The Dynamics of Hyperloop

I heard about this on the new yesterday because the infamous Elon Musk has thrown his support behind it. It is a new high-speed transportation method that primarily depends on an evacuated (or partially evacuated) tube to reduce air friction.

I was going to do a quick study on it, but Rhett Allain at Dot Physics has already done a preliminary analysis on it, so I'll just point to his page.

As someone who works with vacuum/ultra-high vacuum systems, all I can say is that this thing will need a lot of huge vacuum pumps, although for what it intends to do, I think all they need is to get into probably just the milliTorr pressure range, just enough to be below the viscous flow regime.

Zz.