[plam]

Regarding ground changes, we can look to current bullet-train rail systems. Nobody has ever died on a bullet train in Japan due to earthquakes. I saw on a documentary that Japan feed seismic sensor data into train control centers where any dangerous seismic event would trigger automatic stopping of the trains.

[akjj]

No passenger has ever died on the Japanese Shinkansen, but a train was derailed during an earthquake. The safety of high-speed trains, both in Japan and elsewhere, also relies on safety during a derailment by keeping the train rigid and having steel cars. In contrast, it seems to me that a breach of the integrity of the hyperloop tube would probably be fatal. Also, the higher speed of a hyperloop makes automatic stopping take longer.

In all, the hyperloop as it's currently being presented is much more dangerous than high-speed rail during an earthquake, and this is a legitimate concern.

[ye]

I never said it's impossible, I think it's a much bigger problem than building a machine to build the tunnel walls.

[ricardobeat]

How is it a bigger problem if it has already been solved today?

The original paper attempts to deal with all of these problems, pressure, safety, land rights, it's a very interesting read.

[ye]

First of all, it hasn't been solved in the US, and not for these speeds, which are at least double of the fastest bullet train in the world.