Obama's 25 Challenges for America

[Geronimo]

Originally Posted by Jason M. Hendler

Did EV's come from the big 3 automakers? No, they came from AC Propulsion, then Tesla Motors, then Fisker Automotive, then the majors got involved. In the same way, some new energy distributor is going to roll out a lucrative hydrogen production / distribution system, most likely on site production, and grow it to the point that the major oil companies are forced to compete.

In January 1990, GM chairman Roger Smith demonstrated the Impact, an electric concept car, at the 1990 Los Angeles Auto Show. The car had been developed by electric vehicle company AeroVironment, using design knowledge gained from GM's participation in the 1987 World Solar Challenge, a trans-Australia race for solar vehicles, with the Sunraycer, which went on to win the competition. Alan Cocconi of AC Propulsion designed and built the original drive controller electronics for the Impact, and the design was later refined by Hughes Electronics. On April 18, 1990, Smith announced that the Impact would become a production vehicle.

This led to the 1996 GM EV1 (the first car in history to wear a "GM" nameplate, rather than one of the brand names, like 'Chevrolet').
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1

AC Propulsion was not founded until 1992, by Alan Cocconi, mentioned above. Seems like you got the timeline backwards.

However, you could argue that AeroVironment was instrumental in developing the prototype for the EV1. This company was founded in 1971 by Paul B. MacCready, Jr., the famous designer of human powered aircraft (like the Gossamer Condor, now on display at the National Air and Space Museum). The Sunraycer, the solar powered car that won the world's first solar car race in Australia in 1987, was also developed by MacCready's company, with GM's help (also Hughes Aircraft) and money (this car is now in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroVironment

Too bad the battery technology was not ready for prime time back in the 90's - at least GM learned a lot from the EV1 program, and some of those engineers were instrumental in the development of the Volt.

[pdt]

Originally Posted by Jason M. Hendler

If by life support system, you mean a pressurized cabin like they have in airplanes, then yes, the airline industry has decades of data on the cost of lightweight construction pressurized cabin systems.

There is a big difference between a plane flying through low density air that contains 20% oxygen and a pressurized cylinder flying through a vacuum. The later would need to carry oxygen generators and CO2 scrubbers like a spacecraft.

Any idea about costs?

[Geronimo]

Originally Posted by Jason M. Hendler

slide 14 - I just don't think high speed rail is going to become commercially viable until they can travel at least 1/2 the speed of an airplane while expending less energy than an airplane. The only way to do that is propel mag-lev "cars" in evacuated cylinders. You could propel "cars" at Mach numbers in evacuated cylinders.

I hadn't heard of the "evacuated cylinders" before, although I've heard of the maglev train in Shanghai:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train
It cost $1.33 billion to build the 19 mile airport railway. During a test run in November 2003, it reached a top speed of 311 mph, but the normal operating speed is 268 mph.



As for the "evacuated cylinders", my first thought was, that is going to be very expensive per mile; just building a highway costs about $1 million/mile. Sure enough, they say it will cost $2 million/mile, but it looks like some companies are seriously looking into this.

Here's a YouTube introduction to the idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dK_yxaKvk

350 mph for instate use, 4000 mph for cross country !
NY to LA in 45 minutes (2462 miles) !
NY to Beijing in 2 hours !

They envision 5 foot diameter tubes, with capsules that seat 6 people, and software like IP internet routing can zip you to your destination along multiple routes, I guess optimized for time. These capsules also can accommodate 3 'cargo' pallets as well. At the 'exits', airlocks allow the capsule to pop out, while keeping the tube at a vacuum. Interesting.
Capsules cost $27K, exit stations $25M.
It's a huge infrastructure project, but tantalizing speeds and efficiencies result.
Are the tubes transparent ? Do you get a nice view zipping through Siberia ? Maglev - do you have to worry about losing power in a rolling brownout in India ? Can terrorists blow up the tube backbone in some remote province, halting global travel for 3 weeks ? Will they make some underwater ? Can they mass produce 'transparent aluminum' yet (which is basically sapphire, corundum, aluminum oxide, the stuff they use for watch crystals) ? That would make for a nice trip at 4000 mph...

A 14,500 mile ETT (Evacuated Tube Transport) backbone from NY to London via Alaska, China, India and Europe can be built for less than $1 trillion... (I like their optimism, and scale of vision )
Travel NYC to Beijing in 2 hours. I guess they will have to update all this "passport and visa" paperwork nonsense as well
They also allow emergency popout at any station, so if you are zipping through dozens of countries... could be messy visa paperwork.

Here's the website for the ET3 company (sounds like one guy, Daryl Oster, incorporated in Florida in May 1999).
ET3 = Evacuated Tube Transport Technology.
http://et3.com/

Sounds like a good idea, but with minimal resources behind it. Maybe some modern day Cornelius Vanderbilt can get behind this new "railroad" and make it happen...

[pdt]

From http://et3.com/faq.htm

How can people breathe?

Life-support apparatus is a well developed field. Space stations in orbit allow astronauts to breathe for several months, even though the capsule is in a near vacuum. Submarines have been around for over a hundred years, modern subs can stay submerged for more than a month. The systems used in Evacuated Tube Transport will be much less demanding. Only 2-3 hours (plus reserves) of life-support is needed.

[omnimoeish]

Are they thinking that they will evacuate the air once, and then somehow have an airlock or something so that it doesn't need constant air pumping? I imagine so. That's a lot of air to pump if it's hundreds of miles long. I kind of wonder how expensive it would really be. I think $1 trillion to build a rail that crosses the entire Pacific is a little optimistic.

Consider this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

I'm sure a few of you have heard of the Big Dig, you should, you're paying for it. It was originally estimated at $6 billion (real) dollars back in the 80's and ended up costing about 4x that. Just that little 3.5 mile stretch will take until 2038 to pay off.

[Jason M. Hendler]

The energy savings would be enormous, as most of the energy of transport is consumed in pushing the air out of the way. Once evacuated, cylinders will glide through after an initial acceleration.

I am so psyched someone has taken this up - this truly is the way to take the next big leap - NY to Beijing in 2 hours - that rocks.

[Jason M. Hendler]

I understand that it's easier to evacuate a smaller volume, but 5' diameter seems to small for the most lucrative or strategic shipping. I assumed the tube would handle standard shipping containers like those on trucks or ships, so that you could go from ship to train to truck without repackaging the materials. Also, I might like to take my own car on a trip, so I want enough room to do that.

[Steel]

Originally Posted by Jason M. Hendler

I understand that it's easier to evacuate a smaller volume, but 5' diameter seems to small for the most lucrative or strategic shipping. I assumed the tube would handle standard shipping containers like those on trucks or ships, so that you could go from ship to train to truck without repackaging the materials. Also, I might like to take my own car on a trip, so I want enough room to do that.

Hmm, my calculations say that you'd need an at least 15' dia. circular tube to house a standard shipping container (11'9" corner to corner, and the supporting structure). Unfortunatley that would be about nine times as much air that would need to be evacuated.

[Jason M. Hendler]

Originally Posted by Steel

Hmm, my calculations say that you'd need an at least 15' dia. circular tube to house a standard shipping container (11'9" corner to corner, and the supporting structure). Unfortunatley that would be about nine times as much air that would need to be evacuated.

That's OK, because it is shipping that will drive its buildout, not passenger service. Also, the military would heavily use it as part of its mandate to reduce fuel consumption. With a 15' diameter, you would have a normal airplane cabin. This system would allow you to live in one city and commute to another.

[Geronimo]

Originally Posted by Jason M. Hendler

That's OK, because it is shipping that will drive its buildout, not passenger service. Also, the military would heavily use it as part of its mandate to reduce fuel consumption. With a 15' diameter, you would have a normal airplane cabin. This system would allow you to live in one city and commute to another.

I looked into this some more:
http://www.et3.com/faq.htm
The FAQ mentions tubes of different sizes for different transportation needs, such as 1 foot = mail and packages, 5 foot for auto-sized people carriers, 20 feet could accommodate a bus (or as you say, better cargo carriers, or an airplane cabin).
It might be more fun to travel at 4000 mph in a large bus/airplane size capsule, where you could mingle, have a few drinks, walk around (20 foot tube) rather than be stuck sitting with 4 or 5 other strangers (in a 6 person capsule less than 5 feet in diameter). Then they could build one tube for all uses (cargo, mail, people). But if it's much cheaper, I could handle 2 hours to Beijing in a car-sized capsule even with the dullest travel companions - I have plenty of interesting lectures on my iPod.

The FAQ says that $2 million/mile figure is for an in-state 350 mph tube. Presumably the 4000 mph travel would be more expensive per mile. The vacuum in the tube will reduce the air friction of forward movement (as the et3 site says, space travel on Earth), but you still have to worry about gravity. The maglev part is so far very expensive (as I mentioned, $1.33 billion for 19 miles in Shanghai, which is $70 million/mile), but that was the first one in the world, so economies of scale, and engineering know-how will steadily increase, and prices might very well come down to $4 million/mile for a continental tube (4000 mph).

Mr. Oster of et3.com Inc. on the right

The worlds first passenger HTSM (High Temperature Superconductor MagLev) was developed in China by Professor Jiasu Wang and a team of researchers at the Applied Superconductivity Center of Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJU) in Chengdu China. The HTSM test vehicle has safely carried 25,000 passengers in including the President of China. Due to the success of the HTSM a second generation HTSM system was approved for development.
http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:...3.com/tech.htm

Let's look at some numbers:
Build two tubes from NY to LA, 2462 miles, one tube for each direction of travel. At $4 million/mile (for high speed, 4000 mph) vacuum tube and maglev-inside construction, that is $19.696 billion.
Throw in two terminals ($25M each), and as many capsules as we can use. Call it $19.773 billion to build this two-way people carrier (I think the $2 million/mile was for the 5 foot diameter tube, at 350 mph, so I will look at just moving people for now. Maybe FedEx style packages, nothing bigger than almost 5 foot diameter).

Assume the terminals have lots of empty capsules, and allows people and packages to be loaded up, then inserted through an airlock and sent whooshing away at an average one every 10 seconds (big, busy terminals - maybe 100 airlocks in a row, so each airlock used every 1000 seconds, or 16.66 minutes. 20 feet per airlock, so the terminal is 2000 feet long, or 666 yards long).
One year is 3600 seconds (1 hour) * 24 * 365 = 31,536,000 seconds. So 3,153,600 capsules sent on a one-way journey.
Assume, for the people carriers, $100 for a NY to LA trip (45 minutes). Six people per capsule:
$1,892,160,000 generated per year, one way.
Given the traffic in the other direction, that is $3.78 billion/year.
(Time-wise, you could live in NY and commute to a job in LA, but you would pay $1000/week in commute costs, at $100 each one-way trip. Could they cut the cost if they can load more capsules at Rush Hour ? Get the cost down to $50, or $25 ? Maybe. At $25/one-way, that is only $250/week for commuting. Pretty interesting, living 3 time zones away from your job )

You could imagine charging more during "rush hours" or weekends, and less at 4 am. Some capsules could be pure cargo. Some capsules could have an open bar and movies, etc, more luxurious. But figure an average of $600/capsule for the 45 minute trip.

What if a capsule every 10 seconds is too optimistic ? How about 1 every minute (on average, faster during rush hour, slower at night...) ? That's $630.72 million/year income.
For an initial cost of $19.773 billion, that is 31.39 years, at $630 million/year, to recover the cost (forget interest, maintenance, etc for now).
At an average speed of 4000 mph, a capsule every minute would be separated by 66.66 miles. If we have a capsule every 66.66 miles along our 2462 mile route, that is 36.9 capsules, say 37 capsules going in each direction, so 74 capsules total, in travel at any one time. You probably need lots of extra capsules at the terminal to allow loading of cargo, passengers. Say 1000 capsules at $27K, average. That is only $27 million for capsule cost.

I would guess building the tube, and pumping out the air for 2462 miles is no great trick, but the high temperature maglev part is the big question mark (high temperature refers to the superconducting material, the higher you can make it, the cheaper it is to build; high temp is relative, and being above 77 K or -196 °C, the boiling point of liquid nitrogen, is important, because liquid nitrogen is a relatively inexpensive and easily handled coolant.). I don't know how that is going, but I think the Large Hadron Collider in Europe used all superconducting magnets, maybe that helped the science/engineering of high temp. superconductors along...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-te...erconductivity
As of 2009, the highest-temperature superconductor (at ambient pressure) is mercury thallium barium calcium copper oxide (HgBa2Ca2Cu3Ox), at 135 K (absolute zero, 0 K, is −273.15° on the Celsius scale).

I wonder if they need some maglev magnets on the sides and top to keep the capsule from ever touching the walls of the tube ? At 4000 mph, just a scrape might knock the capsule into violent gyrations and maybe a sideways crumple, within the tube. The tube would have to be almost perfectly flat and straight if they didn't have top and side magnets. Earthquakes, large trucks rumbling by, kids throwing stones at the tube... who knows what might cause a capsule to hit the walls ?
And they would have to worry about never losing power along the whole 2500 mile tube. Optical cables connecting all the sensors, magnets, electrical connections to a central computer ?
And getting right-of-way from city to city would be tricky, but doable.