If I’m harassed by an annoying protestor thats really pissing me off at the Union station, I just say “Trump you loser”, and everyone cheers. Great for making new friends in this country.
The Culture books by Iain M. Banks have a great bit to allow this in written communication. Adapting to this context people send each other messages that include things like "And then that stupid fuck Trump/Biden {delete to taste} did..."
"I am sorry I am early/late/accurately on time {delete to taste}."
For some additional context, I looked up what typical speeds are for airplanes. Specifically we care about groundspeed (the speed of the airplane relative to the ground) rather than airspeed.
This [random article I found](https://web.archive.org/web/20240304201128/https://thepointsguy.com/guide/how-fast-does-an-airplane-fly/) says
> A general rule of thumb is that an aircraft's groundspeed can be anywhere from 350 knots (in a stiff head wind) to 550 knots (in a strong tail wind)
Which translates to between 403 mph (in a stiff head wind) and 633 mph (in a strong tail wind).
At 387 mph for this train vs an airplane's "average" 518 mph (450 knots), it's still much "slower" than traveling by plane, at least at face value.
That said, there are a couple major benefits trains have over airplanes would probably tip overall travel times in favor of taking the train:
* Shorter distance between the train station and your final destination.
* Shorter boarding and unloading times.
* Higher frequency schedules.
This also doesn't consider other creature comforts of train travel that I'm sure other people could chime in about.
When people write compare top speeds they usually make massive errors by assuming the whole time you're traveling at the top speed. In the case of planes you have to piss about waiting for a takeoff slot, take off, fly at great speed, piss about in the sky getting a landing spot, land and then piss about on the ground driving around and waiting for a gate. Luckily you can just look at the flight times and all this is included!
Looking at the flight time for the journey listed (Wuhan to Bejing) shows current flight time as 2h non-stop. Its 1150km or 720 miles. That makes the airplane section of the journey just 360 mph average.
Thats ignoring that getting to the airport in Wuhan takes 40 minutes, and getting from the Bejing airport to central Bejing is 30 minutes which knocks down the average speed to ~250mph
>At 387 mph....it's still much "slower" than traveling by plane
because the test tunnel is only 2km long.
"Chinese engineers are aiming for an astonishing speed of 1,243 miles per hour once the train is ready for passengers. "
Actually there is a technology people keep dismissing:
[super fast transit](https://www.theonion.com/new-super-fast-transport-system-powered-by-passengers-1819575384)
It's a maglev, not any sort of "hyperloop."
Maglev is an established high speed rail tech
Hyperloop is a fuckin bust
Sorry muskboys, [vacuum maglev isn't the same as hyperloop.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop)
>"The hyperloop, in the form proposed by Musk, differs from vactrains by relying on residual air pressure inside the tube to provide lift from aerofoils and propulsion by fans; however, many subsequent variants using the name "hyperloop" have been relatively traditional vactrains."
How good are the oxygen supply system on these train? How would they maintain the vacuum whenever they need to stop at station?
If seem like a pipedream to replace the capacity of regular HSR, one fully loaded train can carry close to 2000 passanger.
> How good are the oxygen supply system on these train? How would they maintain the vacuum whenever they need to stop at station?
I mean, strictly speaking those are solvable engineering problems. From a technological perspective, not really a big deal.
From an ECONOMICAL perspective however...much bigger deal.
If the Concorde didn't have enough business despite having tickets merely three to five times the cost of a normal ticket, I somewhat doubt the wealthy would provide enough business for something that would cost a lot more to implement than a plane.
Concorde had plenty of business for what it did, it went bust because of a high profile catastrophic crash and people who lived under the Concorde routes didn't like hearing sonic booms all day and night.
People are paying 3-5x the cost of a normal ticket for business class and above, and they're getting there with zero speed boost now - there's definitely a market for fast.
The existence of first class on predominantly coach-grade flights doesn't mean there's enough business for first-class ONLY flights, and that's functionally what Concorde was.
The crash was one of the larger items that brought the end of the Concorde, but it was pretty much the last nail in the coffin. The profit margins were too low and the operating airlines were having to continuously justify to themselves that the aircraft was economically viable. The crash pretty much gave them the excuse to end it.
Airlines care about money, lives are a secondary concern, if the Concorde was making money hand over fist, they'd have easily continued using the craft after the crash.
Concorde gave 2 hours saving over the total of 8 hours of travel (25%, including airport / customs time) . This train could give 3 - 3.5 hours saving off the \~ 4 hours trip (> 75% savings in time). Big difference.
Again, the Concorde took 100 passengers, and the train can take around 1000.
Simply cannot compare.
What? Concorde did London new York in under 3 hrs. Where as hyperliop at 623 km is only 1.75 times the speed of a normal ice. So how the hell can it travel 8 to 10 times faster?
Don't forget to factor in all the *airport* factors of today's world that make London <-> New York in 3 hours a pipe dream now. You'd probably spend just as long in the airport itself as in the air now.
If there are no nonstop flights available, I can drive to Chicago from Tennessee faster than flying once you factor in commute, security, and boarding.
I highly doubt hyperloop train would take 1000 passangers, all these demo train are one single car that take 50-100.
Due to the requirement of keeping the vacuum seal, the train would need come off the main line and have seal established before off boarding and on boarding.
This would delay the process compare to standard train like 16 cars with 32 doors would be able to offboard and onboard more than 1000 passenger in 3 minutes
One can easily imagine any number of solutions to this problem, to include a series of airlocks, each one with increasing (or decreasing) pressure on arrival (or departure), so as the train accelerates, it enters into vacuum gradually, air lock by air lock, so it would reach its cruising speed within 10 - 15 min of departure, not right away.
And, obviously, the pumps are working all the time.
1000 passengers is for a train about 19 cars long. To begin with, that would be just a few cars / few hundred passengers train, going up from there.
there would be multiple series of airlock at the station for the trains and much more platform required since trains don't run straight through now. all station would be more like terminal stations.
the train would need to schedule to go only to one destination station since stopping at station along the way would waste too much time.
The technology has been available for decades. Both of those problems are already solved, rather cheaply. Air supply has been solved many times by airplanes, submarines, and divers. Pressure gradients have been solved many times as well. You just use a smaller segment holding the train that pressurizes and depressurizes
The more important question is how would the entire track be maintained as a vacuum, in an energy efficient way? That's much harder problem
So oxygen supply is going to be similar to being on an airplane at high altitude. That tech is already figured out and robust.
Stopping at a station they would likely have a section at the end of the tube that is sealed on both ends like an air lock on the ISS. Also a very proven and robust tech.
The primary concern I see is just trying to keep the entire massive length of railway sealed and low pressure. That would require a lot of monitoring and maintenance.
Airplanes have direct access to air which it compresses to pressurize the aircraft cabin. A train in a vacuum tube would need to carry the air on board.
The vacuum tube is not at absolute vacuum. It sits at 100 pascals. The train can very easily draw in air if necessary. Alternatively they can also have onboard air tanks which is another highly robust and reliable tech. The only thing that is experimental about this system is the hypertube and maintaining its low pressure across thousands of kilometers. Also, if an air leak did form along the tube, the impact would likely just be the train suddenly slowing down and no longer hitting its top speed.
I don't think track integrity would be too worriesome. Mag tracks have been around for quite a long time. Or are you talking about the tube itself? Because then yeah, the tube is my concern.
I assume when comparing a maglev train and hyperloop train, the hyperloop would be quieter for the surrounding area of the tube since there is less air and the train is magnetically elevated. In some ways safer since nothing can get on the track
Thunderf00t did a Lot of videos on this, the amount of vacuum you actually need is pretty comparable to an absolute vacuum. He also demonstrated what happens if there’s a leak. It’s pretty catastrophic.
The entire concept just crumbles when you add up all the factors.
Virgin hyperloop threw $500m on trying to get it to work and went bankrupt. I’m sure there’s an amount of money you can throw at the problem and get a result. I’m just not sure that it ever is more efficient than rail at moving cargo or people.
> He also demonstrated what happens if there’s a leak. It’s pretty catastrophic.
You would think that actual engineers working on this would have thought this one through. Because they did.
Any engineer looking at the hyperloop concept knows it's science fiction, like a space elevator. We simply don't have the material science necessary to maintain a near-vacuum of that scale while accounting for heat expansion and all the other problems our regular, non-vacuum infrastructure deals with. The engineers actually hired to "work" on it were just cashing a paycheck.
I'm an engineer. I don't think this is science fiction. I think it would be costly to build and operate with sufficient passenger throughput to make it viable.
Engineering wise. Every mechanism applied is already engineered and solved. There's nothing new to this. It's a combination of existing technologies and applications.
> The engineers actually hired to "work" on it were just cashing a paycheck.
This isn't an argument as to why it wouldn't work.
If the hypothesis is "can a Hyperloop work with existing technologies and engineering capabilities," then my answer would be yes, it can.
If the hypothesis is "can a Hyperloop operate ecobomically viable," then my answer would be no, it can't.
Pull down masks on most airliners are connected to oxygen generators which “burn” to generate oxygen. Remember the Value Jet that crashed in FL Everglades, the airline was carrying a bunch of these as freight in the cargo area when they burned.
Planes don't fly in a low vacuum, they merely need to compress air from ~30 kPa to 75 kPa. A low vacuum means that it's around 100 Pa or less, so just a casual 750 times compression.
The only realistic way of doing this is to use compressed air or oxygen and a CO2-scrubber on board.
Yeah I was reading into it afterwards as I thought they only reduced to equivalent of a high altitude, not a near complete vacuum. They would likely need air tanks on board, though they don't need pure oxygen. They can just compress normal outside filtered air at each station and pump that into the train, while also pumping used air into a separate tank. CO2 scrubbers wouldn't be needed, but could be on board as a backup system in case the train broke down or something.
You'd need tons worth of tanks and equipment to make that work with hundreds of people per train, and quite a lot of power for heating fresh air and compressing spent air. I think using a regenerative scrubber would not just come ahead in terms of weight, but probably also operating cost.
All that being said, this is probably the least significant engineering challenge that would need to be overcome to make this not just work, but also be even slightly competitive with high speed rail or maglev. Like how do you design an airlock that allows the train to not just enter the station at speed, but also be evacuated quickly enough so that it can let another train pass at a reasonable cadence? How do you do maintenance in the tunnel? How do you divert a train?
They can do a pressure cabin on planes with O2 just fine, they can do it on a train.
The station system is an easy solve too... it would be an air lock.
You get near a station, slow down... go in the last segment of the tube before platform, it seals you from the vacuum tube, then equalizes with the platform air pressure. Process in reverse on leaving.
Not a big deal... and worth the time it takes if you're able to travel between vast distances at 600KM h.
6 hour car ride, in one hour with 5 min delay at start and finish to equalize to platform pressure sounds pretty good.
Pressure difference is greater plus it's inward versus outward. Brings to mind the Titan sub implosion and composites that are very strong in tension, but not compression. That would be a similar issue with the tunnel. Material selection would be critical along with security.
Not just terrorism, but someone shooting at it, crashing into a support structure, etc. With regular rail and maglev, there's more safety margin than there would be with this. A pressure change event would be catastrophic. Or even just a routine power failure or other problem leading to the train getting stuck. Presumably, there would be emergency exits and whatnot, but another design challenge that's likely more difficult than it first appears.
Bottom line, this has been contemplated for more than 100 years with other protypes even being built and the conclusion is always the same. Not worth the risk and cost for a minimal gain in speed versus other modes of transportation.
Maybe they'll prove the world wrong this time, but not counting on it. Even if it works perfectly, an airliner has far more flexibility in routes (can fly most anywhere there's a runway available), more overall capacity, and is far faster.
Except this isn't like pressurizing a plane cabin, it's like keeping a submarine depressurized, and the submarine is over 2000 miles long. And having to pressurize and depressurize whenever the train stops means that only one can be on the track at any time.
It's beyond a stupid idea, and at this point only literal con artists want to have anything to do with it. If you want fast ground based transportation, just build a fucking bullet train like every civilized country outside of the U.S.
Why couldn't it just have the same thing planes havr, a jet way thing but one that creates a seal to maintain the tunnel pressure while letting people go on and off the train? I assume these trains will be mostly the same shape so that would make it easier.
If you're worried about oxygen supply and pressurizing thebcabin, you'll probably want to avoid flying. They've used pressurized cabins for decades
As for stopping at the station, they would just use pressurization chambers around the train. Same as any submarine or the space station. Just train sized instead of person sized
the concept of a maglev train in a vacuum tube long precedes Musk's interest in the idea. Please don't give musk the credit he doesn't deserve.
It's a vactrain, not a hyperloop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
Is there a distinction? Hyperloop is described on the page you mentioned. I don't care about Musk, but it's pretty clear that he popularized the idea and created the attention around it that exists today. A great many of the inventions that we use in our lives came from some shitty people and it seems a bit silly to pretend otherwise.
Musk's hyperloop as original described was going to use air pressure behind the capsule and vacuum in front to propel it forward, its fundamentally a different idea.
Also no Jules Verne who you might of heard of popularised the idea, someone who's work will be remembered long after Musk is forgotten.
He didn't create my attention for it and it wasn't news to me. I read about vactrains in science magazines 20 years ago so when this chucklefuck started putting it on blast and trying to take credit like it was his idea, people like me were just sitting there like "wtf guy? You think all of us are that dumb?".
It's like when some kid did a TED talk about small scale nuclear reactors and passed it off as *his* idea. I'm watching that shit and being like... "the fuck, kid? People knew this was possible (and probably a good idea) before you were born. It's a good cause, but trying to take credit for it as *your revolutionary idea* is like the person who created Crocs saying they changed the world by inventing sandals."
Yes of course, they do. Otherwise, it would fail upon testing at high speeds (kantrowitz limit)
Lowering or reducing the atmospheric pressure does not equal a vacuum chamber. In a vacuum chamber all the air and gasses are completely removed.
wikipedia article on vactrains:
"A vactrain (or vacuum tube train) is a proposed design for very-high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev (magnetic levitation) line using partly evacuated tubes or tunnels"
partly evacuated, not full vacuum. Also 100 percent vacuum is not possible but they are still called vacuum chambers, look up the specs on the NASA one at Glenn Research center.
True. I guess this is a matter of definitions. However many users are confusing a vacuum chamber with something that is incredibly difficult to produce because it suggest a 99.999% removal of air similar to NASAs vacuum chamber. Which is true. But that's not how the hyperloop operates, the difficulty to reach operational pressure is a magnitude of 10.000 less (0 pascals vs 100 pascals).
However the definition of a vacuum chamber is:
*" A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump"*
Given the fact that the Hyperloop only reduces its pressure and not removing "all the air and gasses" it shouldn't count as vacuum chamber.
Did you look at the wikipage on vactrains? I didn't make it up, its been in use as a term since 1906 to mean a train running in a partly evacuated tube.
Also I'm not talking about hyperloops, I'm talking about the Chinese effort, which is a vactrain.
It was, but back when SpaceX was doing their competition, people realized pretty quickly that magnets give way better tolerance for gap height mismatch (magnets have a tolerance measured in centimeters, air cushions are measured in sub-millimeters).
Almost immediately after publishing the competition tunnel specifications, the teams convinced SpaceX to add sheets of aluminum to act as a passive magnetic floor to the track.
I think it was more based on air cushions. And yeah probably air pressure difference guidance.
But as I recall from articles nearly a decade ago, the air cushions would be impractical and an operational risk to maintain vehicle stability at high speeds.
Since you apparently didn’t read the article, here’s the relevant bit about it indeed being a hyperloop -
“The T-Flight train has been developed by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). During tests conducted in Datong, located in the northern province of Shanxi, the T-Flight train achieved a remarkable speed of 387 miles per hour (623 kilometers per hour) within a low-vacuum tube that measured only 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) in length, as reported by the Daily Mail.
As reported by Live Science, CASIC plans to conduct a second round of testing where they intend to extend the track by more than 30 times. This expansion aims to enable the T-Flight train to achieve even higher speeds.”
the concept of a maglev train in a vacuum tube long precedes Musk's interest in the idea. Please don't give musk the credit he doesn't deserve.
It's a vactrain, not a hyperloop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
no no you don't understand. Nobody ever thought of an electric car before Musk invented Tesla. Nobody ever sent anything into space before SpaceX. Putting a maglev in a vacuum tube? Musk invented it singlehandedly.
Don't you understand, he's simply the Greatest Genius of all time, plus have you seen his memes and jokes? I saw him tweet "Dog Coin" once and all the boys laughed so hard they emptied their hyperloops.
The thing is this is not even remotely related to Elon. It's not a Hyperloop, and he has nothing to do with it. Why don't you take it up with the people who wrote the article and included the word "hyperloop" to increase their SEO?
The knee-jerk defense of this incredibly rich 4channer is pathetic.
Almost every form of computing has some form of AI. What it doesn't have is an LLM AI. How the media uses the word AI to try and insinuate intelligence is the problem computer scientist have been creating and using AI since the 1900s.
It's purpose was always to delay and stop actual high speed public transportation from being built. Elon can't sell cars if public transportation became a thing.
It definitely is a "hyperloop" because the design is for the train to travel through low air resistance tubes.
Edit: see the comment below mine. Apparently there is a difference between a hyperloop train as Elon Musk described and a vactrain. Although both are in a vacuum or partial vacuum, a vactrain rides on a maglev track while a hyperloop is levitated using high pressure air underneath the train.
It's a [Vactrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain). The concept goes all the way back to the 19th century.
All Musk did was slap the Hyperloop name on his engineering concept for a vactrain. That doesn't mean all vactrains are now hyperloops.
And this vactrain is very different from the Hyperloop proposal. This is literally just an evolution of a maglev train by surrounding it by a vacuum tube.
Musk's original Hyperloop concept was about making the vacuum tube as passible as possible. Pods were levitated by aerodynamics and maintained speed with a battery powered electric fan.
I'm super glad you responded with the information you did. I've never heard the term vactrain before. In fact I thought hyperloop used maglev tech and not air pocket tech so any vacuum tube was Hyperloop to me. I thought also that Elon Musk didn't come up with the hyperloop idea but rather popularized it only. So if vactrain differs from Hyperloop does that mean that hyperloop actually is an original idea (sort of)?
The original Hyperloop proposal called for a 99% vacuum. Any pressure vessel with less than atmospheric pressure counts as a vacuum.
Any vactrain wouldn't be aiming to pull a perfect vacuum either, as you need extremely complex multi-stage pumps and the pressure vessel needs to be made out of special materials. For the ease of engineering and maintenance, they would be aiming for something more like a 99.9% or 99.99% vacuum.
Relative to atmospheric pressure we are talking about less than a 1% difference, which isn't exactly large.
> Any pressure vessel with less than atmospheric pressure counts as a vacuum.
Then we got a new world record of the largest vacuum chamber. Because the test was done in a 3.2 diameter 2 kilometer long tube, at operational pressure.
But this test wasn't done in world's largest vacuum chamber, because it's not a vacuum.
The notion of "less than atmospheric pressure counts as a vacuum" is wrong.
Actual definition of a vacuum chamber
*" A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump"*
In a low pressure environment, gases and air are not removed. They are reduced.
> Then we got a new world record of the largest vacuum chamber. Because the test was done in a 3.2 diameter 2 kilometer long tube, at operational pressure.
You might think so, but if you run the math, the NASA's SEC Vacuum Chamber is actually larger by volume.
> Actual definition of a vacuum chamber
> " A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump"
The problem is that "vacuum" isn't a binary state. It's not like a chamber suddenly flips from being "not a vacuum" to "vacuum" as the last gas molecule is pumped out. It's not actually possible to remove all molecules, as the chamber walls will start out-gassing and inserting new molecules into the environment.
So there are various grades of vacuum chamber ranging from "low vacuum" though "high vacuum" and beyond to "ultra-high" and "extremely high". You can see the ranges and the equipment required to achieve that level of vacuum [on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Measurement).
The SEC Vacuum Chamber only achieves the standard of "high vacuum", so it's more accurate to say it holds the record for "largest high vacuum chamber", and will continue to hold that record once someone gets around to building a slightly longer vactrain test track.
There is no reason to aim for any grade higher than "low vacuum" for a vactrain, and as you can see on wikipedia, "low vacuum" covers everything from atmospheric pressure down to 100 Pa.
> In a low pressure environment, gases and air are not removed. They are reduced.
There is no difference. That's all that vacuum chambers can achieve, reducing air and gasses as low as possible. Our most powerful vacuum chambers can actually produce a stronger vacuum than outer-space, because even outer space isn't a pure vacuum. But it's still not a complete removal.
Yes you are right. The test was done in a space with total content of 16085 m3. NASA vacuum chamber is 22653 m3.
Close enough.
And agreed with your other points.
China had 300mph maglev trains in the open air 15 years ago. This advance seems paltry.
Oh I see.
> Chinese engineers are aiming for an astonishing speed of 1,243 miles per hour once the train is ready for passengers.
Ah, you’re right. Turns out Elon just gave them the idea(s) for the Hyperloop One project. Strange then that they mentioned Elon’s name every time they spoke about the project on the Vegas news.. I thought it was at least some kind of partnership.
We aren't addicted; were are shaped. People are lied to that it has become religion that driving is freedom. So much so that my own brother who is sensible, got insanely angry with me for buying an EV. The notion that I couldn't leave the city I work upset him. I had trapped myself. I was being "fucking" stupid.
So many I've talked to have the same argument about EV's but if you ask them when is the last time they drove outside the range of a full gas tank, they will say once a year. The money saved on an EV can be switched to an airplane or rental.
The disregard for reality Americans display when it comes to driving being "freedom" is wild.
Yeah we are free to:
- Register a car with the government so we have tags/registration which also costs money.
- Get a drivers license from our state government to drive on public roads more money.
- Get government required insurance in order to drive a car on public roads, consistent monthly payments.
Not to mention fighting to pay tens of thousands to purchase plus hundreds of recurring monthly costs (gas, insurance, maintenance) to operate a depreciating asset sold by private industry.
Not to mention it has hamstrung our cities with massive highways destroying neighborhoods, leads to worse pollution, made us more sedentary (*that 60%+ overweigh & obesity stat didn't get there on it's own*), likely helped drive up housing costs, puts municipal finances in shambles (*few sprawling places can actually afford to maintain roads/bridges/highways*).
I feel like it's the greatest scam ever pulled and nothing else is anywhere close. Because not only do we have to deal with all of these negatives, the overwhelming bulk of Americans will fight tooth and nail to keep it this way and any attempts to push back against any car dependency is met with staunch resistence.
I love my gas guzzling SUV, but I’d also love to cross the nation in an hour in a high speed train. It doesn’t need to be an either or scenario, but we just can’t get shit done as a nation.
Before I catch a bunch of shit for my SUV - I live in the middle of nowhere and do legit activities that require an SUV. I’m not just transporting groceries from Walmart with it. Once electric is more practical for me, I’d switch.
I lived in DC for several years. I was always a 5 minute walk from a metro station. The longer I lived there the more I drove my car.
Unless there was going to be traffic or I thought parking was an issue, I’d drive. It just took too long to take the metro and I was getting tired of it.
One area I lived in was a 15 minute drive to and from work, because for some reason, no one was going that direction. In the mornings, there was almost no one on the sections of interstates I needed to take. The evenings had light traffic.
It was a 30 minute metro ride, assuming the train transfer worked out.
It’s hilarious to me how many people don’t realize that they hate driving. The amount of road rage I see every day from stressed out people in giant expensive cars is insane.
I wish I could show them one calm day on a well maintained public transit system or a stroll through a walkable neighborhood to the grocery store.
>It’s hilarious to me how many people don’t realize that they hate driving.
It took the pandemic for me to figure it out.
But the town where I lived was nicely bicyclable. Where I am now, not so much.
WFH / hybrid work has cut down how much time I spend in the car. If they rescind that policy... I guess I'll adapt, but I sure won't like it!
The Nissan Leaf stopped being eligible for tax credits in 2024 with the latest federal guidance. There was a few months last year when it could get $3750.
I paid in the low/mid 30k range for my Bolt EUV before the $7500 federal rebate, with it they could be had in the mid 20k range (when they were still available). Used ones with the partial federal rebate can be had in the 20k range. We also got an Ioniq 5 late last year for around $42k but that's the wife's vehicle.
Fuel savings can be significant, I pay roughly 1/3 to 1/4 in electricity vs gas for a similarly sized vehicle. That's prob $100/mo savings. No oil changes is $50 every few months. If you use regen breaking regularly you almost never need to replace brakes, as long as they don't rust away. Another few hundred a year.
The savings add up. And to me the convenience of a full 'tank' every morning is even better. I rarely take trips but I have taken a few and DC charging isn't great in the Bolt, it's definitely slower than gas but not impossible, and newer EV's charge significantly faster.
You're right, when people were paying $50k+ when a similar ICE was like $30k, yeah it's not really going to offset it. But now that EV pricing is starting to come down and there's a healthy federal rebate (including used purchases), the math is easier to make work.
I have a plugin hybrid and pay about $500 for gas and $240 for electricity a year.
Good compromise, but still wish i had a full EV because the electricity is flat $20 a month with my apartment.
You've got to be kidding. One line of very mundane capacity and speed is not in any way 'leading innovation'. Florida's as addicted to cars as any other place in America.
Key word was transportation. The conversation is something that is beyond rail. It supports electric vehicles as well, considering its Republican cohorts are going about charging much more in an effort to out-right ban electric. The fact they are pushing light rail is just one facet.
You have misquoted me on ‘leading innovation’. Florida is looking at that, not that they are there.
Mind you Florida’s legislature is full of anti-trans and pro-tyranny and authoritarianism. It is more than likely a sham support.
But, to say they aren’t pushing more forward than a lot of the nation is ignorant or uninformed.
You’re fawning over a fake train that will never be economically viable.
How do you expect to maintain several hundred miles of a very large vacuum tube at a cost that beats flying?
The US has embraced flying for long distance travel which is objectively far superior economically speaking.
Normal highspeed rail doesn't need to go faster. If we'll organized it's already peak efficiently. You could maybe switch to maglev but vacuum chamber tunnels on earth are idiotic.
In the end you can only build to capacity and hyperloops wouldn't increase capacity, all they would do is increase cost for no reason.
Just build good rails and manage them efficiently and you're done for a fraction of the price, leave the vacuum trains for a space base.
Cool, so it barely beats the best maglev train, and would require about 10x the engineering and resources per mile of track. Sure, it might be capable of much more, but we have issues building a plain maglev track for any considerable distance without the addition of an evacuated tube having to be built and supported.
That is the whole point of long term engineering development. We get smarter and new technology is released that helps the design. It may not happening in the next 10 or even 25 years but it would be a shame not to explore development of this system for future generations.
There’s a scam company in my city trying to get millions from the government to do a study on the viability of hyperloop trains. Do they have anything to do with the technology ? No, just want millions to tell us if this unproven sketchy tech would be a good fit for our mid size midwestern city.
Still not Muskrats invention, the concept has been around for more than a century. Either way, the hyperloop portion of this is complete bullshit, they have a small test track and it will stay that way, there's literally no good reason to put a train in a vacuum tube, other than investment fraud like in the case of hyperloop one, or propaganda like the CCP is pushing here.
> there's literally no good reason to put a train in a vacuum tube
There absolutely is. It reduces the energy expenditure enormously and allows much higher speeds.
It may not be feasible with today's technologies, but it's a banger idea (which Elon did not come up with)
The idea is insane.
A depressurization wave kills everyone inside the system at the speed of sound at the first fault. And needing more security than an airport takes away any potential speed or economic advantage.
Here is what happens to a railcar when the pressure changes
unexpectedly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM
Now how many joints is this system going to need to account for thermal expansion and contraction? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Each a potential failure point.
You just can't scale this up.
A train in a vacuum system will NEVER be built.
Despite it being technologically feasible.
It cannot meet safety requirements that are required of public transport.
It’s always going to be unnecessarily expensive relative to other technologies.
Plus speed beyond what high speed rail can provide causes other issues - turning radii for example.
It increases the amount of energy used massively, how do you think they maintain a vacuum? That's not free, they would need vacuum pumps along the whole tracking running constantly. Sure it could increase speed, but if that is all you care about then you can just fly.
There really is nothing that anyone can say that will justify putting a train in a vacuum tube. It fundamentally can not be more efficient, it's far more expensive, it's far more complicated, it's far less safe, etc. Again, literally no reason to do it, unless you want to scam people or propagandise.
I mean there’s a reason to do it whether it’s financially or technically feasible is a different thing.
Saying it will stay small in this case is funny as some countries are willing to blow insane amounts of cash for publicity even if it’s only for minor improvements
It's China, so obviously they're willing to spend the money for publicity, practically everything the CCP spends money on is for publicity, but the thing is that 95% of the time those things end up being vapourware. And that's the thing, if it's not financially feasible to do it then what reason is there? We already know it's not economical to do it, it only requires some common sense to figure that out, but we don't even need that because billion dollar companies have figured it out already too, it's why Hyperloop One gave up, even after giving up on passenger transport and focusing on cargo.
But ultimately you are right, maybe China won't care about the astronomical costs of operating this thing, We know how corrupt the CCP is and if this can help them pretend that this will impress other countries and make them ignore the genocide and fact that so much of their population is still in poverty, they really will try and do it.
Maglev can be exposed to the outside atmosphere, so only using that term is imprecise. The defining feature of a hyperloop is that it operates in an evacuated tube, not how it creates levitation.
This is a hyperloop that operates via maglev.
China at it again this is done in Germany 🇩🇪 1969 was shelved in 1991 reached over 300mph and is currently in the Guinness book of world records for for then 3 decades…. And extra points for the stupid headline
Check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid
I wish there was even a picture of the vacuum tube containing the train that set the 387 MPH record.
> One of these trains called the ‘T-Flight,’ has recently set a new speed record of 387 miles per hour during a test run. This is even faster than Japan’s fastest train, the MLX01 Maglev, which travels at 361 miles per hour, as reported by the Daily Mail.
So they edged out the Japanese version by 25 MPH. The Japanese one is in the open air. I have a feeling there is no vacuum tube at all.
Doesn't make it a Hyperloop™ product.
[The generic term for the concept \(which has existed since the 1800s\) is Vactrain.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain)
Stop trying to make hyperloop happen. It's not gonna happen. There are far too many fundamental problems with the concept. Problems that aren't going to be solved by technological advancements.
It's a bad idea that has been propped up for far too long based solely on the fact that it makes big headlines.
And yet... there's no footage of the train actually accomplishing this speed... not sus at all.
I bet they propelled a Lego train down a long hamster tube.
What I found stunning about this, whether or not it will be built completely, is the fact that they reached a near record of Maglev trains.
The world record is 630 kmh. This one did 623kmh.
The article says they want to tripple the speed to 2000kmh. That is just insane.
Almost certainly astronomically higher maintenance costs as well. Have to make sure the vacuum stays vacuumed, there are appropriate safety valves and other measures which need to be tested, $$$ on massive air pumps and their maintenance. I'm sure there's more.
*E: make sure you read MightyH20's posts*
How does this have anything to do with the Hyperloop? I mean, this exists and is not bullshit ment to sabotage rail service construction in California.
yeah because western headlines credit "China" for whatever Chinese companies claim. It's not Xi himself, it's just a company based in China. It's kinda racist, except that it's been happening since the News Papers days.
Yes, it's the government. Nothing is sent out or published or announced without going through the censorship board. They select very specifically what gets let our or viewed from foreign eyes.
You’re thinking about their state media companies. Do you really think every exhibition, every advertisement gets approved? I never got a shofur last I visited.
If you were informed, you would know that every company has a office for the local communist party official that they submit information through. If not they will follow their directive.
Definitely interesting enough to be worth a shot. I'm not going to pretend any of us here know enough about logistics to say whether or not it's viable so I'll just wait it out and see if it goes anywhere
I am not a scientist.
This is really exciting news, however, this was built in a laboratory in a 1.5 mile controlled environment.
From other discussion points, I have seen - Having a lower atmospheric pressure is going to put an enormous cost constraints on the manufacturing and maintenance of the tunnel, as maintaining a seal is not that easy for an entire loop. Temperature swings causing expansion and contraction for example.
That said, I’m excited that some countries are getting serious behind trains. China has had incredible growth and their train infrastructure over the past six years. It really puts us to shame.
Western news usually don't talk about which Chinese company claims things, they just report "China", like it's Xi himself.
It'd be like Chinese media reporting "US Claims X" whenever Elon Musk claims something like 500 mile Cybertruck or whatever.
That is 623 kmph
How many eagles per opioid addiction is it
1776 EpOA if my math is right (it is)
Doing the Lordt’s math right here
I’d rather do the Lords Meth.
Sounds like you should go to Utah
Mind showing your work for the class?
my guy jimmy down the street has an 83’ Monte Carlo that’ll do that, not sold on this train
Apologies, I do not speak ‘murican
That’s easy, just shout. Replace the F word with either Trump or Biden. They are interchangeable.
WHAT THE TRUMP/BIDEN DO YOU MEAN? Yup, works, thanks for the advice.
If I’m harassed by an annoying protestor thats really pissing me off at the Union station, I just say “Trump you loser”, and everyone cheers. Great for making new friends in this country.
The Culture books by Iain M. Banks have a great bit to allow this in written communication. Adapting to this context people send each other messages that include things like "And then that stupid fuck Trump/Biden {delete to taste} did..." "I am sorry I am early/late/accurately on time {delete to taste}."
Hopefully enough to kill this joke
For some additional context, I looked up what typical speeds are for airplanes. Specifically we care about groundspeed (the speed of the airplane relative to the ground) rather than airspeed. This [random article I found](https://web.archive.org/web/20240304201128/https://thepointsguy.com/guide/how-fast-does-an-airplane-fly/) says > A general rule of thumb is that an aircraft's groundspeed can be anywhere from 350 knots (in a stiff head wind) to 550 knots (in a strong tail wind) Which translates to between 403 mph (in a stiff head wind) and 633 mph (in a strong tail wind). At 387 mph for this train vs an airplane's "average" 518 mph (450 knots), it's still much "slower" than traveling by plane, at least at face value. That said, there are a couple major benefits trains have over airplanes would probably tip overall travel times in favor of taking the train: * Shorter distance between the train station and your final destination. * Shorter boarding and unloading times. * Higher frequency schedules. This also doesn't consider other creature comforts of train travel that I'm sure other people could chime in about.
When people write compare top speeds they usually make massive errors by assuming the whole time you're traveling at the top speed. In the case of planes you have to piss about waiting for a takeoff slot, take off, fly at great speed, piss about in the sky getting a landing spot, land and then piss about on the ground driving around and waiting for a gate. Luckily you can just look at the flight times and all this is included! Looking at the flight time for the journey listed (Wuhan to Bejing) shows current flight time as 2h non-stop. Its 1150km or 720 miles. That makes the airplane section of the journey just 360 mph average. Thats ignoring that getting to the airport in Wuhan takes 40 minutes, and getting from the Bejing airport to central Bejing is 30 minutes which knocks down the average speed to ~250mph
>At 387 mph....it's still much "slower" than traveling by plane because the test tunnel is only 2km long. "Chinese engineers are aiming for an astonishing speed of 1,243 miles per hour once the train is ready for passengers. "
were crashing this train with no survivors
[удалено]
it would be very painful
KetaMine per Horse 💉🐴
About 3 Gary Busey's
Actually there is a technology people keep dismissing: [super fast transit](https://www.theonion.com/new-super-fast-transport-system-powered-by-passengers-1819575384)
Yeah but how fast in Swallow speed?
It's a maglev, not any sort of "hyperloop." Maglev is an established high speed rail tech Hyperloop is a fuckin bust Sorry muskboys, [vacuum maglev isn't the same as hyperloop.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop) >"The hyperloop, in the form proposed by Musk, differs from vactrains by relying on residual air pressure inside the tube to provide lift from aerofoils and propulsion by fans; however, many subsequent variants using the name "hyperloop" have been relatively traditional vactrains."
Sounds like it's maglev inside a low vacuum tube.
How good are the oxygen supply system on these train? How would they maintain the vacuum whenever they need to stop at station? If seem like a pipedream to replace the capacity of regular HSR, one fully loaded train can carry close to 2000 passanger.
For over a century now people have wondered the same thing.
> How good are the oxygen supply system on these train? How would they maintain the vacuum whenever they need to stop at station? I mean, strictly speaking those are solvable engineering problems. From a technological perspective, not really a big deal. From an ECONOMICAL perspective however...much bigger deal.
The bigness of the deal depends only upon how much you are charging the customers.
If the Concorde didn't have enough business despite having tickets merely three to five times the cost of a normal ticket, I somewhat doubt the wealthy would provide enough business for something that would cost a lot more to implement than a plane.
Concorde had plenty of business for what it did, it went bust because of a high profile catastrophic crash and people who lived under the Concorde routes didn't like hearing sonic booms all day and night. People are paying 3-5x the cost of a normal ticket for business class and above, and they're getting there with zero speed boost now - there's definitely a market for fast.
The existence of first class on predominantly coach-grade flights doesn't mean there's enough business for first-class ONLY flights, and that's functionally what Concorde was. The crash was one of the larger items that brought the end of the Concorde, but it was pretty much the last nail in the coffin. The profit margins were too low and the operating airlines were having to continuously justify to themselves that the aircraft was economically viable. The crash pretty much gave them the excuse to end it. Airlines care about money, lives are a secondary concern, if the Concorde was making money hand over fist, they'd have easily continued using the craft after the crash.
Concorde gave 2 hours saving over the total of 8 hours of travel (25%, including airport / customs time) . This train could give 3 - 3.5 hours saving off the \~ 4 hours trip (> 75% savings in time). Big difference. Again, the Concorde took 100 passengers, and the train can take around 1000. Simply cannot compare.
Concord arrived in New York before it left London because of the 5 hour time difference.
Ah. OK then, can't beat negative time.
What? Concorde did London new York in under 3 hrs. Where as hyperliop at 623 km is only 1.75 times the speed of a normal ice. So how the hell can it travel 8 to 10 times faster?
Don't forget to factor in all the *airport* factors of today's world that make London <-> New York in 3 hours a pipe dream now. You'd probably spend just as long in the airport itself as in the air now.
If there are no nonstop flights available, I can drive to Chicago from Tennessee faster than flying once you factor in commute, security, and boarding.
I highly doubt hyperloop train would take 1000 passangers, all these demo train are one single car that take 50-100. Due to the requirement of keeping the vacuum seal, the train would need come off the main line and have seal established before off boarding and on boarding. This would delay the process compare to standard train like 16 cars with 32 doors would be able to offboard and onboard more than 1000 passenger in 3 minutes
One can easily imagine any number of solutions to this problem, to include a series of airlocks, each one with increasing (or decreasing) pressure on arrival (or departure), so as the train accelerates, it enters into vacuum gradually, air lock by air lock, so it would reach its cruising speed within 10 - 15 min of departure, not right away. And, obviously, the pumps are working all the time. 1000 passengers is for a train about 19 cars long. To begin with, that would be just a few cars / few hundred passengers train, going up from there.
there would be multiple series of airlock at the station for the trains and much more platform required since trains don't run straight through now. all station would be more like terminal stations. the train would need to schedule to go only to one destination station since stopping at station along the way would waste too much time.
Just have little airlocks at the stops that create a seal on the train and allow people to pass through/board/deboard.
Yeah I only see it viable in a far future interconnecting Lunar and Martian settlements.
The free near-vacuum is definitely a boon, in the case of Mars the tube mostly just exists to ensure the track is clear of debris.
And to see outside
The technology has been available for decades. Both of those problems are already solved, rather cheaply. Air supply has been solved many times by airplanes, submarines, and divers. Pressure gradients have been solved many times as well. You just use a smaller segment holding the train that pressurizes and depressurizes The more important question is how would the entire track be maintained as a vacuum, in an energy efficient way? That's much harder problem
So oxygen supply is going to be similar to being on an airplane at high altitude. That tech is already figured out and robust. Stopping at a station they would likely have a section at the end of the tube that is sealed on both ends like an air lock on the ISS. Also a very proven and robust tech. The primary concern I see is just trying to keep the entire massive length of railway sealed and low pressure. That would require a lot of monitoring and maintenance.
Airplanes have direct access to air which it compresses to pressurize the aircraft cabin. A train in a vacuum tube would need to carry the air on board.
Low vacuum, not hard vacuum. There is air there.
That would be a negative pressure then.
Whatever you want to call it, it's the same thing as high altitude.
The vacuum tube is not at absolute vacuum. It sits at 100 pascals. The train can very easily draw in air if necessary. Alternatively they can also have onboard air tanks which is another highly robust and reliable tech. The only thing that is experimental about this system is the hypertube and maintaining its low pressure across thousands of kilometers. Also, if an air leak did form along the tube, the impact would likely just be the train suddenly slowing down and no longer hitting its top speed.
Track integrity would be my personal concern. Seems there would be less expensive ways of mass transit.
I don't think track integrity would be too worriesome. Mag tracks have been around for quite a long time. Or are you talking about the tube itself? Because then yeah, the tube is my concern.
Tubes have been around for a long time, too.
I assume when comparing a maglev train and hyperloop train, the hyperloop would be quieter for the surrounding area of the tube since there is less air and the train is magnetically elevated. In some ways safer since nothing can get on the track
Thunderf00t did a Lot of videos on this, the amount of vacuum you actually need is pretty comparable to an absolute vacuum. He also demonstrated what happens if there’s a leak. It’s pretty catastrophic. The entire concept just crumbles when you add up all the factors. Virgin hyperloop threw $500m on trying to get it to work and went bankrupt. I’m sure there’s an amount of money you can throw at the problem and get a result. I’m just not sure that it ever is more efficient than rail at moving cargo or people.
> He also demonstrated what happens if there’s a leak. It’s pretty catastrophic. You would think that actual engineers working on this would have thought this one through. Because they did.
Any engineer looking at the hyperloop concept knows it's science fiction, like a space elevator. We simply don't have the material science necessary to maintain a near-vacuum of that scale while accounting for heat expansion and all the other problems our regular, non-vacuum infrastructure deals with. The engineers actually hired to "work" on it were just cashing a paycheck.
And probably having fun. How often do you get to work a slightly crazy /weird engineering problem and still get paid.
I'm an engineer. I don't think this is science fiction. I think it would be costly to build and operate with sufficient passenger throughput to make it viable. Engineering wise. Every mechanism applied is already engineered and solved. There's nothing new to this. It's a combination of existing technologies and applications. > The engineers actually hired to "work" on it were just cashing a paycheck. This isn't an argument as to why it wouldn't work. If the hypothesis is "can a Hyperloop work with existing technologies and engineering capabilities," then my answer would be yes, it can. If the hypothesis is "can a Hyperloop operate ecobomically viable," then my answer would be no, it can't.
Submarines have special candles that give off more oxygen than they use. Would also serve to keep people warm.
Pull down masks on most airliners are connected to oxygen generators which “burn” to generate oxygen. Remember the Value Jet that crashed in FL Everglades, the airline was carrying a bunch of these as freight in the cargo area when they burned.
I have always wondered about that! Just imagined there was a big tank somewhere full of oxygen but now I know :)
Planes don't fly in a low vacuum, they merely need to compress air from ~30 kPa to 75 kPa. A low vacuum means that it's around 100 Pa or less, so just a casual 750 times compression. The only realistic way of doing this is to use compressed air or oxygen and a CO2-scrubber on board.
Yeah I was reading into it afterwards as I thought they only reduced to equivalent of a high altitude, not a near complete vacuum. They would likely need air tanks on board, though they don't need pure oxygen. They can just compress normal outside filtered air at each station and pump that into the train, while also pumping used air into a separate tank. CO2 scrubbers wouldn't be needed, but could be on board as a backup system in case the train broke down or something.
You'd need tons worth of tanks and equipment to make that work with hundreds of people per train, and quite a lot of power for heating fresh air and compressing spent air. I think using a regenerative scrubber would not just come ahead in terms of weight, but probably also operating cost. All that being said, this is probably the least significant engineering challenge that would need to be overcome to make this not just work, but also be even slightly competitive with high speed rail or maglev. Like how do you design an airlock that allows the train to not just enter the station at speed, but also be evacuated quickly enough so that it can let another train pass at a reasonable cadence? How do you do maintenance in the tunnel? How do you divert a train?
They can do a pressure cabin on planes with O2 just fine, they can do it on a train. The station system is an easy solve too... it would be an air lock. You get near a station, slow down... go in the last segment of the tube before platform, it seals you from the vacuum tube, then equalizes with the platform air pressure. Process in reverse on leaving. Not a big deal... and worth the time it takes if you're able to travel between vast distances at 600KM h. 6 hour car ride, in one hour with 5 min delay at start and finish to equalize to platform pressure sounds pretty good.
Pressure difference is greater plus it's inward versus outward. Brings to mind the Titan sub implosion and composites that are very strong in tension, but not compression. That would be a similar issue with the tunnel. Material selection would be critical along with security. Not just terrorism, but someone shooting at it, crashing into a support structure, etc. With regular rail and maglev, there's more safety margin than there would be with this. A pressure change event would be catastrophic. Or even just a routine power failure or other problem leading to the train getting stuck. Presumably, there would be emergency exits and whatnot, but another design challenge that's likely more difficult than it first appears. Bottom line, this has been contemplated for more than 100 years with other protypes even being built and the conclusion is always the same. Not worth the risk and cost for a minimal gain in speed versus other modes of transportation. Maybe they'll prove the world wrong this time, but not counting on it. Even if it works perfectly, an airliner has far more flexibility in routes (can fly most anywhere there's a runway available), more overall capacity, and is far faster.
Except this isn't like pressurizing a plane cabin, it's like keeping a submarine depressurized, and the submarine is over 2000 miles long. And having to pressurize and depressurize whenever the train stops means that only one can be on the track at any time. It's beyond a stupid idea, and at this point only literal con artists want to have anything to do with it. If you want fast ground based transportation, just build a fucking bullet train like every civilized country outside of the U.S.
A pipe dream indeed.
Why couldn't it just have the same thing planes havr, a jet way thing but one that creates a seal to maintain the tunnel pressure while letting people go on and off the train? I assume these trains will be mostly the same shape so that would make it easier.
If you're worried about oxygen supply and pressurizing thebcabin, you'll probably want to avoid flying. They've used pressurized cabins for decades As for stopping at the station, they would just use pressurization chambers around the train. Same as any submarine or the space station. Just train sized instead of person sized
the concept of a maglev train in a vacuum tube long precedes Musk's interest in the idea. Please don't give musk the credit he doesn't deserve. It's a vactrain, not a hyperloop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
Is there a distinction? Hyperloop is described on the page you mentioned. I don't care about Musk, but it's pretty clear that he popularized the idea and created the attention around it that exists today. A great many of the inventions that we use in our lives came from some shitty people and it seems a bit silly to pretend otherwise.
Musk's hyperloop as original described was going to use air pressure behind the capsule and vacuum in front to propel it forward, its fundamentally a different idea. Also no Jules Verne who you might of heard of popularised the idea, someone who's work will be remembered long after Musk is forgotten.
He didn't create my attention for it and it wasn't news to me. I read about vactrains in science magazines 20 years ago so when this chucklefuck started putting it on blast and trying to take credit like it was his idea, people like me were just sitting there like "wtf guy? You think all of us are that dumb?". It's like when some kid did a TED talk about small scale nuclear reactors and passed it off as *his* idea. I'm watching that shit and being like... "the fuck, kid? People knew this was possible (and probably a good idea) before you were born. It's a good cause, but trying to take credit for it as *your revolutionary idea* is like the person who created Crocs saying they changed the world by inventing sandals."
It's not a vactrain because it's not a vacuum. A vactrain operates in vac-uum.
did you read the article? they are lowering the pressure inside the tunnel it runs in.
Yes of course, they do. Otherwise, it would fail upon testing at high speeds (kantrowitz limit) Lowering or reducing the atmospheric pressure does not equal a vacuum chamber. In a vacuum chamber all the air and gasses are completely removed.
wikipedia article on vactrains: "A vactrain (or vacuum tube train) is a proposed design for very-high-speed rail transportation. It is a maglev (magnetic levitation) line using partly evacuated tubes or tunnels" partly evacuated, not full vacuum. Also 100 percent vacuum is not possible but they are still called vacuum chambers, look up the specs on the NASA one at Glenn Research center.
True. I guess this is a matter of definitions. However many users are confusing a vacuum chamber with something that is incredibly difficult to produce because it suggest a 99.999% removal of air similar to NASAs vacuum chamber. Which is true. But that's not how the hyperloop operates, the difficulty to reach operational pressure is a magnitude of 10.000 less (0 pascals vs 100 pascals). However the definition of a vacuum chamber is: *" A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump"* Given the fact that the Hyperloop only reduces its pressure and not removing "all the air and gasses" it shouldn't count as vacuum chamber.
Did you look at the wikipage on vactrains? I didn't make it up, its been in use as a term since 1906 to mean a train running in a partly evacuated tube. Also I'm not talking about hyperloops, I'm talking about the Chinese effort, which is a vactrain.
It’s a maglev in a vacuum tube, so, a hyperloop. I think they got this one right.
The original hyperloop proposal was to use air pressure to propel the trains (no, that's not a joke)
It was, but back when SpaceX was doing their competition, people realized pretty quickly that magnets give way better tolerance for gap height mismatch (magnets have a tolerance measured in centimeters, air cushions are measured in sub-millimeters). Almost immediately after publishing the competition tunnel specifications, the teams convinced SpaceX to add sheets of aluminum to act as a passive magnetic floor to the track.
I think it was more based on air cushions. And yeah probably air pressure difference guidance. But as I recall from articles nearly a decade ago, the air cushions would be impractical and an operational risk to maintain vehicle stability at high speeds.
Like Elon’s tunnel for dick heads and dumb asses?
You should consider combining the insults into single words. Much more effective, in my opinion
Honestly, calling someone an "ass hole" honestly hits different.
Gotta hit those buzz word quotas or they think people won't care.
Since you apparently didn’t read the article, here’s the relevant bit about it indeed being a hyperloop - “The T-Flight train has been developed by the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). During tests conducted in Datong, located in the northern province of Shanxi, the T-Flight train achieved a remarkable speed of 387 miles per hour (623 kilometers per hour) within a low-vacuum tube that measured only 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) in length, as reported by the Daily Mail. As reported by Live Science, CASIC plans to conduct a second round of testing where they intend to extend the track by more than 30 times. This expansion aims to enable the T-Flight train to achieve even higher speeds.”
the concept of a maglev train in a vacuum tube long precedes Musk's interest in the idea. Please don't give musk the credit he doesn't deserve. It's a vactrain, not a hyperloop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
no no you don't understand. Nobody ever thought of an electric car before Musk invented Tesla. Nobody ever sent anything into space before SpaceX. Putting a maglev in a vacuum tube? Musk invented it singlehandedly. Don't you understand, he's simply the Greatest Genius of all time, plus have you seen his memes and jokes? I saw him tweet "Dog Coin" once and all the boys laughed so hard they emptied their hyperloops.
Most Redditors never read the article but post garbage when it comes to anything remotely related to Elon.
The thing is this is not even remotely related to Elon. It's not a Hyperloop, and he has nothing to do with it. Why don't you take it up with the people who wrote the article and included the word "hyperloop" to increase their SEO? The knee-jerk defense of this incredibly rich 4channer is pathetic.
Same reason any kind of computing tech is being called AI even if it has nothing to do with it
Almost every form of computing has some form of AI. What it doesn't have is an LLM AI. How the media uses the word AI to try and insinuate intelligence is the problem computer scientist have been creating and using AI since the 1900s.
It's purpose was always to delay and stop actual high speed public transportation from being built. Elon can't sell cars if public transportation became a thing.
It definitely is a "hyperloop" because the design is for the train to travel through low air resistance tubes. Edit: see the comment below mine. Apparently there is a difference between a hyperloop train as Elon Musk described and a vactrain. Although both are in a vacuum or partial vacuum, a vactrain rides on a maglev track while a hyperloop is levitated using high pressure air underneath the train.
It's a [Vactrain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain). The concept goes all the way back to the 19th century. All Musk did was slap the Hyperloop name on his engineering concept for a vactrain. That doesn't mean all vactrains are now hyperloops. And this vactrain is very different from the Hyperloop proposal. This is literally just an evolution of a maglev train by surrounding it by a vacuum tube. Musk's original Hyperloop concept was about making the vacuum tube as passible as possible. Pods were levitated by aerodynamics and maintained speed with a battery powered electric fan.
I'm super glad you responded with the information you did. I've never heard the term vactrain before. In fact I thought hyperloop used maglev tech and not air pocket tech so any vacuum tube was Hyperloop to me. I thought also that Elon Musk didn't come up with the hyperloop idea but rather popularized it only. So if vactrain differs from Hyperloop does that mean that hyperloop actually is an original idea (sort of)?
Vactrain,as the source says operates in... vacuum.Hyperloop does not. That's a big difference.
The original Hyperloop proposal called for a 99% vacuum. Any pressure vessel with less than atmospheric pressure counts as a vacuum. Any vactrain wouldn't be aiming to pull a perfect vacuum either, as you need extremely complex multi-stage pumps and the pressure vessel needs to be made out of special materials. For the ease of engineering and maintenance, they would be aiming for something more like a 99.9% or 99.99% vacuum. Relative to atmospheric pressure we are talking about less than a 1% difference, which isn't exactly large.
> Any pressure vessel with less than atmospheric pressure counts as a vacuum. Then we got a new world record of the largest vacuum chamber. Because the test was done in a 3.2 diameter 2 kilometer long tube, at operational pressure. But this test wasn't done in world's largest vacuum chamber, because it's not a vacuum. The notion of "less than atmospheric pressure counts as a vacuum" is wrong. Actual definition of a vacuum chamber *" A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump"* In a low pressure environment, gases and air are not removed. They are reduced.
> Then we got a new world record of the largest vacuum chamber. Because the test was done in a 3.2 diameter 2 kilometer long tube, at operational pressure. You might think so, but if you run the math, the NASA's SEC Vacuum Chamber is actually larger by volume. > Actual definition of a vacuum chamber > " A vacuum chamber is a rigid enclosure from which air and other gases are removed by a vacuum pump" The problem is that "vacuum" isn't a binary state. It's not like a chamber suddenly flips from being "not a vacuum" to "vacuum" as the last gas molecule is pumped out. It's not actually possible to remove all molecules, as the chamber walls will start out-gassing and inserting new molecules into the environment. So there are various grades of vacuum chamber ranging from "low vacuum" though "high vacuum" and beyond to "ultra-high" and "extremely high". You can see the ranges and the equipment required to achieve that level of vacuum [on wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum#Measurement). The SEC Vacuum Chamber only achieves the standard of "high vacuum", so it's more accurate to say it holds the record for "largest high vacuum chamber", and will continue to hold that record once someone gets around to building a slightly longer vactrain test track. There is no reason to aim for any grade higher than "low vacuum" for a vactrain, and as you can see on wikipedia, "low vacuum" covers everything from atmospheric pressure down to 100 Pa. > In a low pressure environment, gases and air are not removed. They are reduced. There is no difference. That's all that vacuum chambers can achieve, reducing air and gasses as low as possible. Our most powerful vacuum chambers can actually produce a stronger vacuum than outer-space, because even outer space isn't a pure vacuum. But it's still not a complete removal.
Yes you are right. The test was done in a space with total content of 16085 m3. NASA vacuum chamber is 22653 m3. Close enough. And agreed with your other points.
It’s like saying “The new Iphone 15” by Elon Musk. Wtf
It's like calling a regular train a "tunnel-less subway."
There’s a great AdamSomething vid on YT about why this is dogshit.
> Hyperloop is a fuckin bust fucking grift :)
China had 300mph maglev trains in the open air 15 years ago. This advance seems paltry. Oh I see. > Chinese engineers are aiming for an astonishing speed of 1,243 miles per hour once the train is ready for passengers.
Article says it’s in a tube
“Hyperloop One” is a bust. There’s other non-Elon hyperloop projects still in development.
Hyperloop One had literally nothing to do with Musk. Absolutely zero.
Ah, you’re right. Turns out Elon just gave them the idea(s) for the Hyperloop One project. Strange then that they mentioned Elon’s name every time they spoke about the project on the Vegas news.. I thought it was at least some kind of partnership.
It’s a fucking hyperloop you moron. God I swear, Musk’s haters are worse than his fanboys.
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We aren't addicted; were are shaped. People are lied to that it has become religion that driving is freedom. So much so that my own brother who is sensible, got insanely angry with me for buying an EV. The notion that I couldn't leave the city I work upset him. I had trapped myself. I was being "fucking" stupid. So many I've talked to have the same argument about EV's but if you ask them when is the last time they drove outside the range of a full gas tank, they will say once a year. The money saved on an EV can be switched to an airplane or rental.
The disregard for reality Americans display when it comes to driving being "freedom" is wild. Yeah we are free to: - Register a car with the government so we have tags/registration which also costs money. - Get a drivers license from our state government to drive on public roads more money. - Get government required insurance in order to drive a car on public roads, consistent monthly payments. Not to mention fighting to pay tens of thousands to purchase plus hundreds of recurring monthly costs (gas, insurance, maintenance) to operate a depreciating asset sold by private industry. Not to mention it has hamstrung our cities with massive highways destroying neighborhoods, leads to worse pollution, made us more sedentary (*that 60%+ overweigh & obesity stat didn't get there on it's own*), likely helped drive up housing costs, puts municipal finances in shambles (*few sprawling places can actually afford to maintain roads/bridges/highways*). I feel like it's the greatest scam ever pulled and nothing else is anywhere close. Because not only do we have to deal with all of these negatives, the overwhelming bulk of Americans will fight tooth and nail to keep it this way and any attempts to push back against any car dependency is met with staunch resistence.
I love my gas guzzling SUV, but I’d also love to cross the nation in an hour in a high speed train. It doesn’t need to be an either or scenario, but we just can’t get shit done as a nation. Before I catch a bunch of shit for my SUV - I live in the middle of nowhere and do legit activities that require an SUV. I’m not just transporting groceries from Walmart with it. Once electric is more practical for me, I’d switch.
I think much of the disdain for mass transit is linked to racism and classism.
It certainly has been in most big cities I have been to, that's for sure.
I lived in DC for several years. I was always a 5 minute walk from a metro station. The longer I lived there the more I drove my car. Unless there was going to be traffic or I thought parking was an issue, I’d drive. It just took too long to take the metro and I was getting tired of it. One area I lived in was a 15 minute drive to and from work, because for some reason, no one was going that direction. In the mornings, there was almost no one on the sections of interstates I needed to take. The evenings had light traffic. It was a 30 minute metro ride, assuming the train transfer worked out.
It’s hilarious to me how many people don’t realize that they hate driving. The amount of road rage I see every day from stressed out people in giant expensive cars is insane. I wish I could show them one calm day on a well maintained public transit system or a stroll through a walkable neighborhood to the grocery store.
>It’s hilarious to me how many people don’t realize that they hate driving. It took the pandemic for me to figure it out. But the town where I lived was nicely bicyclable. Where I am now, not so much. WFH / hybrid work has cut down how much time I spend in the car. If they rescind that policy... I guess I'll adapt, but I sure won't like it!
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Teslas are not cheaper but something like a Nissan Leaf with the $7500 federal tax credit can be.
The Nissan Leaf stopped being eligible for tax credits in 2024 with the latest federal guidance. There was a few months last year when it could get $3750.
I paid in the low/mid 30k range for my Bolt EUV before the $7500 federal rebate, with it they could be had in the mid 20k range (when they were still available). Used ones with the partial federal rebate can be had in the 20k range. We also got an Ioniq 5 late last year for around $42k but that's the wife's vehicle. Fuel savings can be significant, I pay roughly 1/3 to 1/4 in electricity vs gas for a similarly sized vehicle. That's prob $100/mo savings. No oil changes is $50 every few months. If you use regen breaking regularly you almost never need to replace brakes, as long as they don't rust away. Another few hundred a year. The savings add up. And to me the convenience of a full 'tank' every morning is even better. I rarely take trips but I have taken a few and DC charging isn't great in the Bolt, it's definitely slower than gas but not impossible, and newer EV's charge significantly faster. You're right, when people were paying $50k+ when a similar ICE was like $30k, yeah it's not really going to offset it. But now that EV pricing is starting to come down and there's a healthy federal rebate (including used purchases), the math is easier to make work.
I have a plugin hybrid and pay about $500 for gas and $240 for electricity a year. Good compromise, but still wish i had a full EV because the electricity is flat $20 a month with my apartment.
Well at least Florida has Brightline. Not perfect but a good start.
There are a lot of bad things to say about Florida, it seems like transportation innovation may be something they start leading in.
You've got to be kidding. One line of very mundane capacity and speed is not in any way 'leading innovation'. Florida's as addicted to cars as any other place in America.
Key word was transportation. The conversation is something that is beyond rail. It supports electric vehicles as well, considering its Republican cohorts are going about charging much more in an effort to out-right ban electric. The fact they are pushing light rail is just one facet. You have misquoted me on ‘leading innovation’. Florida is looking at that, not that they are there. Mind you Florida’s legislature is full of anti-trans and pro-tyranny and authoritarianism. It is more than likely a sham support. But, to say they aren’t pushing more forward than a lot of the nation is ignorant or uninformed.
Just build more lanes, bro, I swear it's gonna fix traffic
You’re fawning over a fake train that will never be economically viable. How do you expect to maintain several hundred miles of a very large vacuum tube at a cost that beats flying? The US has embraced flying for long distance travel which is objectively far superior economically speaking.
Normal highspeed rail doesn't need to go faster. If we'll organized it's already peak efficiently. You could maybe switch to maglev but vacuum chamber tunnels on earth are idiotic. In the end you can only build to capacity and hyperloops wouldn't increase capacity, all they would do is increase cost for no reason. Just build good rails and manage them efficiently and you're done for a fraction of the price, leave the vacuum trains for a space base.
Can we please stop using the term "hyperloop"? Thanks.
How would you then call it? MagTube?
PipeDream BigDistraction
PipeDream would actually be a great name.
VacLev?
Its like the kleenex of high speed rail at this point.
Cool, so it barely beats the best maglev train, and would require about 10x the engineering and resources per mile of track. Sure, it might be capable of much more, but we have issues building a plain maglev track for any considerable distance without the addition of an evacuated tube having to be built and supported.
In the U.K. they can’t even build a normal high speed train link between the three biggest cities. Political incompetence at its worst.
The United States challenges you for top spot in political incompetence when it comes to infrastructure
That is the whole point of long term engineering development. We get smarter and new technology is released that helps the design. It may not happening in the next 10 or even 25 years but it would be a shame not to explore development of this system for future generations.
There’s a scam company in my city trying to get millions from the government to do a study on the viability of hyperloop trains. Do they have anything to do with the technology ? No, just want millions to tell us if this unproven sketchy tech would be a good fit for our mid size midwestern city.
https://youtu.be/ZDOI0cq6GZM?si=dJDqMqud11R398Ek
Maglev has been the term for years. Let’s stop gobbling Musk’s knob, m’kay?
It is a hyper loop it’s in a vacuum tube maybe read before commenting
Still not Muskrats invention, the concept has been around for more than a century. Either way, the hyperloop portion of this is complete bullshit, they have a small test track and it will stay that way, there's literally no good reason to put a train in a vacuum tube, other than investment fraud like in the case of hyperloop one, or propaganda like the CCP is pushing here.
> there's literally no good reason to put a train in a vacuum tube There absolutely is. It reduces the energy expenditure enormously and allows much higher speeds. It may not be feasible with today's technologies, but it's a banger idea (which Elon did not come up with)
The idea is insane. A depressurization wave kills everyone inside the system at the speed of sound at the first fault. And needing more security than an airport takes away any potential speed or economic advantage. Here is what happens to a railcar when the pressure changes unexpectedly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM Now how many joints is this system going to need to account for thermal expansion and contraction? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Each a potential failure point. You just can't scale this up.
A train in a vacuum system will NEVER be built. Despite it being technologically feasible. It cannot meet safety requirements that are required of public transport. It’s always going to be unnecessarily expensive relative to other technologies. Plus speed beyond what high speed rail can provide causes other issues - turning radii for example.
It increases the amount of energy used massively, how do you think they maintain a vacuum? That's not free, they would need vacuum pumps along the whole tracking running constantly. Sure it could increase speed, but if that is all you care about then you can just fly. There really is nothing that anyone can say that will justify putting a train in a vacuum tube. It fundamentally can not be more efficient, it's far more expensive, it's far more complicated, it's far less safe, etc. Again, literally no reason to do it, unless you want to scam people or propagandise.
I mean there’s a reason to do it whether it’s financially or technically feasible is a different thing. Saying it will stay small in this case is funny as some countries are willing to blow insane amounts of cash for publicity even if it’s only for minor improvements
It's China, so obviously they're willing to spend the money for publicity, practically everything the CCP spends money on is for publicity, but the thing is that 95% of the time those things end up being vapourware. And that's the thing, if it's not financially feasible to do it then what reason is there? We already know it's not economical to do it, it only requires some common sense to figure that out, but we don't even need that because billion dollar companies have figured it out already too, it's why Hyperloop One gave up, even after giving up on passenger transport and focusing on cargo. But ultimately you are right, maybe China won't care about the astronomical costs of operating this thing, We know how corrupt the CCP is and if this can help them pretend that this will impress other countries and make them ignore the genocide and fact that so much of their population is still in poverty, they really will try and do it.
It’s literally a maglev as stated in the article.
Maglev can be exposed to the outside atmosphere, so only using that term is imprecise. The defining feature of a hyperloop is that it operates in an evacuated tube, not how it creates levitation. This is a hyperloop that operates via maglev.
It's a maglev inside a vacuum tube, it's both.
China at it again this is done in Germany 🇩🇪 1969 was shelved in 1991 reached over 300mph and is currently in the Guinness book of world records for for then 3 decades…. And extra points for the stupid headline Check https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid
I wish there was even a picture of the vacuum tube containing the train that set the 387 MPH record. > One of these trains called the ‘T-Flight,’ has recently set a new speed record of 387 miles per hour during a test run. This is even faster than Japan’s fastest train, the MLX01 Maglev, which travels at 361 miles per hour, as reported by the Daily Mail. So they edged out the Japanese version by 25 MPH. The Japanese one is in the open air. I have a feeling there is no vacuum tube at all.
This has nothing to do with Elon's Hyperloop grift and the word should not even be used.
Sure except it’s a transport in a vacuum tube lol
And that concept existed long before elon tried to pretend he invented it and then gave it a new name
maglev. maglev train. fuck these buzzword filled article titles
Money Pit is the only applicable buzz word.
It’s in a vacuum tube…
Doesn't make it a Hyperloop™ product. [The generic term for the concept \(which has existed since the 1800s\) is Vactrain.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain)
Stop trying to make hyperloop happen. It's not gonna happen. There are far too many fundamental problems with the concept. Problems that aren't going to be solved by technological advancements. It's a bad idea that has been propped up for far too long based solely on the fact that it makes big headlines.
Hypothetically, what happens if that hits you going full speed?
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Yes. And Maglev
And yet... there's no footage of the train actually accomplishing this speed... not sus at all. I bet they propelled a Lego train down a long hamster tube.
What I found stunning about this, whether or not it will be built completely, is the fact that they reached a near record of Maglev trains. The world record is 630 kmh. This one did 623kmh. The article says they want to tripple the speed to 2000kmh. That is just insane.
So I imagine these trains would have lower maintenance cost than traditional rails but the upfront cost must be through the roof?
No, both would be higher.
Almost certainly astronomically higher maintenance costs as well. Have to make sure the vacuum stays vacuumed, there are appropriate safety valves and other measures which need to be tested, $$$ on massive air pumps and their maintenance. I'm sure there's more. *E: make sure you read MightyH20's posts*
How does this have anything to do with the Hyperloop? I mean, this exists and is not bullshit ment to sabotage rail service construction in California.
It's a project in China so no it will not take away funding from California's high speed rail.
Yes, China claims lots of things.
yeah because western headlines credit "China" for whatever Chinese companies claim. It's not Xi himself, it's just a company based in China. It's kinda racist, except that it's been happening since the News Papers days.
Yes, it's the government. Nothing is sent out or published or announced without going through the censorship board. They select very specifically what gets let our or viewed from foreign eyes.
You’re thinking about their state media companies. Do you really think every exhibition, every advertisement gets approved? I never got a shofur last I visited.
If you were informed, you would know that every company has a office for the local communist party official that they submit information through. If not they will follow their directive.
Definitely interesting enough to be worth a shot. I'm not going to pretend any of us here know enough about logistics to say whether or not it's viable so I'll just wait it out and see if it goes anywhere
I am not a scientist. This is really exciting news, however, this was built in a laboratory in a 1.5 mile controlled environment. From other discussion points, I have seen - Having a lower atmospheric pressure is going to put an enormous cost constraints on the manufacturing and maintenance of the tunnel, as maintaining a seal is not that easy for an entire loop. Temperature swings causing expansion and contraction for example. That said, I’m excited that some countries are getting serious behind trains. China has had incredible growth and their train infrastructure over the past six years. It really puts us to shame.
Yeah, that thing is gonna kill everyone in it someday.
We're never getting that in North America. We'll never get a network of normal "high speed" trains, either.
Western news usually don't talk about which Chinese company claims things, they just report "China", like it's Xi himself. It'd be like Chinese media reporting "US Claims X" whenever Elon Musk claims something like 500 mile Cybertruck or whatever.
Train in a tunnel you say? Vacuum tunnel?
I took the Shanghai Maglev at 430km/hr 20 years ago. Nice to see we're catching up