Hyperloop One's Full-Scale Pod Reaches 192 MPH In New Nevada Track Test (techcrunch.com) 249
On July 29, 2017, Hyperloop One competed a test at its full-scale Nevada test track that travelled a high speed, running nearly the entirety of the 500 meter (1640 foot) test route. "XP-1, the company's first Hyperloop pod, reached speeds of up to 192 mph during the test, which is getting closer to the planned functional speeds of future Hyperloop installations planned for Dubai elsewhere," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The new test breaks the recorded speed record for any Hyperloop tests ever conducted, including those done by research organizations participating in SpaceX's pod design competition. It was conducted on July 29, 2017, and included a 300 meter acceleration phase, with gradual breaking to come to a stop after that point. Hyperloop One depressurized the tube for the test track down to conditions similar to those at 200,000 feet above sea level, which is part of the Earth's atmosphere where there is very little friction and resistance to the rarified air. The company says that all aspects of the system, from motors, to electronics, to the vacuum pump and magnetic levitation mechanism worked well during the test.
First LEP, then LHC, now Hyerloop (Score:5, Funny)
Not content with smashing elementary subatomic particles, not content even with accelerating protons or lead ions, now they want to accelerate people, inside long evacuated tubes, to ridiculous speeds.
Why the surprise (Score:3)
It turns out there are a lot of people what need smashin'
Re: Why the surprise (Score:2)
According to The Hulk, yes.
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The morons mixed up braking/breaking and "rarefied" means the opposite of their faulty usage.
I'm in the UK and I see "breaking" (= destroying) so often used for "braking" (= reducing speed) that I'm beginning to think it is just the American spelling. Is this so?
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Re:First LEP, then LHC, now Hyerloop (Score:4, Funny)
Springfield is getting a monorail.
WOOHOO!!
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Then set up a collider and sensors to see where all the parts splatter and... wait, where were you going with this analogy?
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Don't worry, these guys [ohio.gov] say it's perfectly safe.
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Hey, If I ever need to travel 500 m in short order. I know where to go!
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Something new? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd like to welcome our most recent member - New Nevada, which joins New England, New Jersey, New York and New Mexico in making news!
Re:Something new? (Score:5, Funny)
NevadaTestTrack nevadaTestTrack = new NevadaTestTrack("Hyperloop One");
Re: Something new? (Score:5, Informative)
error 1:32: type NevadaTestTrack* can not be implicitly converted to NevadaTestTrack
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The guy is obviously using java.
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Or C#, or plenty of other languages that would look exactly the same on this level.
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I guess it's C#, then it would be valid.
Vacuums suck (Score:4, Insightful)
They are expensive, temperamental, inefficient, and there is a reason scientists say "Nature abhors a vacuum".
All I can say is, "I want the contract to maintain the 1,000's of miles of vacuum tube!"
Re:Vacuums suck (Score:5, Funny)
and there is a reason scientists say "Nature abhors a vacuum".
They do? 99.99999999999999999% of nature is hard vacuum. Just not where we want it.
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They do? 99.99999999999999999% of nature is hard vacuum. Just not where we want it.
*draws a deep breath* I'm quite happy with where it's not.
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and there is a reason scientists say "Nature abhors a vacuum".
They do? 99.99999999999999999% of nature is hard vacuum. Just not where we want it.
Yet 100% of nature is not a vacuum.
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The well known problems with full vacuum tubes are the entire point of the Hyperloop's design, which uses low pressure (1 millibar) instead of full vacuum.
Re:Vacuums suck (Score:5, Funny)
The well known problems with full vacuum tubes are the entire point of the Hyperloop's design, which uses low pressure (1 millibar) instead of full vacuum.
This is why they should transistorize it instead of using vacuum tubes.
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They're far less problematic when you're not creating a "hard" vacuum as is the case with Hyperloops.
A perfect vacuum is impossible on Earth anyway. Even the metal tube will give off atoms. The point is that even an imperfect but high vacuum poses a lot of difficulty.
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One of the convenient aspects is that when the tube springs a leak, the best place to patch it from is the outside. (Provided it's not a buried tube.) And the pressure helps the patch seal.
Which means for small leaks, there's not even any need to suspend the service whilst repairs are going on.
Dubai elsewhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't you editors even use the right word? (Score:5, Informative)
with gradual breaking to come to a stop
Goddamnit.. the word is braking.
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It depends, it could also stop because there was gradual breaking of the track/vessel
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In fairness, that was accurately quoted from the article. A [sic] would have been nice, granted.
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Is that anything like Murphy's law?
China Rail (Score:2)
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The team believes they’d need an additional 2,000 meters (about 1.2 miles) of track to achieve a max theoretical speed of 700 mph for the test pod, which is what it could possible reach in real-world commercial systems.
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No, that are german maglev trains, moron. Google "trans rapid" or "transrapid".
Re: China Rail (Score:2)
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Are you saying you have no familiarity with iterating towards an objective?
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It is a test. Who cares if it is "better"? It is an experiment to see what the problems are.
Did you ever accelerate on 500 yards to nearly 200mph and braked down to zero again? I guess you lack imagination (science knowledge) to grasp what a deed that already is.
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Re: China Rail (Score:2)
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Elon Musk invented it so it must be the most amazing thing since sliced bread!
The Musk bread slicer passes each loaf through a grid of lasers, so that the bread comes out sliced and toasted.
VR (Score:2)
Wouldn't better VR conferencing make business travel less critical and thus negate much of the need for Hyperloop?
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Robotic factory workers and vending machine baristas have been around for decades.
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Me: "Ummm, give me item 4-E"
Vending Person: "Sorry, it got stuck. That will be $1.50"
Re: VR (Score:2)
Pathetic (Score:2)
It covered nearly the entirety of the 1640 foot meter test track? And hit 192 MPH?
Let's be generous and say it traveled one third of a mile, and let's assume it accelerated linearly (it didn't) from 0 to an instantaneous peak of 192 MPH, then immediately decelerated linearly back to 0 (and stopped). That gives an average velocity of 96 MPH.
The thing ran for less than 12.5 seconds.
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The Wright Brothers only went 120 feet in 12 seconds. Jeez, what a couple of losers!
Driving in circles... (Score:2)
Impressive acceleration (Score:4, Interesting)
a = (v1^2 - v0^2) / 2d
v0 = 0
v1 = 192 MPH
d = 300 meters
a = (192 MPH)^2 / (2 * 300 meters) = 12.28 m/s^2
= 1.25 g
arctan (1.25 g / 1 g) = 51.3 degrees
That's gonna be trippy riding inside. Since there are no windows, you only have the apparent direction of gravity (acceleration) to determine "up". It's going to feel like you're in a plane climbing up at a 51 degree angle. That is, anyone trying to stand while this is going on is going to be leaned forward at 51 degrees relative to vertical at rest. (I'll add that the earlier test to 69 MPH in 30 meters is 1.68g, giving an apparent inclination of 58 degrees.)
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There is no apparent inclination.
You get pushed into the back, that is all.
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There is no apparent inclination. You get pushed into the back, that is all.
That is apparent inclination
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The test track is short so a huge acceleration is currently needed to reach a significant speed. The final version, if it ever exists, will probably require a smaller acceleration but for a longer time.
Let's assume a desired speed S = 700km/h ~= 200m/s at a constant acceleration A = 0.1g = 1m/s^2 (that is a typical acceleration in a train). The acceleration time is T = S / A = 200 / 1 = 200s = 3m20s. Also the average speed during the acceleration phase is S/2 = 100m/s so the required distance is 100m/s * 2
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That's gonna be trippy riding inside. ...., anyone trying to stand while this is going on is going to be leaned forward at 51 degrees relative to vertical at rest.
I don't suppose the passenger version will accelerate that hard. This was to test the behaviour of the hardware at speed. Next step will be to extend the track and reach a higher speed. After that they will need to try a test track with curves. They have not yet begun to address the issue of what people can actually put up with in terms of acceleration (in all three axes) with no reference horizon. They will need some human guinea pigs for that. It did not go too well when high-speed tilting trains were
throughput? (Score:2)
Can someone enlighten me with info about the throughput of this system of small high-speed capsules? A regular trains and airplanes transport large number of people at once, making them economically scalable.
The technology is the easy part (Score:2)
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Re: Reality (Score:2, Funny)
Oh shit! Good thing random fat fuck internet faqgot was here to remind them! I'm sure they haven't even considered it until you put down your sandwich and chimed in, you fucking imbecile.
Re: Reality (Score:2)
This (Score:3)
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Japan has a functional train system with cities designed around them.
Not exactly. At the beginning their towns and cities were destroyed to make train lines to no small effect on the people whose land was needed. That's true everywhere but in the U.S. you seem to have more problems than elsewhere getting land from trains.
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Rofl, that is bollocks.
Do you really think they had no trains before WWII? Or the rest of the world? Germany was quite destroyed too ... but funnily most main stations are still at the same spot they where before the war. One notable exception is the Berlin main statin because it is a new one (the old one still exists, though).
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Trains are problematic in the US for numerous reasons, so even having a "fast" train won't solve many issues. Japan has a functional train system with cities designed around them.
That's because the rest of the world has had trains for a long time, and the US is brand new to this.
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Trains are problematic in the US for numerous reasons, so even having a "fast" train won't solve many issues. Japan has a functional train system with cities designed around them.
That's because the rest of the world has had trains for a long time, and the US is brand new to this.
Wow. In what alternate universe do you reside where this is true?
(I remember seeing an infographic back in the 80s or so that showed a then-and-now "map" of the relative rail density in the US in the 60s and 80s. We've dismantled something like 80% of our rail capacity. There's a difference, IMO, between "being new to this" and having dismantled our infrastructure [in favor of highways and trucking].)
It was a sarcastic remark to the idea that Japan has a functional train system with cities built around them, which implies that we don't. Trains have an integral part in the history of North America,
America has at least one political party that views trains with a jaundiced eyes, probably left over from the heyday of trains here, when that party wanted to be sure to bust the unions that were involved with the train industry. That's an educated guess. At this time we are slowly coming around to the idea o
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Stop making excuses and just get in with it. Eurostar has totally out performed the airlines and you could expect something between many US cities.
Come on now - what I wrote doesn't even rise to the level of a Poe. Its pretty obvious that the US was a world leader at one time in installing ad using train transportation. The idea that we need to catch up with the rest of the world because we don't have any experience in train transportation is silly.
The reason that the US is behind the curve with high speed trains is because we have lost the will to do such things, and are well along the way to ceding technological superiority to the rest of the wor
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I'm pretty sure Japan had cities before they where "designed around trains" (what ever that is supposed to mean).
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Beyond "fine red mist" (Score:2)
If this becomes real, and if there were an accident, I'd hate to be the guy that has to scrape off what's left of the passengers from whatever they collided with. 700mph..cheesh.. a thin layer of organic goo and a fine red mist.
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If two Californians are slammed together at sufficiently high speed, what particle will emerge? A waitron?
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No problems! I already run a company that does these kind of cleanups for airplane crashes.
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I agree. Cheesh and Chong were great. Loved their movies.
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Viscera Cleanup Detail Hyperloop Edition.....
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I'd hate to be the guy that has to scrape off what's left of the passengers f.. a thin layer of organic goo and a fine red mist.
Sounds easy : hosepipe and an air freshener should do it. It's if there are actual body parts that it gets distasteful.
Let's mark that up as a Hyperloop plus point.
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Short of the tube being destroyed, what are they going to collide with? And if the tube itself is destroyed they're going to be affected by the air pressure long before hitting anything solid.
So that's the main area for testing I should think. What if they lose vacuum when a capsule is going at X mph?
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It's not fast enough ... (fill in your own ad hominem)
It's not long enough
You can't get permission to build it
It's too dangerous
It's too noisy
It's too expensive
It doesn't cover everyone's needs
Elon Musk
Slashdot, proudly fighting progress for 20 years.
Curmudgeony old coots, accurately calling out pie-in-the-sky bullshit for thousands of years,
But hey, I'm sure that battery breakthrough is right around the corner.
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Curmudgeony old coots, accurately calling out pie-in-the-sky bullshit
Yeah, I remember for example Slashdot calling Apple on their pie-in-the-sky bullshit iPod when it first launched. Boy, was that an accurate call and no mistake!
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No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
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And where is the iPod now, hmm?
That's right - all but dead!
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iPod. .. an MP3 player that was no better than the already existing competition, used an applauding app to upload, was more expensive than the competition
It was not unique, it was using tried and tested and already available technology
It failed in every way except in marketing ... ...Hyperloop is doing some things that are tried and tested, and not doing them well
and some things that are not tried and tested and doing them badly
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Yeah, and "I don't think anyone was expecting..." is the same reason the Slashdot hive mind is usually wrong.
The rule of thumb is: if it's FOSS/Linux, Slashdot vastly overestimates how successful it will be. If it's not FOSS/Linux, they underestimate it.
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So you're saying you think there have been no battery improvements (or solar, etc.) in the last 20 years?
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For every successful "pie in the sky" project, there are 100 that failed horribly but nobody remembers BECAUSE they failed horribly.
Just ask RCA about their CED systems.
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The tube can be rapidly re-pressurized in case of emergencies. That's a key safety feature in case of a vehicle hull breach. Oxygen masks would probably still be required, similar to airlines.
As far as propulsion failures, I believe each vehicle has on-board power enough to travel to an emergency exit point. No idea about what would happen if the vehicle gets stuck for some other reason, though, or if on-board propulsion fails. Likely, people experience a very long, uncomfortable wait as emergency worke
Re: It sucks (Score:2)
Re: California's "bullet train" (Score:2)
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You can't blame the infinitely expensive slow bullet train to nowhere on the government, when it's the people who specifically voted it into existence with a ballot measure.
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I was listening to an interview with one of the team members on NPR. Apparently, the biggest problem they face trying to go faster is the test track is too short! In other words, they've built the pods to go faster, but until they upgrade the track they won't be able to test it.
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I was listening to an interview with one of the team members .. the biggest problem they face trying to go faster is the test track is too short! In other words, they've built the pods to go faster, but until they upgrade the track they won't be able to test it.
Thanks for that pearl of wisdom. We didn't realise they need some distance to get up speed. Shame that. OTOH my car can reach 60mph without moving from the spot.
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Absolutely. Long pressurized pipe^H^H^H^H tubes certainly sounds unpossible!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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In case it helps you understand what is going on here, the first time the ThrustSSC moved under its own, it hit a whole 70 miles [thrustssc.com] an hour! And that was using technologies that have been around for over 40 years.
Now you want to do it with an entirely brand new technology. You want them go straight to 310 KM/h, do you?
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The tube was only 500m long ... how much faster do you want to go on such a short distance?