
Elon Musk and the Hyperloop  - snippyhollow
http://jacquesmattheij.com/elon-musk-and-the-hyperloop
======
netcan
If/when self-driving cars succeed in being ready for public consumption, I
think a huge opening for revolutions in transportation gets opened up.

\- If you can _call_ your car, it can park farther away. Parking is one of the
biggest problems with cars in urban areas.

\- Instead of calling of _your_ car, you could just call _a_ car. A self
driving car and a self driving taxi are pretty similar, but one can run 24hrs
and reduce the parking problem more.

\- Computers can do things people can't do. Once enough auto-automobiles are
out there, there can be autoauto only "features". The same square footage of
tarmac might be able to move cars much quicker. Maybe autoautos can handle
200km speeds. Maybe they can cooperate to make traffic smoother. Maybe they
can link together like trains to overcome congestion.

There is nothing quite as good as having a car to take you exactly to and from
where you want to go. If self driving cars can really mix with human drivers
everywhere they may have a nice smooth path to innovate on gradually. Big
vision plans for revolutionizing transport are so centralized, so
premeditated.

edit: one more thing. self driving cars interact in an interesting way with
public/mass trasport, especially if people dont own their own. It may reduce
the demand by competing more directly on one hand. OTOH, it will compliment by
providing the last-mile component.

~~~
WhaleBiologist
It would be awesome to call a random car any time you want, but I hate to
think of the mess some people would leave in it once they were done with it.

~~~
mseebach2
You can never avoid this, but take an approach like ZipCar:
<http://www.zipcar.com/how/faqs/how-are-cars-cleaned>

In almost two years of being a ZipCar client, I've never had any issues. Yes,
the occasional coke can or candy wrapper left behind, but never a mess that I
thought to be unreasonable.

If it turns out to be a bigger problem, install a camera that takes a shot
when you take possession of the car, and when you relinquish it. Charge the
renters credit card for messiness.

~~~
MiguelHudnandez
> install a camera that takes a shot when you take possession of the car, and
> when you relinquish it.

Such a system would be good to have anyway as part of a dashcam. One facing
forward, and a fish-eye facing the rear window and also capturing the interior
of the car. I am hoping that car insurance companies will start offering
discounts for cars with installed dashcams.

A tangent of a tangent now, this would be great (though creepy) for public
restrooms. Given that there's a physical method, like positioning on the door,
that prohibits it from seeing anything while the stall door is closed or
locked, I think it would cut down on the seriously depraved messes people
leave behind when they know they can get away with it.

------
schiffern
How can anyone possibly suggest that this would be _cheaper_ than high-speed
rail? If you're going 1150 mph ("average speed twice as fast as a commercial
jet"), the curve radius is going to be immense – _90 km_ to maintain <0.3
lateral g. This will constrain your right-of-way selection _vastly_ more than
the HSR project Musk scoffs at.

And, of course, the skin friction on a 2.5 meter tunnel would be immense.
Using a duct friction loss calculator I get 285 megawatts of loss over the
entire tube. You need two tubes. At 120,000 passengers/day (HSR estimate), it
would take 114 kWh per trip. That's worst than the Model S, hardly an system
in which "the fundamental energy cost is _so much lower_ " than a car.

No, the "theoretically fastest way" to go from Point A to Point B is a great-
circle vacuum train connecting them. A launch loop does essentially that, but
exploits the vacuum above our heads instead. It just fits better.

Any hyperloop theory needs to deal with supersonic speeds – LA-SF as the crow
flies in 30 minutes is _just_ under the wire for subsonic speeds. Elon said
"under 30 minutes." There are mountains in the way.

~~~
ChuckMcM
One of the interesting things about Jacques speculation is that if you move
the pressurized air with the capsules they never go super sonic, the air is
moving with them and their motion relative to that air is pretty constrained.
The duct friction issue however is a serious issue.

It could be a giant hack of course, it could be Elon _saying_ he knows how to
do it when he doesn't and getting all these great ideas to pour out. Or he
could die and it would be his 'last company' legacy like Fermat's last
theorem, sort of "Wow, really elegant way to do that, won't quite fit in the
margin here though."

~~~
leoedin
In aerodynamics, everything is relative. If you, plus a bunch of air are
moving at supersonic speeds through a pipe, then that looks exactly the same
as if you're moving a pipe at supersonic speeds over static you.

~~~
graeham
I think what Chuck meant was that the speed of sound increases with pressure,
so the pressure wave in front of the capsule would cause the transition speed
to supersonic to be higher. I'm not sure this is a good thing though from a
drag perspective, but could be if it keeps the flow under ~0.8 Mach.
Definately the complexity of the fluid dynamics at high speeds can't be
neglected.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)#Wave_drag_in_tra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_\(physics\)#Wave_drag_in_transonic_and_supersonic_flow)

~~~
ChuckMcM
You're both right, at the boundary layer between the volume of air you're
pushing and the tunnel there is going to be a bit of turbulence given the
viscosity of the air, within the bubble you may never exceed the mach number
for the air around you. Excellent paper put out by Barrett on designing long
range sniper rifles [1] talking about the issues have having the bullet not be
deflected by leaving the barrel (where even though its travelling quite fast
it has yet to exceed the mach number of the expanding gas around it) and the
ambient atmosphere (where the air is 'still' to the now speeding bullet).
Needless to say the paper lost me in the fluid dynamics of the barrel air
mixing with the outer air but they seemed pretty clear that inside the barrel
things were pretty linear up to that point.

Anyway, what ever it turns out to be I'm sure it will be cool.

[1] My Dad is an engraver with an FFL and gets all sorts of interesting things
in the mail. Usually to engrave, but the promotional literature is cool too.

------
btilly
I think that you ALMOST have it. You've even explained the following
tantalizing quote from July: _I think we could actually make it self-powering
if you put solar panels on it, you generate more power than you would consume
in the system. There's a way to store the power so it would run 24/7 without
using batteries. Yes, this is possible, absolutely._ The cars in the loop
store power. A lot of it.

Now why do I say almost? Let's make one small modification. Let's put a lot of
one way flaps in the tube so that it is easy for a puff of air to blow out,
but not so easy for air to come back in. There would be leakage, but that is
going to be OK.

As each car comes by, it piles up air in front of it that blows out of the
flaps. Then the flaps fall back, and maintains a partial vacuum. The partial
vacuum is no problem for people because there is a pile of air in front of
their car that can be tapped for breathing air, that can then be released
backwards, where it circulates through the tube (and probably out the flap).

This makes his evacuated tube comment even more of a teasing joke. No, the
tube is not evacuated. Nor did you pump air out of it. But it winds up almost
evacuated. However it is still fine for breathing.

Now the point is that reduced air pressure inside of the tunnel significantly
reduces drag caused by the air dragging on the edges of the tunnel and being
pushed by the cars. This does a lot to make the whole thing massively more
efficient. Elon's claim is then that it is efficient enough that it can be
powered by solar panels placed on the tube.

My big question is how hot it will be. There may be very little gas in the
tube, but that gas will be very, very hot. Over time the cars will heat up as
well. So you'd need to have the cars regularly coming in and out of the system
so that they would have time to cool down.

The practical difficulties in building this are immense. But I do not see any
physical reason why it is impossible.

~~~
jacquesm
hey Ben, I think that the gas won't get too hot because it has all of the
surface of the sheath to cool it. But that's a precarious balance, and it will
need some pretty good book keeping to make sure that all the power generated
on a stretch 'x' meters long gets radiated out from the tube to keep the
temperature stable.

As for the flaps, you're right, I didn't think that bit through, I'm not quite
sure what the best solution would be there. But if that's the only thing wrong
with what I sketched I'll be pretty happy.

~~~
btilly
The problem is that if you're moving fast against a cool surface, friction
does more to make you hot than conduction does to make you cool. Furthermore
even if the gas was room temperature, the air touching the car has just been
compressed by a shock wave. Rapidly compressing gas makes it become very, very
hot. Because of both effects, the car is going to be permanently exposed to
very hot gas.

But I'm sure Elon has thought about that aspect and it is solvable.

~~~
jacquesm
Hm, tricky. Somehow you'd think that that part of the gas that is exposed to
friction is limited to the portion that was slowed down by the interaction
with the wall, and that the rest of the gas would not be subject to this
because it is moving at roughly the same speed as the carriages.

During the acceleration phase this would definitely be an issue, the gas in
front of the carriage would be compressed because the carriage is moving much
faster than that body of gas. But that (hot) gas could be dumped just prior to
insertion of the carriage into the tube.

Maybe the outside of the 'sheath' could be made from a heatsink like profile?
I haven't given the thermodynamics of the thing much thought, I was basically
just trying to figure out a solution that would not require some far-out
technology.

I know that lots of people like to link space with Elon Musk but I think he's
much more practical than that, space is a means for him to get to mars and
Nasa a convenient way to finance it.

Other than that Tesla doesn't have anything to do with space and is ground
transportation, I don't see any reason to go into low earth orbit with all the
associated risks if you could do the whole thing on the ground and be:

    
    
      - safer
    
      - as fast
    
      - not have the energy expenditure of having to work 
        against gravity
    
      - easier to maintain
    
      - shorter path 
    

The thermodynamics of having 'slugs' running around a tube are beyond what I
can easily compute back of the envelope style, the only thing I see is that
the amount of power put in to the system would have to be radiated out somehow
or you'll end with a net gain in energy.

That's mostly a surface area increase problem, the air over a highway is
notably warmer than the air around it simply because all those cars dump the
combined energy of burning all their fuel into the environment. If you can
reduce the energy input into the system then you'll reduce the amount of
energy you have to get rid of afterwards. So I can see that reducing that
input energy is really important and that changing the speed of the cars is
brutal in this respect because it causes the air behind it to pile up against
it (heating it up) when decelerating (but the air in front would cool down due
to expansion) and vice versa.

It's an interesting problem and if I wouldn't have a ton of other stuff to do
I'd happily cook up a simulator for this.

~~~
btilly
I have figured out a solution to the heat problem, but it looks rather
different.

I'll do a blog post later today with it. But now I have to get my daughter to
school.

~~~
btilly
Blog post posted to [http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/11/speculating-about-
hyper...](http://bentilly.blogspot.com/2012/11/speculating-about-
hyperloop.html) and with any luck there will be discussion about my version of
the idea at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4815665>.

------
graeham
“Cheaper than high speed rail” - why is high speed rail expensive? I believe
because precision contact between rail and wheel is required. How would this
be done cheaper in a tunnel?

One issue with a tunnel is that even if the air and carriages are moving at
the same speed, there is still drag or friction between the air and the wall
of the tunnel by Poissiulle's law. At the proposed speeds (~300km/h) and
distances (600km), this becomes a lot, and higher pressures (if my quick
calculations are right) lead to higher energy requirements through higher air
density.

In a vacuum, this friction would not exist. I can post my calcs if there is
interest - I used a Moody chart and Darcy's friction equation, and ended up
with an energy requirement that there would have to be ~80 million carriages
going each way to be as efficient as a Telsa roadster, and neglecting any
other losses.

~~~
jacquesm
600 kilometers / 80 million carriages gives me 7.5 mm per carriage length so I
think there is a bit of a problem with that calculation.

The limiting case is when the whole tube is full of carriages, say they're 4
meters long that would mean there are a maximum of 150,000 carriages in that
600 Km long tube at absolute maximum capacity, something that you probably
should not want to get close to.

More realistically, a regular roadway has a spacing of about 30 meters per
vehicle at 60 Mph, you _might_ be able to pack them in that tight in a tube
like this but that's still pretty tight and leaves very little room for error
when shifting carriages in and out of the loop.

At that spacing you could stuff (600,000 / 34) = 17650 carriages in (none of
those assembled into impromptu trains, which of course would increase the
density).

If we assume train like assemblies of 10 cars with 30 meter spacing you'd be
looking at a 40 meter train + spacing is 70 meters, or 8500 trains, so 85000
carriages.

Those would then be pushing a column of of air 30 meters long ahead of them.

~~~
graeham
I was trying to compare the energy required to overcome friction of the air
against the tunnel to driving the route conventionally. 80 million is an
excessive number to expect want to travel at one time, which implies that
driving is much more efficient from an energy required perspective.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, I got that, but the fact that there isn't room in there for that many
carriages means that the friction can't be that high. Unless there is a way in
which the friction in a tube is so high that the little bit of air surrounding
the vehicle would exert that much drag on the tunnel wall (so one vehicle
length + say a few mm distance to the tunnel wall).

I'm not sure what the figure should be but this seems very high.

~~~
graeham
When fluids flow, there is a `no slip` condition at surfaces - that is the
velocity of fluid at a surface is the same as the surface`s velocity. So in a
stationary tunnel, the fluid may be moving at an average of 300 meters per
second, but will be stationary at the wall. This makes a shear stress in the
fluid and is what causes drag. In fact, making the air gap between the
carraige and wall smaller will increase this drag since there is less distance
for this transition to happen between stopped and fully moving air.

Consider if each carriage is pulling 30m of air a long distance at great
speed. Consider if instead of the air moving against a stationary tunnel, a 30
meter section of tunnel was moving at the same distance and speed through
stationary air. The drag on this would be high, much higher than a car at
highway speeds.

~~~
lazyjones
What if it isn't air, but an actual fluid, e.g. water? It cannot be
compressed, so it's "crash proof" (carriages cannot hit other carriages with
water in between). It also has plenty of mass, so once it has started moving,
it will push carriages around easily. A torus with permanently moving water
(probably a more high-tech fluid), where carriages are injected / removed
after acceleration / before deceleration?

~~~
graeham
Both liquids and gasses are fluids and drag is worse in water than air, so the
energy required would only be higher. Consider: is it harder to push your hand
through the air or a tub of water?

~~~
lazyjones
> Consider: is it harder to push your hand through the air or a tub of water?

Consider a tub of water moving at the desired speed...

------
jusben1369
Everyone's assuming Musk has the answer and we're guessing at it. I feel like
he's prompting the world to create the answer. True leadership at its finest.
Define the problem, broad brush what the solution could and should be and then
watch minds go to work.

~~~
majorlazer
I don't think that this is what he is doing but this definitely crossed my
mind over the past few weeks. It's pretty awesome how inspiring a person like
Elon could be. A year ago, the general public and geek community didn't really
talk all that much about alternative modes of transportation. Now, all because
of Musk, everyone is all of a sudden trying to come with a new idea.

------
Tloewald
Didn't he say in the Ariane 5 is dead interview that it's a cross between a
Concorde and a rail gun, so think super streamlined glider, launched by
maglev, captured by maglev (recovering some energy energy on capture). High
speed rail without most of the rail.

The big issue would be air traffic control at launch and landing. 600 m/s
(Mach 2) at 0.5g acceleration would require 36km of launch rail which is kind
of a lot. But you could loop the track and reduce the acceleration to make up
for centripetal forces — a 200m radius loop might be about right, and once you
use a loop you can go a lot faster (and this explains the name: hypersonic
loop).

I suppose it might skip short distances requiring pylons or something for
speed top ups and travel at lower speed.

------
monk_e_boy
Problems:

Digging a tunnel takes years and cost billions (see London underground new
tunnel <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16320945>)

Making the tunnel fit the carrage = no room for emergency

Security (terrorists + bomb = nightmare at speed of sound)

Windows? What would you look at?

If he thinking of just goods (not people) then some of these problems are much
simpler - the tunnel could be less than 1m in radius.

My wild idea is that he is going to us a rail gun to fire drones up a couple
of KM into the air, these then glide down to mini airports. Replace freight
railroads.

~~~
jacquesm
You don't have to dig. Just place the metal shell on posts like an oil
pipeline.

~~~
Swannie
People don't like windmills because they are "ugly".

They don't like power-lines in the country side.

They certainly wouldn't like a 2.5M+ diameter tube running around. In London,
56% (IIRC) of the "Underground" is above ground, much of that above road
level.

~~~
monk_e_boy
we have a lot of wind turbines where I live. You get a strobe sounds of wuh-
wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh if you are down wind of them. They are noisy. Also, if the
sunlight catches them you also get a strobe reflection off them. That is also
horrible.

There is a farmer who has 2 turbines up, he lives on the far side of a hill
about a km away - you can still hear those whoosh-whoosh-whoosh all day long.
Painful.

Powerlines also run over a lot of campsites near my house, you can hear them
hummmmmm and crackle. In the damp/rain/mist/fog you can hear a lot of
crackling and humming from them.

I can understand why people get angry with them. In urban areas where there is
a lot of noise, I guess you wouldn't notice it so much.

Off topic, but my sister worked in a place where they put the magnets into
wind turbines. There was a loud crash one day, someone had a magnet on a
pallet, lifted it with a forklift and drove it out to a van. Half way the
magnet got sucked by another magnet (in one of the factories) and burst
through the wall and the two clamped together. They never got them apart and
had to take the remaining bits of the turbine apart from around them.

~~~
jacquesm
> Off topic, but my sister worked in a place where they put the magnets into
> wind turbines. There was a loud crash one day, someone had a magnet on a
> pallet, lifted it with a forklift and drove it out to a van. Half way the
> magnet got sucked by another magnet (in one of the factories) and burst
> through the wall and the two clamped together. They never got them apart and
> had to take the remaining bits of the turbine apart from around them.

What city was this in? Which manufacturer?

------
shin_lao
Interesting speculation by Jacques, but I think the combination of rail run
and Concorde is a rail gun that fires hypersonic motor-less capsules that
glide to destination.

Smaller landing zones, no air pollution, much less noise...

It's also a good combination of Telsa (rail gun) and SpaceX (rockets can be
seen as motorized slugs).

Only limit I see with this system is that I'm not sure anyone could withstand
the acceleration.

~~~
Gravityloss
A sling would be much better for this: it's much smaller than a huge gun and
also more flexible since the direction and elevation can be changed by
altering the release point and axis.

Centripetal acceleration is a = v^2 / r so for 300 m/s (about mach 1) speeds,
for 1 gee centripetal acceleration you'd need 9 km radius.

~~~
cpeterso
Maybe this sling is the "loop" in Hyperloop.

------
Tichy
However, somehow using pressurized tubes for mail failed in the long run. I
find those very fascinating, and apparently once upon a time some big cities
were actually connected with a lot of such pressure tubes for sending mail.
But apparently they were too unreliable and ended up going into oblivion.

Would be interesting if some of them could be resurrected somehow.

Another idea for improving transport: with modern technology better routing
should be possible. Instead of all people boarding the same train that stops
at every station, why not only board a carriage that goes directly to your
destination? That could save a lot of time, I think.

~~~
kokey
I think your second idea is closer to what I think matches the things known
about Hyperloop. I am convinced that electric (or hybrid) cars that self drive
along beacons is the obvious next step in human urban transportation. These
follow loops, like bus routes, that will pick you up when you get to a
location along the loop since you have requested it (e.g. phone app) and drop
you off at say a station, or another loop intersection where you can get into
another loop vehicle, a loop bus or train at a scheduled and managed time. It
can send the right size and amount of vehicles out of the depot into loop
depending on how many people want to get on during a cycle, it can park the
electric vehicles to charge at the right time. To the user it's a matter of
saying 'I want to get to the conference at 9am' and the system will tell him
what time a car will pick him up at his chosen pickup point.

~~~
Tichy
Absolutely, and since Musk has an electric car company, something along those
lines might be quite realistic. For electric cars used in that way, charging
would not be an issue, as it would not be the burden of private car owners.

I just had another thought, although maybe a bit ridiculous: the main issue
with "public cars" to me seems to me hygienic, how to keep them clean. What if
in the future instead of owning whole cars, you only own a capsule with seats
that can be picked up by transporters? I'd still prefer a world where parked
car things are completely gone, but such capsules might still save a lot of
space in the meantime.

------
dcosson
One thing not mentioned here is speed. Musk has said this could go from LA to
San Francisco in 30 minutes, which is an average speed of ~700 mph - slightly
faster than a commercial airliner but in the same ballpark. I'm definitely not
an expert in fluid dynamics, but it seems like safely maintaining that speed
in a tube at atmospheric pressure would be difficult. Maybe there's some way
to design the shape of the pods such that there's a very stable equilibrium
keeping it away from the walls. Or you could potentially use a magnetic field
to do this (similar to a tokamak) but that seems be trickier and more
expensive than a mag-lev rail.

An evacuated tube has the advantage of being much more stable at high speeds
and avoids the issue of excess heat from repeatedly compressing and expanding
the air in the tube.

In any case, great read. I almost wonder if Musk has thrown this idea out
half-baked just to get more people to start thinking outside the box about
transportation...

~~~
stcredzero
_> Or you could potentially use a magnetic field to do this (similar to a
tokamak) but that seems be trickier and more expensive than a mag-lev rail._

Using Halbach arrays would do it, without any active control.

------
minikomi
Interesting.. What if if gets shot one direction, presurizing something, which
it uses to shoot back the other direction

    
    
       waiting for passenger
         SF  [||| <> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  ] LA
         pressurized     -->  pretty spaced out "stuff"  
                          
         SF [-| - |- |-  |- <>-| - |- |- -| - |- |- ] LA
                                in transit..
    
         SF [ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  <> ||| ] LA
                                        <-   presurized for return

~~~
leoedin
Just like everything else in life the system would be subject to the laws of
thermodynamics. The act of pressurising air would heat it up, and heat loss
would mean that it wouldn't be fully reversible.

I suspect that a fully evacuated system using magnetic propulsion and energy
recovery would be more efficient - the turbulent nature of air and the low-
quality nature of heat energy would probably work against you to make a
pneumatic spring fairly inefficient.

~~~
aptwebapps
I don't think there's much doubt that an evacuated tube would be very
efficient. Not only that, but you could go much faster. Jacques has rejected
that hypothesis for other reasons.

~~~
dllthomas
_"Jacques has rejected that hypothesis for other reasons."_

Specifically, due to a specific statement that it is not an evacuated tube.

~~~
aptwebapps
Well, yes, but he also supplied some arguments why his idea might be better
which is what I was referring to.

------
jws
Moving the air through the tunnel addresses the capsule drag, but now you have
drag between your moving air and the tunnel wall, which depending on the
distance between vehicles is going to be a larger loss.

Yacht designers refer to the "wetted area" component of drag, and an entire
tunnel wall is a heck of a lot of wetted area.

~~~
jacquesm
Would it be possible to run a partial vacuum just in the space between the
vehicle and the tunnel wall, for instance by having the vehicle body be
slightly curved away from the wall except at the end points?

------
robomartin
I think everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room.

This is a long story, but I'll try to keep it very short. Anyone interested
contact me off-list for far more details and an unfinished paper with some of
my research.

A couple of years ago my son and I were watching a documentary on the subject
of concrete. It was very interesting. They covered a wide range of topics but
one of them really started to trigger my curiosity: The Panama Canal.

I don't know why, but I became very interested in the financial metrics
surrounding the canal. How much does it cost to cross it? How long does it
take? How many ships cross it per year? Where do they come from? Where do they
go?

The more I learned the more the reality of the Canal horrified me. Why?

The bulk of the commercial traffic through the Canal are container ships. And
these ships burn something very nasty: Bunker Fuel. This is, by almost any
measure, the dirtiest fuel you could burn. it's horrible stuff.

When I started to do the math I started to realize the magnitude of the
problem. These ships move at about 20 miles per hour. They could go faster but
there's a balance between the high cost of hydrodynamic drag and fuel costs. A
trip from Shanghai to Long Beach takes about 18 days and will burn somewhere
in the range of 3,600 to 7,200 metric tons of fuel. For those not comfortable
visualizing units in the metric system, that's from 7,936,560 to 15,873,120
pounds. Yes, fifteen million pounds of the nastiest crap you could burn is
used to bring your iPhones (conjecture) and other stuff from Shanghai to Long
Beach.

If my research is correct, the fleet of about 100,000 cargo ships (Yes,
100,000!!!) burns over a million metric tons of bunker fuel PER DAY.

400 million metric tons of bunker fuel per year, which is equivalent to 120
billion gallons.

Can't relate to that number?

Here's an interesting comparison:

To get a better sense of how large this number is we can try to relate it to
how many cars one could fill-up with fuel and for how long. 120 billion
gallons would provide enough fuel to supply 100,000 cars (assuming a 20 gallon
tank) with a full tank of gas every week...for over 1,000 years.

    
    
      100,000 cars.
      20 gallons per week.
      For a THOUSAND years.
    

And our fleet of container ships use this in ONE YEAR.

The evil, when it comes to pollution and energy dependence, isn't the much-
abused light bulb; it's the elephant in the room: Ocean-going cargo ships.

While our mass media chooses to focus its attention on an oil spill (because
it is sensational and it serves political purposes), what is really killing
our planet slowly is the transportation of iPhones, Blackberries, TV's,
blenders, washers, cars, widgets and gadgets on inefficient and highly-
polluting ocean-going vessels. Even the latest Gulf spill is insignificant in
terms of environmental impact when compared to what 100,000 ships are doing to
our environment each and every year.

It is estimated that the fleet of nearly 100,000 cargo ships in the world
produces over 20 million tons of Sulfur Oxides (SOx) per year. For comparison,
the entire fleet of automobiles in the world (about 800 million cars) produces
about 80,000 tons of the same contaminant.

How about the Canal?

A container ship traveling from Los Angeles to NYC through the Canal will burn
about 4,500 metric tons of buker-C fuel. This amount of fuel costs
approximately US $1.8 million. Canal fees would run somewhere around $300K.
The trip from L.A. to NYC through the Canal runs well over two million
dollars, without including handling, insurance, crew costs, amortization,
maintenance, etc. That's quite a chunk of change, however, when divided by the
thousands of containers a ship can move it becomes a few hundred dollars per
container.

How many ships go through the Canal per year?

Approximately 15,000.

I'll leave you to do the math. I have far more detail in my notes. What these
ships are doing to our environment is simply horrific. The pollution doesn't
stop at the act of burning fuel.

Cargo ships are also the source of an unusual form of pollution. Ships use
huge ballast tanks to stabilize themselves. These ballast tanks are filled and
emptied of sea water during loading and unloading operations at port. It is
through this mechanism that cargo ships are responsible for transporting
harmful organisms across the world into ecosystems that cannot handle them.
The introduction of non-native species into a new ecosystem can have
devastating consequences.

And so, from watching a simple documentary I came to the realization that, for
some strange reason, we have been ignoring the most significant source of
environmental pollution on our planet. And, beyond that, one of the largest
--if not the largest-- consumer of petroleum products.

I didn't stop at just identifying the problem. I also wanted to take a stab at
a solution. I came up with something I called "The American High Speed Cargo
System" (AHSCS) as a loose proposal. This would be a cargo-only, electric
powered, high speed rail system. It would connect --at the very least-- both
coasts and, ideally, other major US ports. The idea would be to move cargo
over land from port to port at 200 miles per hour. High speed passenger trains
in the US are a waste of money and that's particularly true in California
(don't get me started there). Not so for high-speed cargo.

The numbers are there to support it: A cargo ship spends over two million
dollars to get from L.A. to NYC. Probably closer to three. Those same
containers could be moved far more efficiently over land, at similar or lower
costs and pollute far, far less. You are exchanging aerodynamic drag for
hydrodynamic drag. Huge difference.

In terms of energy costs (just the electricity), I came up with numbers in the
order of $10K for a trip from L.A. to NYC. I further estimated that the system
would require around 700MW of power, let's call it 1,000MW. We have 53 nuclear
plants that can source 1GW each. This is a case where nuclear power might be a
really good option.

However, the scope of the project needs to be realized. Developing and
building such a systems has the potential to generate hundreds of thousands of
jobs, if not millions. It should be revenue neutral if not positive (sorry
Panama). It would allow for the installation of upgraded communications and
power backbones that would be synergistic to the process of building the rail
system. It would also allow for the potential to install huge solar and wind-
power farms to fully or partially power the system.

I have not explored every angle but would like to think that, if my numbers
and assumptions are right, this could be the most important project this
nation could embark on. You have to think in terms of a hundred or two-hundred
year scale. These ships are not going to go away unless something very
significant changes. Of course, the same concept ought to be replicated across
the planet. Again, if I am right, we should strive to eliminate most, if not
all, container ships traversing our oceans. We are making an absolute mess out
of our planet.

<http://news.discovery.com/tech/shipping-network-map.html>

Like I said, there's more. If interested email me off list and I can send you
a copy of my notes so far. It'd be interesting to have someone go over my
notes and verify my assumptions and calculations. I tried to raise the issue
with politicians but, what can I say, I only have so much time to deal with
morons.

NOTE:

I thank you for your comments. I have to ask that you do me a favor. Please
refrain from making categorical statements about the relative efficiency of
ships vs. a proposed high-speed electric train without having done the math
yourself. Please drop me an email and I'll be more than happy to provide you
with a copy of my calcs, an unfinished paper as well as links, PDF's and
references. Then we can talk about the merits of the concept. I am actually
very interested in having the concept, calculations and assumptions
criticized. Arguing outside of a common frame of reference is rather
difficult.

~~~
theycallmemorty
My understanding was that the Panama canal is mostly used for international
shipping and that your NY -> LA use case would not be as common as East Asia
-> Europe. Do you have the data to back this up?

~~~
dmckeon
Also note that the Panama Canal system is set to expand by 2015, and that US
East-coast ports are already expanding their cargo capacity in expectation of
more & bigger container ships, routing Pacific->Panama->East rather than
Pacific->West->rail->East.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal#Third_set_of_lock...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal#Third_set_of_locks_project)

[http://www.siteselection.com/issues/2011/nov/eastern-
seaboar...](http://www.siteselection.com/issues/2011/nov/eastern-seaboard.cfm)

------
6ren
Re: "no rails" - perhaps it reduces friction by not touching the ground, via a
combination of a railgun propulsion + airfoil. Thus, not needing continuous
maglev for levitation. Also explains the "concord" comparison.

~~~
Swannie
I'm thinking: \- Air based, but near the ground \- The vehicle is concord
shaped \- Vehicle is launched into the air via rail gun (like a fighter jet on
a ship:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_Aircraft_Launch...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_Aircraft_Launch_System))
\- Lots of boosting strips a few KMs apart. \- Based on the rail gun concept,
the same "boosting" strip could also slow down or speed up a vehicle \- It
removes the need for anything between the stations except open space. \-
Minimal on-vehicle propulsion - otherwise I imagine the constant
accelerate/decelerate would be a little unbearable for human flight \- Failure
mode of the vehicle is to glide to a landing (though could magnetic eddy
currents be used for breaking in a rail gun with minimal/no current?) \- The
loop could refer to the idea of a continual loop of boosters, in opposite
directions, removing the need for large "turn around" stations at either end

------
DanielBMarkham
Sorry Jacques, I'm sticking to the suborbital maglev thing.

Yeah, I know it's a long-shot, but it fits into my idea of Musk better than a
giant mail tube. I'm just seeing pressurized tubes scaling. There's the same
problem with the orbital sub-loop, but I'm betting Musk spent a lot of time
looking at this idea as part of his Mars dream.

One thing's for sure -- it's going to be a blast seeing how it all turns out!

------
Maakuth
He also recently said it's "a cross between a Concorde and a rail gun". That
would at least enforce the maglev principle Jacques envisioned. It wouldn't be
quite a Concorde in the pressurized tube though. But it's not impossibly far
away from that concept, maybe Musk deliberately described it in a bit
mysterious fashion. Time will tell.

~~~
mseebach2
"Rail gun" could illustrate the way carriages are added to and remove from the
loop.

~~~
lutusp
In the technical literature, the term "rail gun/railgun" is strongly
associated with electromagnetic propulsion methods:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun>

~~~
mseebach2
Ah, I was thinking of a Gatling gun
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_cannon>), not a rail gun. The concept of
rotary tubes seemed to mesh with OP's vision.

------
mkuhn
The Hyperloop reminds me a lot of the Swissmetro [1] project which was
launched in 1974 and was intended to connect Swiss cities trough evacuated
tunnels which would house maglev trains. The evacuation made the project very
expensive but a lot of tests were run and a lot of the learning probably can
be applied. Solving some of the problems that made the Swissmetro so expensive
could lead to what the Hyperloop wants to be.

[1 ]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro> (the German language article is
much more extensive: <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro>)

------
loceng
First time I read it wouldn't be an evacuated tunnel. Next thought of
technology it could use then then jumps to maglev-like technology; Imagine a
Tesla vehicle (or others) that can hop onto a network that brings the vehicle
onto a maglev system, reducing friction (and other elements wouldn't really
effect it, especially if you decided to put a canopy over it) ; Anyone else
realize he may have dropped a hint in this video
([http://video.ft.com/v/1974478965001/Elon-Musk-from-
electric-...](http://video.ft.com/v/1974478965001/Elon-Musk-from-electric-
cars-to-Mars) ) that we might see flying cars?

You'd need on-ramps, where a minimum speed is required before merging with the
main line, and of course you'd only build on/off ramps at major hubs. The only
issue I see being you're not using tar then, and therefore costs of raw
materials would be higher, at least initially, and would likely last longer
than tar.

Being cheaper than highspeed rail could fit into this equation because its the
vehicle owners paying for the vehicle, and no trains are being build for it -
so actual money going into the system, the synergies that would exist, might
be greater - though putting it how he does is creating lots of attention. :)

Maybe the hyperloop refers to a an on/off ramping system, where you get
accelerated to a certain speed... Fun speculating. And time for tea and
breakfast.

~~~
benzofuran
All great points, but I will point out that the major cost item on high speed
(or any rail for that matter) is the rail itself. The cars and locomotive are
relatively cheap, but you're looking at figures of $1M+ USD per mile of track.

~~~
chokma
In Europe, it's about 12-30 million € / km for high speed tracks (according to
Wikipedia).

~~~
Symmetry
And US construction costs tend to be at least twice what they are in Europe.

~~~
eru
That's for public projects?

------
danpalmer
I'd like to add another possibility into the mix, I think it might be based on
some moving walkway concepts that have been considered for quite a few years
but have never caught on or progressed passed the prototype stage.

The idea is that rather than being a straight line with a sort of conveyor
belt, the walkway is made of plates like an escalator, and the ends of the
walkway curve off from the main body of it. This means that a user steps on to
a slow moving plate, immediately goes around a corner on it, and in doing so
accelerates to a much faster speed, with the opposite happening at the
destination.

As soon as I heard the word 'Hyperloop', this is what I thought of. It's a
looped system, but with an extra dimension in a way as different sections
operate at different speeds. I think this could be scaled up to be perhaps a
track system that 'cars' are put onto with passengers inside, but I don't
know.

Is this a reasonable possibility? Maybe.

✓ Ground based

✓ Weather independent

✓ Like a railgun (if propelled with magnets)

✓ Is not a pressurised tube

✓ Leaves when you arrive

? Could hold solar panels

? Cheap

? Revolutionise the transport industry

✗ No rails - depends on your interpretation of this, one could argue that a
pressurised tube is a kind of track or rail for a carriage.

------
anonymouz
The starting point of the argument is kind of whacky: He claims that the
sentence "It is not (an evacuated tunnel)." is somehow the same as "It is a
(not evacuated) tunnel.", but he completely ignores the fact that the position
of the article that he deliberately changes resolves this ambiguity! So, duh,
if you change the sentence it means something different...

~~~
XaspR8d
I agree the rearrangement of the word order is confusing, but I can also see
that Musk could have been saying "it is not an _evacuated_ tunnel". (In fact
this is the default interpretation I would probably take...) Listening to the
original quote could help us, but ultimately there's no way to know if he's
talking about tunnels in general or just evacuated ones.

~~~
anonymouz
But your interpretation is much, much weaker than "a not evacuated tunnel".

If it's not a tunnel, it's still not an <i>evacuated</i> tunnel.

But if it's "a not evacuated tunnel", then it must be a tunnel.

Edit: Actually, I think with the article "an" between the "not" and the
adjective, there is no way in English grammar to interpret the "not" to negate
only the adjective instead of the whole adjective+noun "evacuated tunnel".
Unfortunately I'm neither a native speaker, nor a linguist, so I cannot back
it up with anything but feeling for the language and the fact that this is how
I always see it used ;).

~~~
stcredzero
_> Edit: Actually, I think with the article "an" between the "not" and the
adjective, there is no way in English grammar to interpret the "not" to negate
only the adjective instead of the whole adjective+noun "evacuated tunnel"._

Well, if you add another "only" before "interpret" then you'd be correct.
Otherwise, it is open to interpretation either way.

Panel 11: <http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0367.html>

------
topbanana
I don't think the tunnel would need to be pressurised. If the air moved at the
same speed as the train, no resistance would be met.

~~~
jacquesm
That's what I meant by using the carriages as the impellers, so effectively
they push against the air in front of them up to the next carriage, which
pulls on this air because it leaves a partial vacuum behind it. So there is no
external source of pressure, it's just the carriages moving and 'drafting' in
each others wake.

There will still be resistance though, both from the walls as well as leakage
between the carriage and the walls (there can't be a really good seal there or
the friction between the carriage and the wall would become too large, and
since the wall is stationary and the carriage is moving very fast this
friction is likely sizeable).

~~~
loceng
Do you know the speed differences that could occur in a tunnel system like
this, versus an "open" on-ground maglev system?

------
danpalmer
I have a problem with the quote "no rails required" because I would interpret
that in a general sense, i.e. a Car does not need rails. To me, a tube just
sounds like a special kind of rail.

However, all the most plausible theories I have heard so far, and my own
possibility, all rely on some sort of (although not traditional) rails.

------
socialist_coder
Didn't Elon also say that the Hyperloop would be buildable/achievable without
having to obtain large swaths of contiguous land for the construction of the
entire loop (which is next to impossible in developed countries)?

How does this prediction meet that requirement? Or am I missing something?

This is the quote I'm referring to:

"It also can’t have a right of way issue, where people have to give up their
homes."

[http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/elon-musk-with-jobs-gone-
go...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/elon-musk-with-jobs-gone-google-will-
win-mobile-and-look-out-for-the-hyperloop/)

~~~
jacquesm
You are absolutely right, someone else in this thread also brought it up. I
completely missed out on that requirement and indeed it seems to invalidate
the whole thing.

Unless there is a recycling of roads somehow.

The thing that bugs me about the whole 'space' angle is that if that is the
solution it is only usable between endpoints, and roads are usable for
everybody (also those people living between the endpoints).

You then get the same issues that you have with airports, you have to actually
go to one of very few terminals in order to get on the loop. And ground
transportation converging on the loop would be the bottle-neck (think highway
LA - SF with only one on-ramp).

So likely we're missing a huge piece of the puzzle still.

~~~
socialist_coder
Definitely. It's still enjoyable to read these ideas though =)

------
frankus
I think most of OP's arguments are spot on, but I think it's likely to be an
elevated system installed over the center divider of the (mostly very straight
and very flat) I-5 corridor. Tunneling that distance just isn't feasible at
the stated cost.

(I expound at greater length here:
[http://franking.tumblr.com/post/36241325898/my-personal-
spec...](http://franking.tumblr.com/post/36241325898/my-personal-speculation-
on-the-hyperloop))

------
sunjain
Rather than self-driving cars, I see hype-loop kind of system being more
effective overall(reliable, cheaper). Obviously a lot more work has been
done(Google) on self-driving cars but I would secretly hope/wish that Elon
really gets cracking on this thing(especially since he has to regular suffer
one of the worst commutes in the world - 405 freeway in LA - especially that
particular section).

------
guynamedloren
Musk has also noted that the system would be "protected from the elements"...
Perhaps he meant the 'pods' inside the tube would be protected.

------
nnq
...the first bit of Hyperloop speculation that actually makes sense and seems
plausible ...though the price will this will likely go up because it's new and
untested technology and it has to be SAFE: the price difference between "doing
something" and "doing something safely" can be orders of magnitude (think
airplane safety) so I wouldn't rush to invest in it though...

~~~
alexandros
As with SpaceX I think Musk would solve this by designing for humans but
testing with cargo.

------
jcfrei
sorry for being kind of a buzz kill - but I'd rather see elon musk venture
away from traditional engineering ventures and going into life sciences. the
hyperloop seems like an interesting concept, but I don't really see where it
fits in, given that his electrical revolution of individual transportation
succeeds. Very densely populated areas like new york are already reasonably
served by a metro - scaling that system might be cheaper and equally effective
as the hyperloop described by jacques mattheij. building new tunnels is very
expensive and would probably account for most of the costs in this endeavor.
additionally finding spare space in dense cities to construct such a hyperloop
might be very difficult besides existing sewer systems and electrical lines,
offsetting the benefits of the hyperloop (after all this would require massive
public funding)

expanding this system to long distances would be really interesting, however
even more expensive, given the need to construct long tunnels or tubes.

~~~
aik
I'm curious what your overall point is?

The purpose of new innovations is to improve something. It's possible that in
the very short term something like wouldn't be the most cost effective thing,
however it's not about the very short term, but rather about the potential. In
most existing transportation systems, the potential of the system without
large changes has probably mostly been realized. The potential of something
like this may be much larger, which is why it would be worthwhile.

~~~
jcfrei
my overall point is that I would rather see musk devoting his time to more
promising and (in my opinion) more valuable projects (which danpalmer just
said he would)

------
pauljburke
I'm aware this is not adding much to the discussion but I couldn't shift the
intro to futurama out of my head while reading the post.

------
grumblepeet
I suspect that it is a beneath the road electrical induction charging system
so that cars/vehicles don't need to carry heavy batteries to travel longer
distances..

On open roads, where batteries fall down on range, surely this would make
sense? Combine with self drive for easy town to town driving experience.

------
meric
Almost sounds like a bigger version of <http://shweeb.com>

------
smoyer
Several comments mentioned freight transport below, but not in this context.
The loop you've described requires some "density" of carriages to maintain the
"group inertia". One obvious way to fill gaps that are too big is to put
freight cars into the loop to fill them.

Very nice article.

------
maxerickson
I figure it is a side by side maglev with a bunch of mass going around one of
the tracks to store energy.

That's assuming the mass needs to be on a second track to maintain a schedule.
I guess it's probably possible to do something clever at the stations to avoid
a second track.

------
gagan2020
Looking to me like router/hub concept in the real world called Hyperloop. You
have network (pressured tunnels) with packets (packets which carry me around
Hyperloop) controlled via nodes aka router/hub (locations where people could
board). Brilliant.

------
Gustomaximus
People have built systems called Atmospheric Railways that could be closed to
Elon's vision than an evacuated tunnel.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway>

------
Jabbles
So it's what they have in Futurama? <http://goo.gl/uEmNW>

I'm not really sure how it "can't crash", nor how there aren't any "rails" (or
things that look suspiciously like rails).

~~~
daniel-cussen
You know they were planning on building this in Manhattan?

------
gusgordon
I remember Musk saying that its propulsion source was similar to that of a
rail gun's. Sorry, can't remember where, but it was recent.

------
Angostura
Sorry to be the pernickety one, Jacque but inyour opening sentence: "For a
while now there are tantalizing hints that Elon Musk is at it again." isn't
correct English since "are" is the wrong tense.

Try "For a while now there have been tantalizing hints that Elon Musk is at it
again"

Or perhaps better: "There have been tantalizing hints that Elon Musk is at it
again for a while now"

~~~
jacquesm
You're right. Sorry to be nit-picking, but my name is spelled 'Jacques'.

~~~
Angostura
Sorry about that.

------
n_coats
Elon Musk > Chuck Norris

------
simondlr
Another point to mention is that it is also solar-powered.

