One of the defining features of the CCP in the PRC comes down to industrial productivity observable in the scope, size, & rapid construction of the existing ~23,500 miles of railway connecting cities across China & continual expansion of that rail network into neighboring countries. There are other emergent ways to transport people & goods & Hyperloop offers a high energy efficient alternative to high speed or maglev railway services.
In the future energy efficiency will become a mainstream diffused topic common in all spheres of human society & civilization. Consider that reality consists of matter, physical substances made of chemical elements & Energy. Even more peculiarly matter is actually made of energy as proven by Einstein's equation E=MC^2
Highspeed railway & maglev railway systems are much more efficient & less polluting than an alternative system made of roadways with many millions of private cars, trucks, SUV's, busses, motorcycles, moto scooters, electric bikes & electric rideable things like my Segway MiniPro by Ninebot. Roads are an ancient concept while gasoline, diesel, hybrid & electric vehicles to utilize these roads are relatively newer technologies, achieving worldwide adoption or wide diffusion during the last half of the 3rd industrial paradigm.
Today we are living in the 4th industrial paradigm, also know as 4IR or the Information Age. Tailpipe emissions are a major source of air pollution worldwide. While emissions controls & vehicle optimization reduce emissions from each vehicle, more vehicles being adopted into public use daily worldwide. 98% of these vehicles are powered by pollutant emitting ICE or internal combustion engines. Roads with gasoline & diesel passenger vehicles are not a good global transportation models. Not only because of air pollution, but also because of the material intensity of car & SUV manufacturing.
Consider that most cars in America & Europe sit idles for 20 hours per day, rusting apart because of iron used in their construction. Privately owned cars also have the problem of poorly skilled, intoxicated & tired drivers causing accidents that hurt, harm & senselessly kill other people randomly because of accidents, 95% or more caused by human driver error or mistakes made by the driver. This injury fatality debacle of private vehicles driven by the public being rapidly addressed with the development of all vision based self driving L5 autonomy technology by Tesla.
Trains & hyperloops can be autonomously operated & that removes human error from the control input point in the network. Humans are better suited for maintaining the system, our unique problem solving skills & thinking & dexterity better for building, upgrading, fixing & repairing things. Consider how an astronaut performs choreographed spacewalks to service the ISS or international space station. When you drive your car, that trip was not preplanned years in advance by a team of intellectuals.
When your driving your literally doing so on the seat of your pants & that's dangerous because a person can suddenly have a stroke or heart attack or lose consciousness, which nearly always ends up causing a vehicle accidents. People who drive while intoxicate on drugs or alcohol also caused accidents as do new or very poorly skilled drivers, distracted drivers & drivers playing with their cells phones while driving. Humans have all sorts of ways of causing accidents as the control operators of cars & SUV's & trucks & busses.
We need more autonomous transportation systems that remove human error from the network control, just like the integrated circuits routing IO inside a computer or via the internet in packet switching networks, humans can not think fast enough on the fly to safely operate vehicles & the accident statistics prove this point beyond any debate. Now, back to why hyperloop better than Maglev!
Consider how a ping-pong nitrocellulose ball can be accelerated in a vacuum tube with pressure assist to over 500 mph / search vacuum ping-pong ball cannon into YouTube to see a video of this concept. Hyperloop technology makes use of low pressure tubes where air resistance reduced by reducing the number of air molecules blocking movement of the transport module inside the hyperloop. Lowering pressure in the front of the vehicle while increasing pressure behind it produces a very efficient means for transporting people & goods. While the tube network more complex to develop & construct than a rail system from steel rails, hyperloops are significantly more efficient & way less costly than maglev or magnetic levitation rail systems.
Energy efficient hyperloop takes advantage of pressure differential inside a sealed transportation tube system that enables very rapid transportation speeds with tiny amounts of energy in the system. While steel wheels on a steel rail track holds the record for the most efficient way to move heavy masses of people or goods, this type of rail suffers from low speeds which enables development & popularization of commercial passenger aircraft. Air pollution from aircraft & poor energy efficiency of aircraft means that flight based transportation models will become more costly over time. Energy will become a premium in the future as energy required to manipulate matter in all the ways that humans do.
Consider the scope & increasing magnitude of human activity in Earth's biosphere, the terrestrial zone near the surface of the Earth where many people live in close proximity to large bodies of water, forests, plains & other landscape features. Air thickest in the lower atmosphere of Earth, with higher partial pressure due to the mass of the atmosphere above pushing down, gravity grabbing at all of those gas molecules in air, mostly diatomic nitrogen & oxygen & argon. Speaking of thick air, that's why the vacuum cannon works so well & why hyperloop so efficient & effective at transporting mass with low amounts of energy.
Sealing the hyperloop network in an easily reversible way may prove technically challenging to ongoing operations, maintenance & repair, though compared with commercial aircraft, this should be a walk in the park. Advancements in polymers should enable gaskets ^ seals sufficient for sealing up hyperloop transport networks.
Its not all roses & free lunch for China, which was largely undeveloped just 40 years ago. In a way, China has more of a blank slate for developing rail, whereas Europe & America have extensive existing concrete & strong well made buildings blocking such developments. Putting fixed railway systems into place avoids the flexibility of road network development. Unlike linear connecting rails that form large lines across landscapes, roads develop into a fractal like sprawling network, giving people better access to the landscapes near or around where they live & work.
Consider the booms & busts of business development & how ghost towns can form when a major industry leaves, either by merger & acquisition by Amazon or Walmart, or just because of mismanagement or getting crushed by their competitors. Expensive energy intensive rail terminals & networks can end up passing through economic dead zones. Roads are more flexible as disused ones can be left to rot & frequently used ones can be updated, maintained & repaired. Steel rails are much more expensive per mile than asphalt or concrete or gravel or dirt roadways.
Hyperloop may be even more capital intensive than highspeed rail, they offers much faster speeds & far greater energy efficiency than traditional highspeed rail & the most energy intensive transportation system of all, maglev. The only way to make maglev cost efficient would be to apply non existing cheap flexible high temperature superconductors to the electromagnets. Traditional copper & aluminum wiring too resistive to the flow of electricity for efficient magnetic levitation networks. Brittle expensive superconducting magnets requiring liquid helium as a coolant exist today in the domain of medical imagine MRI machines that cost many millions $ each & have horrendous operating costs reflected in the prices of such scans to patients, doctors, health insurance companies & states health insurance agencies like Medicare or socialized medicine in more socially advanced countries.
Nuclear energy & large hydro are the only electricity systems abundant enough to power a significantly large Maglev train networks. In the Hyperloop, the pressure differentials can be used for energy recovery, like brake energy recovery charging in hybrid & electric passenger cars. Even my Segway Mini Pro regenerative braking, adding something like ~10-15% greater range per charge // Ultimately the greater energy efficient will make Hyperloop an attractive alternative to Maglev hype & high speed trains. China could easily be the world leader in Hyperloop development, but the conservative culture there causes their leaders to embrace proven solutions. The only Maglev operating in China was designed & implemented by innovative German companies brought to China to enable this development back in 2003. At the high cost per unit of travel distance, this Maglev in China the only one operating today!
Aircraft air pollution the major problem with burning hydrocarbon fuels in turbine engines. Those same axial turbines can be electrically powered with electric motor designs continually optimized for drone & EV applications. Hybrid electric aircraft engines that take-off in EV mode then switch to burn hydrocarbon mode for cruise, then run the turbines as generators to slow down for landing & charge up the onboard batteries on the way back to the airport. Even fully electric aircraft are being developed with hydrogen fuel cells offering much better energy density & flight endurance than larger chemical batteries. Covering the top surfaces of aircraft with solar cells proves challenging given the kinds of thermal & chemical & mechanical loads experience by the surfaces of aircraft.
Slower solar electric airships are a better applications for fully electric flight while we are stuck in the limited lithium ion era of chemical batteries. Lithium ion batteries are damaged by 100% charging, high heat or freezing cold & suffer from rapid capacity fading if deeply discharged repeatedly, especially if hot or cold while charging & discharging. Consider the fading Nissan Leaf batteries or failing Boeing Dreamliner lithium ion battery fires or Samsung Note 7 battery gate as examples of how limited lithium ion today both dangerously flammable & prone to failure in extreme applications. Tesla goes to the crazy extent of liquid cooling & warming of the their vehicles batteries to keep fragile lithium ion batteries in their human preference optimal temperature range between 50-80 F
Yes, I think Hyperloop a good idea just like Elon Musk! I think hyperloop makes more sense than maglev because its more energy efficient & less resource intensive to develop. Hyperloop network builds outs can also leverage mature tunnel boring & large pipe manufacturing technologies. Magnets are an interesting technology, & China the worlds leading producers or rare earths, so they have a cost advantage developing anything using magnets, especially the exceptional NdFeB or neodymium iron boron magnets common in most IPM motors used in energy efficient appliances & computer cooling fans & electric vehicles.
I am actually a big fan of magnet free electric motors, induction motors that Tesla used in the Model S. Without rare earth materials, induction motors make use of electromagnets in the stator & rotor, where electromagnetic induction transfers energy to the rotor windings via magnetic fields produced by the stator windings. China increased the cost of exported rare earth materials, making everything containing high strength magnets more expensive. This gives good motivations towards magnet free motor development. If electric vehicles are going to replace fossil fueled vehicles, they need to be made from Earth abundant materials.
Think how can you make a feasible electric vehicle for 8 billion people; rare earth magnets are not a good solution. Similarly lithium ion must be replaces with sodium ion or aluminum ion or other better battery designs made of Earth abundant minerals like the Ambri liquid metal batteries which seem ideal for use in electrified railway systems & other large grid scale electric energy systems & utility networks. Did I mention that Hyperloop fully electric too, just like those Lime app scooters you can rent on demand with an app on your smartphone //
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