Elon Musk and the Hyperloop

Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by minikomi on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @04:35AM (#4813515)

Interesting.. What if if gets shot one direction, presurizing something, which it uses to shoot back the other direction

   waiting for passenger
     SF  [||| <> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  ] LA
     pressurized     -->  pretty spaced out "stuff"  
                      
     SF [-| - |- |-  |- <>-| - |- |- -| - |- |- ] LA
                            in transit..

     SF [ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  <> ||| ] LA
                                    <-   presurized for return

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Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by leoedin on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @04:50AM (#4813542)

Just like everything else in life the system would be subject to the laws of thermodynamics. The act of pressurising air would heat it up, and heat loss would mean that it wouldn't be fully reversible.

I suspect that a fully evacuated system using magnetic propulsion and energy recovery would be more efficient - the turbulent nature of air and the low-quality nature of heat energy would probably work against you to make a pneumatic spring fairly inefficient.

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Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by aptwebapps on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @07:40AM (#4813989)

I don't think there's much doubt that an evacuated tube would be very efficient. Not only that, but you could go much faster. Jacques has rejected that hypothesis for other reasons.

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Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by dllthomas on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @02:33PM (#4815880)

"Jacques has rejected that hypothesis for other reasons."

Specifically, due to a specific statement that it is not an evacuated tube.

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Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by aptwebapps on Thursday November 22, 2012 @09:50AM (#4818920)

Well, yes, but he also supplied some arguments why his idea might be better which is what I was referring to.

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Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by bahularora on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @04:42AM (#4813530)

sounds interesting,but this wont fit well with "it leaves when you arrive".

I always imagined Hyperloop as carriages pushed by a plasma armature, in a rail gun loop. just like a plasma-rail gun.

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Re:Elon Musk and the Hyperloop by lazyjones on Wednesday November 21, 2012 @06:04AM (#4813727)

It's a "loop", so it won't be a single tube, but a torus ("donut"), probably stretched.

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