
Russia Jumps into the Race to Build a Hyperloop - JDDunn9
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-07/putin-mind-melds-with-elon-musk-as-russia-funds-hyperloop-dream
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stcredzero
People in this discussion keep on referring to the levitation as "maglev." It
is a form of magnetic levitation, but it's significant that they're planning
to use Halbach arrays. Musk's original idea was to basically "fly" the pod
inside a low-vacuum tube using air bearings on the bottom of the pod. Halbach
arrays basically fly above a series of passive metal coils. The faster the
Halbach arrays are traveling, the stronger the field, which lifts the pod,
which decreases the field, lowering it again. The system experiences negative
feedback. It's self regulating. This makes it much cheaper than other forms of
Maglev.

The advantage over Musk's original idea, is that Halbach array levitation
doesn't require the tight clearances that air bearing levitation would
require. Apparently, the cost of manufacturing linear arrays of aluminum coils
is cheaper than ensuring tight tolerances.

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russellbeattie
I don't understand why we haven't seen decently sized scale model before
starting full sized tests. It seems that sending packages over a few miles
would be an interesting viability test... Connect a bunch of oil pipes, design
a self-driven transporter and see what the issues are. Then the public could
also see the thing working as well. It's weird to me the groups so far have
just started with massive designs.

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jballanc
How about a demonstration system spanning the island of Manhattan:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City)

The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even
recent! The pneumatic mail system in NYC was in use between 1897 and 1953.
What's new is that in the 1950s the energy economics made it cheaper to
replace pneumatic tubes with automobiles. Fast forward 60 years and the energy
economy has been turned on its head, thus hyperloop.

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bubuga
> The thing about hyperloop is that none of the technology is new...or even
> recent!

...or even works.

It's quite clear that all this hyperloop hype is a publicity scam targeted at
states with deep pockets and whose governments are gagging for some propaganda
talking point. The people behind hyperloop dedicate themselves to one thing
only: generate hype around the project and jump from publicity stunt to
publicity stunt.

The end goal is to get a government to shelve a wheelbarrow full of hard cash
for them to waste the money building a prototype for propaganda purposes.

In short, it's the Simpson's monorail episode.

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johansch
It seems like you are much smarter than the rest of us.

Would you please tell us plebs what the fatal flaw is?

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rbobby
Capacity seems like a killer flaw to me. Just doesn't make economic sense
compared to rail.

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bubuga
Capacity is a problem, but not a significant one. The problem is the cost to
build, maintain and operate the infrastructure required to comply with the
speed requirements, the fact that most of the technology doesn't exist, that
the physics issues of a vehicle interacting with a foundation medium at very
high speeds are far from being tackled (commonly referred to as trans-rayleigh
trains), and that even the most basic issues of the propaganda talking points
are yet to be tackled by the project.

Hyperloop reminds me of the Simpson's monorail episode in many ways.

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imaginenore
Russian politicians make crazy promises all the time, and deliver almost
never.

All their recent tech projects have been disastrous, either technologically or
financially, or the funds were simply stolen.

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jimbobimbo
Rule of a thumb: every time you hear news about some Big Hairy Audacious Goal
coming from Russia, it's about somebody trying to create an opportunity to
fleece more federal money.

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Aelinsaar
Incredible... the vac-train turned maglev... from the ultimate master of
modern marketing, Elon Musk.

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Twirrim
Does it matter? He's seriously stimulated a market that has been fairly
stagnant for decades, making it an exciting and interesting field again, and
encouraging engineers who previously weren't interested in transportation to
become interested. All without the hassles or complications of having to form
and run the companies himself, or have to pony up the cash. His only
investment has been the work on producing the original whitepaper, and the
blast radius is huge.

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Aelinsaar
Does it matter? I don't know, we'll have to see if something other than some
money going nowhere actually comes from this. If it's just "excitement" and
some lucky folks making millions... don't expect me to get in a tizzy.

Edit: If however this leads, by some longshot, to a functional maglev system
in Cali or anywhere else in the US? Yes, I'd change my tune then.

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Grue3
This will end as well as the "nanomachines" project did. By which I mean,
nothing will happen, but a few people will get a bit richer.

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BinaryIdiot
That assertion doesn't really make sense. Nanomachines are still theoretically
possible but we don't have the technology to really make them shine yet. But
hyperloop? Nothing new really needs to be discovered. It's simply an
engineering task at this point.

So why do you think it would end like nanomachines? Simply Russian politics?

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lisivka
The only way to complete it in Russia is to buy it. But it is impossible to
buy it because nobody completed it. So it will fail. If you want to understand
why every big government projects fails in Russia, just look at salaries of
workers in government sector.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Fair enough. I don't know much about Russian politics.

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Const-me
About two weeks ago, Russian president Putin told they are going to have
teleportation by 2035:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-
de...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/22/russia-aims-to-develop-
teleportation-in-20-years/)

Isn’t teleportation more practical than a Hyperloop? It doesn’t require the
land, nor the power to make and sustain the vacuum…

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DominikR
Typical nonsense brought by main stream media to discredit a politician they
don't like.

Apparently enough people here buy this as this is the top rated comment.

~~~
varjag
Source in Russian:
[https://lenta.ru/news/2016/06/22/teleportation/](https://lenta.ru/news/2016/06/22/teleportation/)

~~~
DominikR
Every word Putin utters in public is recorded on video and lenta.ru is small
opposition media.

If Putin really said this it would be all over the largest media in Russia.

Edit: The article you link to doesn't even state that Putin said this, why do
you even link it here?

Edit 2: The only teleportation mentioned in the article is using a quantum
effect to "teleport" information, not physical objects.

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smsm42
lenta.ru _was_ something like "opposition media" some time ago, but not
anymore. In 2014, all management was fired and almost all the journalists
left. So now lenta.ru is as state-controlled as most other media in Russia.[1]

> If Putin really said this it would be all over the largest media in Russia.

Pretty much all "largest media" in Russia are state-controlled.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenta.ru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenta.ru)

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DominikR
> lenta.ru was something like "opposition media" some time ago, but not
> anymore

Didn't know that, thanks

> Pretty much all "largest media" in Russia are state-controlled.

I know, this is a problem. But when we are talking about what Putin actually
said or did not say these media are very accurate. Much more so than our
Western media.

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smsm42
As most tyrants, Putin is attracted to flashy expensive projects allowing him
to show off his greatness and power. Economic viability is not a big factor
there, neither is the actual benefit vs. costs to the citizens - the only
citizen whose opinion matters is Putin himself. This makes it attractive for
some big projects - you only need to convince one person, and nothing else
matters.

However Russia would not be a good place to do this, the level of corruption
is astonishing and the number of local interests one will have to satiate
would be enormous. And the manufacturing culture is not that great, which
means most of things will need to be imported and assembly will have to be
very tightly controlled, and even then screwups will happen a lot. So I would
estimate the probability of success as very low.

BTW: I wasn't aware there was a "race". Who exactly is racing?

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18172821
I've never been able to find an actual technical description of the hype-loop.

Wasn't it downgraded to maglev at some point?

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Animats
The original air-supported Hyperloop concept, with clearances of a few
millimeters between vehicle and tube, isn't looking good. The MIT prototype
uses maglev suspension and more clearance, which is safer.

Maglev in vacuum or near-vacuum is not a new idea; it's been discussed for
decades. The question was always whether the vacuum tube was worth the
trouble. The Shanghai airport maglev reaches 250 MPH right now in normal
operation, and air resistance isn't the limiting factor on speed. The Japanese
L0 Shinkansen reaches 375 MPH in tests, with an operational speed of 315 MPH.
The main problem with maglev is that the track costs too much.

The main claim for Hyperloop is that the tube is cheap. The original cost
estimates assume using someone else's right of way and unreasonably cheap
tunneling. Also, to get the straight right of way, the endpoints have to be
somewhere inconvenient, well outside major urban areas.

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djsumdog
The concept of a vacuum tube dates back further. You can look up Evacuated
Tube Transport (ETT), which is basically the core of the Hyperloop idea.

There was one company that was proposing building an ETT between Chattanooga,
TN and Atlanta, GA in the US; reducing the two and a half hour drive to less
than twenty minutes. It never really got past the environmental planning phase
(plus Chattanooga didn't want Atlanta commuters, because the South and anti-
progress).

A successful tube transport system could be technologically ground breaking.
Theoretically they'd be faster than airplanes and use a fraction of the
fuel/energy (once they're constructed of course; not counting development
costs).

But they have all the same design problems of monorails (the worst and least
expandable form of public transportation). Difficult to switch lines and
difficult to extend. Also you get the additional difficulty of turning, which
apparently is very difficult in ETTs.

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protomyth
> But they have all the same design problems of monorails (the worst and least
> expandable form of public transportation). Difficult to switch lines and
> difficult to extend. Also you get the additional difficulty of turning,
> which apparently is very difficult in ETTs.

I see the fan group for monorails has a response on the switches
[http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/switch.html](http://www.monorails.org/tMspages/switch.html)
\- what are they missing?

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jcranmer
Monorails operate at relatively low speeds. It's much easier to switch
something running 20 mph than something at 200 mph, particularly because you
start running into issues with the acceleration curves and thus having the two
lines angle off appropriately.

