Hypnotized by Hyperloop • Hacker News Board

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#191

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:01 AM UTC

schiffern wrote: post #52

ardit33 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts 1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place. 2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living r…

That's a very rosy view, only looking at the positive side of the coin and ignoring the negative side. >1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. ...causing property values to rise in the "less expensive area" to match those in the urban center minus the cost of transport. Ultimately you're gentrifying the current residents out of their homes, causing more urban sprawl,…

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Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#192

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:02 AM UTC

starbuxman wrote: post #154

gutnor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why commute ? Remote working is a thing and everything the topic comes up, something that a significant part of HN is already enjoying. No need to pour billions in public transport. Also companies have proven that they are more than willing to outsource everywhere, hiring people anywhere. There are reason they still hire in very expensive place like SF. You bet that it is a problem that will go away at some point, an…

With great collaborative tools, a greater concern for carbon emissions, and the cost-saving benefits of working remotely, daily commutes to the office will decline.

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Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#193

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:08 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #147

dalbasal wrote: post #18

One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite. If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of faster transport, distan…

> If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings. I doubt you would because the cost of the trip would make that the most expensive food you ever ate.

A round trip economy ticket from New York to Hong Kong [1] is about $700. Kayak shows decent hotels at about $200 a night. Let's say 2 nights. That's $1,100 for travel and board.

To match the $3,000 a romantic dinner for two costs at Thomas Keller's Per Se, I'd have to spend almost $1,900 on dumplings and knick knacks.

[1] On Delta, about a month out

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#194

Post by nickparker » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:30 AM UTC

wolfram74 wrote: post #181

nickparker wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The energy required only grows quadratically if you stay on one technology. Simultaneously switching from internal combustion to linear electric motors with efficient regen. braking and bumping the speed up 10x turns out to be a wash.

To clarify, you are stipulating that electric engines and regenerative breaking are ~100 times more efficient than a combustion engine? Because mv^2 means a 10 fold increase in speed is a 100 fold increase in kinetic energy.

Thanks for the catch, I wrote that comment a little too flippantly and left out important factors, the motors/regen alone certainly don't get you there.

Adding in the reduced drag of levitation vs soft tires combined with central control to avoid stop-n-go intersections/traffic gets you to 100x more efficient.

Edit: Also, I should just drop this link to some envelope math I did last Fall:

https://medium.com/@nickparkerprint/why-im-still-excited-abo...

And since I didn't think of this either before the first comment: I'm currently an employee of Hyperloop One, but none of the statements made in this thread are at all based on H1's design or proprietary info. They're based on the envelope math above, which was done before I started working there. I don't actually know H1's efficiency numbers because it's not my department.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#195

Post by picosat » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:42 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #112

The vague notion of Hyperloop is awful for cities for the reasons mentioned in this article. Municipal governments are fighting a very hard, uphill battle right now to get basic funding for proven conventional public transit services which would dramatically make life better for everyone. Musk dropping the promise of Hyperloop (with no interest on following up on the idea) has provided ammo for transit cynics and opp…

I agree that Musk and other proponents of transportation innovation could do more to support the efforts of their municipalities by promoting walking, biking, buses, etc, but that seems like a poor argument against pursuing innovative concepts.

Musk's propositions should and will coincide with years of statistical analysis before actual implementation to prevent exactly what you're talking about. Hyperloop could be to the detriment of a lot of cities, but that doesn't mean there aren't implementations that can improve transportation time, congestion, and quality of life. The attitude that pursuing futuristic transportation technologies will hinder ALL cities seems detrimental to human progress. What brought about our "proven" public transit systems, like subways, to begin with?

Developing Hyperloop or the Boring Company doesn't need to mean replacing current infrastructure or stopping municipal efforts. It means we could put our brightest engineers towards some of humanity's most annoying problems (https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB913090787638355000), forcing them to pay attention to municipal data along the way. If analysis indicates that tunnels would be detrimental to New York, then by all means, let's not build tunnels in New York. But if other analysis indicates that Los Angeles, a city incredibly dependent on cars for transportation (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nobody-walks-in-la-the...), might actually benefit from such an idea, we should pursue it.

Don't be so quick to reject an idea before proper analysis has been done to understand the impact. It's the innovative ideas that end up actually improving humanity, and believe it or not, a lot of the things we consider to mundane today, sewers, subways, roads, skyscrapers, were at one time innovative and new.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#196

Post by deepGem » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:43 AM UTC

The article has a taste of criticism but offers no points of criticism. Sort of a passive-aggressive play on words, which is ok just for a read, but not something that I expect from New Yorker. Comparing Hyperloop to Concorde and it's eventual demise does seem valid at a cursory level. What's key to understand is that Concorde's failure can mostly be attributed to a combination of design, safety and maintenance factors (sonic boom being the foremost). In addition, what plagued the Concorde was the upkeep and maintenance of the aircrafts, and of course the spiraling fuel costs. Are there such equivalents in the Hyperloop world. If so, can they be resolved.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#197

Post by deepGem » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:48 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #51

solatic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for some dumplings. And that's a good thing, because it increases the amount of demand available to businesses. The more potential customers you have, the more product you can make to sell to that market, and the more product you can make, the better your economies of scale. The large population of New York is what allows it to offer so many…

counterpoint: it's also a bad thing because society functioning now becomes more reliant on this transportation method. It destroys "walkable" spaces and encourages centralization of services, when a more uniform spread of services across space is in fact healthier. I heard of a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking, because people g…

I heard of a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking, because people got used to going to Tokyo all the time and ended up just moving there.

This is so counter intuitive. This is the exact opposite of suburbia. Faster and cheaper transport led to the growth of suburbs. Can the movement of people to Tokyo be attributed just to the faster trains ? Can you please share a link to the study if you have it handy.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#198

Post by Invictus0 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 1:56 AM UTC

schiffern wrote: post #52

ardit33 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts 1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper, and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which unlocks greater efficiency of the work place. 2. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces, prices of living r…

That's a very rosy view, only looking at the positive side of the coin and ignoring the negative side. >1. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a major center. ...causing property values to rise in the "less expensive area" to match those in the urban center minus the cost of transport. Ultimately you're gentrifying the current residents out of their homes, causing more urban sprawl,…

> ...causing property values to rise in the "less expensive area" to match those in the urban center minus the cost of transport.

This is a valid concern made invalid by the speed of the Hyperloop. If we estimate very conservatively that the Hyperloop can cut the average commute time 4x, then the radius that a city worker can live increases 4x. However, while the radius increases 4x, the area increases 16x (A=pi*r^2: area increases exponentially as a function of r). Thus, the rise in property values in surrounding areas would be distributed over a large area so as not to make life unsustainable for those already there.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#199

Post by nihonde » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 2:01 AM UTC

deepGem wrote: post #197

rtpg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counterpoint: it's also a bad thing because society functioning now becomes more reliant on this transportation method. It destroys "walkable" spaces and encourages centralization of services, when a more uniform spread of services across space is in fact healthier. I heard of a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking, because people g…

I heard of a study recently that showed that cities in Japan that ended up getting Shinkansen stations ended up almost always shrinking, because people got used to going to Tokyo all the time and ended up just moving there. This is so counter intuitive. This is the exact opposite of suburbia. Faster and cheaper transport led to the growth of suburbs. Can the movement of people to Tokyo be attributed just to the faste…

Shinkansen isn't really priced to be a commuter rail service. Nagoya/Tokyo is roughly $90 each way.

Re: Hypnotized by Hyperloop

#200

Post by KKKKkkkk1 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 2:02 AM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #18

One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is almost infinite. If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of faster transport, distan…

How is demand infinte? Demand is a function of price. We could fly to London from NYC on supersonic jets for decades, but we decided that it's too expensive. How is transportation different from any other service industry?