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The First Hyperloop

The Hyperloop

Elon Musk (i.e. Mr. Tesla Car) has received “verbal” approval from the government to build the world’s longest tunnel for an ultra-high-speed train line to connect New York to Washington.*  Called a Hyperloop, this tunnel is a mere 204 miles long, as the crow flies. Basically, this means the creation of a tunnel into the earth of a very slight angle and linear, i.e. perfectly straight, to Washington DC. The length of this underground tunnel will be about 203.98 miles.  Not much savings there from the crow’s flight. The interesting point is this tunnel will, at its lowest point be 1.3 miles or about 6866 feet below the earth’s surface.  This is deeper than most oil wells.  

So you take a trip on the new train in this new tunnel, and it gets stuck midway.  Will happen sometime. At this depth, the tunnel temperature has increased by 98 degrees F above the mean surface temperature.  It’s hot down there. All this implies system failure at this depth will be fatal.  Passengers would be toasted to death, if not incinerated.
                                     
The construction costs will range into the multiples of billions.  Passenger risks will be astronomic. This is all for a 29 minute trip to DC or to NY.  Average speed would be about 400 mph.  This implies the solution of many new engineering problems having nothing to do with the tunnel, which has itself a host of new engineering problems.   

What do you say we spend that money on fixing roads, bridges, and airports?   

Elon can work on his cars and spaceships.

BTW, news reports indicate the distance is not 204 miles, but 220 miles.  In this case, the maximal depth is about 8000 feet, with a corresponding temperature increase of about 114 degrees F.  Toastier is this. None of the entrepreneurs (actually, promoters) mention these little facts.

Is it possible for the government to resist this project and get to the hum-drum business of running the country? 


* http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-musk-hyperloop-20170720-story.html
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