Hyperloop

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scheme of the hyperloop
Longitudinal section of the hyperloop
Model of the Hyperloop system with solar cells:
(shown transparently for illustrative purposes)

The Hyperloop is a proposed high-speed transportation system in which capsules slide on air cushions in a largely evacuated tube at almost the speed of sound . In the vicinity of stations, linear motors should enable high accelerations like in a magnetic levitation train , while electrically operated compressors should generate sufficient propulsion when the travel speed is reached. The energy is to be generated by solar cells mounted on the tube .

The entrepreneur Elon Musk presented the idea in a white paper in August 2013 . This makes it possible to travel significantly faster and more environmentally friendly than by plane and at the same time much cheaper than by train on routes of up to 1200 kilometers . Shortly after its release, its financial and technological assumptions were questioned.

technology

The concept is based on reinforced concrete props with two adjacent driving tubes of steel , in which a partial vacuum prevails. The partial vacuum should enable travel speeds up to just above the speed of sound. Capsules with space for 28 passengers should move in the tubes or, in a larger variant, loads such as B. Cars. They should glide with little friction on air cushions that are generated from air sucked in by a compressor in front of the vehicles . Most of the companies and research institutions involved are now planning an electromagnetic levitation system .

By above-ground laying of pipes running along existing highway - routes the cost of the travel to be kept down as the most expensive part of the concept. In important parts, it generally relies on the use of technology that is already widespread and cheaply available. Drive and braking are over asynchronous longstator - linear motors done that even with magnetic levitation such as the Transrapid have been installed. Mechanical brakes and electric wheel drives are also provided for emergencies. The power supply is to be provided by solar cells on the tubes.

The capsules , mainly made of aluminum , are said to have a diameter of 2.2 meters. They should have an empty weight of 3 to 3.5 tons with a payload of 12 or 22.5 tons for the cargo capsules. Originally, the air sucked in at the front was supposed to be compressed, cooled and partly used for the 0.5 to 1.3 millimeter thick film of air on which the capsule slides. The other part should be passed in a tube under the capsule and expelled through a rear nozzle.

The steel tubes should have a diameter of 2.23 or 3.3 meters with a wall thickness of 20 to 25 millimeters and their internal pressure should be kept at 100 Pascal , one thousandth of normal pressure . The pillars should stand at a mean distance of about 30 meters and be secured against earthquakes by damping elements.

power consumption

The energy required for the Hyperloop is to be drawn from the solar panels mounted on the tubes and even a surplus is produced in the process.

In 2013 SpaceX stated an energy consumption of 4.4 kWh / 100 km per person for the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco (at full capacity with 840 people). The energy for the construction and maintenance of the driveways was not taken into account. In comparison, an ICE 3 needs around 8.4 kWh / 100 km per person at full capacity and an airplane at least 30 kWh / 100 km per person.

With the Hyperloop as with the ICE, the energy required for the construction and maintenance of the driveways must be taken into account, which is not required for aircraft or is limited to airports. On the other hand, solar panels, such as SpaceX plans on the tubes, would also be possible between railroad tracks and, to a limited extent, as a road surface. With the right political will, not only the Hyperloop, but at least the train too, could be energy self-sufficient.

Compared to California High-Speed ​​Rail

According to Musk, he developed the concept as a cheaper and safer alternative to the California High-Speed ​​Rail (CAHSR) initially for the connection between Los Angeles and San Francisco with a journey time of 35 minutes for the 570 km long route. For this, Musk calculates costs between six and seven and a half billion US dollars . He compares these with the current cost estimates for the construction of the CAHSR, which amount to around 68 billion dollars. The cost advantage should result, among other things, from the lower land acquisition costs, from largely eliminating the expense of leveling the route and from less complex foundations. Land acquisition costs make up a large part of the costs for the construction of the railway line and should be minimized with the Hyperloop by largely routing the line on existing motorway terrain and the relatively smaller space required for the supports. The routing on supports with variable heights means that large areas of the terrain do not have to be removed or filled up. With the intended empty weight of the capsules, the demands on the foundations are much lower than for a typically hundreds of tons heavy high-speed train with axle loads of well over ten tons.

Unlike CAHSR, the technology for Hyperloop still has to be developed, which corresponds to an initial planning phase ("Alpha"), while CAHSR is already under construction. Musk's proposal was heavily criticized from various quarters, including that the cost assumptions were unrealistic and that the route should connect suburbs rather than city centers. In the California High-Speed ​​Rail project, a large part of the costs can be attributed to this connection to the city centers, since land is particularly expensive there. Another point of criticism is that the alleged cost savings through an elevated route have not occurred in previous infrastructure projects on stilts - on the contrary, routes on stilts (as with Hyperloop) were and are always more expensive than ground-level routes (as with CAHSR).

development

George Medhurst presented the basic idea of ​​locomotion without air resistance in an evacuated tube as early as 1812. The earliest concepts for locomotion in (partially) evacuated tubes are already known from the 1910s. Several concepts have been published since the 1970s, which have also gained broader recognition, but have never been implemented.

Musk began designing Hyperloop out of dissatisfaction with the development of the California High-Speed ​​Rail project . He spoke publicly for the first time on July 12, 2012 about his idea and about characteristics and implementation perspectives for it. In an informal group of around a dozen employees from his companies Space X and Tesla Motors, he worked out the concept over the course of the following year and published it in August 2013.

For further development, Musk suggests an open, participatory concept comparable to the development of free software and asks for improvements to be submitted. In August 2013 he published a white paper for this , in which he wrote the following, among other things.

“Another unique thing about Hyperloop is that it is an open development concept, similar to Linux . Feedback from the community, which helps to improve the construction and turn the concept into reality, is welcome. "

- Elon Musk : Hyperloop Alpha

In June 2015, Musk announced it was running a competition called the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition to speed development. For this he had a test track built with a length of one mile (about 1.6 km) in Hawthorne , California . The company AECOM was commissioned with the construction in January 2016 . The tube, in which complete prototypes can be tested, is between 4 and 5 feet (about 1.2-1.5 m) in diameter. In addition, the participating teams have the opportunity to take part with subcomponents in a design workshop at the Texas A&M University . The jury will consist of independent SpaceX engineers. Just one week after the Hyperloop Pod Competition was announced, over 700 participants had registered. This also includes teams from universities. On January 30, 2016, the Texas A&M University hosting the competition announced that 22 of the 120 proposals submitted had been selected for the next round and thus for the test on the test track that was still to be built. At the competition finale on January 29, 2017, three capsules drove through the tube. The capsule of the WARR Hyperloop team at the Technical University of Munich reached the highest speed. The team from the Technical University of Delft won the main prize .

On January 15, 2015, Elon Musk initially announced plans to build a test track in Texas . In May 2016, however, a prototype of the drive was presented to the public on a test track in Nevada and pictures of the test track in the Mojave Desert near Las Vegas were published in March 2017 . The first successful tests took place a little later, in a practical test at the end of July, a new record speed of 310 km / h was achieved.

The second Hyperloop pod competition took place in August 2017, in which only speed was assessed. Again, the WARR Hyperloop team from the Technical University of Munich won . Her capsule reached a record speed of 324 km / h (201 mph), significantly faster than the other teams'. In 2018, the WARR Hyperloop Team won the competition and set a new record with a top speed of almost 467 km / h. The TU Munich team also won the fourth competition on July 21, 2019 (as TUM Hyperloop ) with a record speed of 463 km / h. A test track is currently being built on the campus of the University and Research Center Garching near Munich.

suggested routes

Europe

Vision for Europe

Proposed routes of the "Vision for Europe" concept

In June 2017, Hyperloop One published a total of nine concepts for potential Hyperloop routes in Central and Western Europe under the title Vision for Europe .

The longest of the proposed routes is a circular route that is to connect the cities of Berlin , Leipzig , Nuremberg , Munich , Stuttgart , Frankfurt am Main , Cologne and Hamburg with each other. The Hyperloop is to travel the 1991 km long route in 142 minutes, with the estimated travel time for Berlin – Leipzig with 14 minutes, Leipzig-Nuremberg with 20 minutes, Nuremberg – Munich with 12 minutes, Munich – Stuttgart with 17 minutes, Stuttgart – Frankfurt with 15 minutes, Frankfurt – Cologne as 14 minutes, Cologne – Hamburg as 30 minutes and Hamburg – Berlin as 20 minutes.

The proposed routes also include three route suggestions for Great Britain , a ring similar to the German one in the Netherlands , various city connections such as Helsinki - Tallinn , Madrid - Tangier and Warsaw - Wroclaw and a connection via the Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia .

More concepts

In March 2016, the Slovak government announced that it had concluded an agreement with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies to examine various route options - including from Bratislava to Vienna .

In May 2016, the Russian railway company RŽD started negotiations with the US company Hyperloop One to draft plans for a freight route between the capital Moscow and the northern Russian metropolis of Saint Petersburg .

According to a spokeswoman, the airline Lufthansa also held initial talks with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) in August 2016 . Accordingly, the airline calculated which domestic German flight routes could be replaced by HTT technology. The routes from Munich to Hamburg and the long-distance connections from Berlin to Düsseldorf and Cologne to Berlin were named.

As part of a competition by the Association of German Architects (BDA) for the development of Berlin, an architectural office designed the vision of a new Berlin district “Seaside Berlin” on the Baltic Sea. This Berlin district on the Baltic Sea should be accessible from Berlin in 10 minutes using a hyperloop.

United States

The route from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco region proposed in the concept study begins in Sylmar , a suburb of Los Angeles, then roughly follows Interstate 5 north, and ends at a station near Hayward on East side of the San Francisco Bay . By running the route along the interstate, Musk said that there would be less money to buy building lots. Several possible expansion routes were also shown in the study, for example an expansion to Sacramento or Anaheim to San Diego or Las Vegas. These would be used if it were decided to also transport goods with the Hyperloop.

United Arab Emirates

According to a promotional video, the United Arab Emirates are also said to be interested in this transport system. It is estimated that it will take 12 minutes to travel between the centers of Dubai and Abu Dhabi instead of two hours by car.

Companies

The companies Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and Hyperloop Technologies were founded to implement Hyperloop projects . Hyperloop Technologies was renamed Hyperloop One in May 2016 .

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies plans to build a line in Quay Valley , California in 2016 [obsolete] . This route will initially serve as a test track, but will later also be used commercially. Due to the short length of the route of just 5 miles (8 km), speeds of only 200 mph (about 320 km / h) are expected to be achieved - comparable to today's high-speed trains like the TGV and slower than the planned maximum speed of CAHSR (220 mph). The track would be the first test track, the size of which would be designed with the full diameter corresponding to the planned final state of the Hyperloop. The previously designed test tracks, however, have been designed with a reduced diameter. Around 100 million US dollars were estimated for the construction of the line. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies wants to collect the money from an IPO with an open auction process in order to pursue an open concept here as well.

criticism

John Hansman , director of the MIT International Center for Air Transportation , told the MIT Technology Review that while the idea was physically feasible, it would become extremely expensive. He sees a large number of technical challenges that have not yet been resolved. "My question is not whether it is feasible, but whether it can be implemented in a way that makes sense from an energy point of view and also from an economic point of view."

Markus Hecht , head of the rail vehicle department at the Technical University of Berlin , had not yet looked at the concept study, but expressed general criticism: He considered such concepts to be unrealistic. He names the physical problem of waste heat , which can hardly be solved in a completely pumped-out tube. In addition, rescuing passengers in an emergency is extremely difficult. Other experts are also concerned about security. Safety in the event of an earthquake is particularly questionable. The Hyperloop is to be equipped with an emergency system that stops the capsules in the event of an earthquake. But high speeds of over 1200 km / h would result in a braking distance of almost 2 kilometers and a braking time of 15 seconds. Problems such as the placement of toilets have also not yet been resolved and the weight for a passenger including luggage at around 100 kilograms is calculated too low. In the USA in particular, one would have to ask more precisely whether the weight of an American should not be calculated more realistically with an average weight of 80 kilograms. But cost accounting, which is viewed as unrealistic, is named as the biggest problem. Hecht refers here to the Swissmetro project, which has been discontinued for cost reasons, and other similar projects that exceeded the proposed costs. René Lavanchy notes in The Guardian that the inconsistent height of the individual support pillars makes mass production more difficult and that building on the freeway green strip would certainly lead to long-lasting disruptions in the traffic on Interstate 5 , which are difficult to tolerate . Furthermore, no solutions are known to date for forks / “switches”.

See also

Broadcast reports

Web links

Commons : Hyperloop  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

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