SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition

Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by michaelbarton on Monday June 15, 2015 @02:43PM (#9721172)

This immediately reminded me of the early days of steam when, very similarly, at Rainhill a one mile test track of railway was constructed and people were invited to compete their different locomotives. The winner was Stevenson's rocket which amazed the large crowd by travelling at a heady top speed of 30mph.

An "also ran" was the amusing cycloped, the only non-steam entry, a horse on top of a treadmill walking the carriage forward.

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Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by abc_lisper on Monday June 15, 2015 @06:04PM (#9722414)

Hoping you were not old enough to know this first hand ;)

This is fascinating? Where did you come across this info?

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Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by michaelbarton on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @03:39AM (#9724272)

There's an excellent book on the start of the railways "Fire and Steam: A New History of the Railways in Britain". It's very interesting and full of side stories about how people adapted to the start of the steam age.

For example the one of the first railway lines was more like a toll road. A company built the tracks, and then other companies paid to run their locomotives on them. This lead to chaos where two locomotives would meet on the single track, neither was willing to back up, and so the passengers would often get out and fight each other over it.

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Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by abc_lisper on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @02:21PM (#9727764)

>> neither was willing to back up, and so the passengers would often get out and fight each other over it.

Hahahaha..

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Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by abc_lisper on Tuesday June 16, 2015 @02:22PM (#9727767)

Adding it to my reading list. Thank you!

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Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by melloc on Monday June 15, 2015 @08:08PM (#9723041)

There's a Wikipedia article on this, it seems:

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

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Re:SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition by dimlyaware on Monday June 15, 2015 @07:02PM (#9722736)

That fact really made me laugh when I looked into it. Thank you for the cycloped fact.

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