Hyperloop One Reveals Its Plans For Connecting Europe (engadget.com) 111
Hyperloop One has revealed its plans for connecting Europe via its Hyperloop transportation system that can move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel. The company is currently considering nine potential routes in Europe, "running from a 90km hop to connect Estonia and Finland, through to a 1,991km pan-German route," reports Engadget. "The UK [...] gets three proposes routes: one to connect its Northern Cities, one to connect the North and South, and one to connect Scotland with Wales." From the report: Several of the routes, including ones between Estonia and Finland, Corsica to Sardinia and Spain -- Morocco, all cross bodies of water. The company has, on several occasions, spoke of its love of tunnels, and plans to use them extensively in construction. Although rather than using tunneling machines, which can be slow, submerged box tunnels or archimedes bridges may be cheaper and faster to build. CNBC notes that the proposals for Europe connect more than 75 million people in 44 cities, spanning 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).
Wait in line (Score:1)
75 millions people with a transportation method that can do 840 passengers per hour...
Good luck waiting in line to travel.
Re:Wait in line (Score:5, Insightful)
One assumes that all 75 million people aren't traveling from Estonia to Finland at the same time.
Re:Wait in line (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever been to Estonia? It might not be safe to assume that they won't all leave at once...
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I have been to Estonia. Tallinn, specifically. It has become a sizable tech hub, aside from being absolutely beautiful.
Linking Finland and Tallinn is a perfect application for this. There are already fleets of ferry ships linking the two, as it's an exceedingly popular route.
https://www.tallink.com/routes
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I bet you don't actually live there though? prices of ferries? it's cheap as balls to go over already and when the catamarins run it's just couple of hours.
and if they were to build a tunnel, it would be far cheaper and almost just as fast to just drive it with 200kmh regular trains.
of course musk keeps saying that somehow hyperloop would be cheaper, in which case you could just replace all train routes with them.
tech hub or not, you would still be connecting it with just helsinki - if it were cheap enough
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You know, you could actually RTFM (in this case, TFM = Hyperloop Alpha [spacex.com]) rather than being bewildered as to why.
The short of it: it's basically a pipeline, so you start with base pipeline costs for the given diameter. Compared to a pipeline:
Advantages:
* Far lower mass loadings
* Does not carry things that could "leak" and contaminate the ground (much easier environmental permitting, less NIMBY)
* Simpler thermal manageme
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Advantages: * Far lower mass loadings * Does not carry things that could "leak" and contaminate the ground (much easier environmental permitting, less NIMBY) * Simpler thermal management * Much lower pumping requirements (just to head this off: it's a mild vacuum, not a hard vacuum. The energy required (and pump sizes) to pump fluids through a pipeline is far more than is required to simply maintain a mild vacuum) * Usually periodic branch points
So, you are basically saying that building a standard piping system to conduct fluids is more difficult than one hosting the very fast transportation of persons except for these points? Even by ignoring diameter/length aspects, I am afraid that such a claim is very far away from being truth.
The points which you are referring aren’t even too relevant IMO:
* Far lower mass loadings -> I guess that you make that assumption by focusing your analysis on eminently theoretical as
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Their earthquake proofing (and safety in the event of an accident, e.g. a truck going into one of the pylons in a road median) is not nearly good enough. The PDF they put out suggests that they will simply put adjustable dampers in the pylons... But such things react relatively slowly and have a limited range of movement.
The reason that high speed rail is separated from other things by grades, fencing and large, high-mass pillars is so that these kinds of events don't deform the rails enough to derail the
Re:Wait in line (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, linking us here in Helsinki to Tallin with a tunnel may be smart. However, using Hyperloop to do it makes no sense to me as a Finn that travels to Estonia several times a year. Why? The travel time on the fastest ferries is already down to below couple hours, and they're currently looking into the option of building a rail tunnel [wikipedia.org] in between the cities. which would cut the travel time down to 45 minutes. Benefits of a rail system over something like the hyperloop at this point are enormous: first off, trains are a technology we have mastered and the project does not require maintaining a near-vacuum, second of all trains have a higher capacity than hyperloop and are very likely cheaper to maintain*.
The Hyperloop test track which was about a mile long is so far the 2nd largest vacuum chamber in the world after NASA's. The Hyperloop tech is probably on the order of decades from being commercially viable. Even the planning of a regular underwater tunnel takes years, the estimated completion time of the rail tunnel is in 2038. Infrastructure projects like this take massive amounts of time and money to plan an execute and the planning needs to be started years in advance so it's near impossible that a technology like Hyperloop in such an early stage of innovation will even be considered for the Helsinki-Tallin route. The upsides are not worth the increased risks.
Even the rail tunnel is not a certainty due to the cost factors involved. At 92 kilometers - nearly twice the English channel tunnel - It'd be the longest rail tunnel in the world and underwater, making it extremely expensive (current estimates are in the ballpark of 13 billion euros). With the ferry traffic being cheap (you can get tickets for less than 10 euros), plentiful and fast it may well be the case that the tunnel is never implemented. Not to mention that the ferry companies are major players in the baltic regional economy, and this wield significant political lobbying power both here and in Estonia. Tallink-Silja is one of the largest companies in the Baltics, coming 2nd or 3rd behind only banks.
So to summarize: would it make sense to establish a faster connection between Helsinki and Tallinn? Possibly, I'll wait for more info before saying that for sure. If it is done, what are the chances of hyperloop being used to do it? Practically zero.
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The UK has never been part of Schengen, so leaving the EU won't change much.
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If you're willing to abide by the same free-movement requirements you're currently subjected to, sure.
That'd tick off the UKIPers to no end, mind you. ;)
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...except for the visas UK citizens will need to get into the EU after day one of leaving, because they can't negotiate with any of the member countries for visa-free travel until after they have left.
they are supposed to negotiate those treaties before they leave.
however, any country might block those treaties - and thanks to schengen while uk can negotiate treaties to let people into uk, they cannot negotiate with individual countries to let brits into schengen, so guess what the result of those negotiations is going to be? exact same as it is now.
Except that... (Score:3)
so guess what the result of those negotiations is going to be? exact same as it is now.
Except that now UK isn't part of the EU and doesn't have anything to say anymore about its politics.
UK went from a full blown EU member, to probably the same status as Switzerland and Norway, two countries who were never members of the EU to begin with, and just sign treaties to be able to participate anyway.
Basically, UK just lost its voice at the EU table - its share of sovereignty.
Which sounds ironic, when a good chunk of the campaign's argument was something along the lines of "we want to be in charge o
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Basically, you're wrong.
1) The UK has not left the EU yet, even though article 58 has been triggered.
2) The 'voice' the UK and other countries have are only opinions relating to topics that the EU parliament have decided to discuss and have ultimate authority to decide even with opposition of all countries.
3) Any changes that require a modification to a treaty needs to be ratified by all countries unanimously, which rarely happens.
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The fantasy they voted for was that the EU "needs us more than we need them" and so decided to kiss the collective arse for access to the lucrative UK market...
In reality the EU is more worried about America at the moment and is looking to renew itself without any reliance on the UK or US. The UK will be offered a fair deal, but the EU won't compromise its most basic principals like free trade also requiring freedom of movement.
I think the Conservative plan is to wait for the talks to break down and blame i
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...except for the visas UK citizens will need to get into the EU after day one of leaving, because they can't negotiate with any of the member countries for visa-free travel until after they have left.
*yawn*
Visa-free travel does not even need to be negotiated. It can be granted unilaterally.
Re: Wait in line (Score:1)
EU != Europe
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They've also got their geography slightly wrong. By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more.
I didn't realize that the brexiters were hard-core enough to uproot the whole island(s) and tow them to somewhere else.
Political != Geographical (Score:3)
They've also got their geography slightly wrong. By the time this finally eventuates, if it ever does, the UK won't be part of Europe any more.
Unless you expect hyperloop construction to take place on a geological timescale they have the geography just fine. Geographically the UK will remain part of Europe regardless of what the idiots in Westminster decide to do politically.
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The business opportunity will be severely downgraded if people need visas to travel in/out of the UK though. May seems to be hoping that it goes wrong so she can blame the EU and avoid negotiating a deal that will inevitably be criticised, which means visas required to visit the EU or enter the UK.
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Speak for yourself - I lost a ton of money on the Doggerland Hyperloop project when it went under.
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transportation system that can move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel
Only if you completely ignore:
- many billions in construction cost
- thousands of airports already in existence
- planes can fly to any city in the world (thanks to those thousands of airports that already exist) while your hyperloop scam can only go from one specific point to another.
So, yeah, good luck with that.
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just to add.. existing high speed train routes and the routes that would require a tunnel would be served just fine with a regular train and couldn't make a profit with a regular train.
have to be cheap as pie to make it. (Score:4, Interesting)
they will have to be cheap as pie between finland and estonia.
I seriously hope that finnish government doesn't put a dime towards this though. it's still unproven as fuck. they don't have a prototype. giving money towards a tunnel would be shady as fuck. furthermore, estonia - finland route is so fucking short that regular train going 200kmh would do just fine, just fine, if there was a tunnel.
and they have to be cheaper than 20 euros for a trip. which is basically cheaper than a comparable train route in finland. why? boats between finland and estonia are pretty darn cheap and will get you there in couple of hours anyways(!).
Re: Wait in line (Score:1)
That's super low for a train like system, but seems to be about aligned with or slightly better than airports (though I have no idea max capacity between two points, I'm just basing it on five or so flights a day for most domestic cities I go to).
I question the value of a hyperloop vs a traditional train for the short routes suggested too.
Even more concerning is the suggestion of combined never tested but long thought of techs to make it work (the tunnels and the hyperloop itself being decades (fast tube ze
Sounds great (Score:2)
Re:Sounds great (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, as much as I like the idea of a hyperloop, and new ways to transport people, I think the main issue of hyperloop is right now that its an unproven technology. There isn't a single track in operation around the globe. No info about how expensive it all is, etc. Of course, operating one track is considerably more expensive per rail km than operating many tracks, due to economics of scale, but you can't just give a company that has nothing but concepts billions of dollars/euros to deploy a technology that hasn't even a working prototype. I mean I'm not saying that hyperloop is a bad idea and that it will never work, but I'm neither sure of hyperloop working so well that it should be deployed.
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Or just build a 50 mile test track from San Jose to Palo Alto, and then up the Peninsula to SF. That would be enough to test the concept, and if it works, there would be plenty of demand from people that can afford the fare.
Good luck in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)
Cross rail, Channel Tunnel (Score:4, Informative)
It's a train in a tunnel but with air sucked out of it. So the difference between a high speed train tunnel and this is the air suckage.
So its put all the energy into keeping the air sucked out, instead of pushing the train against the air.
But the air is a known problem, in the Channel Tunnels it's handled with vents connecting the two direction tunnels, they open and close so the pressure wave from the front of one train pushed the train in the other direction from behind. Chunnel is not watertight let alone air tight.
So if you consider the costs of the Channel Tunnel GBP 9.5 billion for 31 miles of track, and the price.... the Chunnel competes with boats that are slow and expensive, a normal train has to compete with cars, coach, normal rail and flights.
So say low interest 3% government loan, so that 31 miles of track needs to return GBP 285 million profit. Eurotunnel makes only about 51 million, and that's competing only against ferries.
So hyperloop is basically hype. They cannot deliver on any of these ideas and their costings are comedically bad.
Re:Cross rail, Channel Tunnel (Score:4, Interesting)
The fast trains between London and Paris (2hours city centre to city centre) has cut the number of flights dramatically between london and paris. More people are travelling between them now than ever before.
The tunnel (road traffic) competes against the ferries. The Passenger tail service from London to Paris, Brussels etc competes against the airlines.
I took the train from London to Avignon last year (a through service). Very much more civilised way of travelling than by air. Yes it took a bit longer but was far less stressful.
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A better model would be Japanese high speed rail. For a start, a lot of the profit comes form the stations which are basically big shopping centres. The station is a destination in itself, with shops, supermarkets, restaurants, daycare and more. The revenue from that subsidises the trains, which bring people to the shops.
As for land, the new maglev track is over 90% tunnel. Through hard rock and difficult terrain. 800km/h, rising to well over 1000km/h. Hyperloop is 1500km/h but the cars are much smaller and
Re:Good luck in the UK (Score:4, Informative)
I can't see this happening in the UK fortunately
FTFY
Whilst hyperloop may be orders of magnitude cheaper per route km ...
Lay off the Kool-aid if I were you. Why should a railway in a vacuum tunbe be cheaper to build than a railway not in a vacuum tube? (Yes, yes, I know Musk and his fans don't like it called a "railway". OK, "Guided public transport", whatever).
In fact it will involve far more expensive civil engineering because at its speed the curvature in both horizontal and vertical planes will need to be very very gentle - much more so than with conventional railways. So expect either mostly tunnels, or massive cuttings and viaducts. Those support pylons, that people keep glossing over as if it were a contour-hugging oil pipe, will need to be hundreds of feet high in some places.
progress! (Score:5, Funny)
Unlike so many previous ripoffs, this one has the "hype" right in the name!
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Uh, where to begin in answering such a stupid, lazy question?
Solar Roadways? Hoverboards? Thorium-powered cars? Self-filling water bottles? Plastic from the air? Artificial gills?
I guess it all depends on your very own personal level of stubbornness and stupidity...
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He does not seem to know much about the UK either. A Hyperloop between Wales and Scotland? Very little traffic there. I live in one of the more populated areas of Wales and I've never come across anyone around here who travels to Scotland on any regular basis. It would be even less so if Scotland gets independence.
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I bet that they looked at transport data around the weekend of the 6 nations rugby game between the two and said "Holy shit! Look at those numbers.", completely failing to recognize that there is probably close to zero demand for the rest of the year.
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While I agree that Wales to Scotland probably isn't where you would start, you are missing the real opportunity. New high speed links can create traffic, not merely serve existing travellers.
Is it really practical (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Engineer, I see always see the problems....
- Thousands of sliding expansion joints that need to remain vacuum tight.
- The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)
- The problem of escaping people from a vacuum tube when something breaks. This would probably require uuuuge isolation valves every few km, and escape points closer than this, with emergency air infiltration systems, which then has to emergency break other pods who are then stuck in long queues with limited air, in battery powered coffins.
- Long term maintenance: esp of underground parts requiring building a tunnel in a tunnel.
- High capital cost of a complex pod requiring compressors, life support (aircon and air), batteries, recharging systems.
- Being not much faster than a bullet train of much higher capacity, and slower than an aircraft.
- Energy is becoming cheaper, so the main advantage of hyperloop is somewhat dulled.
I'm sure other can add more
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Historical perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems.
As a physicist, I know engineers are not smart enough realize how stupid they are.
The hyper loop will never be cheaper than air travel or rail.
I was watching some of the original Mission Impossible episodes recently, and recalling my thoughts on watching them when they were first aired.
Some of them required tiny TV cameras hidden in (for example) a brooch worn by the female lead, and I remember thinking at the time how preposterous that was. The technological problems of getting a videcon that small, the lenses necessary, the power supply to generate the HV necessary for the tube, all the tube or transistor amplifiers, and the dry-cell battery needed to power it for several hours - complete fantasy!
And of course nowadays these devices are on eBay for $10.
You may not see the solutions to the problems today, but you really can't predict what will be possible tomorrow.
There's a difference between physically impossible and technologically impossible.
it's mostly materials. (Score:3)
There's a difference between physically impossible and technologically impossible.
there's a long disconnect what physically makes sense to build and what hyperloop is proposing.
mostly materials. you see. if hyperloop could develop the materials they need, they would be better off selling them for other uses than their tube.
they don't have what their idea needs.
their idea itself is 100+ years old. seriously, the idea is as old as balls and they don't have the technology to make it as of now.
conceptually it's the same as having a flying car company that depends on some sound dampening and battery technology that doesn't yet e
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There's a difference between physically impossible and technologically impossible.
There is also a continuum from "we can build this now for pennies" to "we could theoretically build this in a few years' time at a cost of half the whole planet's GDP".
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As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.
Sure, I solve problems all day: but before I take on a project, I like to know the risk/reward ratio and for Hyperloop it doesn't look like a great ratio.
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As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.
So let's see your plans for a free-as-in-beer time machine then.
Oh no, wait, not everything is possible, either technically or economically.
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As an Engineer, I always see solutions to problems. I always thought that was the point of the job.
As an engineer I also see solutions to problems, but I also see their costs. All options have problems, but it is part of an engineers job to rule out those options with costs outweighing the advantages. Hyperloop is one of those, but as long as a billionaire nutter is paying engineers to work on it come-what-may, they will do so.
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As a physicist that has worked with vacuum systems in the past including, changing oil on a rough pump, regening a cryopump, cleaning a vacuum chamber from a diffusion pump back streaming, rebuilding a gate valve, so i known what I'm talking about.
As an Engineer, I see always see the problems....
- Thousands of sliding expansion joints that need to remain vacuum tight.
Absolutely correct. The bellows for a two foot travel is on the order of one $1000.
- The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)
- The problem of escaping people from a vacuum tube when something breaks. This would probably require uuuuge isolation valves every few km, and escape points closer than this, with emergency air infiltration systems, which then has to emergency break other pods who are then stuck in long queues with limited air, in battery powered coffins.
When something breaks there is a significant just maintaining the vacuum system.
- Long term maintenance: esp of underground parts requiring building a tunnel in a tunnel.
- High capital cost of a complex pod requiring compressors, life support (aircon and air), batteries, recharging systems.
As a person that has worked on vacuum systems for my PhD, I agree here. You could just the maintenanc
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You missed one:
This has already been discussed rather extensively [youtube.com].
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The psychology of being subjected to movement with no visual reference (vomit tube)
This is an issue in ships and aircraft, which can move around violently depending on weather. In a high-speed train, by contrast, you hardly notice anything. In a TGV, 300 km/h feels like standing still, the only lurching about is when the train approaches a station at low speed and runs over old tracks. Hyperloop won't have points or crossings, and won't encounter trains running in the opposite direction, so should be a very smooth ride.
I thought (Score:1)
Europe already had public transportation. Isn't hyperloop only relevant as a fantasy in the US where efficient public transportation is forbidden by law?
Next up... hyperloop replaces Japanese bullet train.
Nothing happens in Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not believe that the Hyperloop One is feasible with this generation of quaint leadership in Europe. They can just talk big and well about climate change, integration, etc.
Still in the 19th century there was the St. Petersburg-Wien-Nizza-Cannes-Express regular train https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , there were no visas, and not even passports were necessary for travel. WW1 destroyed it all and we are still stuck there.
Re:Nothing happens in Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
Talking about cherry-picking your examples. Ukraine is only geographically in Europe. It uses a different gauge and its railway tracks probably weren't maintained since the 1980ies. Even their fastest train (Hyindai Intercity) runs about as fast as German commuter trains stop every two minutes. If you want to go to Kharkov, use an airplane from Kiev. It is an old B737, but at least it is fast. Trust me, I speak from experience. Besides, the only reason to go to Kharkov in first place would be for using it as a time machine - it still feels very much like USSR - but if you want that particular experience, Tiraspol would probably be more authentic.
trains are fast enough in the UK (Score:2, Interesting)
They can always run the existing trains faster, they just don't like the wear on the tracks.
If people want the hyperloop experience they can always just make one of the cars a lot smaller and take the window out.
Come to think of it, if the train cars rode closer to the rails and were half the height they could probably just run the whole train 50% faster
Fishing for investors (Score:4, Insightful)
15 years to build 100km of TGV tracks in Holland (Score:1)
Correction for BS summary... (Score:3)
Hyperloop One has revealed its plans for connecting Europe via its Hyperloop transportation system that can* move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel.
*cannot
Hyperloop One is really trying to hire engineers (Score:2)
Start with one (Score:2)
They should start with one. In one country and if possible one legal district. First you need to get acceptance of each local political entity. That mean city, province and state. And in each one you win, it must be connected to the next one and that all the way from start to finish.
At the same time you need to compete with the fast trains that already exist all over Europe and are backed by public money.
If they could start with just one and pull it off, that would be great. If you want to invest in money,
Scotland and Wales? (Score:2)
I have nothing against Scotland and Wales; however, I've never heard of the demand being that great for people in either country to get to the other and with the lack of available opportunities in both countries, I'm not really understanding the purpose of this...
Since it's been proposed, perhaps someone could enlighten me as to what they intend to accomplish? I feel like I am missing something.
Hyperloop is all Hype and nothing else (Score:2)
Building costs? (Score:2)
move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel
Only if you don't include the cost of building the infrastructure. Once you total up the cost of building an airtight tunnel for hundreds of miles, and of designing, proving and building the trains, carriages and stations to deal with near-vaccum travel, the cost of a ticket will far exceed the cost of a flight. We have had airports for decades and most of them are already paid-for, from past use.
Connecting nowhere (Score:2)
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FTFY
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Wow, I have a tribute band. Cool! :)