Hypnotized by Hyperloop
newyorker.com
Hypnotized by Hyperloop
1–10 of 255 posts
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#2Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#3Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.
You have more than one pod?
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#4Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech. You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds.
You have more than one pod?
Do you link them physically, do you have enough braking distances, or do you, as musk suggests, run pods that are separate close enough that in case of a disaster all pods will crash?
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#5I'm a fan of the hyperloop concept and I hope it gets implemented. However, the Concorde example is useful to think about to me. Perhaps the reason we don't have better city-to-city transportation when there are options available and even implemented in other countries is actually that we lack the true will to build them.
This article does make the common mistake of suggesting the Hyerloop competes with intra-city subway systems though. I find the "just fix the subways" response to the Hyperloop disingenuous.
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#6Couldn't finish this. It started off badly by calling the hyperloop "vacuum-powered". First, it's not even vacuum sealed (just low air pressure), and second, how can something even be powered by the vacuum? Are we just throwing terms around for effect here?
Then, the author continues with more material errors. The hyperloop/tunnel combo apparently "requires a hard reboot" of the modern city. No it does not. The whole point is that it is tunnels underneath the modern city.
Finally, it starts mentioning ambitious projects that didn't work, such as the Concorde. Yes, people have tried things that failed before. And then it talks about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!
As far as I was able to read, not a single mention that Musk has been able to take two or three other previously considered impossible tasks and bring them to completion. Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is evidence-based.
It seems the author's point is "Let's never fund anything else speculative ever again". What's that network you're using to blast this tripe straight to my eyeballs right now? The inter-what? Who ever funded that waste of money? Why didn't they just fund the post office a little more?
The fact that we've lost faith in humanity's ability to improve things by taking on large, ambitious projects, even if some, even if most, will fail, saddens me every day. It doesn't prevent me from trying to make the world a better place though, and I hope nobody else was discouraged by low-quality, knee-jerk thinking like this, either.
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#7For fun, let's say we'd sat Geoff down 20 years ago and asked him to rate the following futures in units of 'preposterousness': "Geoff, how preposterous is it to believe that in 20 years..."
1. We live in a world of self-driving, all electric automobiles, the safest and fastest ever built in mass production.
2. We live in a world where private space companies build profitable space transportation systems that can land themselves after orbiting the Earth.
3. We travel from city to city in vacuum tubes that enable 700+ mph speeds on land.
4. The mind-numbing gridlock of urban auto traffic is relieved by tunnels that whiz cars across town at speeds exceeding 120 MPH.
I'm pretty sure he'd scoff at all of it. I would have, too, but then I'd be pretty giddy that even one of them had materialized.
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#8Some hypnotized people think that a Hyperloop in tunnel under the Baltic sea between Stockholm and Helsinki is a good idea - two sparsely populated capital cities of two small countries.
http://nordic.businessinsider.com/stockholm-helsinki-hyperlo...
Even if it's only there to siphon of some taxpayer's money to someone or another, I just can't fathom how things like this can be allowed to go on. Even if the entire population will spend half of their income on tickets, it will not be economically viable.
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#9Some hypnotized people think that a Hyperloop in tunnel under the Baltic sea between Stockholm and Helsinki is a good idea - two sparsely populated capital cities of two small countries. http://nordic.businessinsider.com/stockholm-helsinki-hyperlo... Even if it's only there to siphon of some taxpayer's money to someone or another, I just can't fathom how things like this can be allowed to go on. Even if the entire po…
> it will not be economically viable
Government projects don't (and shouldn't) have to be "economically viable." They can be services to the citizens with no hope of profitability.
Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop
#10This was a disappointing "article" which conflated The Boring Company (intracity tunnels) and the hyperloop (usually conceptualized aboveground) and never really made a concrete point, just provided FUD about anything that smells like a Concord or SciFi.
The general idea that the hyperloop is more of a North Star than a proposal stands, but that was always its stated nature.