![]() “The success of such companies as EasyJet, Flixbus, and Uber can be explained by how easily they fit into existing transportation systems,” he says. Hyperloop TT’s prototype for the Abu Dhabi station could become reality within the next two years, according to the company How useful would it really be?Īccording to Carlo van de Weijer, head of the Strategic Area Smart Mobility at the Eindhoven University of Technology, the future of mobility lies in flexible systems. The only reasonable solution would be to go in a tunnel, where the issues of environmental impact, security and vulnerability would be solved.” Perhaps for that reason, Musk has announced that the Boring Company, his own tunnel-digging firm, plans to build a Hyperloop between New York City and Washington, D.C., underground. “You’d have the same problem in the event of an earthquake. “The Hyperloop would be vulnerable to terrorist attacks because it would be difficult to monitor 600 km of tubes,” says Rufer. With just the slightest crack, outside air would enter the tubes at the speed of sound, and the infrastructure would implode. The atmospheric pressure on the tubes under vacuum would be 10 tonnes per square meter, basically the weight of a lorry. ![]() In comparison, NASA’s Space Power Facility in Ohio, the world’s largest vacuum chamber, has a volume of 30,000 cubic meters – 66 times less. If the tube has a diameter of at least 2 meters, the total space stripped of air would be about 2 million cubic meters. Traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco – the example used by Musk when he introduced the project in 2013 – would require 600 km of tubes elevated on pylons. ![]() The Hyperloop concept uses magnetic levitation to thrust capsules or pods through a steel tube maintained in a near vacuum. “Passengers would, therefore, experience acceleration lasting more than five minutes – and that wouldn’t be very comfortable.” Then there’s the vacuum “If we limit acceleration to 1 meter per second squared, it would take a distance of 54 km to reach a speed of 1,200 km/h,” he explains. In the 1980s and 1990s Rufer was involved in a similar project in Switzerland, Swissmetro, a magnetic levitation train that was abandoned in 2009. As the acceleration time in Musk’s concept would be significantly longer, the exposure to the G-forces for the passengers would be greater, says Alfred Rufer, professor of electrical and electronic engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Today’s travelers are accustomed to airplane acceleration, but it lasts no more than a few seconds. Even so, many people still worry about the project’s safety – and even its usefulness. More trials are planned in France and the United Arab Emirates. ![]() Initial tests were conducted in 2016 in the US, where speeds edged over 300 km/h. In the five years since, a handful of research teams have worked to make Hyperloop a reality. ![]() Their main concerns involved safety and cost. When Elon Musk first published his designs for Hyperloop, a train that could reach a top speed of 1,200 km/h, the skeptics reacted within a hypersecond. Even if Hyperloop as a serious means of transport will never happen.”Īlso, read Carlo van de Weijer’s column on High-Speed Traveling “All that buzz will lead to major advances in mobility. But despite those negative expectations, Van de Weijer supports the research generated by the Hyperloop project. According to the head of the Strategic Area Smart Mobility at the Eindhoven University of Technology, it’s not flexible enough and it doesn’t fit into the existing transportation systems. The Hyperloop concept is never going to take off, Carlo van de Weijer says. ![]()
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