Talk:Hyperloop

Merge with the Vactrain article

The whole basis for this being a separate article is that the hyperloop proposed by Musk is different in function to the Vactrain. But this contradicts his own actions by funding/hosting a competition where magnetic levitation is explicitly allowed.

As such the best pod from the last competition used magnetic levitation. It cant be therefor be argued that the hyperloop as it currently exists acts different to a vac train. Its akin to suggesting that preproduction car designs are representative of the final product.

BikingFish (talk) 13:27, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

There is a final product? When (if) it is finally made and if it does not use aerodynamic lift and also does not use aerodynamic propulsion, then yes, you can have your wish at that time. Who knows, maybe the next competition will return to both of those features. Be careful not to put the cart before the horse at 400 km/h.  Stepho  talk  21:07, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

SCMaglev manages easily 500km/h and is in an actual construction phase. Also how do you then justify the existence of a separate article? Can reverse your argument and claim that as there is not even a prototype using aerodynamic propulsion the idea is just a continuation BikingFish (talk) 21:33, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

All the Hyperloop projects (commercial/academic) that i know of, you can list others, use magnetic levitation. How would a air cushion then arise in development? BikingFish (talk) 21:37, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

You mention lift a lot. Is it the same story with propulsion? But this debate won't be finished until they actually start operation. Until then we have no idea whether it will be a traditional vac tunnel with magnetic levitation/propulsion (Hyperloop in name but not really matching the original idea) or Musk's original idea with aerodynamic lift/propulsion or something else.  Stepho  talk  22:17, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Then why split the articles if we dont know? BikingFish (talk) 22:38, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

In my view, a merge would be a poor idea, and would be a net loss for the encyclopedia of all human knowledge.

As a wise Wikipedia administrator told me once—in a contested debate over the appropriateness of having an article on a proposed spaceplane that, at the time was only in prototype form (of a less capable version) and still in the hangar having not yet been flown—paraphrasing here: "Heck, Wikipedia can have an article about a balsa-wood spaceplane model, as long as there are sufficient verifiable sources to demonstrate notability of the balsa-wood model." Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

But this article is not about a specific prototype/model/.. but about a general transportation concept, the core differentiation to vactrains is touted as the air cushion from the original whitepaper. Nowadays the concept of a hyperloop moved to include any levitation train in a low air pressure tube, which brings us back to vactrains. A person reading an article about hyperloops in context of goverments or companies will likely land on this page and would get a wrong image of the proposed technology. My position is that the whitepaper is superseded and a tighter integration with the vac train article is beneficial. BikingFish (talk) 15:44, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Reliable sources tend to treat it as a distinct concept, thus so should Wikipedia. It is not up to us to 'fix' what the independent sources are doing (see WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS). MrOllie (talk) 16:08, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Which sources? I find certification, standardization bodies and universities(not research papers but the university statement) highly reliable. I elaborated in #The idea was around since 1910 so how did Elon Musk propose the idea? that these bodies explicitly do not make that distinction. This whole debate sole revolves around the conceptualization of a whitepaper and not the use of the term as it currently is. BikingFish (talk) 17:08, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Which sources? - The ones cited in the article. Your personal standard of reliability doesn't really matter here, the one in explained in Wikipedia:Reliable sources does. MrOllie (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

So we have contradicting sources what now? In the article the IEEE source quickly moves on to maglevs. No mention of air-bearings is in the article which is the source for that statement. And the other is the white paper. While a certification body and university building a hyperloop research campus specifically do not mention the use of air bearings. BikingFish (talk) 17:43, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any evidence that there are contradicting sources. I also do not see the relevance of the points you raise here to a potential article merge. MrOllie (talk) 18:07, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

The reason why its separate is due to it using an air cushion. TuvSud and HyperloopTT define it as not requiring that and only state a minimum levitation height[1], TU Munich, winner of the Hyperloop competition, do not define it as a requirement [2]. I checked the sources in the article and could not find any reliable source defining what a Hyperloop is. BikingFish (talk) 20:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Original whitepaper or current use authoritative on hyperloop definition

Should a hyperloop be defined as a system requiring an air-cushion based levitation mechanism, as by the Hyperloop alpha proposal, or as a maglev/not mandating a specific levitation scheme, as done by companies, governments, and technical bodies? Does the original definition of the term or its current use take precedent.

BikingFish (talk) 20:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

• Fair enough question. Does "Hyperloop" mean the initial idea presented by Musk in the alpha paper? Or does it mean a general project that started with the alpha paper but may end up with anything from the alpha concept to a vac-train to Tesla cars driving along an underground tunnel in Los Vegas? The first competition had a tube (as in the alpha paper) but also allowed non-aerodynamic levitation (eg, wheeled rails and maglev) and non-aerodynamic propulsion. It seems that most teams went for rails or maglev. Which I fully agree does make them vactrains. My choice would be to leave this article as based on the alpha paper (because it differs significantly from vactrains), but then point out that almost everyone involved tossed out the aerodynamic parts (the parts that made it different from vactrains) and that the current efforts are really just vactrains.  Stepho  talk  00:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

  Im simply asking which definition to use for an article about hyperloop.

  Neither of these definitions by the way would classify the Las Vegas Loop as a hyperloop, neither have i heard media or the boring company use it that way.

  What my main concern is that when somebody reads about the hyperloop in media (government wants to set guidelines or some organisation is researching in this topic) and looks it up, they would get the wrong impression as most, maybe all, do not imply the definition of the whitepaper but the more general definition. Additionally large segments of this article would also have to be moved if the whitepaper definition is used, as they are about companies which develop a vac-train called "hyperloop" and not a hyperloop using aerodynamic effects for levitation. BikingFish (talk) 19:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

  On Wikipedia a 'hyperloop' is whatever a reliable source says it is. We should be covering everything a source calls a hyperloop here, rather than insisting on some arbitrary definition. We don't come up with a definition and then insist that the sources conform to our usage, that is a form of WP:OR. MrOllie (talk) 19:51, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

  "Reliable sources tend to treat it as a distinct concept". Thats your quote. What now. Ether sources say its distinct or sources say its not distinct. And thats what this question is supposed to answer. Also one definition encompasses the other. Its not like yellow or blue. BikingFish (talk) 09:28, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

• Bad RFC. RFC question is unclear about what the impact on the article would be. If this is about proposed merger/splitting of article content, that should be asked directly. - MrOllie (talk) 19:59, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

  RFCs are supposed to be short and neural.

  Simply. Someone types in "Hyperloop". Which definition should the article use that person gets redirected to?

  Those are secondary effects which can only be answered if there is consensus on what can be called "hyperloop". Renamimg this to "hyperloop-alpha" and redirecting "vactrains" to "hyperloop" or vice versa are possible options i came up with.

  There are too many possible answers for a simple question. BikingFish (talk) 09:34, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

• Article scope should be principally the 2010s alpha Hyperloop concept Why? The low-vacuum (but some air required) concept received significant coverage in media over many months/years, and is notable. The article can certainly link to predecessor technologies (like VacTrains), but there are good articles on those already, and the tech is different in those cases since the idea was to have max vacuum. The article can also mention how numerous other enterprises picked up & used the "Hyperloop" descriptor, for a very wide-variety of technologies that may or may not have been much about the low-pressure buried tubes concept of Hyperloop as proposed; but again, there are other articles for many of those variations, as and when they became sufficiently notable by Wikipedia standards. N2e (talk) 23:08, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

  Then the article has to make clear that this is about a proposal idea and not about the current development. If thats the accepted idea then a name change and/or redirect to vac trains which makes it obvious that thats what governments are talking about is more applicable. BikingFish (talk) 09:38, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  It sounds like you're imagining a bit that would run something like "Although the original idea of a hyperloop has been abandoned in favor of the vactrain, the hyperloop name has stuck, and vactrains are commonly, though technically incorrectly, called hyperloops by government projects, researchers, and industry leaders."

  That'd require us to find a source that complains about how everyone uses the "wrong" name, but it might be possible to find one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:11, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Short bit of My position.

As many other commentators have pointed out an article should use the consensus definition of a term. In the article MrOllie nicely provided they explicitly state that the idea "quickly" moved on from the original paper [3]. I see no bigger consensus than industry, research and governments using the same definition, which by the way is inclusive of the original proposal BikingFish (talk) 07:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

What is the issue with defining both terms (The Alpha proposal & the maglev definition)? I don't see why having information on both routes would be disadvantageous, if phrased properly. MaximusEditor (talk) 02:34, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

I think that having some information on both is necessary. We need at least enough to help the reader find out whether they're in the right article, and help them get to the right article if they're not. A hatnote won't be enough for this purpose; we need a bit of a compare-and-contrast thing, and some way to acknowledge the reader's potential confusion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:36, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Adding prior concept mentions to the article.

So, we have consensus that the Hyperloop is derived from earlier projects such as the Vactrain. We also have consensus that this should be mentioned in the article.

I believe these concepts should have mentions higher up in the article. I'm adding those mentions in an edit to the lead section and the history section. These are key talking points used by YouTube channels such as Thunderf00t. (Yes, i watch those videos.)

I don't expect this to be universally accepted. The Musk fandom might try to argue about things such as the WP:ONEWAY principle and the fact that the article already talks about prior/similar concepts near the bottom. Due to this, i suggest you raise any complaints in the talk page or with an RfC before we break out the WikiRifles and start another edit war. 187.46.129.25 (talk) 13:36, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Youtube videos are not reliable sources and don't influence what we put in the lead sections of articles. Also, vactrains are already mentioned in the opening paragraph. We do not need a second, redundant sentence. MrOllie (talk) 13:43, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Italic 64.226.63.202 (talk) 06:18, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Then also please add your opinion in the RFC. BikingFish (talk) 07:56, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Hyperloop vs (California) High Speed Rail

there is enough coverage in reliable sources (including Musks biography) claiming that Hyperloop (and Boring Company) primarily exist to siphon off money and interest away from high speed rail investments. The Vance biography specifically mentions Musks dislike for California High Speed Rail as a motivation. See also Paris Marx article The Hyperloop was always a Scam. Nothing of the sort is included in the article, but it does feature a bunch of 2013 puff pieces that have nothing to do with the actual physical development since the white paper and should probably be removed for being irrelevant. For example, an entire paragraph by The Economist in 2013 claiming that because of "Californias political system" it would be difficult to replace HSR with Hyperloop, not because its a technology that a decade later still does not exist. — jonas (talk) 09:39, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Reliable sources - hardly. The claim is based on a single book by Vance and a blog post by Marx which copies from the book. See the archived discussion for more details at Talk:Hyperloop/Archive_2#California_high_speed_rail_conspiracy_theory and the criticism of the claim at https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460

However, your claims are mentioned in the 'Political considerations' section. and there is a 'Criticism' section to counter "puff pieces".

Not sure which 2013 puff pieces you mean. We listed the history of the development from its 2013 release. Can you give some concrete examples of these puff pieces?

My own opinion is that Musk didn't think much of the HSR and literally thought he had a better solution to replace it. It didn't work out but I don't think it not working was part of the plan - I think he believed his own hype. But that's just my theory.  Stepho  talk  16:43, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Theory and operation

The "Theory and operation" section says: "The much-older vactrain concept resembles a high-speed rail system without substantial air resistance by employing magnetically levitating trains in evacuated (airless) or partly evacuated tubes. However, the difficulty of maintaining a vacuum over large distances has prevented this type of system from ever being built. By contrast, the Hyperloop alpha concept was to operate at approximately one millibar (100 Pa) of pressure and requires the air for levitation." (Reference removed). "By contrast"? What contrast? Atmospheric pressure is approximately 1000 millibar, so 1 millibar is about 0.1% of normal atmospheric pressure, which is consistent with the airless or partially evacuated tubes of the vactrain concept. Moreover, 0.1% of normal atmospheric pressure is practically a vacuum, and Hyperloop faces the the same difficulty as any vactrain of maintaining this pressure over large distances. What contrast? Seems to me the essential difference between vactrain and Hyperloop is vactrain proposes to float the vehicle magnetically, while Hyperloop proposes to float the vehicle using air jets, which seems extremely dubious if the system operates at 0.1% of normal atmospheric pressure. —Anomalocaris (talk) 23:59, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

It could be worded better but the idea is that a traditional vactrain wants as much vacuum as it can economically get - the more vacuum the better. The limits would be technology/engineering (mostly leaks) and money (high vacuum is expensive but if a low vacuum is workable then it will cost less).

But the Hyperloop requires a certain amount air to remain so that the aerofoils and propeller will still work - at least in the alpha paper, less so in current versions.

Granted that 100 Pa seems close enough to a hard vacuum by layman standards. But at vacuum#Measurement 100 Pa is only low-vacuum. Space craft consider 100 Pa to be well into the atmosphere. Outer space is considered to start at the Karman line - 100 km above sea level and about 32 millipascals.

Also granted that even at 100 Pa it's still an engineering challenge to keep that level of (low) vacuum.

Open to ways to reword it.  Stepho  talk  05:00, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Technical Challenges

@O1Proando3ASI: just added a new section "Technical Challenges". I'm not against such a section but it has been added in a form that is overly dramatic and and most of it's challengers are things that engineers already know how to solve.

1. It is mostly depends on a single reference called "PremsagarKenworthyCritReview'. This was not supplied, violating WP:FACT. Even if it was provided then we need to know if this guy is a reliable source.
2. The existing "Initial design concept" and "proposed routes" sections are now a subsection of the "Technical challenges" section. Simple to fix but it must be fixed.
3. Sealing - Leaks are inevitable. All large boats leak, so they use bilge pumps to counter it. Likewise, vacuum pumps will need to work continuously. Better seals will make it more economical but engineers know how to tackle both seals and the consequence of imperfect seals.
4. Structural Integrity - 10 tons per square meter is about the same as a hefty person (100 kg) on a 10x10 cm square (about a man's footprint). Also, this is only 1 atmosphere pressure difference - which is easily handled by aeroplanes, the Space Shuttle and party balloons. His calculatior link didn;t work but I suspect he is using flat plate calculations instead of tube calculations - tubes are inherently stronger than flat plate.
5. Pumping systems - so what if it takes a long time (weeks, or months) for the initial pump down. And I already covered continuous pumping via bilge pumps. These are economical variables, not an engineering variables.
6. Kantrowitz limit - he says this is a problem but not why. If not using compressors for propulsion (most current versions have given this up) then large channels along the length of the pod similar to channels on winter tyres will handle it.
7. Air management - yes, it's complex. But engineers know how to land aeroplanes and similar aerodynamic problems. Complex but a known field of expertise.
8. Mag Lev - Stability of the track is a known field of expertise. China is working on it now for maglev. They have reached 623 km/h on a 2 km test track - [4][5]. And of course ordinary high speed rail handles track variations over high speed and long distance.
9. Linear motors - Also a known field of expertise. It's an economic variable, not a technical challenge.
10. Thermal expansion - Also a known field of expertise. Just like what happens in rail tracks, oil pipelines and bridges.
11. Alignment - admittedly, this one is important and tricky. But it's also a known field of expertise.
12. Decompression - small breaches are just leaks. Catastrophic breaches (eg tube cut all the way through) will propagate through the tube but the pod will only see a relatively small change at any one time. The pod will decelerate accordingly by the pressure of the air by not violently. No worse then an aeroplane hitting turbulence or decelerating for landing.
13. Emergency Evacuation - same as for long car tunnels under water or through mountains - a known area of expertise. Oxygen bottles are easy to supply. In some cases, they could deliberately allow air into the tunnel.
14. Emergency Braking - Also a known field of expertise. Nothing new here. Maglev can be done in reverse. Brake pads rubbing against the floor or tube as the final back up.
15. Switching - admittedly, this is important. I would image some type of airlock system but this is currently to be worked out. An area where the problems are fully known but efficient and economical solutions are yet to be worked out.

In summary, most "challenges" presented in an alarming manner are in areas of known expertise and are no worse than designing a new aeroplane or a new bridge. Documenting these challenges here is fine but not in a manner that presents them as seemingly insurmountable problems.  Stepho  talk  00:50, 9 April 2025 (UTC)