech. But what's with the massive negativity?

      Yes, of course it wouldn't be only $6bn. Nothing ever comes in at budget, but the high-speed rail California has started to build is projected at many times that amount.

      The tubes are not at complete vacuum. The tubes have magnetic propulsion at regular intervals that can also be used for braking. The pods could also have braking built in somehow. I believe they also have some kind of drive mechanism planned that could limp the pods to a place for evacuation. The energy to evacuate the air to a semi vacuum is negligible. Pods also have an air supply.

      This is a concept vehicle. They are currently prototyping, with private money. Jeez Louise. Perhaps you're one of those folks who hates all buses, subways, trains, and bike lanes?

      1. bazza Silver badge

        Re: Los Angeles to San Francisco route comes in at $6bn

        @jphn37,

        "There may be problems. That's what the startup are for: to iron out the problems with the tech. But what's with the massive negativity?"

        The negativity comes from the fact that even a cursory examination of the engineering barriers to achieving an economically viable and beneficial high throughput passenger service leads one to realise it's a dead-duck of an idea.

        Sure, something could be built, but as currently envisaged it won't carry many passengers, so it won't deliver a useful service, and therefore it won't pay. Imagine:

        1: "Lets go to LA!"

        2: "Sure! Plane, car, train or 'loop?"

        1: "Not the 'loop, the queues are awful and you can never get on it"

        2: "Well I don't wanna drive, and we haven't got air tickets booked"

        1: "Let take the train then, it's only a couple of hours".

        or

        1: "Lets go to LA!"

        2: "Sure! Plane, car, train or 'loop?"

        1: "Not the 'loop, I know it's fast and there's no queues these days, but it's soooo expensive"

        2: "Well I don't wanna drive, and we haven't got air tickets booked"

        1: "Let take the train then, its only a couple of hours".

        Result: no one ever goes by 'loop.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Los Angeles to San Francisco route comes in at $6bn

          @bazza Something of a logic error there...

          1: "Lets go to LA!"

          2: "Sure! Plane, car, train or 'loop?"

          1: "Not the 'loop, the queues are awful and you can never get on it"

          2: "Well I don't wanna drive, and we haven't got air tickets booked"

          1: "Let take the train then, it's only a couple of hours".

          or

          1: "Lets go to LA!"

          2: "Sure! Plane, car, train or 'loop?"

          1: "Not the 'loop, I know it's fast and there's no queues these days, but it's soooo expensive"

          2: "Well I don't wanna drive, and we haven't got air tickets booked"

          1: "Let take the train then, its only a couple of hours".

          Result: no one ever goes by 'loop.

          If there are queues then everyone is going by the loop, and if there are no queues on the loop then the train must have the queues, unless fewer people are travelling.

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