
SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition - dtparr
http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop/
======
guynamedloren
Any engineers or mechanically inclined folks around LA interested in
assembling a team? Let's chat.

About me: full stack software engineer with a degree in Systems Engineering
from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I work on classic cars and build
shit with my hands when I'm not coding. I'm into efficiency, and I loooove the
idea of building a better, faster cheaper CA high-speed railway.

~~~
nether
I'm an aeromechanical engineer around LA and might be interested in
contributing some design/analysis work in a non-leadership role. Current work
is in structural analysis, interested in aerodynamics though (was my master's
concentration years ago).

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michaelbarton
This immediately reminded me of the early days of steam when, very similarly,
at Rainhill a one mile test track of railway was constructed and people were
invited to compete their different locomotives. The winner was Stevenson's
rocket which amazed the large crowd by travelling at a heady top speed of
30mph.

An "also ran" was the amusing cycloped, the only non-steam entry, a horse on
top of a treadmill walking the carriage forward.

~~~
abc_lisper
Hoping you were not old enough to know this first hand ;)

This is fascinating? Where did you come across this info?

~~~
michaelbarton
There's an excellent book on the start of the railways "Fire and Steam: A New
History of the Railways in Britain". It's very interesting and full of side
stories about how people adapted to the start of the steam age.

For example the one of the first railway lines was more like a toll road. A
company built the tracks, and then other companies paid to run their
locomotives on them. This lead to chaos where two locomotives would meet on
the single track, neither was willing to back up, and so the passengers would
often get out and fight each other over it.

~~~
abc_lisper
>> neither was willing to back up, and so the passengers would often get out
and fight each other over it.

Hahahaha..

------
marbogast40
Wait But Why - Tim Urban's take:
[http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/hyperloop.html](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/hyperloop.html)

~~~
camenk
Thanks for the article. I'm really hopeful that this competition will bring
out something on the table (maybe a prototype).

It would be really nice to be able to travel between nearby cities in the US
without spending hours driving / flying. Flying itself is not really bad if
it's not because of the time you need to waste until you actually fly.

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lisper
> SpaceX will construct a one-mile test track adjacent to our Hawthorne,
> California headquarters

I'm not sure which would be the more remarkable achievement, getting the
Hyperloop working, or obtaining the real estate to build a mile-long test
track in _Hawthorne_.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They could use what I will call a rocket-estate crash coupling:

1\. "Accidentally" crash a rocket near some properties there (far enough not
to do any actual damage).

2\. Wait for said property prices to crash.

~~~
impish19
You can't be serious.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Can't I?

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dtparr
I thought this was an interesting tidbit from the linked rules pdf:

> In addition to hosting the competition, SpaceX will likely build a pod for
> demonstration purposes only. This team will not be eligible to win.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I think that's admirable, and doesn't strike me as out of the ordinary for
Elon. SpaceX has some remarkable engineering talent (which also transfers tech
to Tesla; see their friction stir welding technique that is used by both
companies now).

It wouldn't be fair for SpaceX to be able to win.

~~~
dtparr
I agree SpaceX recusing itself from winning its own competition is the right
thing, but the bit I found interesting was just that they were building a pod
as well as the track, putting even more skin in the metaphorical game.

I've had projects before where I came up with an interesting idea but
dismissed it as too costly (in time or money or what have you), but it stuck
in my head. So then, well maybe I'll just do a quick proof of concept... And
then, well, maybe I can hack something a bit more complete together.
Eventually, despite myself, it makes it to being a fully formed thing just
because it was so interesting I couldn't ignore it.

I'm wondering if the Hyperloop is going to be that sort of thing for Elon et
al.

~~~
kiba
Elon Musk doesn't have the time to learn civil engineering, property
development, let alone the politics surrounding it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
After Elon said "fuck it" and built his own rocket motors after getting
screwed by the Russians, I don't see him wasting any time with politics or
property development (who I'd argue would be leeches/vultures trying to
extract their tax on the project).

He's just commission 2-4 TBMs (tunnel boring machines, about ~$20MM/each),
drop them in the ground, and have them start digging hyperloop tunnels.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think it's reasonable to expect at this point that there would be quite a
lot of people willing to help Musk battle various leeches and vultures.

~~~
dragonwriter
And a quite a lot of people presenting themselves that way will _be_ various
leeches and vultures.

~~~
toomuchtodo
How do we differentiate them then?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Probably those willing to do it pro bono would be ok.

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loceng
I'm really happy to see Tesla and SpaceX being run properly as platforms.
Clearly Elon Musk has a great understanding of platforms with his online
involvement with PayPal, however there aren't as obvious examples of it
occurring in the physical product world; there are attempts though they seem
more to control a user's behaviour and entrench people into a recurring
business model than actually disrupting an unmanaged-disorganized system.

Platforms that generate a lot of value from APIs succeed by getting developer
adoption by running things like hackathons - and this effort seems no
different. Kudos.

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imglorp
I wonder what they will do about claustrophobia?

> The capsule itself would need to be small—4.43ft (1.35m) wide and only
> 3.61ft (1.10m) high. No standing room

No windows, pod inside a metal tube, seats reclined with minimal head room.
There's no rational reason to panic in that position, but many people will not
be comfortable. Video displays might help, but only to a point.

~~~
cloudwalking
VR goggles.

~~~
unoti
I was about to say that sounds even _more_ vomit-inducing, when you consider
all the g-forces going on, and then add goggles on top of it. But then, if the
g-forces match what the passenger is seeing through the goggles, that could
actually be less vomit-inducing maybe? It's an interesting idea. I personally
find the idea of spending an hour in a tiny enclosed space with no ability to
move to be quite disturbing, and I'm not sure if the idea of doing it with VR
goggles makes that less disturbing or more.

~~~
andrewchambers
Why are there lots of G forces? once you are at cruising speed it might not
feel like you are moving at all.

------
Animats
The original Hyperloop system was supposed to be powered by linear induction
motors spaced along the track. The pod doesn't have propulsion capability,
except maybe an emergency system. So the pod/track interface is pretty much
set by the propulsion system.

For trains, linear induction motors have usually been paired with magnetic
levitation, as in the Transrapid system. But they don't have to be. Many
roller coasters with a linear induction motor launch system have been built;
Flight of Fear at King's Dominion, by Premiere Rides, was the first, in 1996.
For a 1-mile test track, outsourcing the whole job to Premiere Rides or
Intamin would be a good move. Intamin, which mostly makes amusement park
rides, also has a transportation division. They build monorail systems.
Intamin would just have to combine the car design from their P8 monorail[1]
with their linear induction motor launch system.[2] By Intamin standards, a
fast 1 mile loop with no hills is easy. ("We can put in a vertical loop for a
small extra charge...")

[1]
[http://www.intaminworldwide.com/transportation/Home/news/Sha...](http://www.intaminworldwide.com/transportation/Home/news/Shanghai/tabid/203/language/de-
DE/Default.aspx) [2]
[http://www.intaminworldwide.com/amusement/RollerCoasters/LSM...](http://www.intaminworldwide.com/amusement/RollerCoasters/LSM+Launch+Coaster/tabid/138/ProductNumber/LSM+Launch+Coaster/language/de-
DE/Default.aspx)

~~~
tallerholler
as an aside, holy crap that website is terrible!

------
martinald
The projections of capacity seem way too low. It says it can do
840passengers/hour.

In the UK each 11 car train on the West Coast Mainline can take about 600
passengers seated + maybe slightly over 100 more standing. So around 700. We
have 3 trains per hour between London and Birmingham, which adds up to a rough
capacity of 2200 per hour.

This doesn't even take into account the multitude of slower trains that go
between the two cities.

All these trains are generally congested as hell at peak (and increasingly off
peak).

How is 840 passengers/hour enough for two big cities? I would assume making
each pod bigger and heavier would require a greater stopping distance between
them so the only way I can see to add more capacity is to build parallel
hyperloops. At that point you've got the land take and the expense that comes
with it.

~~~
DuskStar
To be fair, Birmingham <-> London is 125 miles, while Los Angeles <-> San
Francisco is 380 miles. A better comparison would be Edinburgh <-> London, at
410 miles or so. At those distances, required capacity probably drops off.

~~~
martinald
Well, there's between one and two trains per hour between London and
Edinburgh, each holding about 600 people. So that's more just on train
capacity, and there's up to 53 flights a day between London and Edinburgh. So
that's another 6000ish seats per day.

Just doesn't add up.

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zacharypinter
Very cool announcement.

It strikes me that this is a pretty good insurance policy against a poor
implementation of Hyperloop being used as an argument against its feasibility.
SpaceX/Musk gets to put out a proof of concept track and pod without
committing to building the full thing themselves.

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jcchin41
For those interested in getting a better handle on the vehicle thermodynamics,
see[1]. Feel free to play around with the open-source python model here[2]

[1]
[https://mdao.grc.nasa.gov/publications/AIAA-2015-1587.pdf](https://mdao.grc.nasa.gov/publications/AIAA-2015-1587.pdf)

[2] [https://github.com/OpenMDAO-
Plugins/Hyperloop](https://github.com/OpenMDAO-Plugins/Hyperloop)

[3] [http://www.popsci.com/hyped-up-startups-race-hyperloop-
life](http://www.popsci.com/hyped-up-startups-race-hyperloop-life)

~~~
bsdetector
For those of us who aren't aeronautical engineers... if you just covered a
normal expressway with a half tube, wouldn't the air start moving along with
the vehicles and greatly decrease the drag at high speeds, making higher
speeds more economical? Or at what point does the vacuum and ratio of vehicle
to tube size make hyperloop work out, but a simple enclosed highway doesn't?

~~~
Swannie
IANA engineer...

Only if the vehicles are self propelling from the ground, and if you refer
back to trains really they are just pushing air in front of them, with some
air escaping past them.

If there were not ventilation systems to allow the air behind the train to be
filled, the train would need to work harder to essentially pull the air behind
it.

At least, that's my understanding.

If the vehicles are not self propelling from the ground, and propel with air,
like the original hyper-loop proposal, they are actually pushing air backwards
to their direction of motion, which would stop any such forward moving air
flow develop.

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omegant
The 9 engineering points at the end of the text, are very important and
extremely dificult each one of them.

I would add a pod decompression, and the emergency braking emergencies. Common
oxigen masks don't work above 50000' and you can not dissipate the kinetic
energy of a pod traveling at 900km/h just by friction without a brake fire.

~~~
MertsA
> you can not dissipate the kinetic energy of a pod traveling at 900km/h just
> by friction without a brake fire.

Sure you can, just use water stored onboard to cool the brakes. Obviously the
only case when you would need to use friction brakes in the hyperloop is in an
emergency so we're fine with just boiling away the water into the steel tube.
It takes 2,261 KJ per kg to boil water in the vacuum of the tube and assuming
a pod weighs in at 1000 kg and is travelling 300 m/s that gives us 45 MJ of
kinetic energy to deal with. That comes out to just under 20 kg of water to
stop a 1000 kg pod moving 300 m/s. That's a decent size tank when considering
the form factor of a hyperloop pod but still doable.

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fitzwatermellow
They plan on releasing the full requirements for the final design in Aug, but
the rules document includes some example technical questions. Most
calculations I imagine can be estimated using college physics and mechanics:
drag coefficient, pneumatic pressure, heat flux, etc. But I'm curious if
anyone has any references specific to air compresser propulsion systems? I'm
thinking it would make a nice WebGL simulation that shows the relationship
between speed and heat generated ;)

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myth_buster
For those who couldn't access the site:

    
    
      Webpage screen grab [0]
      Guidelines [1]
    

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/iq3W18x.png](http://i.imgur.com/iq3W18x.png)

[1]
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/18IkkbuxMbrzaVKHRnqXqtWimxF5...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/18IkkbuxMbrzaVKHRnqXqtWimxF5FfiBwo27WMgtvTstKQMWpHVL37LScQxx7Q_LryBuqfgPs9WNhrZ1D/view?usp=sharing)

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ljk
> _Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies_

what does that mean? Didn't they come up with the idea of hyperloop?

~~~
GeneralMayhem
For things like this, "affiliated" usually has a very precise legal
definition, which means that they don't help each other with research and
they're not financially invested. It means they're not cheating by entering
their friends (or themselves) in the competition. Compare with the small print
on most lotteries and contests, e.g. Google Code Jam:

> You cannot participate in the Contest if... you are a current employee
> (including intern), contractor, officer, or director, of Google or its
> affiliates.

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robin_reala
Site was erroring when I visited; Google cache is here:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.sp...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.spacex.com%2Fhyperloop%2F)

------
capkutay
Does anyone know about the relationship between SpaceX and Hyperloop
Technologies? It looks like Hyperloop Tech has a lot of ex SpaceX
engineers/execs, but they don't seem to have an active partnership with Musk
or SpaceX

------
mixmastamyk
If it works well, I'd like to see these in LA or other big cities too, not
just long distance. Would be great to get on one of these and end up at the
beach in Santa Monica at high speed instead of suffering through traffic.

~~~
netfire
Would a Hyperloop system work well in a system with frequent stops, where you
wouldn't be able to get up to full-speed because you needed to stop and the
stops could disrupt other express traffic. Would you really be gaining that
much over other traditional rail transportation options?

It seems like the strength of the Hyperloop is extremely fast travel over long
distances. Personally, I think having a line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles
would be awesome, as the traffic can be horrible on that route, especially on
weekends and probably significantly affects traffic in LA in general. Its also
around 100 miles less than the LA to SF route, through mostly undeveloped
desert, so it could be a lot cheaper to build.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I think it would, however I didn't realize until now how small the tubes and
cars are, might make a metro-type system challenging. Or, it could be widened
for metro usage, like the disneyland monorail.

~~~
netfire
Yeah, I wondered if some sort of on-ramp/off-ramp or multi-lane system might
work, but given the distance it would take to get up to full-speed (or
decrease speed to stop), that could greatly increase the cost of construction,
especially if there are a lot of stations.

For the Hyperloop to make any sense in a shorter distance metro setting, you'd
probably want to have no stops between where you start and your destination.
(So you might go directly from Anaheim to Santa Monica, for example) With
smaller cars/trains, this may be possible (since you might be able to fill
trains quickly enough to not make people wait too long), but potentially very
expensive to build enough lanes to manage that amount of traffic with greatly
varying speeds efficiently.

Without that sort of system, however, I think the additional stops would delay
you so much that the gain over a traditional metro train would be small and
not worth the extra expense of building it.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Looks like it would be a lot cheaper than an underground metro though. But
perhaps a standard monorail would be better for short distances.

------
revelation
It seems like theres way too little information here to build anything.

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databound
It's funny they are building a 1 mile test track but don't have any interest
in running with the idea... seems pretty committed at this point.

------
moey
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies.
While we are not developing a commercial Hyperloop ourselves, we are
interested in helping to accelerate development of a functional Hyperloop
prototype."

I thought Elon wanted to create the Hyperloop. Here I was thinking I would see
it in the next 5-10 years :(

~~~
dtparr
I think he wants it to be created by someone, but my recollection is that when
he announced the plans he specifically said he didn't have time to do it
himself and wanted others to take the ball and run with it.

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SapphireSun
Hey Boston, want to join a feasibility meeting I'm setting up? Email me. :)

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jackreichert
I'm finding the center alignment of the text bothersome.

Aside from that, very cool!

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CodeSheikh
"Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies" Yet
it is hosted on spacex.com. I love the project but I hate the legalities here.
What does that mean? If something bad happens during operation then these
aforementioned entities cant be held responsible.

~~~
vidarh
It means what it says. Various people have formed companies to try to
commercialise the Hyperloop concept. SpaceX and Elon Musk are not affiliated
with them.

SpaceX and Elon Musk _are_ behind this competition.

