At present, high-speed rail has benefited thousands of households and brought great convenience to people's travel. However, scientists are not satisfied with the current speed of high-speed rail, and they have always wanted to upgrade high-speed rail to a "hyperloop". So, what is the concept of a "hyperloop"?
First, let's take a brief look at the history of high-speed rail.
High-speed rail, people's abbreviation for high-speed rail, it refers to those railways with high infrastructure design speed standards, which can be used by trains to travel safely and at high speeds on tracks, and trains generally operate at a speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour. In terms of speed, China's railways are divided into high-speed railways with a speed of 250-380 kilometers per hour, high-speed railways with a speed of 160-250 kilometers per hour and general-speed railways with a speed of 80-160 kilometers per hour.
It is important to note here that high-speed rail is not the same as a high-speed train, and a good race track is not the same as a racing car.
High-speed rail that we just mentioned is a railway system, while high-speed trains are a type of vehicle. High-speed railways can either allow or provide high-speed trains to travel; Similarly, high-speed trains can travel on both high-speed and normal-speed railways, but if the design speed of the railway and the train does not match, it will restrict the speed of the train.
High-speed electric locomotives with speeds of more than 200 kilometers per hour were introduced in 1903, and even steam locomotives set a high-speed record of 202 kilometers per hour as early as 1938. The world's first railway system that can truly enable the long-term safe and stable operation of high-speed trains appeared in Japan, which is why the Japanese Shinkansen, which was completed and opened to traffic in 1964, is the precedent for high-speed railways.
Nowadays, many places in China will adopt the mode of combined operation of high-speed trains on high-speed railways and high-speed railway lines, such as the high-speed train from Zhuhai to Chaoshan, which passes through the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong line that belongs to the high-speed railway and the Xiamen-Shenzhen line that belongs to the high-speed railway, and even passes through the Guangzhou-Zhuhai intercity railway line that operates at a speed of only 200 kilometers per hour. Therefore, high-speed rail and high-speed trains are not the same thing, and they must not be confused.
After learning about high-speed rail, let's go back to the question at the beginning of the show, what is a hyperloop?
In fact, the hyperloop is also known as the "capsule high-speed rail", that is, the train that looks like a capsule is loaded in a pipe close to a vacuum, and it is said that it can reach a speed close to the speed of sound under ideal conditions. Elon Musk, the American tech maniac and founder of Tesla's electric car, proposed in 2013 that could change the future of transportation, saying that this technology could allow passengers to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes, with only half the time it takes to travel by plane.
However, many people at the time questioned the realization of this technology, so, after all these years of development, is the hyperloop a practical science or an experiment that only exists in theory?
In fact, the high-profile hyperloop isn't entirely cutting-edge. As early as 200 years ago, the British inventor George Medhurst proposed the idea of using vacuum pipes to transport trains; Also, in the late summer of 1864, anyone visiting the east side of London's Crystal Palace Park could buy a sixpence train ticket, but instead of riding the ordinary railway, the Crystal Palace Pneumatic Railway, designed by the British engineer Thomas Lammell. The entire design consists of a tightly packed carriage loaded inside the tunnel, which, when turned on, is sucked from one end of the tunnel to the other, with an average speed of about 40 kilometers per hour. The pneumatic railway in Lamel was experimental, and it only operated for two months.
A century and a half later, the billionaire Musk, the founder behind Tesla's electric car and the American SpaceX company, further solved the technical problems of the year and proposed the concept of hyperloop, which is not only remarkable in terms of speed, but also in the design of the pipeline to reduce the impact of the weather environment and be safer, and the energy it consumes will be cleaner and more environmentally friendly.
This hyperloop sounds too good to be true, so much so that many critics agree that it is completely impractical, unsafe, and unachievable for a variety of reasons. But in the four years since, at least three Hyperloop start-ups have been founded, and dozens of academics and industry experts have joined their teams. They want to change the landscape of public transport and build back for the better.
A few months after Musk proposed the "hyperloop", a German entrepreneur, Dirk Arbern, founded the hyperloop transportation technology company in the United States, but they only started building an 8-kilometer-long demonstration track in 2016, and said that it will take at least ten years before the commercial operation of the hyperloop; He was followed by Iranian-American entrepreneur Shervin Pissyphus, who persuaded Musk to release the idea of the hyperloop in the first place, and Pisifer made more progress than with Arborn, in May 2016, Pissyphus's company conducted the first outdoor test of the propulsion system north of Las Vegas, USA; And a year later, the company conducted a system-wide test of its design for the hyperloop, the first of its kind in the world.
In 2015, a third Canadian company also joined the market. Unlike other competitors, they are more focused on developing faster passenger compartments than they plan to develop the entire system, and its founder, Ryan Can, has said that they will draw on expertise in rail, aerospace, space and architecture to build a spaceship that looks like an airplane and runs like a train. They expect to deliver a "commercially viable product" by 2020 and develop algorithms that can design the best routes between cities, taking into account geography and existing infrastructure.
These global tech minds are gearing up for the realization of the Hyperloop. However, progress on the ground has been relatively slow, and it's easy to see why the technology has been slammed as a fantasy on paper. So, what are the main aspects of the problem that those who question the hyperloop are aiming for?
The first is the speed aspect. The hyperloop claims to be able to reach speeds of more than 1,200 kilometers per hour, but the current test results are not ideal. In early August 2017, Pisifher's company successfully tested a passenger compartment at a speed of 309 kilometers per hour, which is slightly lower than the fastest high-speed train at present. Of course, they are still trying to figure out how to increase the speed, and the next step may be 500 kilometers per hour, and then gradually get closer to their preset target.
In fact, the United States is not alone in researching the hyperloop, and Chinese scientists are also poised for it. In August 2017, at the Commercial Aerospace Summit Forum, China's Aerospace Science and Industry Group announced that it would soon start developing a "high-speed flying train" with a speed of 1,000 kilometers per hour, and the speed would be increased to 2,000 kilometers or even 4,000 kilometers per hour.
Secondly, cost is also an important issue that Hyperloop has to consider. Proponents of the hyperloop envision that vacuum pipes will be cheaper to build than high-speed rail. But many engineers are skeptical, as major infrastructure projects often experience cost overruns, which can lead to loss of support and abandonment.
In the early 80s of the 20th century, Swiss researchers planned to build a network of underground tunnels to connect major Swiss cities, called the "Swiss Metro". The system uses a maglev train to reach speeds of up to 450 kilometers per hour by reducing air pressure. The initiative was also initially supported by the Federation** and was subsequently analysed with more substantive research and analysis with the support of the State and the private sector. But after a few years, the interest in ** waned significantly, arguing that the system was not economically viable.
While the Hyperloop won't necessarily suffer the same fate, don't underestimate the challenges of economic spending. If the construction cost of the hyperloop cannot be well controlled within the acceptable range of the public, then even if it can reach a high speed and have good performance, it will be difficult to further commercialize.
Finally, there is the security aspect. Vacuum tubes are the basis for achieving high speeds, but there are also safety risks. Once there is a problem with the pipeline, there is basically no chance of survival in the vacuum environment. In addition, the integrity of the vacuum tube is also an issue over long distances, and passengers may have to endure strong gravitational acceleration on curves when the tubes have to fork into different routes, which means that it may be difficult for people to work, eat, and move around during the journey. Also, the hyperloop system can be susceptible to everything from power outages to noise to natural disasters.
Of course, while we can always hear criticism, we need to think bolder about the future, and it's lazy to stick to the rules and ignore things like the hyperloop that could change our lives. The future of the hyperloop is still worth waiting for.