High Speed Digital Tube Transport

[Bye Ya]

4000 mph, apparently... but only 6 on board

Around the World in 6 Hours Via Tube

 

[Touring Mars]

Good luck building a tube between New York and China!

Seattle to Beijing, however, would be a bit easier... provided you could get Canada and Russia on board, you'd be over land for all but ~100 miles. At a total of only 5,500 miles (as opposed to 7,300 for the China-NY tube), you'd save a bit on tubing too.

 

[ASH32]

It's a nice fantasy but that's all it is, there is multiple reasons why it will never work.

 

[wfooshee]

Ah, vacuum tubes. The next Big Thing!!

Speaking of vacuum, those things better have heftier doors than what's illustrated.

 

[Keef]

Only 1G of force at top speed, they say. The curves of this tube will need a 50 mile radius to manage that.

 

[lemansfanatic]

"Aww damnit, its only been 5 mins into the trip, who farted?"
"Sorry man I ate onions"

 

[Lizard]

Interesting system.

It could work actually and if its cheep I can see people going on holiday to somewhere hot for the weekend and still getting home in time for work on monday. This would be one technology that improves peoples lives loads.
I actually don't think its too far off though as the rich countries are starting to upgrade their trains to maglevs so I think we could see it soon.

Although how would countries defend themself? Surely its a great way to transport an army and if the other guys don't know your coming it will be too late when they know.

 

[Omnis]

Yeah, if you can't take cargo along with people, it's probably going to be prohibitively expensive.

 

[Lizard]

Yeah, if you can't take cargo along with people, it's probably going to be prohibitively expensive.

True but they said it would be rather cheap in the video. I think its a case of load your cargo on another pod.

And if you look it has a cargo space like you would on a car so unless you want to move heavy goods then its fine.

Well I want this tech now I would love to be sitting on a tropical beach every weekend.

 

[wfooshee]

He's not talking about personal luggage, he's talking about freight.

The US can't run a profitable passenger railway, but we rule the world in freight trains. Both of those come from the distances involved. Nobody wants to spend days traveling across the country by train, but nobody wants to pay to have their furniture shipped by air, either.

I have a hard time with the economy of this tube transport. Maybe you could build it for a quarter of the cost of a freeway (as stated in their video) but could you then run it???? You have to keep thousands of miles of tube at millibars of pressure, with airlocks to let cars in and out. And New York to China? How many freeways have been built from New York to China? How do you do that "at a quarter of the cost?"

And we all know that the entire planet's continental crust is stable enough to not shift these tubes around anywhere. What happens when you have a 6-inch shift somewhere, breaking the vacuum seal and shutting it down? How do you rescue the passengers?

 

[Lizard]

The freight problem can likely be solved with longer capsuals.

The safety concerns I don't really get. You run the risk with cars and trains as well whats the difference?

In 1900 people thought your head would come off above 30 mph look what hapened.

 

[wfooshee]

How safe would it be to have a power failure of some kind and be stuck in a vacuum? Where ya gonna go?

Or simply a door failure. In an airliner, a loss of pressure makes your ears pop, and oxygen masks drop down. On one of these things, a loss of pressure makes your blood boil and you die.

Cars and trains don't run FOUR THOUSAND FREAKING MILES PER HOUR!!!! You don't want to hit a dead rat at that speed.

As for longer capsules for freight, it is apparent that you simply have no concept of the volume of material a single freight train carries. A single box car carries at least two, probably three times as much as a full-size semi-truck trailer. And trains can be made of over a hundred such cars! One train, 300 semi trucks. That's the math these things would be up against to move freight.

 

[Lizard]

Yes ok there could be larger tunnels for freight it is easilly solveble.

Btw if the vacume goes you WONT STOP. The vacume means no drag and thus higher speed but the thing is propelled by magnets.

And yes the thing would clearly have oxygen masks and whatever. Is it really that much different to the 1900's when everyone was scared of the car? Some just don't like new tech.


Hit a dead rat hmm the tunnels are sealed so good luck.

 

[BobK]

In 1900 people thought your head would come off above 30 mph look what hapened.

Err, no they didn't, at least not most people. Especially those who were riding trains at double or triple that speed. In 1900.

Oh, and what on earth is a "capsual" anyway?

 

[wfooshee]

I wasn't talking about the vacuum failing in the tunnel, I was talking about the seals failing in the vehicle. If these are going to travel in vacuum then they have to be space capsules, i.e. perfect pressure vehicles, which has never been done commercially, and a pressure failure in the capsule will kill everyone in it. (Yes, airliners are pressure vehicles, but they won't tolerate a vacuum environment.)

And larger tunnels for freight doesn't fix the economic problem, it adds to it. You want to build a larger separate system at greater expense to solve the cost problems of the passenger system? You show a lot of promise for a career in government!

Tunnels are sealed? So what? Nobody has EVER built anything that large that maintained its structural integrity for more than a few milliseconds.

 

[Lizard]

Err, no they didn't, at least not most people. Especially those who were riding trains at double or triple that speed. In 1900.

Oh, and what on earth is a "capsual" anyway?

Ok maybe I got my dates wrong or I was thinking of open top cars but they once held that belief.

Oh and above since when has getting freight transported quickly and cheeply in terms of running cost add to the economic problem? An initial spend known as a pump primer will boost the economy half the time. It is a lot more than trying to save money at every chance. Its like when the country is doing poorly in economic terms and the government announces that its going to build a load of things. In your eyes it sounds stupid right? In my eyes and that of economists not so much.

And the pressure problems? Airliners have safety messures in place in case of such an event so will this.

 

[Azuremen]

And the pressure problems? Airliners have safety messures in place in case of such an event so will this.

Yeah, they drop oxygen for passengers. At 30,000 feet, pressure is high enough that you just have issues with thin air and thus breathing.

A loss of pressure in a vacuum means your blood boils. And then you die.

I think you are grossly underestimating the engineering problems involved in a project of this scale with this tight tolerances.

And "priming" the pump has been shown to not really work. You'll likely cite FDR to "prove" otherwise, but the devaluing of the currency from switching to a fiat currency while more or less creating currency to fuel a wartime economy "saved" the nation at that time.

 

[wfooshee]

It added cost because you wanted larger tubes to carry it. Thus you want to build a second, entirely separate system which contributes nothing to the smaller passenger system. How is that not an added cost?

And like Azuremen said (and I did, too) a pressure drop in an airliner is not a pressure drop to vacuum. There are no safety measures for vacuum unless you have a space suit you can don in 5 or 10 seconds.

 

[Azuremen]

Another interesting bit that should be considered is the complexity is just maintaining the optical cables that run between the continents, and they are far, far less complicated than a vacuum tube that people can fit in.

 

[PeterJB]

I don't see how these things could be constructed across entire oceans, whether above the surface, below it, or below the sea bed. Making one between Alaska and Russia could be feasible, but not across the entire Pacific ocean.