Can the Hyperloop have stops along its route

Think of a piece of string pulled tight between your hands. If someone were to cut the string somewhere in the middle, the tension would be lost and the string would fall down.

Similarly, if a Hyperloop tube just had a simple “door” or hole opened-up somewhere along the route, the low pressure vacuum inside the tube – which is required for Hyperloop pods to operate – would be lost, and the system would stop working entirely. It might even implode as air from outside the Hyperloop tube rushed in!

Back to the string

If you have a friend hold a string in tension and you pinch two points close together somewhere along the way, then if the string is cut between your pinch points, it wont fall down. If the string was a tube like the Hyperloop, the low pressure vacuum would not be lost between the sections, even though there is now a break in the tube.

Designing a Hyperloop stop

So the Hyperloop can have stops along a long route, for example, a stop in Denver for a route going from Los Angeles to New York City, but the stops aren’t as simple as a roadside bus stop (or a break in taut string). They must be very complex mechanical structures that create a barrier (as seal, like your string pinch point) between the low pressure vacuum inside the Hyperloop tube and the regular-pressure outside environment we live in.

Because of this, unless a Hyperloop route is a single, long, interrupted route (which some of them may be), it’s better to think of longer routes as a series of shorter routes, connected by complex stations that cap both ends of each section.