For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By Grelly
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1515387
I'm a big fan and I hope they succeed. My secret hope is that they build a hyperloop between all major European cities, thus making commercial air transport obsolete and releasing all that controlled airspace for us to use :lol:
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By matthew_w100
#1515562
But what is magic about it? Why, in engineering terms, is it better to build and maintain a very long vacuum tube than - say - to simply push air out of the way with a pointy bit on the front of a train?
By ChrisRowland
#1515564
Department stores have had something similar for many years, it's smaller and used to send money and receipts between the sales desks and accounts.

Brunel had an atmospheric railway, this used a tube with a slot on the top to provide the power to move a conventional train. AIUI it failed because the rate eat the greased leather seal, If he'd put the passengers in the tube we could have had this more than a century ago. He probably thought that people wouldn't want to be in a windowless tube.
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By matthew_w100
#1515672
Those pneumatic things still exist - we have one in one of my hospitals. The most brilliant bit is the huge electro-mechanical router in the basement.

But Hyperloop isn't proposing to use pressure to power the thing - they are talking maglev in some form. So it is just a big trainset in a tube and I cant see that the tube is worth it.
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By nallen
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1515738
matthew_w100 wrote:So it is just a big trainset in a tube and I cant see that the tube is worth it.


I think the calculation goes that the gains accrued from running in a partial vacuum make the cost of the tube worthwhile, and allow speeds that would otherwise simply be unattainable; plus the tube gives a predictable aerodynamic environment -- if you are planning on 600 mph plus, that's a major issue
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By Boing_737
#1515770
It's all about heat. The stated intention was to travel between LA and SF in 30-40 minutes, so the speeds it'll need to reach mean that at sea level air density, the outside is (a) going to get very hot and (b) cost a lot of money to run.
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By kanga
#1515790
matthew_w100 wrote:Those pneumatic things still exist - we have one in one of my hospitals. The most brilliant bit is the huge electro-mechanical router in the basement.

...


Lamson Tube:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube

They used to connect all the hotels, stations and major office buildings in Paris; I can still remember people talking of any rapidly delivered message as a 'pneumatique', just as later people talked of documents being 'biked'.

I worked on a large, multibuilding, site where this system had been built in many decades earlier. The system was still being built into new buildings on the site - both within the new building and connected to the wider network - as late as the '80s.

The 'exchange' was in a large office which at the beginning and for other reasons had to have many lowlyish people working 24/7 (manual switchboard, TELEX, operators etc) . One of these on each shift was assigned to the tube exchange duty, which was manual and at times intensive (eg, at peak TELEX flow, related to office hours). Unfortunately, as so many of the other tasks in that room became automated, that one shift post became a visible extravagance, and the system was withdrawn; which was a pity: it was very fast, and could take documents which were no longer or had never been in electronic form. But size and weight of contents were limited.
By cockney steve
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1515854
Pay attention to both Tesco and Asda checkouts.....the vacuum system is the quickest, safest way to transfer cash from tills to a central strongroom.
Used to be as Department-store in central Dublin, that had a similar system, but on suspended wires (miniature cablecar!) ISTR the operator pulled the "carriage" down to a latching mechanism, loaded the "pod" and then fired the complete capsule, which "zinged" on it's way to the glass-windowed eyrie which was the central retminus. IIRC , it was St. Cuthbert's on O' connell st. (early '70's. )
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By Boing_737
#1515907
Yeah that's great and everything, except that's not how Hyperloop will work.

The vacuum is to allow the capsule to travel at 400mph at sea level using maglev or similar technology, without resorting to the two Typhoon engines that Thrust SSC needs.
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By garethep
#1515938
Yeah but the 2 typhoon engines sounds much more fun :-)

It's an interesting concept and I did read the concept document a while back with a sceptical mind but technically I think it can probably work. Whether that translates into a successful venture is of course a different matter!

Worthy of note that the hyperloop is by no means the first "high speed" transport system designed to be placed.above existing roads!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bennie_Railplane
By cockney steve
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#1516000
It would need a massive fan, (think wind-tunnel ) to get the air-velocity required, to ensure the "capsule" was not butting into positive pressure.

A Chartered Engineer who was Charge-Engineer on various power-stations , described how the huge generators were filled with Hydrogen. Apparently, the reduction in drag, on the rotating armature, made the complex sealing and sustaining system worthwhile.....he also told of the occasion when a water-seal was allowed to run dry....several hundredweight of access door demolished a wall in the ensuing explosion.
Luckily, nobody injured.

In a giant vacuum -tube, you'd have the problem of sealing and pressurising the passenger-capsule.
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By stevelup
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1516007
cockney steve wrote:In a giant vacuum -tube, you'd have the problem of sealing and pressurising the passenger-capsule.


I don't see how it's any different to an airliner?