CMStPnP Hyperloop is going nowhere, in my opinion. Technology is not at the point where that makes sense with either the electromagnetic model or with the vacuum model. The ticket costs to support such a system long term would be astronomical and the capacity limitation on how many people could be moved between point A and point B in a given timeframe would be limited as well driving up ticket prices further over time. Many of us are still waiting for Tesla to be self-sustaining. At some point the government aid as well as the junk bond sales will dry up.........then what?
Hyperloop is going nowhere, in my opinion. Technology is not at the point where that makes sense with either the electromagnetic model or with the vacuum model. The ticket costs to support such a system long term would be astronomical and the capacity limitation on how many people could be moved between point A and point B in a given timeframe would be limited as well driving up ticket prices further over time.
Many of us are still waiting for Tesla to be self-sustaining. At some point the government aid as well as the junk bond sales will dry up.........then what?
Dear CMSTP&P,
I have been on a Yahoo! E-group for a number of years called the Light Rail Professional’s Group. It is a group of light rail, transit and general rail advocates. Many of the members are professionals who have been involved in the transit industry for years although the group is open to anyone (as long as you’re pro-rail).
On that group they have a name for things like the hyperloop: “Gadgetbahn”. The “hyperloop” is only one of the latest “Gadgetbahns” to come to light but there have been many.
The oldest form of gadgetbahn is probably the monorail. There have been many, many monorails built but they have never really prevailed. The Wuppertal line in Germany is probably the longest lived and most successful of any monorail. Many other monorails have been little more than novelties or tourist lines.
The problem with monorail is that you need to go to great efforts and expense in order to make a single rail work when it’s just as easy to have two!
Then came tracked air cushion vehicles and maglev. Maglev might be coming into its own but has some of the same issues that monorail has. One of the things that’s made the French TGV so successful is that it can use conventional tracks to access large terminals and yards. A maglev can’t do that. One of the things they like to promote about maglev is speed. They can travel at speeds up to 350 MPH. But test trains have reached nearly that speed with conventional steel wheels and steel rails.
And now we have “hyperloop”. Will this be any different? Most of the members on the light rail list see a real danger with gadgetbahn. It is namely that it's a major distraction from real, practical rail solutions that are available now and will continue to be available far into the future. At least Musk is using his own money in this endeavor.
In my own personal, honest, humble opinion, I believe that in the future we will have all of these including hyperloop. But will they prevail over twin steel rails? I don’t know but I tend to be very skeptical about that.
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
There were several prospective designs for ’atomic locomotives’ which we have discussed in the past (a couple of which were more than just ‘proof-of-concept’ designs) but they would all fall squarely in the ‘gadgetbahn’ category when Brotherhood rules are considered... even before you get to fuel-cycle economics and ... certain other concerns.
Wasn’t that Lampoon issue the one with the Diesel (not lowercase in THAT future) typewriter, and ‘Tap-A-Toe’ control for thousand-horsepower automobiles? (“Tap once to stop. Tap twice to GO! Tap three times to back up”... a railroad tie-in!)
Hmm- I didn't save all my issues of National Lampoon but that does sound familiar. I do believe that Ford was working on an atomic truck 50 years ago. Wouldn't that have been something? "Been taking little white pills and my eyes are open wide" like the song says.
I'm very doubtful that a practical hyperloop system will be built. One challenge not often mentioned is the need for a very precisely surveyed right-of-way acquired and built over a long distance. Major employment opportunities for surveyors and geologists ....
This ROW must be designed for low G forces that a human body can tolerate. Healthy twenty-somethings will have few problems, but your frail 80 y/o grandmother or carsick prone brother not so. High employment rates predicted for car cleaners!
The hyperloop tube will require an immense amount of tunneling and/or long elevated sections that property owners will not appreciate. Lawyers are salivating already ....
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If I remember correctly the Ford ‘atomic’ stuff was like the Nucleon: car-show rolling chassis with a little sign on the engine bay that essentially said ‘reserved for atomic (and nuclear, after atomic lost its special cachet the way ‘pile’ did) power’. The closest I can recall to something actually providing that was the nuclear-electric battery, and while it is hard to imagine one of those rolling down the road in a truck or car without an attendant guard of armed Marines, it sure beats molten-salt or anything with sodium in the heat exchangers...
One of my aunts was born just short of the turn of the twentieth century and openly declared man would never walk on the moon. Time proved her wrong.
She also said five cents for a pound of butter was equivalent to extortion. I wonder what she would think of the price today.
Times change.
Norm
John Kneiling once wrote that the AAR's idea of research was an atomic-powered switch lamp (instead of his 'baby', integral train systems).
- PDN.
Norm48327One of my aunts was born just short of the turn of the twentieth century and openly declared man would never walk on the moon. Time proved her wrong. She also said five cents for a pound of butter was equivalent to extortion. I wonder what she would think of the price today. Times change.
My Grandfather was born in 1892 - he would regale me of stories of the first man to fly a plane over downtown Baltimore to be able to collect some form of challenge prize some time in the middle 19 oughts. Hired out on the B&O in 1910, ran the B&O's dining car department from 1937 until he retired in 1957. He was able to watch man land on the Moon before he took his first airplane flight with my father in about 1975. He passed on at 98 years of age. His only complaint was that all his close friends had preceeded him in death.
I won't say the Hyper-loop won't work - it may have the technical merits to function, however, will it become economically viable? If it isn't anywhere near self supporting, let alone profitable it will be good money thrown after bad.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Paul_D_North_Jr John Kneiling once wrote that the AAR's idea of research was an atomic-powered switch lamp (instead of his 'baby', integral train systems).
But it does have to be said that the essentially ‘permanent’ illumination of switch lamps was a highly desirable object, achievable by no other means than decay emission... and that most other uses of atomic power that would fall under AAR’s research would be similarly low-key and nonlethal.
I don’t think the integral train was that different from the BCR coal turbine in being a project whose R&D costs should rightly be switched from commonly-supported bodies to those manufacturers standing to profit from sales and support of the equipment. I believe that was done with the HPIT when the integral-train idea was tried in the early ‘80s ... of course, the results then were not particularly compelling, and the primary factor leading to the present success of integral-type consists other than dedicated bulk is much more due to the peculiarities of ISO marine containers than ingenuities of rail-specific swap-bodies like Flexi-Van or specialized trailers like the ‘kangarou’ system that would optimize Kneiling-style integral train consists, fitting ‘legacy’ East Coast loading gage, with distributed power.
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