Hyperloop - London to Edinburgh?

Yup - another pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by idea. Sounds fantastic and in theory can work but what they try not to mention is the implementation. Cost of construction, purchase of right of way, cost of maintenance, operation, and so on.

What they absolutely do not want to mention is the vulnerability. I mean what a fantastic target. Something traveling at several hundred miles per hour (and in a vacuum at that I think). One shoulder fired rocket and its all over. Its like painting a bulls eye on your bum and bending over in a shooting gallery and yelling have at it mates, lol.

Ben
 
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I certainly wouldn't like to be stuck in a 100+ mile long tube in a non functioning, broken down capsule!
 
I certainly wouldn't like to be stuck in a 100+ mile long tube in a non functioning, broken down capsule!

Stranger things have happened. I mean who would want to travel at a "breakneck speed" faster than a horse pulled by a smelly, dirty coal burning contraption and supported only by long thin ribbons of iron?

The hyperloop is an interesting proposal and may actually get off the ground in some unique situations such as freight over (or under) oceans but other transport solutions may be more practical and economic at least for the foreseeable future. Who knows, Kim-Tubby-Whats-His-Face in Nth Korea may actually be testing out a new method of public transportation since the roads and railways there are so cr*ppy.
 
Stranger things have happened. I mean who would want to travel at a "breakneck speed" faster than a horse pulled by a smelly, dirty coal burning contraption and supported only by long thin ribbons of iron?
Yes , quite right but even so, I still say that I certainly wouldn't like to be stuck in a 100+ mile long tube in a non functioning, broken down capsule! So what's your point?
What goes on in N. Korea is irrelavent to this topic.
 
Yes , quite right but even so, I still say that I certainly wouldn't like to be stuck in a 100+ mile long tube in a non functioning, broken down capsule! So what's your point?
What goes on in N. Korea is irrelavent to this topic.

I'm not disagreeing with you. I would find that experience to be claustrophobic. 14+ hours stuck in an aircraft made from a thin aluminum shell 10,000m up is bad enough. My reference to Nth Korea may have been somewhat obtuse and sarcastic but the possibility of the missile tests there being for a new form of public transport is no stranger than the concept of the hypertube.
 
Think about this gents:
1. How do you make a switch on one of these?
2. How do you maintain a vacuum in a tube 8, 10, or 12 ft in diameter and 100 miles long?
3. How do you get folks in and out (airlocks)?
4. What about propulsion (my guess would be linear induction motors)?

This thing would be great on the moon since no tube would be required. Just make it a very high speed overhead monorail. On earth - more of a publicity stunt I think.

Ben
 
Plus if it's in a vacuum the air inside the capsule with it full of passengers isn't going to last very long. Looks to me to be a very fast coffin....
 
I guess you don't remember or are too young to have seen the pneumatic mail tubes that stores had for moving information to different areas of a store. It is the same concept of a tube, a vacuum and a sealed cylinder that travelled in the tube. They worked great and moved at a good pace. Plus delivered information from one place to another. The hyper loop is just a bigger version of this.

The old methods are coming back.

Here is youtube about a current system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAlzYLcqsTU
 
Actually I do from when I was a kid however they didn't stick people in them ;o)

A sealed container full of people without an air supply will fill up with CO2 as well as run out of oxygen well before the thing has gone 100 miles.
 
The early tube trains in London used a vacuum (or more correctly pneumatic air suction) as their propulsion method. A "vacuum" tube ran alongside the track that was covered and "sealed" by thick leather flaps that allowed an attachment on the carriage to slide along the tube using negative air pressure. London at that stage already had a vacuum system connected to houses in the more "well-to-do" areas that provided the first vacuum cleaners via attachment plugs build into the walls.

Unfortunately, the vacuum tube trains failed because the rats found the leather flaps to be a ready made meal (the original McDonalds???) and this broke the seal.
 
A sealed container full of people without an air supply will fill up with CO2 as well as run out of oxygen well before the thing has gone 100 miles.

They have sealed containers that can have many people in them for a long while, it is called a submarine.
 
They have sealed containers that can have many people in them for a long while, it is called a submarine.

Which contains the necessary equipment for scrubbing the CO2, being ex Navy is what made me think of it..... It's going to need to be more sophisticated than just a presumably pressurised container with people in it shot through a vacuum tube not to mention the equipment needed for maintaining a vacuum over a couple of hundred miles or longer. ;o)
 
They have sealed containers that can have many people in them for a long while, it is called a submarine.

On submarines, in order to maintain a breathable, non toxic atmosphere/environment there has to be lots of auxilliary equipment - CO2 scrubbers as mentioned, plus atmosphere analysying equipment. On a conventional sub (non nuclear) the boat has to surface often to replenish atmosphere. On a nuclear sub oxygen is extracted from seawater but in order to maintain a non poisonous atmosphere CO2 scrubbers are used and atmosphere analysys is done using mass spectrometers in order to monitor and keep a balanced healthy atmosphere.

The short journey times as envisaged by the Hyperloop developers would probably negate such atmosphere monitoring measures but what if the capsule gets stuck or malfunctions? Will there be some sort of emergency breathing apparatus? How would the capsule evacuation be carried out in such emergency situations?

Many questions need to be answered - not to mention the ensuing hoo ha about planning permission etc. that has accompanied the HS2 project. How many more people would have to lose their homes?

It will never happen! It's total bollocks!

Rob.
 
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I can just imagine the uproar if there were 12 ft diameter Tubes laid across the countryside! More chance of that flying Saucer, they could just borrow one from Area 51? :hehe:
 
It will never happen! It's total bollocks!
I can just imagine the uproar if there were 12 ft diameter Tubes laid across the countryside!
And putting them underground just generates a new and different set of problems.

Its a brave man who says "never". I suspect that much of the hype about the hypertube is all part of the publicity machine of one E. Musk. That said, I do see one genuine possibility for it - the transport of cargo across oceans with the tube laid in a seabed trench.

Peter
 
I'm not saying one can't be built. What I am saying is its difficulty of construction and impracticality of usage so large as to be little more then an interesting experiment. Can a small one be built and gotten to work as proof of concept - almost certainly - its the "what next" that presents problems.

Think about this gents: CURVES. If the tube is 12 ft in diameter that is for all practical purposes its gauge. Depending on car length the minimum radius of curvature will be gigantic and the greater the velocity the larger the radius must be.

As for crossing the Atlantic for example in a trench on the ocean floor - don't forget about the mid-Atlantic ridge where the continental plates are growing away from each other. Gonna need some serious expansion joints there folks.

These things really would be better off on the Moon, :hehe:.

Ben
 
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