
Hyperloop One Raises $50M, Hires Former Uber CFO - jonbaer
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-13/hyperloop-one-raises-50-million-hires-former-uber-cfo
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jandrese
I still can't get past the feeling that this is another Moller Aircar type
project. Something to string investors along forever while you bilk them out
of money.

The proposals aren't even all that similar to the original Hyperloop proposal.
Gone is the ducted fan setup and instead they're just building high speed rail
in a tube. And the cost estimates still make no sense whatsoever. I will be
frankly shocked if any of these companies ever lay anything more than a short
test track somewhere.

~~~
Animats
Most of the workable plans, such as the MIT prototype, are "maglev on a track
in a vacuum tube", rather than the original Musk "flies at a 0.5 to 1.3 mm
height on aerodynamic lift" plan. That low flying height would require a
really smooth tube, with no millimeter-sized sags in the middle of tube
sections. Not impossible, just expensive. The whole point of the Hyperloop
system is that that the tube is supposed to be cheap.

Dubai Ports World might build a system between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The route
is flat and empty. and not too long. Dubai already has two monorail systems
and a metro rail system, all beautiful and underutilized.[1] It may cost too
much, but that probably won't be a problem.

A maglev doesn't need the tube below 200MPH or so. One way to build a useful
system might be to run in a vacuum tube for long, straight runs, and switch to
open track in congested areas. This would allow bringing the tracks much
further into cities. Musk's original plan called for ending the LA-SF system
in Fremont, near Tesla's plant.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=615x7e8wXNU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=615x7e8wXNU)

~~~
jandrese
The idea of creating a miles long pressure vessel "for cheap" always seemed to
be the most insane part of the project. It is certainly technically possible
to build a structure like that, but I have no idea how they plan to make it
affordable.

~~~
Animats
That's a classic problem with monorail enthusiasts. Early drawings of proposed
monorails used to show single lightweight elevated rails on thin pylons.[1]
Pictures of successful operating monorails, such as Tokyo Haneda, show double
tracks on heavy pylons.[2] Often there's an emergency walkway alongside.

(There are a surprising number of operating monorail systems in the world now.
The US is way behind in this. The few in the US are airport systems or tourist
attractions, but Japan and China, and now Brazil, have city-sized systems.)

~~~
kalleboo
> The US is way behind in this

I wouldn't worry about this - I've never ridden a monorail I liked. They
always seem slower and much bumpier than a traditional track - see something
like the Bangkok BTS SkyTrain for the type of system you really want.

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stcredzero
I think this needs to be brought to more people's attention, so I'm putting
this in a top level comment:

Thunderf00t's video:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk)

Debunked:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hype...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4udgd2/the_hyperloop_one_busted_by_the_youtube/)

Also debunked:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4wck43/hi_were_mostly_engineers_here_at_hyperloop_one/)

~~~
wtvanhest
I do not know a lot about the technology, but I remember reading that the
hyperloop is not a full vacuum, just a lower pressure environment. That alone
means all these videos are bunk themselves.

~~~
Qantourisc
Low pressure, vacuum, I doubt physics care (not a physicist), it's just a
pressure differential, just a bigger or smaller one. So the effects would just
be smaller.

~~~
wtvanhest
Right, but using a true vacuum as your comparable for the construction of a
partial vacuum is nonsensical. This structure has a differential closer to an
airline, not a space shuttle. Airplanes can handle that pressure differential
with a thin layer of aluminum. They can even have windows!

Thinking through this a little more. In basic terms, you just need a tunnel
big enough combined with low enough pressure that at speed, the train has
significantly less air to push out of the way. I'm sure it is some complex
math, but someone who understands the math could figure it out.

~~~
danbruc
The air pressure 10 km above sea level is about 25 % of the air pressure at
sea level, the Hyperloop paper says the air pressure in the tube will be 0.1 %
of the air pressure at sea level. So the pressure is way closer to a perfect
vacuum than to the air pressure outside of airplanes.

~~~
stouset
It's still a linear change. The tube needs to withstand 1 ATM of pressure,
which isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things.

~~~
danbruc
Withstanding one atmosphere is certainly not an unsurmountable challenge but
given the dimensions and given that this thing is supposed to be cheap it is
also certainly not a negligible issue. You also have to maintain the quality
of the vacuum, possibly in presence of expansion joints, and you have to deal
with the consequences of a loss of vacuum for whatever reasons.

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lisper
Ooh, how I wish I could buy put options on the Hyperloop. Because unless they
solve the thermal expansion problem -- and there is no feasible solution on
the horizon AFAICT -- they will fail.

~~~
a11r
I am assuming that you are talking about the thermal expansion of the tubes
(ducts ?). A long time ago, the rails making up train tracks used to have gaps
every few meters to accommodate thermal expansion (same problem). Modern rails
in high speed train tracks are welded into one continuous bar that can be over
a kilometer long. The trick is to stretch the rail just enough and then pin it
down - kind of like a slightly stretched rubber band. That stretch can
accommodate thermal expansion.

~~~
m0skit0
Not a good analogy. One of the main Hyperloop points it is to have near vaccum
inside the tubes, which will reduce air resistance and allow faster speeds,
otherwise it's just a train inside a tube. This means they must be totally
sealed, so no gaps allowed.

~~~
riffic
> near vacuum inside the tubes

This isn't true at all. The tube will still have air inside of it, you just
need higher pressure behind the car than the air in front.

The cars themselves work a lot in the same way a cylindrical air hockey table
would work.

~~~
Pxtl
The current hyperloop company has deviated substantially from Musk's design -
now it's just narrow train in a semi-evacuated tunnel.

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brianbreslin
Am I the only one who gets confused by which hyperloop company is which?
What's the difference between the different players?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
From what I can tell, Hyperloop One f/k/a Hyperloop Technologies [1] is a
venture-backed company testing at an open-air track in Nevada. They are the
ones raising $50MM. (They are also the ones playing the "everyone sues
everyone" game.)

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies [2] is approaching the problem with
crowdfunding and crowd collaboration. Their pictures are quite pretty.

[1] [https://hyperloop-one.com](https://hyperloop-one.com)

[2] [http://hyperlooptransp.com](http://hyperlooptransp.com)

~~~
blhack
Which one has the test track next to SpaceX?

~~~
strictnein
To make it more confusing: neither. It's SpaceX's track.

[http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop](http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop)

> "To support this competition, SpaceX is constructing a test track adjacent
> to our Hawthorne, California headquarters"

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imaginenore
I'm happy for them, but I'm yet to hear for anybody to address the major
challenges that many people have raised. The major one being - the sudden
pressurization in any point and the consequent shockwave traveling at the
speed of sound, exploding the tube, killing everything in its way.

Thunderf00t did a good job summarizing the problems:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk)

~~~
adekok
Or the massive G forces on the passengers.

If you're going 650 Mph in an airplane and hit a bump (air pocket), the plane
can bounce 5-10 feet. So the acceleration is spread over a long time /
distance.

If you're going 650 Mph in a hyperloop and hit a bump, you have _millimeters_
of room. So any minor bump is going to be a gigantic slam.

I've ridden TGVs in Europe. At 250 Km/h (~150 Mph), it's bumpy enough that I
have a hard time doing anything other than stare out the window.

The hyperloop will be 4x faster than that. If it does work, I'd probably want
a padded interior, and a face mask with attached vacuum aspirator for vomit...

~~~
vmarsy
> I've ridden TGVs in Europe. At 250 Km/h (~150 Mph), it's bumpy enough that I
> have a hard time doing anything other than stare out the window.

This is the total opposite of my experience, I've ridden the TGV many times in
France and I'm always amazed how smooth the ride is, without looking outside I
wouldn't even notice I'm moving. It's actually a weird feeling to look outside
as you see the landscape moving so fast.

~~~
adekok
I used to live in France, and would sometimes commute from the south to Paris
for the day.

Sure, there are large stretches where it is straight and smooth. But when it's
bumpy, it's _really_ bumpy. In a way that a slow train just can't do.

~~~
wott
Which South? If it is via the Atlantic-side line, only the 200 km near Paris
are a high-speed line, the rest is a classical line (on which the TGV rides).

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falsestprophet
The funding round was led by DP World, which operates 77 marine terminals
around the globe [1] and is interested in using hyperloops to move containers
from marine terminals to inland ports.

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

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wcummings
Hyperloop (and pretty much all "PRT") is a joke and whoever invested in this
should be embarrassed. Just get it over with and build high-speed rail.

~~~
Shivetya
better yet, don't build any rail for passenger travel. let us instead engineer
changes to our roadways to allow for self driving cars to occur sooner and
safer. only a few countries in the world have more than 10% of passenger miles
by rail.

heavy rail is just too damn expensive for what it provides and there are what,
two non subsidized systems out there? plus hundreds of billions in backlogged
maintenance to many rail systems, not even counting the rail car maintenance
that has been put off.

~~~
moultano
Isn't rail inherently more energy efficient due to the rigid wheels even
without the economies of multipassenger vehicles?

~~~
geezerjay
Rail is efficient due to the low slopes that are required by the steel-on-
steel friction, required to accelerate/brake through the wheel/rail
interaction.

And yes, the only mode of transportation that is cheaper than rail with
regards to cost per tonnage is sea transport. In passanger transportation, it
really depends on the distances and on the speed of transportation. People
tend to pay a premium for point-to-point speed, and although airway
transportation is unbeatable in that regard the time to get to the nearest
airport and required to board end up adding a travel time penalty between 1
and 2 hour. This means that high-speed rail tends to be, by far, the best mode
of transportation between destinations that are distanced up to around 400km.

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Animats
_Dubai Ports World_ invested in this? That's serious. They're owned by the
government of Dubai.

~~~
stingraycharles
Why is that serious, considering the track record of Dubai investing in silly
things ?

~~~
jpatokal
The things may be silly, but they still cost serious money. So Hyperloop
appears to just gone from "unfunded wacky idea" to "funded wacky idea".

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minikites
I wonder if they've fixed the basic engineering errors from the first
proposal: [http://www.leancrew.com/all-
this/2013/08/hyperloop/](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/08/hyperloop/)

> Neither of these is possible for the Hyperloop because the high speed of the
> capsule zooming along inside it means the pipe curves have to be very
> gentle. How, I wondered, is Musk going to solve the thermal expansion
> problem?

> The answer turned out to be simple: he didn’t. There’s some hand waving and,
> possibly, a complete misunderstanding of how thermal expansion acts, but no
> actual solution.

The rest of the article is a deep dive into the problems with the earlier
Hyperloop proposal.

~~~
pitaj
That appears to be old. The official proposal by his engineers was released,
where every criticism I've heard has been addressed. Here's a playlist of
videos rebutting some common claims against the hyperloop:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSPi1JFx4_-Gz0Fm0qq2K...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSPi1JFx4_-Gz0Fm0qq2KUz4c22UbZCco)

~~~
minikites
Interesting, thank you.

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alberthartman
How about dropping the Hyperloop evacuated tube idea and replace it with
something more achievable? How about a private roadway that is completely flat
and only for specially-equipped electric cars? The cars are completely
autonomous and communicate with neighboring cars and a central traffic
controller. The cars can tailgate each other in complete safety at 200-250 mph
allowing for extremely dense road usage (no 9 car lengths separations). And
all the traffic will move at exactly the same super-high speed, carefully
servoed.

People can just get in using their own privately-owned certified compliant
electric cars. And then take a nap as the autonomous driving takes over for
safe high-speed travel. No traffic jam slowdowns, no slowpokes in your lane.
Road-embedded power can wirelessly beam energy so there is no need for
refueling stations. Traffic control manages vehicles entering and leaving the
roadway. Read the news or take a nap. SF-to-LA in 2hrs, and you arrive rested
and with your car.

Not the hyperloop, but drastically cheaper and leveraging technology that's
coming anyway. The novelty is drastically higher speeds, bumper to bumper
driving, continuous fueling.

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AndrewKemendo
$50M is peanuts for this scale of a project and the engineering that will need
to be done. Seems like this is likely only enough to get to a small scale POC.

I think it's a great start, but it's still super early to know if this can
even work.

~~~
danbruc
50 million Dollars will buy you at least 200 man-year of clever people
thinking about it, that should be more than enough to realize that this is not
an (economically) viable endeavor and render building a prototype mood.

~~~
zootam
but it will also buy at least 50 'man-year' of clever people thinking about
marketing it and how to continue to profit off of it regardless if it is
feasible or not

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KyoChunho
Does Elon Musk still have anything to do with any of the Hyperloop companies?

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zizzles
How resilient will the Hyperloop be against terrorist attacks?

It is situated above ground. This means the tubing is exposed to all and
everyone. In other words, it is vulnerable to homemade explosives which can
perhaps obstruct the path the vessel transverses. Sounds far-fetched, but the
lengths extremists go to can not be undermined as we have learned time and
time again throughout history.

I am interested in the security protocols more so than anything else.

~~~
the_watcher
This is a valid concern, but it's definitely not one that should impede
efforts to construct one or prove its viability. For one, hyperloops have a
lot of potential value for shipping. For another, most of the designs don't
seem to involve a huge number of people in on point at once, and it wouldn't
be hijackable in the way than an aircraft is. To be honest, the simplest form
of transit to use in terms of ease of access combined with potential
destruction is just a car or bus, right?

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jrockway
50 million dollars is enough to build 100 feet of subway (in New York).

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jlebrech
will hyperloop be the only martian transportation one day? imagine there being
a grid of hyperloop to take all over the planet. it's also free of those pesky
seas.

~~~
lisper
Hyperloop is much more feasible on Mars than on earth because you don't need
to maintain a vacuum -- you've already got one. You don't even need a tube,
just a U-shaped track.

~~~
m0skit0
What benefits does a U-shaped track have over traditionnal rails?

~~~
lisper
The reason the hyperloop is attractive is that it's effectively "flying" at
low pressure, which is equivalent to flying at high altitude, which lets it
operate effectively like a jet airplane. On Mars you can do the same thing in
a U-shaped track because of the thin atmosphere. You would be "flying" on a
very thin cushion of atmosphere between the vehicle and the track. That has
much less friction than a rail, and so you can go much faster.

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xseven
Uber had a CFO? That's news to me

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tofupup
neat

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kahrkunne
The hyperloop - all the dangers of outer space, here on earth.

Or: if we can't get SpaceXplode into space, we'll get space down to earth

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douche
I'd like to see some venture capitalists put forth some big chunks of money on
realistic infrastructure projects using boring, proven technologies. Sure,
there's not much chance of ever getting any kind of return on it, but at the
end of it, there's still a bridge, or an extra couple transit stops left over
when you're done lighting money on fire.

Maybe something like imperial Roman conspicuous construction instead of
conspicuous consumption.

Just for a change.

~~~
eric_h
I believe we have a presidential candidate quite well versed in conspicuous
construction with negligible returns.

