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China's hyperloop maglev train has achieved the fastest speed ever for a train at 623 km/h, as it prepares to test at up to 1,000 km/h in a 60km long hyperloop test tunnel. (robbreport.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Lugh to c/futurology

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[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

For reference, if atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 1 bar, "low vacuum" is between 0.3 and 0.001 bar.

Huh. Insane they actually build that. It's basically impossible to ever make it economical though. Just go slower, build more trains and lower prices. Way more benefit to society.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The US should be having a rail-measuring contest with China, not a hype®loop-measuring one.

[–] Flumpkin@slrpnk.net 7 points 9 months ago

Yeah China is doing real well in that department.

I mean if we lived in a post-scarcity utopia and build these hyperloops under ground it might be a worthwhile investment. If we had more advanced tech for tunnel digging robots and maybe 3D printing the walls out of the material we take out etc. But if you include the energy for just maintaining the vacuum against small leaks it's probably not better than airplanes. Maybe with some kind of genetically engineered bio-crete that automatically seals small cracks. But even when we'd advanced to that level of tech and automation to make it viable, it would still have to compete with a fleet of ultra cheap vertical take of electric aircraft.

[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 9 months ago

It still takes the technology further, and we learn something from it that may or may not be useful in future.

[–] Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 9 months ago

The idea is to compete with planes because making them climate friendly is a damn hard problem to solve and China has a lot of domestic flights. When you put it in that context, the economic cost makes more sense.