this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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A very long evacuated tube hundreds or thousands of miles long - too long to ever be actively defended - is itself fundamentally untenable. There are US states where every "welcome to ___" sign is shot up with holes. You don't think people will take potshots at this thing?
Even if you somehow made it armoured and immune to small arms (this would be the largest armoured thing ever constructed), it would never make any sense over cutting edge high speed rail that doesn't require an evacuated tube.
This all comes straight from first principles. To change this, any number of fantastical technologies would need to be invented (maybe the tube can be made of vibranium?).
What I always thought was the worst part about the idea is pressure equalization in the event of an eventual cabin seal failure.
Yeah I think we've learned all we need to know about the mega-rich "MoVe FaSt AnD bReAk ThiNgS" types and their highly pressurized people-carrying cylinders...
This is totally different, the tube is under vacuum and on land.
So the pressure difference between the vehicle and the outside is the opposite. If the vehicle fails, rather than being crushed by the pressure, the occupants explode.
It wouldn't be that bad. Just possibly popping a lung, rupturing ear drums, and/or passing out.
Better built on the moon than on California, no guns or people to mess it up
Yeah, that's why we don't have any thousands mile long tubes transporting dangerous substances. Oh, wait. We do! What happens when someone shoots a gun at them? They go to jail! (look up Daniel Carson Lewis of Livengood).
In your theory, why can't the same laws protect 'railway tubes' that protect oil and gas pipelines? Why terrorist don't shoot guns at pipelines all the time? Why don't terrorist jump on high speed rail tracks and sabotage them? Where I live there's 5000 km of high speed tracks that are not "actively defended". There's just a fence. Big rock could take out a train. Why do you think no one ever attacked it but everyone would be shooting at hyperloop pipes for fun?
Oil pipelines are often buried underground, they can have up to 60'' in diameter. Hyperloop pipe is about 90'' in diameter. It could be feasible to put it underground. I'm not saying it's a good idea or bad idea. I'm just saying that some guy commenting on a blog is not a good reason not to try. Get enough of good engineers to work on it for a while and you will know if it's feasible or not. That's what they did. I think it was a good thing to try.
None of those are vacuum tubes. This is nonsense.
They leak. Literally all the time. They keep working. This won't.
Okay well you got there eventually.
The good reason not to try is that bullet trains have proved working perfectly in other parts of the world. Sure, they would be slower than an hypothetical hyperloop but they are a working technology that would help alleviate the transportation problem.
Why invest in a project that might lead nowhere?
I'm not anti experimentation, by any means. It's just that as the article says, the hyperloop was proposed when a bullet train was being discussed by local politicians.
Test hyperloop track was supposed to be build close to where I live, in Antequera, Andalucia, Spain. There's a railway test center built specifically for testing new rail technologies. Since it was build decades ago nothing was really tested there because bullet trains already existed and no one had any new designs since then. The trains didn't really change since 1980s. At the same time bullet trains still lose to planes on longer routes because they are simply too slow. Hyperloop was supposed to change this and offer rail technology that would compete with planes on long routes. It was supposed to be the next step in rail travel that would be able to compete with air travel. Now we know it wasn't feasible but just because it's not right for USA it doesn't mean it's not worth testing.