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发帖数: 29576 | 1 Hyperloop Update: Elon Musk Will Start Developing It Himself
Elon Musk just finished a phone call with reporters explaining a little more
about his Hyperloop idea. Before the call he posted the link to a 57-page
outline describing what it might entail. You can read the whole thing here.
http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hype
Here are a few other things Musk mentioned and clarified while on the call:
- The plans Musk unveiled were developed by a team of a dozen engineers from
both Tesla and SpaceX. They spent roughly nine months developing them,
though Musk started thinking about a Hyperloop concept about two years ago.
“It was very much a background task—it was not anybody’s full-time job,”
he said. “We were just batting it around in the background at SpaceX and
Tesla and then in the last few weeks we ended up allocating some full-time
days to it.”
- The Hyperloop sits in a tube system, rather than previously speculated
underground tunnels or rails.
- The electromagnetic tubes will run mostly along the I-5 corridor, with
exceptions around the densest areas in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “
There is a tricky portion near LA which is called the grapevine,” Musk said
, so he would make a “series of tunnels through the hills – they’re not
very long tunnels”—to help navigate passengers to the correct station. The
passenger pods “end up essentially chasing the pulse,” he said.
- The Hyperloop is optimized for travel between cities that are fewer than 1
,000 miles apart. “The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion,
the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are
less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart,” Musk wrote in the report. “
Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up
being faster and cheaper… For much longer journeys such as LA to NY it
would be worth exploring super high speeds and this is probably technically
feasible, but, as mentioned above, I believe the economics would probably
favor a supersonic plane.”
- The Hyperloop will travel 800 miles per hour–and in every way feel more
like the Concorde than an Amtrak car. “Trains are heavy,” he says. “This
is designed more like an aircraft.”
- In theory, the Hyperloop will be safer than a plane or train. “Obviously
never is a rather strong word, but it would just be extremely difficult I
suppose to crash,” Musk said. “It’s not like it’s going to fall out of
the sky, essentially, nor can it be derailed as a train can.”
- Same goes for earthquake hazards: “The thought I had was actually in the
pylons where the tube is mounted to have earthquake dampers, the sort of
things you have in buildings in California, basically shock absorbers….
There’s going to be potentially some earthquake that is so gigantic that it
overcomes the dampers but we have that same problem with buildings, too. So
relative to say a train where you can’t really do that with tracks it
should be quite a bit safer.”
- The Hyperloop will use some of the same technology that is found in the
battery packs of the Tesla Model S. “It’s a linear electric induction
motor, the same as what is in the Model S. This is a pretty longstanding
technology: The linear electric induction motor was essentially invented by
[inventor Nikola] Tesla back in the day.”
- Musk will build a demonstration prototype himself. “I think it might help
if I built a demonstration article. I think I probably will do that,
actually. I’ve sort of come around in my thinking on that part.”
- The Hyperloop will feel like an airplane to ride. “There will be initial
acceleration and once you’re at traveling speed you wouldn’t really notice
the speed at all,” Musk said, noting that there will be no lateral
acceleration (by which he means swaying side-to-side like a roller coaster).
“It should just feel really super smooth and quiet, and obviously there
wouldn’t be any turbulence or anything.”
- It’ll take roughly seven years before we can ride in it.
- For now, this is a low priority for Musk. “Maybe I would just do the
beginning bit, create a subscale version that is operating and then hand it
over to someone else. Ironing out the details at a subscale level is a
tricky thing. I think I would probably end up doing that. It just won’t be
immediate in the short term because I have to focus on Tesla and SpaceX
execution.”
- If it was his first priority, he could have it done in a year. “The
demonstration project would not be anything that required some sort of big
government approval process,” he said.
- The $70 billion “high-speed” rail system proposed for California’s
coastal corridor prompted Musk to act. “I don’t think we should do the
high-speed rail thing because it’s currently slated to be roughly $70
billion but if one ratio is the cost at approval time versus the cost at
completion time of most large projects I think it’s probably going to be
close to $100 billion. And it seems like it’s going to be less desirable to
take that than to take a plane, so that means it’s not just going to be, I
mean California taxpayers are not just going to have to write off $100
billion but they’re also going to have to maintain and subsidize the
ongoing operation of this train for a super long time, sort of California’s
Amtrak. And that just doesn’t seem wise for a state that was facing
bankruptcy not that long ago.”
- The Hyperloop will cost closer to $6 billion to build. “That’s about the
right number,” Musk says. “It’s worth noting that that’s more than
Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City have spent, combined.”
- Musk will invest his own money into this project, even though he hopes
others will help as well. “I always invest my own money in the companies
that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other
people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other
people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.”
- But it’s okay if it doesn’t make him a lot of money. “I’m not trying
to make a ton of money on this but I would like to see it come to fruition,
” he said. “I don’t really care much one way or another if I have any
economic benefit or another, but it would be cool to see an alternate form
of transport.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahelliott/2013/08/12/latest-upd | G*****h
发帖数: 33134 | | p*********n
发帖数: 3183 | 3 他的钱能造多少公里？
千万不要弄个试验性质的一公里，或者五公里 |
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