this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
-17 points (35.6% liked)

Showerthoughts

30010 readers
637 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. Avoid politics
    • 3.1) NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
    • 3.2) Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
    • 3.3) Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU DOWNVOTE.

Disclaimer: The hyperloop is an absolutely shit idea right now. I do not support building in any form right now.

Now to the shower thought: Theoretically, a hyperloop can get you from place A to place B on the planet in less than 40 min (back of the napkin calculations assuming constant acceleration and deceleration of around 1G). Being completely underground (more on that below), it would also be a really good piece of infrastructure safe from arial/orbital bombardment.

Now to the obvious problems: We need the tube to be very very straight to achieve high speeds without killing our passengers. We would want the hyperloop to enter city centers. Building such a straight thing in city centers would require a lot of demolition. Therefore, we would have to get it underground. Bringing it on the ground again outside cities doesn't make sense because we would be introducing steep upward curves, thus reducing its maximum speed. Therefore, it makes sense to build this thing completely underground. Building underground also gives us many more benefits like not having to do much land acquisition, safety from violent attacks and so on.

Our tube would have to be incredibly airtight. It absolutely cannot have any leaks anywhere. Also, we need to be able to achieve incredibly low chamber pressures and maintain them.

If we are building this underground, we would need a shit load of energy to dig and transport the material outside the tunnel. We would also need a shit load of steel and other resources for these incredibly long tunnels.

Where do we get this energy? Where do we mine these resources without destroying the planet? Now this is where the "future" part comes in. We would need energy to be incredibly cheap. The only viable long term method (by "long term", I mean it from the civilization time scale) would be via nuclear fusion. When is nuclear fusion happening? Well, it's only 30 years away! /s Jokes aside, the energy source might be when nuclear fusion not only becomes possible, but also incredibly cheap (the nuclear reactor shouldn't cost billions lol).

About the resources? Well, we probably need to mine them on the moon, no? The moon has A LOT of them right on the surface. If we can mine them and send them back home, we solve our resources problem!

Well, you might ask- doesn't it make more sense to just have spaceships with engines propelled by nuclear fusion that exit the atmosphere, go at hypersonic speeds and then drop in? Why build expensive underground continent spanning tunnels? Well, what if we are attacked by aliens? They could easily blockade our airspace. Hell, just dropping a few million stealthy pebbles in our lower orbits would be enough to stop all hypersonic travel (the risk of ships exploding on contact with these pebbles would be too high for air travel to continue). Hypersonic spaceships would also face the problem of traditional aircrafts- you would need to build spaceports far from city centers. These spaceports would require a lot of space and cause a tremendous amount of noise pollution (constant sonic booms for every launch and landing).

Therefore, I think I have made my mind. I think I would be voting for a hyperloop proposal that possibly would be tabled in our direct democratic government a 100-150 years from now!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not rlly that aware of how boring works, so I'll take ur word for it there I suppose.

Any moon mining is going to be expensive because it's the moon. That kind of travel is going to be expensive.

For this tho, u don't have to "travel" anywhere. U just build a one time installation on the moon, which would be expensive. Once it's built, u just launch stuff from the moon using a railgun like system with enough velocity to deorbit it, use the earth's atmosphere to slow down enough that the material doesn't vaporize on a crash landing in a designated location. This would most likely be how we would get our material in the future.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

u just launch stuff

That's travel (of materials).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Whose cost would be energy and light wear and tear on the railgun. Which won't be much at all.

(I thought by "travel", u meant having to use spaceships to transport material which would be significantly more expensive).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

You still need a container with a navigation system and descent system, so yes it's both and both ways.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Which would be incredibly cheap even in 2024 (compared to the amount of resources being transported).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

No, it's incredibly expensive now and will very, very likely continue to be. You need a very expensive $/lb material like gold (but with an actual use) for moon mining to be worth it. What we need for infrastructure is basic stuff like steel and concrete. I'm gonna stop replying.