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How the Hyperloop Will Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, March is tripod month, my friend, and you know
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Speaker 1: what that means. Yes, that means it's time to let
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Speaker 1: y pod still in nascent industry. A lot of people
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Speaker 1: so get on board the dry pod train. Welcome to
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Speaker 1: stuff you should know from how stuff works dot com. Hey,
0:53
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant say hi hello, and there's Jerry Jerry.
1:04
Speaker 1: Jerry can't talk because the tape is still holding after
1:07
Speaker 1: all these years. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, at any rate
1:11
Speaker 1: it stuff you should know that tape has gotten kind
1:15
Speaker 1: of gross that there's like hair stuck to it. We should.
1:18
Speaker 1: We should swap it out every now and then, she screams,
1:20
Speaker 1: though every time we do. Well, the little slit that
1:24
Speaker 1: we have cut so she can drink her mi so
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Speaker 1: through a straw is getting gamy. Yeah, I think some
1:30
Speaker 1: of that miso has a little bit of meat in it.
1:33
Speaker 1: Oh you didn't like that one? Huh? No, I find
1:38
Speaker 1: that satisfying. Um. I find it ironic that we're um
1:43
Speaker 1: podcasting today on this fast thing because I am. I've
1:48
Speaker 1: had the lowest energy today any day I can think
1:52
Speaker 1: of in a long time. They need to bring Surge
1:54
Speaker 1: back just for days like today, man, because I would
1:57
Speaker 1: strongly recommend you drink a Surge brand beverage. I'm not
2:01
Speaker 1: into those things, dude. Serge was so good. I'm just
2:04
Speaker 1: I'm not into any of them. But I've had I've
2:07
Speaker 1: tried one once when I was super low energy. I'm
2:09
Speaker 1: not gonna name it, but um, it made me feel
2:12
Speaker 1: like I was gonna have a heart attack. Oh yeah,
2:15
Speaker 1: it's like this doesn't feel good? Yeah, no, not at all.
2:19
Speaker 1: So what about coffee? You've been drinking coffee lately? Right?
2:22
Speaker 1: Have you fallen off of that? I've fallen off, but
2:24
Speaker 1: I did. I had a triple this morning? Whoa triple espresso?
2:29
Speaker 1: That's why you feel low energy right now? You're crashing? Man?
2:33
Speaker 1: Well I was. That was low before and low after.
2:36
Speaker 1: So it's just the thing. Are you okay? I'm fine.
2:40
Speaker 1: Personal problems that I don't feel like telling a million
2:43
Speaker 1: people about. Do we have a million listeners? Oh? I
2:45
Speaker 1: don't know. Let's say, what's a listener? What's a download?
2:49
Speaker 1: Are these bots? Who knows? No one knows? Oh that's good.
2:53
Speaker 1: That was a nice conversation. Well, I'm I'm super hyped
2:57
Speaker 1: up chucking you? Why? Uh? Because you had a serge
3:02
Speaker 1: energy drink. I didn't know. Because literally every project that
3:09
Speaker 1: Elon Musk has his hands on I am jazzed about.
3:13
Speaker 1: He was in our short lived television show supposedly he
3:16
Speaker 1: was your man crush hero idol. Yes, yeah, and actually
3:20
Speaker 1: it has grown exponentially since then. Like the more I
3:23
Speaker 1: found out about him, the more I actually have come
3:27
Speaker 1: to I think he's a pretty cool dude. Like that,
3:30
Speaker 1: would you have such a crush on him if his
3:33
Speaker 1: name was, like, you know, Bill Burrels. I actually have
3:37
Speaker 1: a crush on a guy named Bill Burrels. So yes,
3:41
Speaker 1: A right, Elon Musk sounds so you know, exotic and
3:44
Speaker 1: James BONDI, oh, it definitely does. He definitely has one
3:47
Speaker 1: of those guns that slides out of his sleeve when
3:50
Speaker 1: he needs it. But he can always talk his way
3:52
Speaker 1: out of anything that's is real. But it shoots kisses. Right,
3:57
Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm not the only one. Um you mean
3:59
Speaker 1: actually loves the guy a lot too. I'm sure you
4:01
Speaker 1: gotta watch out for that though. Yeah. Well it's it's
4:04
Speaker 1: like a nice, respectful love from a distance, so I'm
4:07
Speaker 1: not threatened by just don't let them in a room together. Right.
4:10
Speaker 1: She has this t shirt. UM it says save us Elan,
4:15
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Yeah, and she tweeted to him
4:18
Speaker 1: last night actually um asking him to design well, it
4:22
Speaker 1: was on behalf of our dog Momo. She was asking
4:25
Speaker 1: him to design um safe dog cars or safe dog
4:30
Speaker 1: seats for cars, specifically testless to start, I think they
4:34
Speaker 1: have dog restraining systems that are to use. They do,
4:38
Speaker 1: But I mean, imagine if Elon Musk put his like
4:41
Speaker 1: even half of a percentage of his brain towards designing
4:47
Speaker 1: something like that just on the back of a cocktail nap,
4:49
Speaker 1: can it be awesome? Yeah? MoMA would be in a
4:51
Speaker 1: like a plasma bag right with like one of those
4:55
Speaker 1: Hannibal Lecter masks. So she looks so cute. Oh boy.
5:00
Speaker 1: So I bring up elam Musk though, because um, well,
5:04
Speaker 1: we're talking about one of his projects, but technically it's
5:08
Speaker 1: not actually one of his projects because this the hyper loop,
5:12
Speaker 1: was um basically a concept that he thought of about
5:15
Speaker 1: a fifty seven page white paper on it, just roughly
5:20
Speaker 1: outlining some of the challenges the problems, and then did
5:23
Speaker 1: something really unusual, especially for massive transportation projects, which is
5:28
Speaker 1: what the hyper loop is. He open sources that. He said,
5:31
Speaker 1: here you go, everybody, let's see what you can do
5:33
Speaker 1: with it. Somebody take this and run with it. He's
5:35
Speaker 1: kind of big on that though, right Yeah. I think
5:38
Speaker 1: though that um yeah, I don't think he did that
5:41
Speaker 1: with like tesla um or SpaceX or anything like that.
5:44
Speaker 1: I think that's all very like private and hush hush.
5:46
Speaker 1: This one was. This was like, here's a really good idea.
5:50
Speaker 1: Here is how you would do it. Somebody go do it.
5:53
Speaker 1: He It's yeah, this is unusual I think even for him.
5:56
Speaker 1: He uh he open source something I can't remember what.
5:59
Speaker 1: Maybe it was the the the home battery system or something.
6:04
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, maybe he opened sources things that he
6:07
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like you can make a lot of dough on. Well,
6:09
Speaker 1: I don't know that battery thing he said that, Um,
6:11
Speaker 1: I think he's going to use that to solve Australia's
6:14
Speaker 1: um black and brown out problems. Oh yeah, all right,
6:18
Speaker 1: well who knows. I just like that he does that occasionally. Yeah, no,
6:22
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. Cool cat, Yeah, agreed. So let's
6:27
Speaker 1: talk hyper loop you want to? Yeah, So the idea
6:30
Speaker 1: here originally, and I've kind of learned to through reading this.
6:33
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk a little bit about his UM his
6:36
Speaker 1: boring company pun intended UM as well at the end.
6:40
Speaker 1: But um, I've learned that when Elon Musk gets irritated
6:44
Speaker 1: with something, good things happen. Right. If he has a
6:48
Speaker 1: problem and he's like, you know, I'm tired of sitting
6:51
Speaker 1: in traffic or flying from l A to San Francisco
6:55
Speaker 1: is a real drag. Uh, he gets that cocktail fifty
6:59
Speaker 1: seven pages of cocktail napkins, and he said, you know what,
7:02
Speaker 1: how about if we developed a high speed transport system
7:07
Speaker 1: forget your maglevs? Does only go I know you're building
7:10
Speaker 1: one California for sixty billion dollars. But that thing only
7:13
Speaker 1: goes two hundred miles an hour. It's not even maglev.
7:16
Speaker 1: It's just a straight up bullet train. Oh it's not
7:18
Speaker 1: even I thought it was a maglev now no, no,
7:21
Speaker 1: it's a it's as he he called it, the UM
7:25
Speaker 1: like world's slowest high speed train or something like two
7:29
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour, right right, which I mean two
7:32
Speaker 1: hundred miles an hour. That's super fast. How how could
7:35
Speaker 1: you possibly improve on that? Well by putting people in
7:39
Speaker 1: a pod in a tube and shooting them at almost
7:43
Speaker 1: mock one in twenty three minutes I'm sorry, thirty five
7:47
Speaker 1: minutes from l A to San Francisco or vice versa.
7:52
Speaker 1: That's and I know he wants mock one so bad. Yeah,
7:55
Speaker 1: I don't know what the problem is. I I don't
7:58
Speaker 1: know if UM like the the sonic boom would throw
8:01
Speaker 1: off the whole thing, the whole UM closed system. You
8:04
Speaker 1: mean make it cooler. Yeah, no, it definitely would. But
8:08
Speaker 1: he in the in his white paper, he makes reference
8:11
Speaker 1: to the shock waves that are created as you get
8:14
Speaker 1: close to the speed of sound and the supersonic threshold.
8:18
Speaker 1: And I was reading UM the right. Stuff that Tom
8:21
Speaker 1: wolfbook about the early space program, right, And he was
8:25
Speaker 1: talking about Chuck Yeager when he broke the speed of sound. Um,
8:29
Speaker 1: they had no idea what happened on the other side
8:32
Speaker 1: of a sonic boom. No one had ever gone that fast, right,
8:35
Speaker 1: And it was Yeager who figured out that. He was
8:38
Speaker 1: just sure that once you hit sonic boom, everything would
8:40
Speaker 1: smooth out. But the closer and closer and closer you
8:44
Speaker 1: got to the sonic threshold, the harder it was for
8:47
Speaker 1: to for to keep the plane stable. He said, it
8:50
Speaker 1: felt like it was gonna break up. His teeth were
8:52
Speaker 1: like breaking off into little pieces. UM. So I would
8:55
Speaker 1: imagine that if you're doing that inside it closed and
8:58
Speaker 1: enclosed tube and start to hit those same kind of
9:01
Speaker 1: shock waves, it would it would screw things up. So
9:04
Speaker 1: I would guess that's why they're they're not taking it
9:06
Speaker 1: to supersonic level, gotcha. So there it's a purposeful thing. UM.
9:11
Speaker 1: I did look into makwe and apparently it varies, and
9:13
Speaker 1: I never realized that, um, we should do something on
9:16
Speaker 1: that at some point. Mack one varies. Yeah, it depends
9:19
Speaker 1: on the local conditions, um, Like mainly temperature and air
9:23
Speaker 1: pressure as to how fast you need to be going.
9:26
Speaker 1: I mean it's generally in that wheelhouse of seven hundred
9:30
Speaker 1: and sixty two, you know. I'm not sure how high,
9:33
Speaker 1: but I saw seven sixty seven. Uh. And it just
9:36
Speaker 1: depends sort of where you are the object speed as
9:42
Speaker 1: it relates to the conditions, which is interesting. I got you. Well,
9:46
Speaker 1: that's one of the benefits of this hyper loop that
9:49
Speaker 1: he's proposed is it's it's enclosed, it's encapsulated, it's UM
9:54
Speaker 1: it's a closed system, which means that it can be controlled, right,
9:57
Speaker 1: so you can control everything from the temperature, to the
10:00
Speaker 1: air pressure, to all that stuff, which we'll get into.
10:03
Speaker 1: But the hyper loop, we I guess we should say,
10:06
Speaker 1: is UM this proposal for the line, like you said,
10:11
Speaker 1: from l A to San Francisco, and it's two tubes
10:15
Speaker 1: side by side. They're actually welded together, but they are separate.
10:19
Speaker 1: That UM form, this closed system on either end is
10:22
Speaker 1: a UM a way for the cars to go one way,
10:25
Speaker 1: turn around and go back the other way. And like
10:28
Speaker 1: you said, it takes thirty five minutes to to for
10:31
Speaker 1: this this journey, a one way journey. I don't even
10:34
Speaker 1: know if you call that a journey. Uh a, what
10:37
Speaker 1: would you call it? Just a yeah, hey, so it's
10:45
Speaker 1: whatever it is. It takes thirty five minutes to go
10:48
Speaker 1: three D and fifty miles. It is five d sixty
10:52
Speaker 1: three kilometers. We should say hello, rest of the world. Uh.
10:56
Speaker 1: And he proposed initially that this thing would only cost
10:59
Speaker 1: about six billion dollars, which the entire world scoffed at
11:04
Speaker 1: that more than I think they scoffed at any other
11:05
Speaker 1: part of the plan. Um. I mean, you know, people
11:08
Speaker 1: were like, first of all, this train that we're building
11:11
Speaker 1: in California sixty sixty billion, and the Bay Bridge in
11:16
Speaker 1: San Francisco, we're just we're just redoing that thing for
11:20
Speaker 1: six billion, for the same price that you think you
11:23
Speaker 1: can build this George Jetson machine. Uh but you know,
11:28
Speaker 1: who knows. We'll see what it ends up costing. But
11:31
Speaker 1: six billion dollars sounds like a ton of money. Um.
11:34
Speaker 1: The thing that shocked me, I think, well, first of all,
11:37
Speaker 1: let's not ruin the price tag just yet, um, except
11:41
Speaker 1: to say that it's shocking. But uh so, so what
11:44
Speaker 1: you do is you would you would have this tube
11:47
Speaker 1: mounted on these pylons. The pylons are about their reinforced concrete.
11:52
Speaker 1: They're about a hundred feet apart from one another, and
11:55
Speaker 1: they vary in height because of the train. You know,
11:58
Speaker 1: he's gonna run along. I've five ye right down the
12:01
Speaker 1: median is as long as possible, or as they call
12:03
Speaker 1: it in Los Angeles, the five uh, and it would
12:08
Speaker 1: be you know, at vary in height hundred feet depending
12:12
Speaker 1: on the terrain. And UM. Part of the reason they
12:14
Speaker 1: put it on the five was because it just makes
12:16
Speaker 1: sense because there's already already highway there. They wouldn't have
12:19
Speaker 1: to like, you know, buy people out of their homes
12:21
Speaker 1: and businesses to build it. And UM, I like to
12:24
Speaker 1: think another reason is that they could just make fun
12:27
Speaker 1: of people sitting in traffic right when this thing, when
12:30
Speaker 1: you hear that sonic boom as it goes by. UM.
12:33
Speaker 1: The other thing about the pylons too, is it has
12:37
Speaker 1: a much It creates a much um smaller footprint on
12:41
Speaker 1: the actual ground because the whole thing is raised up
12:44
Speaker 1: in the air and those pylons are they're gonna be
12:47
Speaker 1: twenty ft wherever possible. It's gonna be about the average
12:50
Speaker 1: height off of the ground of the hyperloop. Earthquake proof supposedly,
12:54
Speaker 1: which is a big deal. Yeah, there's gonna be dampers
12:56
Speaker 1: in the pylons um so that it could take a
12:59
Speaker 1: pretty pretty decent sized earthquake. And then I guess the
13:02
Speaker 1: just the whole process of running this system will cause
13:07
Speaker 1: some expansion and contraction and so the whole things it's
13:10
Speaker 1: got to be pretty well um together, you know, I think.
13:15
Speaker 1: So you can't make it loosey goosey, so um the
13:19
Speaker 1: any any movement, it's gonna be um conversated for in
13:23
Speaker 1: these dampers in the pylons and he sway and he
13:26
Speaker 1: up and down and barrel rolls any of that stuff. Yeah,
13:30
Speaker 1: I'm sure that was I mean, besides the movement, but
13:36
Speaker 1: just building something that travels that fast full of people
13:39
Speaker 1: along the fault lines out there, that was probably a
13:44
Speaker 1: very early consideration, Like am I just stupid for even?
13:47
Speaker 1: But then he went on. So when he first started, uh,
13:54
Speaker 1: I guess what the people like Elon Musk would call
13:56
Speaker 1: Blue Sky Territory. People started throwing out idea as he
14:00
Speaker 1: assembled a team, and they were like, hey, you remember
14:03
Speaker 1: those cool pneumatic tubes and offices. Sometimes you gotta look backwards,
14:08
Speaker 1: you know, at old technology to realize that you're wrong.
14:12
Speaker 1: And they had these fans that would shoot, you know,
14:14
Speaker 1: a letter from Florida floor through a tube, so satisfying
14:18
Speaker 1: the man. Those are the best. It's the same thing
14:20
Speaker 1: that they used them when you do a drive through
14:22
Speaker 1: banking thing. Yeah, which does anyone do that anymore? All Right?
14:28
Speaker 1: I can't remember the last time I went to a bank.
14:30
Speaker 1: I'm like, I've got too much gasoline in my car.
14:33
Speaker 1: I need to get rid of some of it, and
14:35
Speaker 1: I need to bank and a lollipop. I'm going to
14:38
Speaker 1: combine those two. So, uh, they had that idea to
14:43
Speaker 1: use these giant fans, and he said, you know, I
14:45
Speaker 1: don't know if he personally said this, but they basically said,
14:48
Speaker 1: not a bad idea. It is possible to build a
14:52
Speaker 1: fan that large, but over three fifty miles that's going
14:56
Speaker 1: to create a lot of friction with this thing, and
14:59
Speaker 1: it would explode. You know. Something interesting is somebody actually
15:04
Speaker 1: created that very system in London in eighteen sixty four
15:08
Speaker 1: and exploded. It didn't explode. It it ran for a
15:11
Speaker 1: year apparently without major problems. It's called the Crystal Palace
15:15
Speaker 1: pneumatic railway. I think I've heard of that. The thing
15:18
Speaker 1: is is It wasn't trying to go a thousand kilometers
15:22
Speaker 1: an hour. It was just puts them along, like isn't
15:25
Speaker 1: the future amazing? Or in a pneumatic railway. But I
15:29
Speaker 1: mean it worked, right, So it had Actually that had worked.
15:33
Speaker 1: But for what the hyper loop is trying to be
15:36
Speaker 1: pneumatic just it wouldn't work. It would It would just
15:39
Speaker 1: create too much drag pushing a column of air three
15:43
Speaker 1: d and fifty miles too much friction. Yeah, so the
15:46
Speaker 1: pneumatic one, he said, no, we're not doing that. By
15:50
Speaker 1: the way, that made me think the exploding thing. Did
15:52
Speaker 1: you know that cars don't really explode like a car
15:56
Speaker 1: on fire? Oh yeah, I think there's a lot of
15:59
Speaker 1: like safety feet. Does that keep it from doing that? Right? No,
16:02
Speaker 1: it's just gasoline just doesn't explode like that. It can
16:06
Speaker 1: catch fire very fast and cause a big fire very quickly,
16:09
Speaker 1: but it's not like a movie where a car catches
16:12
Speaker 1: on fire and then goes boom really loud. Yeah. I
16:15
Speaker 1: feel like Chuck Norris really misled me all these years,
16:19
Speaker 1: well in many many ways. But I saw a car
16:23
Speaker 1: it made me think of because I saw a car
16:24
Speaker 1: on fire the other day on the highway and the
16:27
Speaker 1: people were running away from it, and which is you know,
16:31
Speaker 1: it's probably not a bad idea anyway, but um, I
16:34
Speaker 1: was kind of curious, so I looked it up and
16:36
Speaker 1: apparently that doesn't happen. So I if my car is
16:39
Speaker 1: every one fire, I'm just gonna like stand right next
16:40
Speaker 1: to it like the coolest dude in the world. You
16:43
Speaker 1: just light a cigarette off exactly. You're like, I don't
16:46
Speaker 1: even smoke. But I'm not recommending that I would still
16:49
Speaker 1: get away from a burning car if I were you
16:50
Speaker 1: people time. That's sage advice. Uh So anyway, Um, the
16:55
Speaker 1: other they came up with another idea and they said, well,
17:00
Speaker 1: you know, we mentioned Maglev trains. They said, that's a
17:02
Speaker 1: pretty good idea to get trains to go fast. And
17:04
Speaker 1: we did a we did a whole episode on that, right, Yeah,
17:07
Speaker 1: we did a Maglev episode. It was pretty good. And
17:09
Speaker 1: I think when we did the Maglev episode, everybody's like,
17:11
Speaker 1: you have to do a hyper loop episode. So we
17:14
Speaker 1: go everybody, well, it was probably good that we did
17:16
Speaker 1: it years later, you know. Um, and you know Maglev,
17:19
Speaker 1: when you when you put two magnets together, uh in
17:23
Speaker 1: the correct way, that will either snap together or they
17:26
Speaker 1: will have that, um, you know, they will push each
17:29
Speaker 1: other apart. And we also did one on magnets, so
17:32
Speaker 1: refer to that for for that magic explanation. But um,
17:36
Speaker 1: the idea is that there what you create is no friction, right,
17:40
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of problems. We talked about drag
17:43
Speaker 1: and friction, or we're gonna talk about drag, but those
17:46
Speaker 1: are sort of the two issues with the hyper loop.
17:48
Speaker 1: Those are the things that will make something slow down, right.
17:51
Speaker 1: And there's like really no problem with the maglev train
17:55
Speaker 1: except that it's extraordinarily expensive to build track. Right. So
18:00
Speaker 1: Musk was like, well, we maybe we could put a
18:02
Speaker 1: maglev train in this tube in the hyper loop, because
18:06
Speaker 1: there's drag even on a maglev train, but in a
18:08
Speaker 1: vacuum there would not be. No But that's what he
18:11
Speaker 1: was saying is Okay, well we can put it in
18:12
Speaker 1: a vacuum and it would just go zoom and you'd
18:15
Speaker 1: be there in like half of a second. The problem
18:18
Speaker 1: is is it would be extraordinarily expensive, um to build
18:22
Speaker 1: and operate. And the reason it would be so expensive
18:26
Speaker 1: to operate is because the closer and closer you get
18:29
Speaker 1: to creating a full or perfect vacuum, the more expensive
18:34
Speaker 1: the pumping operation gets right. So you know, if you're like, uh,
18:38
Speaker 1: if you're one or two percent away from a perfect vacuum,
18:42
Speaker 1: you're spending five bucks pumping out the air to get
18:45
Speaker 1: to that point. But it's ay a hundred trillion dollars
18:50
Speaker 1: to get to a perfect vacuum. I don't think that
18:52
Speaker 1: those numbers are accurate, but you get the picture, right. Well. Yeah,
18:56
Speaker 1: And the other thing too is it's it's nearly impossible
18:59
Speaker 1: to create thing over that distance. Uh. Musk himself even
19:03
Speaker 1: said if there's one small leaky seal or small crack
19:07
Speaker 1: anywhere and that three fifty mile tube, then everything's down.
19:11
Speaker 1: So one of the other problems when they were in
19:14
Speaker 1: blue Sky Territory, which I guess was starting to look
19:16
Speaker 1: like dark Sky territory at this point, um wash, what
19:22
Speaker 1: if we had something like a syringe, Like we're moving
19:26
Speaker 1: air through this tube, but it's pushing this entire column
19:31
Speaker 1: of air. And they basically said it would just go
19:34
Speaker 1: too slow unless you built it super big, and then
19:37
Speaker 1: it would go too fast, which I don't I don't
19:39
Speaker 1: fully get right, um because well, I think about it
19:42
Speaker 1: when you're pushing air, when you're pushing something through a
19:45
Speaker 1: tube a cylinder, it starts pushing the air ahead of it,
19:49
Speaker 1: which slows it down. Right. The only way for that
19:53
Speaker 1: to um to get away, to get around that is
19:56
Speaker 1: to make your little whatever you're pushing through the tube small,
20:00
Speaker 1: or make the two bigger. So he he looked at
20:03
Speaker 1: all these challenges, you know, the problem with a vacuum,
20:07
Speaker 1: the syringe effect, um, the idea of newmatics, and he said,
20:12
Speaker 1: I think I'm onto something with a closed loop, a
20:15
Speaker 1: closed tube and pushing something through it. So I just
20:18
Speaker 1: got to figure out the details. And he did, and
20:20
Speaker 1: he came up with the hyper loop. And we'll tell
20:22
Speaker 1: you how he solved a lot of these problems, uh
20:25
Speaker 1: in just a minute, all right. So he does not
20:50
Speaker 1: work in a vacuum, even though he works on a
20:54
Speaker 1: vacuum that was terrible. But he has a great team
20:59
Speaker 1: of brilliant, brilliant people. Um. So he gets his engineers,
21:02
Speaker 1: the same folks who work on the Tesla and the
21:04
Speaker 1: same people at SpaceX, and uh, I get the feeling
21:08
Speaker 1: that these men and women can kind of do anything
21:11
Speaker 1: when they put their mind to it. So, like you said,
21:13
Speaker 1: they proposed these two tubes a northbound line in a
21:17
Speaker 1: southbound line along I five, and he said, what we
21:21
Speaker 1: want to do is reduced drag and reduced friction, the
21:24
Speaker 1: kind of two things that will slow down something that
21:28
Speaker 1: you want to go super fast. Uh. And if you notice, uh,
21:33
Speaker 1: jets fly really high in the air at high altitudes
21:35
Speaker 1: because it's less dense, so you're gonna have less drag.
21:38
Speaker 1: So he said, we can recreate that by uh manipulating
21:42
Speaker 1: the air pressure in that system in a big, big way. Yeah,
21:47
Speaker 1: by dropping it tremendously, like hugely. So he figured out
21:51
Speaker 1: that you don't have to have a vacuum. Like, sure,
21:53
Speaker 1: a vacuum is nice, but it's just so prohibitively expensive
21:56
Speaker 1: to pump the air fully out of an enclos system
21:59
Speaker 1: and all it takes his one little leak in the
22:01
Speaker 1: whole thing's toast, right, So he figured out that you
22:04
Speaker 1: could still get roughly the same effect by lowering the pressure,
22:08
Speaker 1: not to a vacuum, but just super super low. And
22:10
Speaker 1: what he settled on was about a hundred pascals of
22:14
Speaker 1: air pressure within the tube. That's extremely low air pressure.
22:19
Speaker 1: It's something like a sixth of the air pressure on Mars,
22:21
Speaker 1: which is pretty thin, but if you haven't been to Mars.
22:24
Speaker 1: It's actually about a thousandth of the air pressure at
22:27
Speaker 1: sea level on Earth. So it's significantly lower pressure air,
22:30
Speaker 1: which just means the air is thinner, which means things
22:33
Speaker 1: will move through that tube with that low pressure air
22:36
Speaker 1: much more easily, with much less drag. So the other
22:41
Speaker 1: point to UM having very very low but not a
22:44
Speaker 1: full vacuum as far as air pressure goes, as even
22:47
Speaker 1: if there was a crack or something in the tube,
22:50
Speaker 1: you can still pump that air. You can overcome it
22:53
Speaker 1: um by pumping air out a little more, but it's
22:56
Speaker 1: not gonna raise your cost of five or ten trillion
22:59
Speaker 1: dollars again because not creating a vacuum and just a
23:01
Speaker 1: little duct tape and you're all set right. So it's
23:04
Speaker 1: a durable system that you can do with existing technology. Right,
23:11
Speaker 1: So you've got your drag um solved in a way.
23:15
Speaker 1: But then you have the friction problem. Um, what do
23:17
Speaker 1: we put this thing on wheels? Uh? Do we want
23:20
Speaker 1: it on magnets? He kind of had already decided against that,
23:24
Speaker 1: so he said, what if we put it on skis
23:28
Speaker 1: and did sort of like they like, And it's a
23:31
Speaker 1: perfect way to describe it in this article like an
23:34
Speaker 1: air hockey game, where these tiny little holes blowing air
23:37
Speaker 1: up from the bottom, and that is what makes the
23:41
Speaker 1: train not have contact with I guess the track whatever
23:46
Speaker 1: that would look like, right, or the inside wall of
23:49
Speaker 1: the tube. Yeah, So the little ski it basically it's
23:54
Speaker 1: like you just said, it floats on a cushion of air,
23:56
Speaker 1: very very tiny cushion of air, something like less than
23:58
Speaker 1: half of an inch I think, So it's just barely
24:01
Speaker 1: above the surface of the tube. But that's all it takes.
24:06
Speaker 1: And you've got a little cushion of air that it
24:08
Speaker 1: floats on. And since it's already thin air, um, it
24:12
Speaker 1: just zooms along as fast as you like with very
24:14
Speaker 1: little drag. So the wind gets under the ski because
24:17
Speaker 1: it's kicked up a little bit in the front. And
24:20
Speaker 1: then amazingly, astoundingly, they also designed these skis so that
24:26
Speaker 1: little bursts of compressed air shoot out of the skis
24:29
Speaker 1: to help support that cushion whenever it starts to erode,
24:32
Speaker 1: like say at a turn, or because it starts to
24:35
Speaker 1: get too hot underneath. Yeah. I mean, ideally you would
24:38
Speaker 1: do this all on a straight line, but um, you
24:40
Speaker 1: just can't do that when you're designing it to go,
24:44
Speaker 1: you know, as as far as from l A to
24:46
Speaker 1: uh San Francisco. Um, so to to get this thing, uh,
24:52
Speaker 1: to to continue this air flow because it is a
24:54
Speaker 1: closed system. They have a really really powerful electric compressor
24:58
Speaker 1: on the front of the odd that pumps air to
25:01
Speaker 1: the back. Yeah. Instead of forcing the air to go
25:05
Speaker 1: around it, it allows a lot of it to go
25:08
Speaker 1: straight through. And when it gets compressed again, some of
25:11
Speaker 1: it gets shot to the skis, but a bunch of
25:13
Speaker 1: it gets shot to the back, which helps um which
25:16
Speaker 1: helps accelerated I think, yeah, but that's not how it
25:21
Speaker 1: gets going. Uh. He had that, you know, the idea
25:23
Speaker 1: with the magnets. He didn't completely discard it in order
25:26
Speaker 1: to get it started. And the at the beginning of
25:28
Speaker 1: your trip, Uh, he does use magnets on the skis
25:31
Speaker 1: and he gives it. They basically said, it provides for
25:34
Speaker 1: the initial shove. This electromagnetic pulse gets it going. And
25:38
Speaker 1: he said at that point, you're gonna feel it when
25:40
Speaker 1: you start from zero, sort of like you're taking off
25:42
Speaker 1: in a plane basically. But then after that, once you
25:45
Speaker 1: get up to speed, he said, you can't even feel
25:48
Speaker 1: like it doesn't feel like you're moving basically, right, which
25:50
Speaker 1: is amazing. Do you remember our electricity episode. We're just
25:54
Speaker 1: both so blown away with how electricity is generated. Yeah, like,
25:58
Speaker 1: that's what that is. So the actual inside of the tube,
26:04
Speaker 1: You've got a stat or, right, which is basically just
26:07
Speaker 1: a um ah, a magnet with a groove in it
26:11
Speaker 1: and then attached to the skis on them. On the
26:15
Speaker 1: capsule the pod, you've got the rotor and what you
26:19
Speaker 1: when you put them together, you have a linear induction motor, right,
26:22
Speaker 1: So you run one through just like when you run
26:25
Speaker 1: like a coil of copper through a magnet, it generates electricity.
26:29
Speaker 1: If you run metal through a magnet in a in
26:33
Speaker 1: a straight line, it will also generate electricity. And then
26:37
Speaker 1: when it does that, like you said, that's how they
26:39
Speaker 1: actually accelerate from zero to say three hundred. Then after
26:42
Speaker 1: you're at three hundred, you're going through a city going
26:44
Speaker 1: three hundred miles an hour because there's almost no drag whatsoever.
26:48
Speaker 1: You're just coasting. And then as you get out of
26:51
Speaker 1: the city and they step you up to full speed,
26:53
Speaker 1: you go through another linear induction motor. And when this
26:57
Speaker 1: this rotor goes through the stator, an electrical charge is
27:01
Speaker 1: created and it's like the tube. This is Elon Musk's words,
27:04
Speaker 1: it's like the tube is chasing the capsule and it
27:08
Speaker 1: just speeds it up to seven and sixty miles about
27:11
Speaker 1: a thousand or so kilometers an hour, and you just
27:13
Speaker 1: coast along fast as you like, going between l A
27:17
Speaker 1: and San Francisco. Yeah, and these these motors are sort
27:20
Speaker 1: of placed along the way, and I get the feeling
27:22
Speaker 1: that works in concert with that air, and I mean
27:27
Speaker 1: it sounds like something from the future. But well, and
27:30
Speaker 1: we'll get to it here in a bit. It's actually
27:32
Speaker 1: kind of happening in a way, but um, we won't
27:35
Speaker 1: talk about that quite yet, right, right, So this sounds
27:39
Speaker 1: very cool as it is, uh, the actual experience on
27:42
Speaker 1: one of these things, because it's Elon Musk, you know,
27:45
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be uh you know, like a like
27:49
Speaker 1: a chicken bus, even though I love a good chicken bus.
27:52
Speaker 1: We've been on him in Guatemala, right, Um, so he
27:57
Speaker 1: wanted to make it a little more posh obviously. Oh,
28:00
Speaker 1: what this thing is. It's a pod that holds twenty
28:03
Speaker 1: eight people, got fourteen rows of two. Um, there's a
28:07
Speaker 1: little luggage compartments, you can put your junk. Apparently they're
28:10
Speaker 1: going to design them one day, hopefully where if you're
28:13
Speaker 1: I guess I would imagine it would They would charge
28:16
Speaker 1: you a little bit of dough for this, but you
28:18
Speaker 1: can put your car in it and transport your car
28:20
Speaker 1: as well. Well. They have that's like he has basically
28:22
Speaker 1: two designs. He proposed two designs once, like the regular
28:26
Speaker 1: passenger only one and the other is a passenger and
28:28
Speaker 1: a car, which makes a lot of sense because you know,
28:31
Speaker 1: you're zipping from l A to San Francisco, just shouting
28:34
Speaker 1: the future. But then when you get to the other end,
28:37
Speaker 1: you still need your car. You don't want to rent
28:39
Speaker 1: a car like yeah, uh, it should drop you off
28:44
Speaker 1: at like you know, car rental row. Yeah. I think
28:48
Speaker 1: those would build up around the stations for sure. So um,
28:52
Speaker 1: they would take off about every thirty seconds or so,
28:55
Speaker 1: uh during peak travel time, and you think, man, that
28:58
Speaker 1: sounds dangerous. You gotta remember, thirty seconds later, this thing's
29:01
Speaker 1: already twenty three miles down the loop, so there's a
29:05
Speaker 1: good amount of space in between even though it's only
29:07
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, which is a benefit of going three miles
29:10
Speaker 1: an hour. At startup. Uh. And supposedly, and this is
29:14
Speaker 1: the thing that blows me away more than anything else.
29:16
Speaker 1: He said it would be about twenty dollars each way.
29:21
Speaker 1: That's so, that's how much you could charge and just
29:24
Speaker 1: break even, I think, is what he was saying. That's crazy.
29:28
Speaker 1: So in other words, it would be five dollars a ticket. Yeah,
29:32
Speaker 1: depending on who actually built it and started operating it.
29:35
Speaker 1: I'm sure. Yeah. And I imagine, like you get the
29:39
Speaker 1: romantic notion of being in Los Angeles at at three
29:42
Speaker 1: fifteen and saying I want to I want to hit
29:45
Speaker 1: Napa Valley at happy hour. Um, I don't think that'll
29:49
Speaker 1: be possible, Like, surely this thing will be booked months
29:51
Speaker 1: and months in advance. Well, supposedly they say that the
29:57
Speaker 1: the at the at the thirty seconds I think thirty
30:02
Speaker 1: seconds of departure That's what I'm trying to say at
30:05
Speaker 1: rush hour, and then significantly less at other times. Um.
30:09
Speaker 1: They say that that is enough in and of itself
30:12
Speaker 1: to account for like the seven million people a year
30:16
Speaker 1: who traveled between San Francisco and l A. UM, I
30:21
Speaker 1: don't know if that's by air. I don't know if
30:24
Speaker 1: that's by air or not. But there's there was some
30:26
Speaker 1: number that this number satisfied that UM said it covers
30:31
Speaker 1: everybody who would want it. So I don't know. I
30:33
Speaker 1: wonder if that's if they're just saying for like business
30:36
Speaker 1: travelers or something, because once you get this thing going,
30:39
Speaker 1: you are going to have people like I want to
30:41
Speaker 1: have dinner in l A tonight, right, and then I
30:44
Speaker 1: want to have dessert in San Francisco. Yeah, you know.
30:46
Speaker 1: I mean though, if you think about it, and it
30:49
Speaker 1: mustn't cover this, I'm I'm riffing here, But if you
30:53
Speaker 1: all you would have to do is build another one
30:55
Speaker 1: right next to it or on top of it, or
30:56
Speaker 1: right below it, and then bam. He just doubled doubled
31:00
Speaker 1: how many people can be served by this. He also
31:02
Speaker 1: said that if you need to add more people, that
31:05
Speaker 1: these things could depart significantly faster than um thirty second increments. Uh.
31:11
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of ways that you could do that. Right.
31:13
Speaker 1: So when you are UM, well, let's let's go to
31:16
Speaker 1: the future. Chuck, does the way back machine go forward? Uh? Yeah,
31:21
Speaker 1: just let me recalibrate it here. Alright, alright, oh nice, Alright,
31:26
Speaker 1: let's go like I don't know, ten years from now okay,
31:34
Speaker 1: so here we are. We are at the the San
31:37
Speaker 1: Francisco end of the hyper loop station, right, so what
31:42
Speaker 1: you're not dead yet, that's that's twelve years um. The
31:46
Speaker 1: the in the station, you and I are like handing
31:49
Speaker 1: off our baggage to a friendly hyper loop employee, right,
31:53
Speaker 1: aren't they smartly dressed? Those are on the ball. Uh,
31:57
Speaker 1: they're all wearing silver jumpsuits everybody. So they take our luggage,
32:01
Speaker 1: they put it in a luggage pot and it's just this,
32:04
Speaker 1: well it's just a pod, right, and these other guys
32:08
Speaker 1: are loading them up, and they close the luggage pod
32:11
Speaker 1: and they say follow us, and we walk alongside the
32:14
Speaker 1: luggage pod, and the luggage pod gets put on a capsule, uh,
32:19
Speaker 1: a passenger pod. It just kind of like clicks onto
32:22
Speaker 1: the back of it. Right. So you've just figured out
32:25
Speaker 1: a problem of getting luggage on board when you're trying
32:29
Speaker 1: to get a thing to depart every fifteen seconds. Right,
32:32
Speaker 1: you know how fast that happens on planes, right, exactly.
32:35
Speaker 1: So you do the luggage ahead of time using capsules
32:38
Speaker 1: that can be taken off and put on. Same with
32:40
Speaker 1: the batteries, and we'll talk a little more about the energy.
32:42
Speaker 1: It uses in a little bit, but the batteries are rechargeable,
32:47
Speaker 1: and so on each journey they get used and then
32:49
Speaker 1: taken off and new fresh batteries are put on, and
32:52
Speaker 1: then the passengers get onto them. The actual passenger compartment
32:57
Speaker 1: with through goal wing doors which are just cool. Right,
33:01
Speaker 1: you get in and take your seat, the golding doors closed,
33:03
Speaker 1: the luggage compartment has been attached to it, and the
33:06
Speaker 1: new batteries are on and you're off. You could conceivably
33:10
Speaker 1: do that in fifteen seconds if you made everybody run
33:12
Speaker 1: and like clap your hands. Well, like I said, anyone
33:16
Speaker 1: who's reported a plane, I think they're there dreaming if
33:19
Speaker 1: they think that that's gonna happen. Yeah, I don't know
33:21
Speaker 1: exactly how they could. But he also says in the
33:24
Speaker 1: white paper that it has to be um as safe
33:28
Speaker 1: as T s A. But having um people just streaming
33:33
Speaker 1: on like almost constantly, would somehow, in his estimation, make
33:37
Speaker 1: the trap the screening process faster and more efficient. That
33:41
Speaker 1: I don't understand, but I'm quite sure that whatever t
33:45
Speaker 1: s A Is doing could be made more efficient. I
33:47
Speaker 1: have total faith in that. It sounds like you'd be
33:49
Speaker 1: in a queue, sort of like a roller coaster ride. Yeah. Probably, um,
33:55
Speaker 1: and I guess you'd have to have a system where
33:59
Speaker 1: unless you had, you know, hundreds of these pods lined up,
34:02
Speaker 1: where you have the southbound ones, you know, doing a
34:06
Speaker 1: little uh, you turn right and then heading back north
34:09
Speaker 1: immediately exactly. Yeah, like when it reaches the end, it
34:13
Speaker 1: hits the turntable, turns around and is aligned with the
34:16
Speaker 1: old street cars. Yeah, or like a record. I didn't know.
34:22
Speaker 1: I didn't until I wrote a street car. I didn't
34:23
Speaker 1: know they did that. That was that was kind of
34:25
Speaker 1: blown away by that. Did you get to ride it
34:27
Speaker 1: to the end? Yeah? Oh wow, Well now I think
34:30
Speaker 1: I got on at its departure point, and so you know,
34:35
Speaker 1: street car came down, the city moved around it, it
34:39
Speaker 1: seemed like, and then you know, we took off again.
34:42
Speaker 1: What was the street car named Desire? I had actually
34:46
Speaker 1: one of my best moments of my life on a uh.
34:50
Speaker 1: I had been to a bar by myself in San
34:52
Speaker 1: Francisco and Emily and I were traveling. She went back
34:54
Speaker 1: to the hotel and I wanted to stay out and
34:57
Speaker 1: uh got a little saucy and then I'm I told
35:00
Speaker 1: the story. On the way back, I caught the last
35:02
Speaker 1: street car uh to get back towards my hotel, and
35:06
Speaker 1: I was the only person on it for the whole
35:08
Speaker 1: entire ride. I had the street car to myself going
35:12
Speaker 1: downhill the whole way and the driver. I was up
35:14
Speaker 1: near the driver and he kind of talked to me
35:16
Speaker 1: the whole way, and it was like as if I
35:18
Speaker 1: were Elvis and I had rented this thing. That's your
35:22
Speaker 1: go too. Yeah, I mean he's he's the one that
35:24
Speaker 1: used to like, I want to run out six flags man.
35:27
Speaker 1: Oh yeah he did. Yeah, sure he'd rent out everything
35:30
Speaker 1: to see he didn't have to be bothered. But you
35:31
Speaker 1: didn't even have to lay out any extra money for that,
35:34
Speaker 1: So no, even better. It was really great. It was
35:37
Speaker 1: just one kind of one of those moments. Did you
35:39
Speaker 1: just keep singing the Rice of Roney theme song over
35:41
Speaker 1: and over to the driver? I did, and he finally
35:43
Speaker 1: kicked me off and I rolled downhill the rest of
35:45
Speaker 1: the way. It was great, all right, So nostalgic travel
35:50
Speaker 1: memories aside. Let's take a break and I will take
35:53
Speaker 1: another espresso shot and we'll finish up here with the
35:57
Speaker 1: hyper loop. Okay, so before we left, we didn't quite
36:23
Speaker 1: finish um. Once you get on this thing. They're only
36:26
Speaker 1: they're a little under seven feet at tall, so if
36:29
Speaker 1: you're a tall person or you have claustrophobia, it might
36:32
Speaker 1: not be for you. Well, there's no bathroom on board either. Yeah,
36:35
Speaker 1: there's no bathroom as of yet, because you know, unless
36:38
Speaker 1: you have like a medical condition, you should be able
36:40
Speaker 1: to hold it for thirty five minutes. I yeah, yeah,
36:43
Speaker 1: you never probably have to be a lot of bathrooms
36:45
Speaker 1: at the station, just in case. Well you can't bevy
36:47
Speaker 1: up like you'd like to know, That's what I'm saying. Um,
36:50
Speaker 1: and then uh, there you have your own little, you know,
36:53
Speaker 1: personal entertainment system of course, to occupy you for the
36:57
Speaker 1: thirty five minutes, because God forbid anyone just be alone
37:00
Speaker 1: with her thoughts, Oh my god, for that long. That
37:03
Speaker 1: would make the Hyperlop the most terrifying ride on the planet.
37:06
Speaker 1: And I think that it would make periodic stops along
37:10
Speaker 1: the way to right. Um, it's like that's proposed that
37:14
Speaker 1: you could have stations that branch off right. I mean,
37:17
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be a lot. There's probably
37:19
Speaker 1: in there may be an express model kind of like
37:21
Speaker 1: a subway, but it's not like, you know, we're gonna
37:23
Speaker 1: stop in Bakersfield in Modesto. Maybe we can get a
37:26
Speaker 1: sandwich or something. See the site. Yeah, that's what the
37:30
Speaker 1: buses do. Yeah, this is the opposite of that sentiment.
37:34
Speaker 1: It's just like just get there, all right. So, uh,
37:38
Speaker 1: they ended up talking to um, this guy named Jim
37:40
Speaker 1: Powell who was he was I think he designed the
37:44
Speaker 1: first mag left train, didn't He yes, he was one
37:46
Speaker 1: of the designers, and they just want to get his
37:49
Speaker 1: take on it. And he said, well, he's definitely onto
37:51
Speaker 1: something with this closed system, he said, because part of
37:55
Speaker 1: the problem with the maglev is the drag that we get.
37:58
Speaker 1: And he said, but he said, I still think you
38:01
Speaker 1: might have some problems achieving those speeds personally, Um, and
38:06
Speaker 1: ideally like you're going in a straight line, because who
38:09
Speaker 1: knows what it's going to be like going around a curve.
38:12
Speaker 1: Well that's these people. Yeah, that's a big thing. Like
38:15
Speaker 1: if you go around a curve at these speeds, you're
38:18
Speaker 1: gonna feel the g's And that's not the point of
38:22
Speaker 1: this is not to be scary or terrifying. What what
38:25
Speaker 1: they're trying to do is get the sensation of g's
38:28
Speaker 1: two about point five and um, that's like a tenth
38:32
Speaker 1: of like a scary roller coasters gees um. So it's
38:38
Speaker 1: it would be something that you wouldn't even necessarily notice
38:41
Speaker 1: unless you're taking a curve. And this is where they
38:43
Speaker 1: deviate from the I five median. Right in some cases
38:48
Speaker 1: where I five takes a bend with the radius of
38:51
Speaker 1: I think less than a mile, that's too much of
38:55
Speaker 1: a turn. So the UM hyperloop will actually the route
38:59
Speaker 1: will just keep going straightish until it picks up by
39:03
Speaker 1: five again, because if it turns too much, you know,
39:07
Speaker 1: to even more than a mile radius, that's a big
39:10
Speaker 1: wide swing. Well not when you're going that fast. Right,
39:13
Speaker 1: when you're going that fast, you feel it and you'll
39:15
Speaker 1: just throw up and and um puke all over your
39:17
Speaker 1: fellow passengers. But they won't care because they'll be puking
39:20
Speaker 1: on YouTube and everybody will get everybody else's vomit and
39:22
Speaker 1: everybody else's mouth. Yeah, they'll go it was worth it.
39:24
Speaker 1: It was so fast, I love you must. I imagine
39:28
Speaker 1: they could slow it down a bit on those curves too.
39:30
Speaker 1: They'd work it out, you know. Sure, But apparently he
39:34
Speaker 1: is personally guaranteed that um every passenger that throws up
39:38
Speaker 1: on his hyperloop. He will be at the station to
39:41
Speaker 1: receive them with a warm towel to clean their face off,
39:45
Speaker 1: and he will clean their face off with it and
39:47
Speaker 1: then pat them, pet their head and tell him it's okay.
39:51
Speaker 1: What a guy, Yeah he is. And then Richard Branson
39:54
Speaker 1: will anoint their feet with oil. That's another great guy.
39:58
Speaker 1: I really hope. I'm not like digging must up in
40:00
Speaker 1: a whole five ten years from now where it turns
40:03
Speaker 1: out that, oh they both enslaved the world together. But
40:06
Speaker 1: Josh sure liked them, you know, kind of the opposite
40:09
Speaker 1: of my Jared focal prediction exactly. So check. Another another
40:13
Speaker 1: issue that people have raised is well, what about energy consumption?
40:17
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk actually has that pegged. First of all,
40:20
Speaker 1: he's like, there's not a lot of energy you need.
40:23
Speaker 1: Most of this is coasting. Something like eighty or ninety
40:26
Speaker 1: percent of the of the actual trip requires no energy whatsoever.
40:32
Speaker 1: The stuff that requires the most energy is the compressor
40:34
Speaker 1: that's on the front of each pod that compresses the
40:37
Speaker 1: air to shoot out to the jets or shoot behind
40:39
Speaker 1: the pod, and the personal like entertainment system and lighting
40:43
Speaker 1: on board the pod itself, and the rest is well
40:49
Speaker 1: like you've got the linear induction motor that doesn't require
40:52
Speaker 1: any energy, it just requires movement. And again Elon Musk
40:57
Speaker 1: is gonna personally shove off each pod. He's gonna be
41:00
Speaker 1: hands on in this project from what I understand. And
41:03
Speaker 1: then UM any other energy sources that are needed can
41:07
Speaker 1: be covered, and then some by solar arrays that are
41:10
Speaker 1: going to be built on top of the UM hyper
41:13
Speaker 1: loop tube. So the whole thing, the whole system will
41:16
Speaker 1: actually capture and generate more energy than it actually uses. Yeah.
41:24
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the guy who invented the Tesla
41:27
Speaker 1: and this battery bank that they're going to be using
41:30
Speaker 1: on solar home. So I think people would be foolish
41:33
Speaker 1: to try and call him out on energy consumption. So
41:35
Speaker 1: he'll probably be like, they'll just divert some of the
41:38
Speaker 1: electricity to UM power irrigation systems and crop land along
41:44
Speaker 1: the way. Who knows, you know a road signs for
41:47
Speaker 1: I five saying like, suckers, get out of your car, Yeah,
41:51
Speaker 1: get in the hyper loop all right. So you sent
41:55
Speaker 1: me this article. I think that was from January. It's
41:58
Speaker 1: very recent UM called these are the first images of
42:02
Speaker 1: what will soon be the world's first hyper loop tube
42:07
Speaker 1: a little wordy um, but there is, like you said,
42:11
Speaker 1: because it was open source, there were a bunch of
42:14
Speaker 1: companies and but you know, startups mainly that were like,
42:16
Speaker 1: you know, we want to get on this thing, because
42:20
Speaker 1: if you get on the Elon Musk train, you know
42:22
Speaker 1: you're headed for goodness. I think that's what the hyperloop
42:25
Speaker 1: tagline will be. Uh. And so there's this company called
42:30
Speaker 1: hyper Loop one and they are apparently the sort of
42:34
Speaker 1: out in front on this race so far to make
42:37
Speaker 1: this thing a reality by um having a test site
42:41
Speaker 1: where else in the desert of Nevada. Yeah, it's pretty
42:46
Speaker 1: flat and straight and you can go real fast and
42:49
Speaker 1: the only thing out there are buried bodies, right, and
42:54
Speaker 1: what's the decompose You're fine? So they have this test
42:57
Speaker 1: site called the devl Loop and the only thing I
43:00
Speaker 1: don't I mean, it's got pictures of it and looks
43:02
Speaker 1: exactly what you would think like it looks like a
43:05
Speaker 1: tube on pylons, um and right now it's long five um.
43:13
Speaker 1: But apparently they're going to top it out for testing
43:16
Speaker 1: at one point eight six miles, which seems way too
43:22
Speaker 1: short to me. Yeah, for sure, but I think you
43:25
Speaker 1: could probably like You probably couldn't test the actual maximum conditions,
43:32
Speaker 1: but you could probably test everything enough to see if
43:36
Speaker 1: to to prove mathematically that you could do these these
43:40
Speaker 1: top conditions, you know what I mean. But it would
43:42
Speaker 1: be like alright, start test, test over right. What happened? Yeah,
43:48
Speaker 1: no one knows. I mean, you couldn't even get up
43:50
Speaker 1: to speed at that. Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what
43:53
Speaker 1: they're what what they'll be capable of proving with that,
43:57
Speaker 1: but basically just that the machine can run. I think
44:00
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do is prove to the United Arab
44:03
Speaker 1: Emirates that it works, because they're apparently in line too
44:08
Speaker 1: to say, yes, if you guys can show that this works,
44:10
Speaker 1: we want one immediately from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, which
44:15
Speaker 1: apparently is a trip that you'd be able to make
44:17
Speaker 1: in about twelve minutes. Normally it takes two hours or
44:19
Speaker 1: so by car. Yeah, I mean that that is. When
44:21
Speaker 1: I read that, I was like, well, of course they're
44:23
Speaker 1: exactly who's gonna build the first one of these? They're like,
44:26
Speaker 1: how much is it? We're just joking, we don't care, yeah, exactly. So,
44:31
Speaker 1: So hyper loop one is from what I understand at
44:34
Speaker 1: the forefront of this. There are a number of companies
44:37
Speaker 1: and startups that have formed that are um working on
44:40
Speaker 1: the project, but hyper Loop one, I think is at
44:43
Speaker 1: the forefront, so much so that they're not now they're
44:45
Speaker 1: starting to show off. They've released like um c g
44:49
Speaker 1: I video of what it will look like when they
44:51
Speaker 1: dropped the hyper loop underwater, because you know, why not
44:54
Speaker 1: do that, um And you know, they, like I said,
44:58
Speaker 1: they've got at least one customer just waiting in the wings,
45:02
Speaker 1: if not more so. Apparently they're going to test it
45:06
Speaker 1: this year in the spring or the summer, and man,
45:08
Speaker 1: if it works like it really would be a revolution
45:11
Speaker 1: and transportation like it would change everything, especially if it
45:15
Speaker 1: comes even close to that initial cost projection. If it
45:20
Speaker 1: comes even remotely close to that, you could just say
45:23
Speaker 1: goodbye trains so long it was nice knowing you. I mean, they'll, they'll,
45:27
Speaker 1: they'll they may still have some, but it'll be for
45:30
Speaker 1: like nostalgic tourists. Yeah, I mean, of course, we're talking
45:35
Speaker 1: about hundreds of years in the future when they had
45:39
Speaker 1: hyper loops on every route in the United States and
45:42
Speaker 1: throughout the world, or fifty years from now. Well, he
45:46
Speaker 1: actually a lot of Musk made a really good point.
45:48
Speaker 1: He said, Um, this is this would be really good
45:51
Speaker 1: for medium length travel that um, at these at these speeds,
45:57
Speaker 1: anything over about nine hundred miles in distance, you'd actually
46:01
Speaker 1: be better off with supersonic flight. Yeah, I mean I could.
46:05
Speaker 1: What I would see them doing is doing uh like
46:08
Speaker 1: you know, Boston to d C and doing up the coast.
46:12
Speaker 1: They would they would serve the coastal elites as they
46:14
Speaker 1: call them, and forget the rest of the country. Right,
46:19
Speaker 1: That's how it always works. Yeah, fly over, I guess
46:21
Speaker 1: is what they call it. I don't know what they'll
46:23
Speaker 1: call it when it's a hyperloop. Zoom over, yeah, the
46:27
Speaker 1: zoom past the One of the other things that people raise,
46:32
Speaker 1: though I wanted to say real quick, was safety. And
46:35
Speaker 1: apparently this is one of the other ways that it's
46:37
Speaker 1: revolutionary is that it's fairly safe and in ways that
46:42
Speaker 1: other other modes of transport just aren't. One of the
46:45
Speaker 1: main reasons that it's safe is because it's an enclosed capsule,
46:48
Speaker 1: which means that you take weather out of the fact
46:50
Speaker 1: out of the the the equation, yes, you're not very
46:57
Speaker 1: good at math, uh yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, um,
47:02
Speaker 1: and the the each car I think is going to
47:04
Speaker 1: be equipped with brakes, like mechanical brakes and wheels, so like,
47:09
Speaker 1: if something happens, if the whole thing loses pressure, Uh,
47:13
Speaker 1: that you can just drive along. I wonder if you
47:16
Speaker 1: would have to be strapped in Um, yes, oh you would, okay,
47:20
Speaker 1: because I imagine going from seven miles to zero if
47:24
Speaker 1: one of the other ones is stopped in front of you,
47:26
Speaker 1: you that would be a pretty pretty quick breaking Yes.
47:31
Speaker 1: So the air pressure sensors would control the brakes on
47:34
Speaker 1: each car, so the UM like, Yeah, if one of
47:38
Speaker 1: them started to stop or something, or the whole or
47:40
Speaker 1: the things started to lose air pressure, the system start
47:43
Speaker 1: to break down. All the cars would be directed to
47:45
Speaker 1: put on their brakes and the other thing. I thought
47:49
Speaker 1: this was pretty interesting too if you had like a
47:51
Speaker 1: medical emergency on on board one of these things. Um
47:56
Speaker 1: Ellen points out that, uh, you just be better off
48:01
Speaker 1: completing the route and then having E. M. S waiting
48:05
Speaker 1: for you when you got off because than anything else. Yeah,
48:09
Speaker 1: way quicker. Yeah, So you just sit there and hang on,
48:13
Speaker 1: stay away from the light until you got to San
48:16
Speaker 1: Francisco or l A. So earlier on I talked about
48:19
Speaker 1: his boring company that it was a very purposeful play
48:22
Speaker 1: on words. Um. And like I mentioned earlier, when Elon
48:25
Speaker 1: Musk gets aggravated, things start happening. He was in I
48:30
Speaker 1: think it was late last year in December. He was
48:32
Speaker 1: in traffic and he literally just tweeted out that he
48:36
Speaker 1: was in traffic and uh. He said, literally said this
48:40
Speaker 1: traffic is driving me nuts. I'm going to build a
48:44
Speaker 1: tunnel boring machine and just start digging sad. Oh did
48:49
Speaker 1: he say sad? Really good? And people thought, you know,
48:55
Speaker 1: all right, Elon Musk just fired off a tweet about something.
48:57
Speaker 1: So we we know he's not one to just shoot
49:00
Speaker 1: his mouth off, um, because he he backs up what
49:03
Speaker 1: he says in most cases, and he has done this.
49:07
Speaker 1: What he's trying to do is build this tunnel boring
49:10
Speaker 1: machine that would increase tunneling speed by he said, between
49:14
Speaker 1: five hundred and one thousand percent. Uh. And the idea
49:19
Speaker 1: is to go down. He's basically like, if we want
49:22
Speaker 1: to improve traffic, you can go up or you can
49:24
Speaker 1: go down. We're already too dense to keep building roads, basically,
49:28
Speaker 1: and he said going up isn't a great idea. I
49:30
Speaker 1: guess because I'm gonna have my hyper loop up there. Um,
49:33
Speaker 1: so he said, I'm gonna start digging. So right now
49:35
Speaker 1: they have dug under SpaceX a test trench and this
49:40
Speaker 1: is this is December. This is like three months later.
49:43
Speaker 1: They've already got a test trench that's thirty ft wide,
49:45
Speaker 1: fifty ft long and fifteen feet deep that runs under SpaceX.
49:50
Speaker 1: And uh, he's he's sees a future basically, and it's
49:55
Speaker 1: problematic in cities because there's already a lot going on underground,
49:59
Speaker 1: but basically envisions the future where they have these incredible
50:04
Speaker 1: tunnels that are dug very very fast beneath cities, where
50:08
Speaker 1: you could have highways um trains. And they even asked them,
50:13
Speaker 1: are you gonna put You're gonna combine your hyper loop
50:16
Speaker 1: through these underground tunnels? And he just tweeted back maybe
50:22
Speaker 1: so I guess he you know, it was just being
50:23
Speaker 1: a little coy there. Yeah. I took him more like
50:26
Speaker 1: maybe he should have done ellipse question mark then and
50:32
Speaker 1: then fingers crossed sign. Right, we know what he means. Um,
50:36
Speaker 1: I got one more thing, man. So the hyper loop
50:40
Speaker 1: was foreseen predicted back in nine Did you know that?
50:45
Speaker 1: Why that doesn't surprise me? Some science fiction writer yep,
50:49
Speaker 1: and actually a science science fiction comic strip. Guy um
50:54
Speaker 1: who his name was this? This name is amazing Athelston Spillhouse. Wow, Yeah,
51:01
Speaker 1: pretty good name, right. He decided to create a comic
51:04
Speaker 1: strip back in the sixties called Our New Age because
51:07
Speaker 1: he wanted to get American kids interested in science to
51:10
Speaker 1: keep up with the roos Keys, right, And in one
51:12
Speaker 1: of the comic strips, he basically talks about the hyper loop.
51:16
Speaker 1: This this pod carrying passengers floating on air, traveling at
51:20
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles an hour within a tube to solve
51:23
Speaker 1: traffic jams. It's just it was. It's like the hyper loop.
51:27
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. I for some reason thought that would
51:30
Speaker 1: be like ten different comic books that did this. It
51:35
Speaker 1: just seems like back then that would be such a
51:37
Speaker 1: sort of obvious thing to do. Yeah, I guess so,
51:41
Speaker 1: but hey, maybe it was. It was just Spillhouse, just
51:44
Speaker 1: Ethelston spell House. It sounds like a It sounds like
51:48
Speaker 1: evil Simpsons character or something that would come into town
51:50
Speaker 1: to do something bad. I'd like to hear Sylvester the
51:53
Speaker 1: Cat say that name you anything else? Nope? Okay, well, everybody,
52:01
Speaker 1: let's um apply some pressure on Elon musk too, get
52:05
Speaker 1: some dog seats made for cars. Okay, yes, help me
52:08
Speaker 1: out if you want to know more about the hyper
52:12
Speaker 1: loop type that word in the search part how stuff
52:14
Speaker 1: works dot com? And since I said that, it's time
52:17
Speaker 1: for administ details, all right. Uh. If you don't listen
52:32
Speaker 1: to the show ever, maybe we should set this up.
52:36
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, we get nice gifts from
52:39
Speaker 1: people and more and more from companies. Uh, and we
52:43
Speaker 1: like to read them on the air every few months. Yeah, uh,
52:50
Speaker 1: in a in a little weirdly awkwardly titled segment called
52:55
Speaker 1: administrative details. You know, I came up with that name.
52:58
Speaker 1: It's the worst, but I love it. It is pretty bad,
53:02
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah? So uh, here we go with our
53:05
Speaker 1: special Is the music already queued up? Oh yeah, all right,
53:08
Speaker 1: here we go with administrative details. We want to thank
53:11
Speaker 1: Matt and Kim of Mincing mocking Bird Art and Design Company.
53:15
Speaker 1: They sent a book of his painting, plus some really
53:18
Speaker 1: fun journal type notebooks. They look like, uh, they look
53:22
Speaker 1: like these vintage journals, but then it says things like
53:27
Speaker 1: dope rhymes or my favorite one was strange ideas and
53:30
Speaker 1: impure thoughts. And I love a good journal. So they
53:33
Speaker 1: were really cool. Yeah, thanks a lot for that, you guys.
53:36
Speaker 1: I want to give us special thanks to Tyler Murphy,
53:39
Speaker 1: our buddy. He likes to send me Highlander grog coffee
53:44
Speaker 1: and um it's been so long since he did administrative details.
53:46
Speaker 1: He's actually sent me two packages so far, so thanks
53:49
Speaker 1: for both of them. Tyler, uh Will and Dave from
53:52
Speaker 1: Bully Boy Distillers in Boston sent us well, they sent
53:56
Speaker 1: us a bunch of booze, some rum, and some gin um.
54:01
Speaker 1: It seems like there was one other thing in there.
54:03
Speaker 1: There was a old fashion, old pre made, old fashioned
54:07
Speaker 1: bully old fashioned. Did you have that? I bet yes
54:10
Speaker 1: there was. They were apparently the first craft distiller in
54:13
Speaker 1: Boston since Prohibition times and they opened up in two
54:17
Speaker 1: thousand ten. So thank you Bully Boy Distillers. Yeah. Thanks
54:21
Speaker 1: to Taylor Newton for the awesome stoked socks. Did you
54:25
Speaker 1: get some of those? Uh no, dude, I've been rocking those.
54:28
Speaker 1: They're like super eighties just pop art socks that have
54:34
Speaker 1: like like their teal blue with lots of pink um
54:37
Speaker 1: palm trees all over them stuff like that. You know,
54:40
Speaker 1: They're they're like something d J Jerzy Jeff would have
54:43
Speaker 1: worn back in the day. Well, you love your wacky
54:45
Speaker 1: socks so yet. Yeah, thank you Sarah Austin. She sent
54:49
Speaker 1: us some fine leather work. Nice. Uh, thank you Mark
54:53
Speaker 1: Hicks and family for the very nice Christmas card. That
54:55
Speaker 1: was nice of you, guys. Colin Flay hive fly five
55:00
Speaker 1: Um interesting name. Dolly d A l I bars from Kunming, China,
55:06
Speaker 1: that's what they sent us. And a book called Great
55:10
Speaker 1: Leaps Nice. Thanks cute Thanks dudes. Uh. Karen Johnson's everyone's
55:16
Speaker 1: a while. Somebody will find something or just come across
55:20
Speaker 1: some weird article and and be like Josh and Chuck
55:23
Speaker 1: would love this, and they nail it every time. And
55:25
Speaker 1: Karen Johnson was one of those people. She sent us
55:27
Speaker 1: a series of articles about the dreaded outhouse peeper who
55:33
Speaker 1: kept Montana in his grip of fear in n Yeah,
55:38
Speaker 1: thanks for those articles. Uh. Bob Ticken or of way
55:41
Speaker 1: Back w E Y b A C H Way Back
55:45
Speaker 1: guitars um which are handmade here in Atlanta. He sent
55:50
Speaker 1: t shirts. That was my way of building up suspense.
55:55
Speaker 1: They sent me a guitar. Huge thanks to Norell, who
56:00
Speaker 1: gave us a bounty of Australian candy and thanks to
56:04
Speaker 1: a lesser degree for the tube of vegemite. Uh, snowdrop gin.
56:09
Speaker 1: Thank you Tim from Saxton's River Distillery in Vermont for
56:13
Speaker 1: the snowdrop gin. Nice? Is that good? Delicious? Uh? We
56:18
Speaker 1: got a another Christmas card, handmade Christmas card from the
56:22
Speaker 1: Hoy family in normal, Illinois. It was very normal. Adam
56:28
Speaker 1: Pobiac he's a screenprinter and graphic artist and he said,
56:31
Speaker 1: remember those awesome Repo Man posters. Those were very sweet,
56:35
Speaker 1: So thanks Adam for those. Yep. Uh, Cyrus Ahman or amon.
56:40
Speaker 1: I never asked him how to pronounce his name. He
56:42
Speaker 1: interviewed me for his sight. He's got a really cool
56:45
Speaker 1: site where he just interviews people he likes UM and
56:48
Speaker 1: it's see why are U s A M A and
56:52
Speaker 1: dot com? And he just a total class act. Just
56:55
Speaker 1: to say thanks for the interview, sent some homemade chocolate
56:58
Speaker 1: chip cookies that were a may easingly delicious, So thanks Cyrus. Uh.
57:02
Speaker 1: We got an assortment of shrubs like drinking shrubs not
57:06
Speaker 1: for the lawn from Shaker and Spoon dot com. Oh
57:10
Speaker 1: those are good guys. Their advertisers with us now too,
57:13
Speaker 1: well fantastic. Thanks thanks everybody, over there. Uh. And speaking
57:17
Speaker 1: of booze, Uh, where would we be if we didn't
57:20
Speaker 1: thank our good friends at Crown Royal for always keeping
57:24
Speaker 1: us wet. They send us. Not only did they give
57:28
Speaker 1: us some XR which is like really really really good
57:32
Speaker 1: um whiskey. Uh, it's almost like cognaky whiskey. It's so good. Um.
57:37
Speaker 1: They made us personalized velvet bags like Crown Royal bags
57:41
Speaker 1: that have our names on it, so we can say
57:43
Speaker 1: that's mine, uh, Sally Franklin, she works for Crown Publishing Group.
57:48
Speaker 1: They send us a couple of great books about women
57:50
Speaker 1: in science, one called Women in Science and one called
57:54
Speaker 1: Headstrong fifty two women who changed science in the world.
57:57
Speaker 1: Good stuff, and they're on our bokshelf here at work
58:00
Speaker 1: now and everyone like reads all these things, so it's great.
58:04
Speaker 1: Yep um. Alex Kernow sent us some amazing prints of
58:07
Speaker 1: states that his fiance makes. Their just beautiful and super
58:11
Speaker 1: kind of old timey looking. They just have a nice
58:13
Speaker 1: look to him. Um. And you can find them at
58:16
Speaker 1: stampilli s t A M p I l Y on Etsy,
58:20
Speaker 1: So go check those out. And thanks Alex, uh sky
58:22
Speaker 1: lebrown s k I L E send us her book
58:25
Speaker 1: to Stay Alive. She said that we inspired her with
58:28
Speaker 1: our episode on the Donner Party and she actually researched
58:31
Speaker 1: and wrote a book about it. Nice. Yeah, it was great. Um, wow,
58:35
Speaker 1: we inspired a book. That's wonderful. Um Korty from Tokyo
58:40
Speaker 1: who sent us a beautiful holiday card, just gorgeous and
58:44
Speaker 1: some wonderful or gami stars. So thank you very much.
58:48
Speaker 1: Our friend Jamie Buckner as a filmmaker and send us
58:50
Speaker 1: a D D D copy of the indie film that
58:53
Speaker 1: he made called Split, which is available also on your
58:57
Speaker 1: Video on demand and Amazon and iTunes if you want
58:59
Speaker 1: to check that out. Split. Matt Dragor sent us some
59:03
Speaker 1: homebrew beer. Thank you, Matt, Raymond Busingeringer be singer, all
59:09
Speaker 1: three of them. Uh. They sent some really cool poster prints.
59:13
Speaker 1: These are the ones uh and I really love the
59:15
Speaker 1: stuff they sent Atlanta in eighteen seventy one to me
59:18
Speaker 1: in Toledo in eighteen seventy six to you and uh,
59:22
Speaker 1: you know how I love my maps and these are h.
59:25
Speaker 1: You can find his work at fifteen spelled out f
59:28
Speaker 1: I F T E N dot c A. Uh. The
59:31
Speaker 1: last one for me for today is from Doug Frumpkin,
59:34
Speaker 1: Thank you Doug for sending us coins from the Nuclear
59:37
Speaker 1: Regulatory Commission. Who knew. I'm assuming that they're not irradiated.
59:43
Speaker 1: Uh in my last one, and we're going to continue
59:45
Speaker 1: this on our next episode. UM Kevin from draw Kevin
59:49
Speaker 1: Drawl dot com send his hand printed note cards made
59:53
Speaker 1: from Soy Inc. And they were quite lovely nice. So
59:56
Speaker 1: thanks everybody. Yeah, thanks a million everyone to keep them coming. Huh. Absolutely,
1:00:01
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with this,
1:00:02
Speaker 1: you don't actually have to send us anything. You can
1:00:04
Speaker 1: just say hi if you like. You can tweet to
1:00:06
Speaker 1: us at I'm at Josh Underscore, UM Underscore Clark and
1:00:11
Speaker 1: at s Y s K Podcast, Chuck's on Facebook dot
1:00:14
Speaker 1: com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and at Facebook dot
1:00:17
Speaker 1: com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
1:00:20
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot
1:00:22
Speaker 1: com and has always joined us at our home on
1:00:24
Speaker 1: the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com For more
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