by Laura Feinstein One of the most iconic symbols of luxury in South Africa, the famous Blue Train line has spent the last 67 years taking visitors on an adventure through the country’s stunning and diverse…
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News: entrepreneur Elon Musk has revealed designs for a supersonic Hyperloop transport system to link Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 30 minutes (+ slideshow).
Elon Musk, billionaire and founder of Paypal, electric-car firm Tesla Motors and space technology company SpaceX, has revealed designs for Hyperloop – a supersonic Jetsons-style transportation system for California. Travelling at over 700 mph, passengers would sit in a 1.35-metre-wide tube and be blasted through the 382-mile tunnel linking Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 30 minutes.
After months of speculation, Musk envisions using magnets and fans to shoot capsules that float on a cushion of air through a long tube. “Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods,” said Musk in the design study.
In the designs, passenger capsules that float on a cushion of air are transported at high speed through a low pressure tube, elevated over the land between the two cities. “The capsules are accelerated via a magnetic linear accelerator affixed at various stations on the low pressure tube with rotors contained in each capsule,” Musk said.
Passengers would not notice the speed and travel by Hyperloop would feel a lot like being in an aeroplane, Musk explains: “It should really feel just super smooth and quiet. And there’d never be any turbulence or anything.”
Well-known for electric cars, civilian space travel and a vision for interplanetary evolution and sending humans to Mars, the transportation tycoon says Hyperloop would be twice as fast as an aeroplane, cheaper than a bullet train and completely self-powered. It would be both weather and earthquake resistant.
“If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive,” Musk said. “Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be: safer, faster, lower-cost, more convenient, immune to weather, sustainably self-powering, resistant to earthquakes and not too disruptive to those along the route.”
Musk made the announcement via Twitter last night and a full 57 page pdf document detailing his ideas was published shortly after 9.30pm GMT. He held a 30 minute conference shortly after.
The designs for Hyperloop are open source and Musk has asked for feedback from others to advance the design and make it a reality.
The transportation tycoon first mentioned Hyperloop in July 2012 – leaving amateur designers, engineers and investors speculating ever since. Musk described Hyperloop as the “fifth mode of transportation” – the previous four being train, plane, automobile, and boat. “It’s not a vacuum tunnel, but a cross between Concorde, a rail-gun and air hockey table,” he said.
“The Hyperloop is something that would go effectively faster than the speed of sound. Conceivably you could live in San Fran and work in LA,” said Musk.
Musk has said his Hyperloop designs rival the “high-speed” train the US are proposing. “The $60 billion bullet train they’re proposing in California would be the slowest bullet train in the world at the highest cost per mile.” Musk said. “They’re going for records in all the wrong ways. The cost of the SF-LA Hyperloop would be in the $6 billion range.”
Watch a recording of Elon Musk talking about Hyperloop:
Musk’s ideas for futuristic transport don’t stop there. Speaking online during a Google “Hangout” event with Virgin Group CEO and founder of Virgin Galactic Richard Branson on Friday, Musk said he has another idea, to rival Concorde — a vertical lift-off supersonic electric passenger jet. He said that he envisaged journeys over 1000 miles long being done in aircraft that would travel faster than the speed of sound.
“If you fly high enough and have the right geometry of plane, you can make the sonic boom no louder than current planes,” he said.
Musk commented that vertical take-off and landings would mean passengers could land closer to a desired destination – eliminating the need for large airports and long runways. Too busy – with electric car innovations, hovering reusable rockets and passenger flights to Mars – to launch into the vertical jet business just yet, Musk did add: “If somebody doesn’t do [it] then maybe, at some point in the future, I will.”
Read more transportation features on Dezeen »
See our archive about transport and architecture in space »
Here is the full announcement from SpaceX/Elon Musk:
Hyperloop
August 12, 2013
By Elon Musk, Chairman, Product Architect, CEO
When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? Note, I am hedging my statement slightly by saying “one of”. The head of the California high speed rail project called me to complain that it wasn’t the very slowest bullet train nor the very most expensive per mile.
The underlying motive for a statewide mass transit system is a good one. It would be great to have an alternative to flying or driving, but obviously only if it is actually better than flying or driving. The train in question would be both slower, more expensive to operate (if unsubsidised) and less safe by two orders of magnitude than flying, so why would anyone use it?
If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive. Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be:
Is there truly a new mode of transport – a fifth mode after planes, trains, cars and boats – that meets those criteria and is practical to implement? Many ideas for a system with most of those properties have been proposed and should be acknowledged, reaching as far back as Robert Goddard’s to proposals in recent decades by the Rand Corporation and ET3.
Unfortunately, none of these have panned out. As things stand today, there is not even a short distance demonstration system operating in test pilot mode anywhere in the world, let alone something that is robust enough for public transit. They all possess, it would seem, one or more fatal flaws that prevent them from coming to fruition.
Constraining the Problem
The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart. Around that inflection point, I suspect that supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper. With a high enough altitude and the right geometry, the sonic boom noise on the ground would be no louder than current airliners, so that isn’t a showstopper. Also, a quiet supersonic plane immediately solves every long distance city pair without the need for a vast new worldwide infrastructure.
However, for a sub several hundred mile journey, having a supersonic plane is rather pointless, as you would spend almost all your time slowly ascending and descending and very little time at cruise speed. In order to go fast, you need to be at high altitude where the air density drops exponentially, as air at sea level becomes as thick as molasses (not literally, but you get the picture) as you approach sonic velocity.
Continue Reading: Hyperloop-Alpha.pdf
The post Billionaire reveals Hyperloop
supersonic transport system appeared first on Dezeen.
by Jason Kenny In 2011 Melbourne photographer Kate Seabrook moved back to Berlin looking for a new project. She found her muse in the 173 stations of the city’s underground subway system, the U-Bahn. Aptly titling the series “Endbahnhof”—which translates to “railhead” in German—Seabrook snapped each and every port beneath…
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The Subway Signal Light is a digital sand timer that intuitively changes color from green, to amber to red, informing the passenger through passive visual clues, that the doors to the train are about to close. As far as subway safety is concerned, you can’t be too safe. Just the other day I saw a lady get caught between doors because she tried to rush through the doors at the last minute. Hopefully visual clues will help people understand better that green says go and red says STOP!
Designer: Hyun Ju Park
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(Well Timed Closure was originally posted on Yanko Design)
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En parallèle de son incroyable série sur les enfants dans le monde qu’il actualise depuis plus de 20 ans, le journaliste Steve McCurry aime immortaliser des ambiances et des univers aux quatre coins du monde. La preuve en est avec cette série sur les trains en Inde d’une beauté époustouflante à découvrir dans la suite.
Découverte des images capturées par le photographe Aaron Durand soulignant la vitesse des trains qu’il immortalise, à travers leurs lumières. Avec ces clichés, la vitesse est bien retranscrite et permet de donner une belle ambiance à découvrir dans la suite.
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Industrial designers Priestmangoode have revealed a concept for high-speed trains that would transfer passengers to local services while still moving, instead of stopping at stations.
By avoiding time-consuming stops, the Moving Platforms concept would allow faster long-distance journey times.
Trams and local trains would dock alongside the high-speed trains while still in motion, allowing passengers to walk between the two services.
As part of a fully integrated network, passengers would be able to journey from a local stop to any international destination without disembarking.
Watch an animation of the Moving Platforms concept on Dezeen Screen »
Watch an interview with Paul Priestman about Moving Platforms on Dezeen Screen »
More stories about Priestmangoode on Dezeen »
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The following details are from Priestmangoode:
Britain’s leading transport designer unveils the future for 21st Century train travel
Britain’s leading transport designer has unveiled his idea for the future of train travel. Moving Platforms is a completely inter-connected rail infrastructure where local trams connect to a network of non-stop high speed trains enabling passengers to travel from their local stop to a local address at their destination (even in another country) without getting off a train.
Paul Priestman of Priestmangoode is the designer of the Virgin Pendolino train and last year’s hugely successful Mercury high speed concept train. Moving Platforms is a totally joined-up network that allows passengers to transfer directly from one moving tram or high speed train to another. This new integrated infrastructure mimics the way the internet works, creating a system similar to the one that allows your home PC to connect to a computer on the other side of the world via a series of connected networks.
Moving Platforms involves a network of high speed trains that run non-stop between two ends of a continent, New York to San Francisco for instance. The high speed trains run on a line that passes outside towns and cities with a network of local feeder trams that carry passengers from local stops out to meet them. As they near each other, the high speed train slows down slightly and the tram speeds up alongside it, at which point the trains physically connect via a docking system allowing passengers to transfer directly across from the tram to the high speed train and vice versa. Once transfers are complete, the trains separate, with the high speed train speeding up again along its route, and the tram slowing down and going back into the town or city centre with the newly disembarked passengers. The tram, in effect, acts as a moving station. The same system could also be used by passengers transferring from one high speed train to another.
This idea is not as crazy as it sounds. There are plenty of examples in every day life where we step onto a moving vehicle: escalators, moving walkways, paternoster lifts, ski lifts and Ferris wheels like the London Eye.
We are trying to build a new 21st Century train service on a station-based infrastructure that was designed in the 19th century for steam trains. We should be re-thinking infrastructure and building an inter-connected local-to-global rail network.
Current plans for high speed rail will require a new network of major stations, taking up huge amounts of space and with a cost and environmental impact that is potentially vast. These stations function for the most part as large car parks that are packed during working hours and empty the rest of the time, and are only in use by passengers for short periods of the day.
The big problem with high speed trains is that they are not very fast. Slowing down and speeding up as they move between stations means they are only able to travel at their full speed for limited periods of time (wasting vast amounts of energy in the process). On long journeys, the non stop high speed train could save a vast proportion of any journey time.
We lose huge amounts of time in transit waiting at stations as we change trains. Moving Platforms would enable passengers to travel from their local stop to an address of their choice in another town or country without getting off a train.
Many rail passengers use cars to get to their main-line embarkation station, so being able to link up to the high speed train directly from a local tram or train service means we could reduce car usage in towns and cities.
Track infrastructure is already in place in many areas. On each train line, there are two tracks, one high speed and one local, next to one another. This means that potentially, Moving Platforms would not take up any more land.
Existing local stations would serve the feeder trams, enabling passengers from rural areas to access the high speed line easily.
Moving Platforms could also be used for local deliveries and freight. This will help get trucks off the road and ease congestion on motorways and in towns and cities.
A journey planner App would tell you what local tram or train to get on in Boston to go to a local address in San Francisco for instance, making travel simpler and easier.
“I can’t believe that across the world we are spending billions on high speed rail making it run on a network that was invented in the 19th Century. I’m under no illusion that Moving Platforms is a big idea, but if we really want high speed rail to be successful and change the way we travel, getting people off the roads and reducing the number of short haul flights, it is imperative that the infrastructure we use works with, not against, this new technology to enable a seamless passenger journey from start to destination. The days of the super-hub train station are over, connectivity is the way forward,” says Paul Priestman.
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| Mercury high-speed train by Priestmangoode | Autonomobile by Mike + Maaike | Mutation by Ora-Ïto for Citroën |
MoMA screens the true-story adventure of tracking down boxcar graffiti’s most notorious artist
One man’s sixteen-year quest to track down the elusive artists of a moniker that’s been appearing in railyards across America for 80-odd years is beautifully captured in the 56-minute documentary Who is Bozo Texino? The film debuted in 2005 and since its creator—filmmaker, trainrider and Guggenheim Fellow Bill Daniel—has taken the film on the road to more than 400 venues large and small.
Shot in black-and-white 16mm film with a Bolex camera, Daniel uses the scrawled moniker of Bozo Texino, an expressionless man wearing a large stetson, to explore the themes restlessness and freedom, hardship and entrapment and the many contradictions that exist for those that live on the rails.
This week Daniel brings the film to the MOMA for a rare special screening in Manhattan. He’ll be joined by Gary Fogelson who designed and edited the companion book, Mostly True, which elaborates on the mythic Bozo Texino and how its legacy reflects a largely invisible subculture that ride the nation’s rails and has existed in parallel to mainstream society since the Civil War.
“I don’t want to give too much away about Bozo, the film, or the mystery behind it all because people should come and find that out for themselves,” Folgelson recently told Cool Hunting. “I will say that the folks featured in this film (and book) are well known unknowns, and their work is an important piece in the history of American folk art.”
View a clip here featuring one of the many interviews of tramps and hobos Daniel encounters along the way. The DVD is also available for purchase direct from Daniel
on his website or from Amazon.
A Grand Central pop up for shopping the National Design Museum on the go
Travelers passing through Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal have an ideal reason to take a break from the busy commute with the Shop at Cooper-Hewitt‘s pop up kiosk, located near the Graybar Passage.
Opened this month and scheduled to remain through 31 January 2011, the Shop offers 25 design works from the National Design Museum including such items as the Eton Solarlink FR600 radio which can be charged by the sun or hand crank and is currently featured in the National Design Triennial ($80); the Brodman Blades Ping Pong Paddle Set in which the handless paddle fits like a glove ($89) and beautiful wool pom-pon hats by designer Kika Schoenfeld.
The kiosk also features Swiss-made USM modular furniture (in addition to being made of it itself) in newly-reissued orange and offers all of the pieces available through the company’s convenient Quick Ship program.
The Shop at Cooper Hewitt Grand Central kiosk is open Monday through Saturday. Four Square users receive an added bonus—simply show that you’ve checked in at the kiosk and receive one complimentary pass to the National Design Museum.
Une impressionnante collection de plus de 3000 images de Grafiti et autres arts urbains sur des trains abandonnés. Des clichés originaux pris au Japon et dans le reste du monde incluant des wagons et des trains.
Plus d’images dans la galerie Street Art
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
