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by taneq 3524 days ago
That sounds even more fun. :D

Although as the poster mentioned below, a passenger service would gradually rotate the passenger compartment to keep the G-forces vertical, a la a banking aircraft, so all you'd likely notice would be feeling heavier for a few seconds.

2 comments

The "barf ride" comments were the result of calculations which included rotating the passenger compartment.

See https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loop... linked from the original article.

Interesting link, thanks! I should have clicked more on the original article. :)

This seems to be the comment in question:

> This is worse than sideways acceleration: track standards for vertical acceleration are tighter than for horizontal acceleration, about 0.5-0.67 m/s^2, one tenth to one seventh what Musk wants to subject his passengers to. It’s not transportation; it’s a barf ride.

I find the statement that vertical acceleration is 'worse than sideways acceleration' to be highly suspect (otherwise why would you bother to bank into turns?) - I would guess that the track standards are for +/- 0.5ms^-2 and mostly target short-period up-and-down bouncing motions rather than smoothly applied upwards acceleration.

The analysis suggests that the speeds involved would require a few minutes of said g-forces, not seconds.