
My Not-So-Hyper Loop - softbuilder
http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=1050&sub=2
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The1TrueGuy
nothing wrong with this design itself but some details of his example are
problematic. 6km down from the midway point between LA and SanFran is loaded
with faults and I'm no geology expert either but this close to the ring of
fire I bet rock in that vicinity would be pretty toasty. Sure, maybe not
exactly magma but could easy be like 160F.

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Turing_Machine
You could pump out all (or even some) of the air, which would not only reduce
friction but also help buffer the heat problem in the deepest parts due to the
insulating qualities of the vacuum (like a Thermos).

There'd still be some major engineering involved; ATW the deepest transit
tunnel at present, the Seikan Tunnel in Japan, is only about 140 meters below
the seabed and 240 meters below sea level.

On the other hand, there's a mine in South Africa that's nearly 4km deep, and
people work down there for extended periods of time. The mine has several
hundred km of tunnels, too.

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softbuilder
Last I heard, Elon promised to dig into the Hyperloop after his 1st quarter
earnings were announced. This seems like a fine time to toss around ideas for
what it actually might be.

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cheapsteak
Interesting idea, but doesn't fit with "I think we could actually make it
self-powering if you put solar panels on it" part

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softbuilder
Why not? Don't get me wrong, there are tons of problems with this, but it is
clearly going to need some external power. Why not solar panels?

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cheapsteak
My apologies, I was remarking that it didn't seem to fit with Elon's
description of the Hyperloop but neglected to notice that you weren't trying
to predict what his actual idea will be.

You could of course hook the system up to a power grid that could be getting
power from solar panels, but Elon's description sounded like he intended for
the panels to be part of the system, which would require it to be above ground

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softbuilder
I see what you're saying. Related, he talked about the system possibly being
able to store energy for when solar wasn't available. I'm very interested in
how that would work.

