# SF - LA in 30 minutes?



## CHamilton (Sep 17, 2012)

California Is Going To Burn Money On A Bullet Train; Elon Musk Says He Has Something Much Better



> Super-hero entrepreneur Elon Musk ... is cooking up plans for something he calls the Hyperloop. He won’t share specifics but says it’s some sort of tube capable of taking someone from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. He calls it a “fifth mode of transportation”—the previous four being train, plane, automobile, and boat. “What you want is something that never crashes, that’s at least twice as fast as a plane, that’s solar powered and that leaves right when you arrive, so there is no waiting for a specific departure time,” Musk says. His friends claim he’s had a Hyperloop technological breakthrough over the summer.


The blogosphere has ideas as to what this technology is. I'd be more impressed if the writer could spell vacuum correctly.


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## the_traveler (Sep 17, 2012)

I don't want to go from SF to LA in 30 minutes!




Even a plane can not do that!


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## afigg (Sep 17, 2012)

Elon Musk has been successful with his SpaceX venture. But a "Hyper Loop" transportation system? A completely unproven technology that has likely been demonstrated only on a lab test bench and from that, he thinks a SF-LA system can be built for $8 billion? There is a reason that Maglev has not broken into the marketplace. Diminishing returns on cost, complexity, power consumption for modest trip time savings over HSR. We don't have supersonic passenger airliners any more, we don't have flying cars, we are not driving 300 mph cars and SUVs.


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## George Harris (Sep 17, 2012)

Whether it is bus, train, plane, maglev, monorail, or this whatever-it-is, transportation of people boils down to some container for people with associated amenities for safety and comfort, and some means of moving this container between origin and destination. You then have to attach to this container means of support and propulsion. You then have to have some sort of guideway between origin and destination. If in the air, this is of course provided by the air. You just need a blob of ground at the end points. Otherwise, it requires a strip of land or a hole through the land between end points is necessary. This land component is not given to you. It must be bought. If under the surface, you still have to buy the right to be there from the owners of the land at the surface. The normal concept of land ownership is that it extends to the center of the earth. That is why in case of mining or pumping the mineral rights must be purchased by those doing the extraction. Which also gets around to for a tunnel you have to buy the rights or have some sort of contractual agreement with the mineral rights holder. If you change directions the laws of physics that apply to lateral forces on curves do not care whether the curve is in a road, railroad, maglev, monorail or whatever type of guidway you have, so you cannot magincally turn a small radius curve just because it is other than on rails. yeah, you see much higher levels of cross slope, superelevation, or whatever you want to call it on maglev and monorail tracks, but at some point the reality that unintended stops do occur and you must be able deal with vehicles stopped on curves with high cross slopes will slap you upside the head.

There is no magic here. If the proposed system requires suspension of reality in physics, noise and power issues and being able to obtain land requirements, it is not science, it is science fiction, and not particularly goo science fiction.


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## fairviewroad (Sep 17, 2012)

George Harris said:


> Whether it is bus, train, plane, maglev, monorail, or this whatever-it-is, transportation of people boils down to some container for people with associated amenities for safety and comfort, and some means of moving this container between origin and destination. You then have to attach to this container means of support and propulsion. You then have to have some sort of guideway between origin and destination. If in the air, this is of course provided by the air. You just need a blob of ground at the end points. Otherwise, it requires a strip of land or a hole through the land between end points is necessary. This land component is not given to you. It must be bought. If under the surface, you still have to buy the right to be there from the owners of the land at the surface. The normal concept of land ownership is that it extends to the center of the earth. That is why in case of mining or pumping the mineral rights must be purchased by those doing the extraction. Which also gets around to for a tunnel you have to buy the rights or have some sort of contractual agreement with the mineral rights holder. If you change directions the laws of physics that apply to lateral forces on curves do not care whether the curve is in a road, railroad, maglev, monorail or whatever type of guidway you have, so you cannot magincally turn a small radius curve just because it is other than on rails. yeah, you see much higher levels of cross slope, superelevation, or whatever you want to call it on maglev and monorail tracks, but at some point the reality that unintended stops do occur and you must be able deal with vehicles stopped on curves with high cross slopes will slap you upside the head.
> 
> There is no magic here. If the proposed system requires suspension of reality in physics, noise and power issues and being able to obtain land requirements, it is not science, it is science fiction, and not particularly goo science fiction.


Actually, to get from SF to LA in 30 minutes one does not need land or air...you just need a REALLY fast boat and a blob of ground (as you put it) on either end for the pier.


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## Anderson (Sep 18, 2012)

fairviewroad said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> > Whether it is bus, train, plane, maglev, monorail, or this whatever-it-is, transportation of people boils down to some container for people with associated amenities for safety and comfort, and some means of moving this container between origin and destination. You then have to attach to this container means of support and propulsion. You then have to have some sort of guideway between origin and destination. If in the air, this is of course provided by the air. You just need a blob of ground at the end points. Otherwise, it requires a strip of land or a hole through the land between end points is necessary. This land component is not given to you. It must be bought. If under the surface, you still have to buy the right to be there from the owners of the land at the surface. The normal concept of land ownership is that it extends to the center of the earth. That is why in case of mining or pumping the mineral rights must be purchased by those doing the extraction. Which also gets around to for a tunnel you have to buy the rights or have some sort of contractual agreement with the mineral rights holder. If you change directions the laws of physics that apply to lateral forces on curves do not care whether the curve is in a road, railroad, maglev, monorail or whatever type of guidway you have, so you cannot magincally turn a small radius curve just because it is other than on rails. yeah, you see much higher levels of cross slope, superelevation, or whatever you want to call it on maglev and monorail tracks, but at some point the reality that unintended stops do occur and you must be able deal with vehicles stopped on curves with high cross slopes will slap you upside the head.
> ...


...and a VERY large flood wall at each end to ensure that the water you're pushing out of the way en route doesn't swamp the neighborhood


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