Elon Musk said it was nearly impossible to get injured in his system. Which means that any aircraft travel is out, because all it takes is an engine failure to kill everyone on board.<p>The safety reason is a big reason why I'm going with the underground tubes between LA and SF.
"It leaves when you arrive"<p>This doesn't work for an electric aircraft, or many normal public transport methods as they are all focused on batching people up into large groups (planes, trains, etc).<p>Also, Elon has called Hyperloop 'another type of transport', i.e. nothing like we already use, whereas I would say this idea is just an aircraft with a new type of launch system; not as different as Elon suggests it will be.<p>However I agree that getting the land to build a tunnel on the surface (or a track of any sort) would cost a lot of money, and tunnels below the surface would be too costly as well.<p>Although I think lots of people are converging on the idea, sound waves, evacuated tunnels, all that sort of stuff, I think everyone so far has missed the big detail or breakthrough that makes it feasible, after all, these techniques have been known for a long time, just not been taken advantage of because they aren't practical.
I'll re-issue my prediction: an STP hydrogen tunnel with elecromagnetic levitation (my favorite being Inductrack, known for its passive failsafe) and propulsion, and wheels for low speeds, makes a lot more economic sense than an evacuated tunnel. Much less drag, much higher speed of sound.<p>The other things that any modern engineer would never do that an 1870's railroad technician somewhere built into SOP, like mixed speed segments, frequent braked unbanked turns, single-tracking, and manual signalling / switching and grade crossings, will also be consciously avoided; the FRA regulations are built on making operating under such principles safer. Applying modern real-time at-speed routing to rail is something the PRT guys have been dreaming about for decades - the money and organizational will just hasn't been there to make it happen at a scale sufficient to make it cheap enough to justify.
After ruling out underground tubes, electric aircraft and coast-to-coast travel, teleportation seems to be the only option left. And I haven't really expected that.
One of my takes on it is that it has to be some sort of land/underground interconnection between cities.<p>My reasoning behind this is that he is open sourcing the designs. My guess behind this is that if it is a ground based system that requires right of way/property access etc. then there is tons of transaction costs & government regulation that would prevent copy cats from destroying the first mover's capital investments that would normally be protected via IP law.<p>If it didn't have these high transaction costs associated with it, then any actor could come and undercut your system after the tech behind the open source designs becomes cheaper. Traditionally this would be protected because of IP laws. However, he's dismissing this route & letting anyone up to the challenge take on the construction challenge with him. I'm guessing this is likely because the government won't eminent domain/allow/permit etc. extra routes between SF & LA etc. if there's already a hyperloop.
Interesting idea, but I don't think it is realistic as air travel, even from a launch tube, I suspect would be under the rules if the FAA, which I'm sure would still require the security ....uhhhh, stuff (?) that we currently have to deal with, so really a very limited benefit.<p>Plus, if then hyper loop can run along/beside the California aquaduct, I think that would solve the issue of terrain and land purchase. If elon can convince the gov't that the hyper loop would secure the passageway, they might go for that.
About the land access concern, in France we had the aerotrain which was developped as an alternative to high speed train but did not survive the conventional railroad lobbies. There is still 60 km of test track south of Paris. The track is 10 m above the ground and is built using pillars every 20 m. It has been there for more than 40 years for it's considered too expensive to dismantle for actual very limited annoyment, more limited than high voltage power lines for example. However, land is flat there and mostly non urban.
Keeping a passenger aircraft at constant speed of 600 mph is not realistic with the current (or near-future) battery technology, even if the initial kinetic energy comes "for free".
Elon Stevens mashup?<p><i>And again, the [hyperloop] is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big [plane]. It's a series of tubes.</i>
I remember a similar project from the French TV news. The airplanes were ultralight drones (no pilot and only as many passenger as taxis). I can't find the source.
I guess Elon Musk does know about stuff like "right of way". Also you might experience difficulties to launch something into the air from an evacuated tube...
why is everyone taking this thing so seriously? correct me if I'm wrong but it seems so vague as to not deserve the current hype, regardless of who Musk is
So my take on it is this:<p>There will be a guiding rail, and the vehicles will be 2 / 4 person pods that can be accelerated in the same way railguns work.