Mobile 155

So true, every engineer I have ever worked with always made assumptions that there would be no delays. The tunneling would overcome the ROW problems and decrease the up and down elevation gains. G force also happens when you climb at speed. Think riding on a roller coaster through a series of small roller bumps. Point the nose up at speed and you get pushed back in the seat. Crest the rise and your stomach feel like it stays going up as you drop down. A tunnel would minimize elevation gain and loss.

Walter S

Have you checked with the many thousands of owners of that farmland, forests, timberland, etc. to see what they think about a hyperloop coming though their property or do you assume the public will support eminent domain to lay claim to those thousands of acres of land? And there are houses including little towns and geographical challenges to maintaining a nearly straight line that also need to be considered. Just not going to work. If you were coming up thru South Georgia towards Atlanta (an area I'm familiar with) you'll find relatively dense populations of people (when you consider how straight the line needs to be) that are going to need to relocate.

I own 30 acres of property in South Carolina and it's mostly just land. But it's my land to enjoy and I'll be damned if the government is going to route a hyperloop thru it without a fight.

And I thought you were talking about using existing routes anyway? Or you've moved beyond that now?

And again, what about the hills??

Walter S

I think my case is also made by looking at the interstate highways. There's a reason they don't go straight. The devil is in the details. For every mile they traversed there was one thing after another in spite of the fact that they DID take people's property left and right especially in the 1950s when the system was promoted for national security reasons.

tandempower

I would love it if everyone would just stop driving and hike/bike everywhere, but since they don't, there is the question of when there will be big, expensive new highways coming through the same land. If those land owners prefer to have noisy, polluting, highway through those lands, then it will be up to those of us who don't want them to try and prevent them with protest. Otherwise, the only choice is to support a better alternative, which imo hyperloop is since it is essentially a train but it can be built up off the ground, leaving the ground for natural ecological growth, hopefully.

I don't think you'd want it to go anywhere near Atlanta because that would run it through the mountains. I think you'd want to run it along the east coast.

Yeah, I feel the same about highways and sprawl . . . except I hope not to be damned, ultimately.

Maybe you could have a series of shorter hyperloops where people have to get out and re-board, though that would take more time. Then, maybe you could have a few different runs between major population areas several hundred miles apart, e.g. Orlando to Savannah, Savannah to Fayetteville, Fayetteville to Richmond, Richmond to DC, and DC to NYC. Then if each leg takes about 30 minutes, you could get from NYC to Orlando in 2.5 hours plus however long it takes to re-board the next tube. Maybe there could be a non-stop tube for luggage and cargo as well, since that one wouldn't mind fast deceleration and acceleration for the turns.

That would be four tubes total , two in each direction. e.g.


Still, I actually don't look forward to it being initiated until there's more of a shift away from driving, because there's always the risk that it will turn into a big infrastructure project to fund the automotive economy further. Probably the best would be to solicit private investment by selling stock or crowdfunding or however that works nowadays.

Walter S

Most of the country is hilly. Atlanta is just one metro area where millions of travelers live and they won't be enjoying your hyperloop - not saying you couldn't go specifically where it's flat (and still have quite an expensive undertaking along with the same eminent domain issues). But you're not talking about something revolutionary that's going to impact most of the U.S.

There's a reason that Elon Musk is focused on the Boring company as mentioned above. I think he may be a little bit ahead of you in thinking about this and realizes that an above ground hyperloop is not a practical thing.

cooker

If it happens on a grand scale it will almost certainly be a mix of elevated and underground, for example elevated across a valley to save boring costs, and then plunging into a hillside and out the other side to maintain a straight line, somewhat similar to how railroads already deal with mountainous terrain. However I wouldn't be surprised if there are long straight fast sections with occasional slowing for curves. In fact I doubt it can be avoided.

Walter S

I agree. But I do think that compared to railroads, the real focus will be underground instead of doing that only when necessary to get past a hill (so you don't need a monopolizing right of way across private property). That's assuming the Musk cost savings become reality. Otherwise it won't even be done. If I understand what the Boring company wants to do, they'll go under your property and you still own it (or maybe the government has a technical right of way but not one that imposes any significant problem to you as a land owner). You won't even know it's there. Only a short depth underground and you won't hear it or feel it.

Machka 

I worked for a shire who was building a rail trail for bicycles, walkers, and horses. The federal government had given the shire, and the two adjacent shires, enough money to build the rail trail as part of the bushfire recovery program. Then it was up to the three shires to build it.

One of the first steps was to acquire permission from the landowners to build this trail on the old railway line.

That was some process! Some were happy with the idea. Many weren't. It took over a year to gain permission to use the old railway line, or in some sections, permission was never granted, and the rail trail kind of zig-zags around a bit to stay off certain sections of land.

There were many other issues that had to be dealt with along the way, and from conception to completion the project took about 5 years.

And that was just a rail trail ... a chert-covered trail about the width of a rail line on top of the old existing railway track on which a few people would cycle, walk, or ride horses.

tandempower

If evolution doesn't happen, then the status quo will expand. If that happens, things will get worse. That's why evolution needs to happen, but the people are resistant because they are mostly short-sighted and status-quo oriented, because that is the default/weakness of human nature.

It's just fresh real estate, but it's a bad idea to turn the Earth's crust into swiss cheese for numerous reasons. I am against fracking, mining, etc. for this reason. The Earth is a pile of sedimentary layers because those layers have been allowed to sediment and isolate/insulate what's below them. Underground mining/boring accelerates the erosion of the land into the oceans, which may not seem like a significant immediate threat, but if we don't start living as if the patterns we start today will continue for 1000 generations to come, then we'll never save the future.

tandempower

Yes, the default is to resist projects. My hope is always that if I say no to everything, the economy will slow down and everyone will have to walk and ride bikes because there won't be enough money for cars anymore. But guess what? Whenever it starts to slow down, the government takes the reigns and stimulates it again. They don't go around asking like you did for your rail trail. They just print the money and the people buy new cars, drive them around, run over animals, pave more lanes and parking lots etc.

Machka 

tandempower

Your point was that it is difficult to appease people to get things done. My point is that things happen all the time that override concerns and resistance. If 100% consent was a prerequisite for all development, what new development would ever occur?

Walter S

Even for you, that's a new level of crazy. I'm sure you disagree but think about this from another angle for a second. You will NEVER convince any significant number of people to follow that kind of ideal for as long as you live. You'll live your entire life and get nowhere with that. Doesn't that make it a sort of useless thing to want? Just a waste of time and a purpose without any merit. Do you realize that or do you think that by talking to people on BF, facebook, friends, or whatever that you're going to get somewhere with this?

Also there's a lot more wrong with the world than cars! Cars are a drop in the bucket. Cars are a big topic on this forum but it sounds like you think cars are a huge red light for all of society and if we just got rid of the cars everything would be OK.

Walter S

Contrary to your belief the government does not stimulate the economy by just "printing money". That leads to out of control inflation and an economy that will quickly collapse. Just inflating the money supply has happened but is definitely not monetary policy in any successful economy. Where do you get your information?

If there's not enough money for cars there's not enough for lots of other stuff too. Cars are not nearly as big a slice of people's income as you and some others make them out to be. If money got real tight most people would give up all kinds of stuff and genuinely suffer before they also gave up the car.

tandempower

It doesn't matter. It is the only thing worth saying. People have the power to go on wasting and destroying everything good about this planet but there is no better use of human life than to try to talk sense into them. As a species we have the ability to reason and communicate and to understand, so that is what we have to try to do, until we're blue in the face or dead or both, as long as we have a conscience. What more can be done? Until people recognize/acknowledge the problems, they'll keep getting worse.

Yet if you corrected all the other problems, you will still be dealing with all the problems of driving and growing population. There's no way to get rid of those problems by solving all the other problems, and driving/cars is the primary cause of spatial waste and natural land destruction.

Machka 

Stop talking and start doing?

Learn, research, get involved, do.

Mobile 155

I think Musk might be way ahead of a lot of people. By proposing Hyperloop he has gained the trust of enough people that he was given permission to dig some smaller tunnels using his new company and machinery to build high speed skate tunnels. They will only go about 150 MPH but they will be computer controlled and smaller pods will enter and exit depending on need. If you think about it the program looks a lot more like what he proposed at first with Hyperloop when he received flack for wanting small pod delivery systems taking only one or two passengers at a time. Even if hundreds of passengers would be shuttled down the tunnels at a time in separate electric pods. Take a look at this and tell me what you think his goal is?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/29/...rst-look-photo

Walter S

Thanks for that link. Yeah I think he shifted a number of months back to focusing on urban transportation instead of long haul routes between cities. And it looks like a great idea that promises to ultimately make a total transformation of city landscapes and transportation. Moving roads underground is not an intuitive improvement until you consider the layered approach along with the lack of air resistance. As traffic gets more congested you just dig deeper and add new layers. Tunnels never need to intersect just because they cross paths.

With all the cars moved underground now the whole landscape above ground can become walking and bicycle trails and greenspace etc. A little slice of that effect is being felt by people now at the expense of compromising efficient transportation by car some - i.e. more bike lanes and greenspace here and there at great expense in terms of public debate and real estate acquisition. But by moving the cars underground everything changes. Yes there's the pretty big expense of the tunnels themselves. You can start small and add a little at a time and 10, 20, 50, 100 years go by and then everything is radically different - what used to be city streets or big wide interstates thru the city can now be parks and wetlands and a much healthier environment. Plus a lot of that land can just be denser development so everything is a short walk by foot.

TP seems to think digging tunnels is going to harm the earth somehow. I don't get that. If you just carelessly pile up the earth with no attention to managing runoff etc. then I'm sure there's a significant negative effect for some time. But earth moving and cultivating new growth is a pretty well developed building practice faced again and again in almost all construction and has been addressed on big and large scales for long periods of time. It doesn't worry me. Building codes are very strict with respect to this stuff where I live in order to protect our lakes, rivers, streams, and the aesthetics of the land. And the payback of digging these tunnels is absolutely huge. I probably won't experience transformative effects personally because it will take a while. But I might live long enough to get a taste of what's coming for the human race

tandempower

Talking IS doing. LCF you can do on your own. Beyond that you have to talk about it because you can't force anyone to do anything. You have to talk to them about what they should do and then leave it up to them to make the right choice.

cooker

People have been tunneling for millenia. There are vast underground networks of sewers, utility tunnels, subways, and in some cases abandoned mines under lots of major cities, and historic cities may have networks of catacombs. There are lots of rail and road tunnels through hills and mountains and since the 19th century at least, there have been lots of tunnels under rivers. Lots of disputed lands and borders have strategic tunnels and smugglers tunnels and so on. As well there are natural caverns in lots of places created by aquifers or old volcanic activity or maybe earthquakes. In ancient times an earthquake opened up a "bottomless chasm" in downtown Rome and they spent weeks throwing in rocks and dirt and old building materials to fill it in, but no doubt there are still some missed air pockets down there to this day.

So a tunnel for hyperloop is nothing new. Presumably it will be rigid and sealed and waterproofed and will have minimal impact on underground water or overlying land stability - far less than fracking or mining.

One big worry in California, I assume, would be if a segment of the tunnel is shifted and cracked by an earthquake. A shuttle operating at that instant might break apart or jam in the tunnel killing the occupants in the process, but even if that didn't happen, repairing and possibly straightening the tunnel would be a huge challenge.

Rollfast

I think that somebody got this hyperloop idea from watching Logan's Run.

tandempower

It all comes down to entropy. There is entropy and there are anti-entropic expressions of energy. Where energy results in anti-entropic effects, there is hope for the future. Where energy is only resulting in entropy, the question is how much destruction/erosion/etc. will result before anti-entropic processes take over and renew things.

I think humans have a tendency to glorify their own work instead of considering how they are replacing living, anti-entropic systems with dead ones that can only support entropy. Cutting tunnels/etc. through rock is a very destructive example of entropy because that rock could otherwise last for ages and provide a foundation for living, anti-entropic growth.

It takes ages for living organisms to use natural sunlight, wind, water, etc. to build up anti-entropic systems. Humans can destroy and undermine these systems in the blink of an eye by harnessing entropic power sources like combustion and radioactive decay; and using these power sources in the most efficient, surgically precise ways. A chainsaw can cut down a centuries-old tree in minutes, for example, with a cap-full of gasoline. Dynamite or a boring machines can chisel away virgin rock at a much faster rate even than armies of Roman slaves could have done by hand 2000 years ago.

I-Like-To-Bike

$50 for guessing the secret word of LCF!

Mobile 155

Not only that it is used to derail the thread started by the OP by the OP.

What Was translated from Greek for actor? https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/hypocrite-meaning-origin

Machka 

So have we all answered the question(s) above ... that 'no' buses-on-rails and super-speed-sleds will not become a thing soon.