Self-driving cars with impeccable stability control and built-in desks will let you use your 5G wireless connection and your iSurface Pro to work while you commute. Assuming any of us even has a job by then.
Hyperloop to Start Construction in 2016
- Thread starter Dryson
- Start date
Humanity needs a working ground bridge instead. 
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE9tGLrMjSw[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVc85lWg2tQ[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G98-NKWnASU[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE9tGLrMjSw[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVc85lWg2tQ[/yt]
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G98-NKWnASU[/yt]
It seems to me that it would have to be transcontinental to be worthwhile. Like NYC - LA or NYC - London. But that would make construction of it even more expensive.
I remember estimating how long a high-speed train would take to go NYC - LA, and with a reasonably good approximation to a great circle, it would be about 15 hours. It would likely have stops at big cities along the way, which would make it take longer. A reasonable route would be
NYC - Philadelphia - Pittsburgh - Cleveland - Chicago - St. Louis - Kansas City - Denver - Salt Lake City - Las Vegas - LA
That's 9 intermediate stops, and for 5 minutes per stop, that's 45 minutes.
Most of it is geologically stable except for near LA, where there is a tectonic-plate boundary: the San Andreas Fault.
NYC - London would not have as many intermediate stops, but it has problems of its own, like crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The best scheme that I've seen so far is buoyant tunnels anchored to the seafloor with cables. These tunnels would be well below sea level to avoid storms and surface-ship traffic, but they would still be vulnerable to submarines. One will want to go on land as much as possible, and I've thought of a route.
NYC - Montreal - Labrador - Greenland - Iceland (Reykjavik) - Ireland (Dublin) - Great Britain (London)
Most of the route is geologically stable except for Iceland, where it crosses a tectonic-plate boundary, the Mid-Atlantic boundary.
I remember estimating how long a high-speed train would take to go NYC - LA, and with a reasonably good approximation to a great circle, it would be about 15 hours. It would likely have stops at big cities along the way, which would make it take longer. A reasonable route would be
NYC - Philadelphia - Pittsburgh - Cleveland - Chicago - St. Louis - Kansas City - Denver - Salt Lake City - Las Vegas - LA
That's 9 intermediate stops, and for 5 minutes per stop, that's 45 minutes.
Most of it is geologically stable except for near LA, where there is a tectonic-plate boundary: the San Andreas Fault.
NYC - London would not have as many intermediate stops, but it has problems of its own, like crossing the Atlantic Ocean. The best scheme that I've seen so far is buoyant tunnels anchored to the seafloor with cables. These tunnels would be well below sea level to avoid storms and surface-ship traffic, but they would still be vulnerable to submarines. One will want to go on land as much as possible, and I've thought of a route.
NYC - Montreal - Labrador - Greenland - Iceland (Reykjavik) - Ireland (Dublin) - Great Britain (London)
Most of the route is geologically stable except for Iceland, where it crosses a tectonic-plate boundary, the Mid-Atlantic boundary.
I remember when this was the future of fast travel around the globe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30
One might object to high-speed trains that airplanes are good enough for most intercity travel. But where high-speed lines have been built, they have been impressive competition for airplanes. I've found this train-vs-airplane ridership study for European high-speed trains:
Microsoft Word - Final report FINAL.doc - 2006_08_study_air_rail_competition_en.pdf
One can approximately fit that paper's numbers with this function:
100% / (1 + exp((t - t0)/tw))
t = travel time
t0 = 50-50 crossover point: 3.5 hours
tw = width of crossover: 1.1 hours
Presentation from the US DOT Intercity Passenger Rail Forum | Federal Railroad Administration has Amtrak vs. airplanes, and with Amtrak's scheduled times, it roughly fits that curve.
So high-speed trains do best when they travel less than about 3 to 4 hours.
That means that a high-speed train is good enough for California, even if it isn't very good for transcontinental distances.
I must note that over three decades of high-speed-rail construction in Europe have yielded some impressively long lines, even if not completely continuous ones. There is now a nearly continuous stretch of high-speed line between Amsterdam and Cadiz, Spain. It goes:
Amsterdam - Brussels (branch to Cologne) - Lille (branch to London) - Paris (branches to Strasbourg, Tours/LeMans) - Lyon - Avignon (branch to Marseille) - Perpignan - Figueres - Barcelona - Madrid (branches to Valencia/Alicante, Valladolid) - Cordoba (branch to Malaga) - Cadiz
Japan and China now have similar impressively long lines.
So a vactrain like the Hyperloop will have some impressive competition.
Microsoft Word - Final report FINAL.doc - 2006_08_study_air_rail_competition_en.pdf
One can approximately fit that paper's numbers with this function:
100% / (1 + exp((t - t0)/tw))
t = travel time
t0 = 50-50 crossover point: 3.5 hours
tw = width of crossover: 1.1 hours
Presentation from the US DOT Intercity Passenger Rail Forum | Federal Railroad Administration has Amtrak vs. airplanes, and with Amtrak's scheduled times, it roughly fits that curve.
So high-speed trains do best when they travel less than about 3 to 4 hours.
That means that a high-speed train is good enough for California, even if it isn't very good for transcontinental distances.
I must note that over three decades of high-speed-rail construction in Europe have yielded some impressively long lines, even if not completely continuous ones. There is now a nearly continuous stretch of high-speed line between Amsterdam and Cadiz, Spain. It goes:
Amsterdam - Brussels (branch to Cologne) - Lille (branch to London) - Paris (branches to Strasbourg, Tours/LeMans) - Lyon - Avignon (branch to Marseille) - Perpignan - Figueres - Barcelona - Madrid (branches to Valencia/Alicante, Valladolid) - Cordoba (branch to Malaga) - Cadiz
Japan and China now have similar impressively long lines.
So a vactrain like the Hyperloop will have some impressive competition.
lpetrich, you can forget about a NYC-London tunnel ever being built; it's just not gonna happen. Too much hassle where planes work just fine.
Regarding the hyperloop, apart from the enjoyment problem (again, I'm assuming) of a lack of windows, what about commodes? Requiring everyone to refrain from pissing for more than, say, an hour between stops is not terribly realistic.
I'd be interested to see a particular city/area actually declare they'd like a hyperloop. Although the SF Bay Area already has BART, a system from downtown Oakland to downtown SF would be pretty awesome, though the expense of building a new, separate under-the-Bay tunnel when local transit is already cash-strapped would surely not fly.
Regarding the hyperloop, apart from the enjoyment problem (again, I'm assuming) of a lack of windows, what about commodes? Requiring everyone to refrain from pissing for more than, say, an hour between stops is not terribly realistic.
I'd be interested to see a particular city/area actually declare they'd like a hyperloop. Although the SF Bay Area already has BART, a system from downtown Oakland to downtown SF would be pretty awesome, though the expense of building a new, separate under-the-Bay tunnel when local transit is already cash-strapped would surely not fly.
^ I'm sure they could, but IIRC, the graphic renderings of potential cars in early media reports were too small for commodes. Also, given the speeds involved, surely there'd be safety hazards in walking from a seat to a commode, unless the track were perfectly straight?
^ If said plane were to make abrupt turns, then yes, rather like that safety hazard. Of course, not having to navigate around geographical obstacles, planes are free to make very gradual turns.
Again, I don't doubt that these questions could easily be resolved on a theoretical level; it's the practical and real-world political feasibility questions that are most interesting here.
Again, I don't doubt that these questions could easily be resolved on a theoretical level; it's the practical and real-world political feasibility questions that are most interesting here.
The hyperloop could actually be a lot more stable for passengers. If the tube and pods are round, and as long as there is no track or anything of the sort, the pod should be able to rotate in the tube. It could easily rotate around curves so that the passengers only feel a slight increase in gravity as it turns. If the pods are spherical, so they can rotate front to back as well, the could rotate so that the passengers don't really feel the acceleration and deceleration either.
Okay, thanks for the information and reality check. I can see why you don't believe that the military already has vactrains.
I suppose that building the tubes above ground would be the way to go. I'm not really knowledgeable about geology, but I'd imagine that in order to get the tubes done in a reasonable amount of time, you'd need fast boring machines, which even if you could make, I'd imagine that boring tunnels at high speeds could cause geological problems (cave-ins and sinkholes), unless the tunnel placement could be calculated carefully enough (and even that might not be enough).
Though I thought of one problem about building the tubes above ground (while going to the restroom of all things!), and that is that they would eventually intersect roads. So either tubes would have to be elevated or go underground so that they don't occupy the same place, the roads would have to be rebuilt to go above or under the tubes, or some sort of system would need to be built so that automobiles can cross the tube tracks when trains aren't crossing. I'm thinking that the sections of the tubes crossing the roads would slide back, allowing cars to cross. The sections that slide back would have a longer or shorter diameter than the rest of the tube tracks.
I remember when this was the future of fast travel around the globe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30
I still have my hopes that something like this might fly everyday one day. Though at the rate that things are progressing, by that time that happens, I'll probably be a very old man.
On another note, I can't help but see that some doubt that there would be restrooms on these trains. I'm thinking that the final product might be as wide as already existing trains, or maybe as wide as some of the smaller airliner fuselages.
Sojourner is right, you'd want to be strapped in when the train is accelerating, but once it reaches it's top speed, it should be safe to move about the cabin.
Best not mention this fiasco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_(tunnel_boring_machine)
And I believe even the machines that build the Chunnel had issues, true most of these where down to either poor surveying or unforseen isues, but what kind of issues would we encounter on building a transatlantic tunnel. Also these tunnel boring machines aren't exactly noted for their speed.
But hypothetically would we build a transatlanic tunnel or series of smalle tunnels. i.e. Scotland-Iceland-Greenland-USA doing it that way could speed up the process.
You're a month too late.
Holy shit! That thing is HUGE!!!
More like Big Bertha! Unfortunate that she isn't as durable as her size might suggest.
That would need a *lot* of connecting track.
The Yakutsk end of the Amur–Yakutsk Mainline - Wikipedia gets the closest to it of any railroad line connected to a continental railroad network, the Eurasian one. Yakutsk is about 1200 km north of the nearest bit of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. It is about 3000 km from the Bering Strait.
They've made plans to go further to Magadan on the Pacific coast, about 1200 km from Yakutsk. Staying near the coast when going to the Bering Strait will add about 2300 km, giving a total of 3500 km from Yakutsk.
Going from the Bering Strait to Edmonton is about 3200 km. Edmonton is in the North American continental railroad network.
So this Yakutsk - Bering-Strait - Edmonton line will connect those two continental railroad networks.
The Yakutsk end of the Amur–Yakutsk Mainline - Wikipedia gets the closest to it of any railroad line connected to a continental railroad network, the Eurasian one. Yakutsk is about 1200 km north of the nearest bit of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. It is about 3000 km from the Bering Strait.
They've made plans to go further to Magadan on the Pacific coast, about 1200 km from Yakutsk. Staying near the coast when going to the Bering Strait will add about 2300 km, giving a total of 3500 km from Yakutsk.
Going from the Bering Strait to Edmonton is about 3200 km. Edmonton is in the North American continental railroad network.
So this Yakutsk - Bering-Strait - Edmonton line will connect those two continental railroad networks.
