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Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

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Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#81

Post by whipoodle »

ferdbold wrote: post #71
christophilus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been said before elsewhere, but HN is the place to go to find out why your project will never succeed. I've seen many successful projects crapped all over here when they were in their infancy / pre-success days. "Stripe?! 3% fees! So dumb. We already have lots of payment gateways. It's not hard. You just have to {list of many tedious manual steps}..."

My favorite is Dropbox. "Store all my personal and/or corporate files on some third-party server?! DOA."

No, now it’s “why do they need 1500 employees for file syncing?!”

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#82

Post by rtpg »

christophilus wrote: post #57
batrat wrote: post #16

I see so many negative comments about this, but in my opinion everything has to start somewhere. It doesn't matter how crazy and impossible it looks, it will be done eventually (and we have plenty of examples). Maybe we will not teleport in 2 seconds across the globe or this project will die, who knows if we don't try. A little bit of optimism doesn't hurt. Just saying. And for Virgin, it's not my money, if they want…

It's been said before elsewhere, but HN is the place to go to find out why your project will never succeed. I've seen many successful projects crapped all over here when they were in their infancy / pre-success days. "Stripe?! 3% fees! So dumb. We already have lots of payment gateways. It's not hard. You just have to {list of many tedious manual steps}..."

There's also been plenty of valid criticism here as well...

"Hacker News hated Dropbox so..." Is a fun trope, but Dropbox still isn't profitable ;)

In seriousness I bet a lot of us go though the thought process that we want to give constructive criticism, since positive feedback isn't super actionable.

Feeling smarter than the rich people is always a good feeling too (and cheap, since we aren't even betting our own money )

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#83

Post by rakoo »

always_good wrote: post #78
ferdbold wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite is Dropbox. "Store all my personal and/or corporate files on some third-party server?! DOA."

More like "uh, how is this different from rsync?"

"Pfff I could just set up my own FTP server and mount it with curlftpfs on my machine. I don't see what's new"

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#85

Post by austenallred »

ferdbold wrote: post #71
christophilus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been said before elsewhere, but HN is the place to go to find out why your project will never succeed. I've seen many successful projects crapped all over here when they were in their infancy / pre-success days. "Stripe?! 3% fees! So dumb. We already have lots of payment gateways. It's not hard. You just have to {list of many tedious manual steps}..."

My favorite is Dropbox. "Store all my personal and/or corporate files on some third-party server?! DOA."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

> For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

This sounds like such an insane proposition relative to the Dropbox we know today.

The top comment is being pedantic that it doesn’t technically replace a USB drive because you have to install software and have access to the Internet. Hilarious in retrospect.

If the biggest complaint someone can have is “you have to have Internet” you’re doing OK.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#86

Post by hbosch »

Analemma_ wrote: post #21
kumarski wrote: post #8

Something I wrote a while ago.... w/ back of the napkin calculations....... Why I wouldn’t invest a money into Hyperloop - Stabilizing a single fault line risk pylon is more than $250K. - How many million are needed for vacuum pumps to evacuate 100+ million cubic feet of of pipe to 100 Pa? - Hot air discharge needs to go somewhere. For every 1 bar pressure, you need ~200 to ~400 cubic meters of volume which is larger…

When Musk first said that an LA SF Hyperloop could be built for 1/8th the cost of the equivalent HSR, I chuckled and then waited for the punchline, which still hasn’t arrived. It’s a cool idea and I do want to see more prototypes and feasibility studies, but people need to get off the hype train (no pun intended) and be realistic about the cost.

Okay, we'll bookmark this for the future. Amtrak estimated a HSR/"bullet train" from D.C. to Boston would cost ~$151 billion. Since LA to SF will only be two stops, and we can assume Amtrak estimated at least 4 (Philly and NYC) let's bring the number down closer to $100 billion to make it even.

Do we think the Hyperloop costs are more or less than that? 1/8 of a theoretical $100b is $12.5b -- is $12.5billion for Hyperloop unreasonable? I have no opinion on cost personally, and I don't know economics, but this $151 billion from D.C. to Boston was floated by the established US player in rail infrastructure. Anything less than that number is fantastic, right?

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#87

Post by M4v3R »

logicallee wrote: post #63
sschueller wrote: post #3

When are we going to address the elephants in the room? Just the tube alone: - largest pressure vessel in the world. How do you keep it at near vacuum? - Thermal expansion over such a large distance, especially if the top of the tube is warmer than the bottom. - Safety, how does an evacuation look like if the tubes are sealed?. There are many more. Some how I feel like this is a "pipe" dream. Lots of marketing, very…

Out of curiosity, have you ever built anything big? I say this because the tone of your comment is dismissive, however it seems quite low-effort. I can translate your criticisms into criticisms of building subways in 1863: - if you build a subway it will be the biggest underground railway ever built. - Rocks. They could fall in front of a subway car and cause a huge accident. - safety. what if all the lights and powe…

Also, planes are a terrible idea. I mean how do you evacuate people from them if something goes wrong? I think this whole airplane thing is just vaporware.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#88

Post by wallace_f »

rco8786 wrote: post #23
batrat wrote: post #16

I see so many negative comments about this, but in my opinion everything has to start somewhere. It doesn't matter how crazy and impossible it looks, it will be done eventually (and we have plenty of examples). Maybe we will not teleport in 2 seconds across the globe or this project will die, who knows if we don't try. A little bit of optimism doesn't hurt. Just saying. And for Virgin, it's not my money, if they want…

Right. Could you imagine what people thought/said around the advent of commercial airliners or heck, even automobiles?

My favorite historical example of this is that of the nautical screw.

Orwell mentions it in one of his lesser-known essays when discussing the problems with arguing about economics(1).

>"When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions. Finally, however, a distinguished admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of Norway and of Flanders [referencing economic questions]."

1 - www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_saw

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#89

Post by jgalt212 »

christophilus wrote: post #57
batrat wrote: post #16

I see so many negative comments about this, but in my opinion everything has to start somewhere. It doesn't matter how crazy and impossible it looks, it will be done eventually (and we have plenty of examples). Maybe we will not teleport in 2 seconds across the globe or this project will die, who knows if we don't try. A little bit of optimism doesn't hurt. Just saying. And for Virgin, it's not my money, if they want…

It's been said before elsewhere, but HN is the place to go to find out why your project will never succeed. I've seen many successful projects crapped all over here when they were in their infancy / pre-success days. "Stripe?! 3% fees! So dumb. We already have lots of payment gateways. It's not hard. You just have to {list of many tedious manual steps}..."

Stripe is an amazing enterprise, but we've yet to see whether or not it will delivery steady profits, and profits anywhere close to the 20 PE that stocks trade at.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#90

Post by simias »

batrat wrote: post #16

I see so many negative comments about this, but in my opinion everything has to start somewhere. It doesn't matter how crazy and impossible it looks, it will be done eventually (and we have plenty of examples). Maybe we will not teleport in 2 seconds across the globe or this project will die, who knows if we don't try. A little bit of optimism doesn't hurt. Just saying. And for Virgin, it's not my money, if they want…

Your types of comment annoy me more than harsh criticism frankly, at least criticism can be constructive, your comment is just fluff.

I mean, let's apply your logic to its logical conclusion: we should never criticize anything, ever, on the off chance it could end up working and then people would look back on our comments and call us silly. On that note I'm just starting a gofundme to create my own interplanetary travel agency, don't forget to donate.

Yeah, HN was wrong about dropbox (although some of the criticism was a lot more specific and arguably accurate than some make it up to be). Now let's fetch the comment threads about color.com, about google plus, about the ubuntu phone, about whatever other failed product we've already long forgotten about.

If HN is wrong about hyperloop, so what? You'll be able to gloat about it in a few decades from your supersonic train seat. In the meantime there are real, practical questions that need answering and that's a much more interesting discussion than "wow this is so coool" or "I wonder what Elon Musk's armpits taste like".

Do you think that the Hyperloop One folks are going to read this thread and give up on the project? "Well, looks like we were wrong, shut down everything folks". I can get this argument for a small startup of one or two young entrepreneurs but for some reason I don't expect Virgin Group to be that insecure.

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