Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

Highly unlikely.

Branson's Virgin Group owns only 20% of Virgin Atlantic (don't let yourself be mislead by the Virgin name appearing all over the place - Virgin tends to start businesses, sell all or part of them when the opportunities are right, but continue to lease the name out to the buyers; the Virgin brand appears on dozens of companies with little to no Virgin Group ownership).

In 2016, Virgin Atlantic's revenue was less than 3bn GBP, with Virgin Group's "share" of that, just 600 million GBP (yes, I know it doesn't make sense to count it that directly; if looking at operating income instead, Virgin Atlantic's operating income in 2016 was ca. 150mn GBP), while Virgin Group's revenue was 20 billion pounds. So Branson's airline interests are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.

And Virgin Atlantic would not face much competition from high speed rail (the clue is in the name - Virgin Atlantic might in fact very well benefit from a high speed rail network if it meant the ability to offer customers faster/easier access to more of the US with fewer US destinations which would make it easier for them to compete with airlines with more comprehensive route networks).

Virgin Group also wholly owns a UK train operator - if they saw "regular" high speed rail as a good business opportunity in the US, odds are higher they'd invest in it than try to stop it.

This is a pet peeve of mine. It hurts not just the other cities in the UK, but London as well. We don't alleviate overcrowding in London by making it easier to move to London. We alleviate overcrowding in London by making more other locations economically stronger.

That should mean strengthening a region around Birmingham, faster links connecting the Leeds - Sheffield - Manchester triangle + tack on Liverpool, and a wide orbital around London improving connections between the towns around London that now are reduced to feeder/sleeper towns. There are towns around London that has decent direct rail tracks, but where the fastest rail route is a 2x-3x longer journey in to a London terminal and back out again. Actually run direct trains, and you suddenly have new viable commuter regions that bypass the centre.

Only after that should we think about making the links between these centres faster.

The problem of course is that many of these will need to be run at substantial losses for years before enough companies etc. will move/get established to change transport patterns, and it's so much easier to justify building more expensive routes where there is existing overcrowding.

Never mind that doing so just attracts more people.

I think GP could have a point with Dunning-Kruger applying to EM. Here's the main difference IMO: By far most people who experience the Dunning-Kruger effect have no way of self correcting, i.e. they don't recognise when they're wrong or they do when it's too late or they keep on their path nevertheless because of the sunken cost fallacy or vanity. EM on the other hand has proven to be very good at admitting and correcting his mistakes. That filter effect combined with simple uniform-density-spherical-cow type modelling for his initial guesses combined with some of the best computer simulation experts in the world seems to be enough to have catapulted his endeavours to orbit and back - both figuratively and literally.

Meanwhile Switzerland, one of the top most expensive countries in the world, has tunnelled at the base below the alps (one of the most difficult terrains to tunnel due to vertical sediment layers) for ~20B. Workers died on that project too, but that risk is simply being managed rather than grinding everything to a halt.

I'd argue it's absolutely possible to improve the cost on American public transit infrastructure by one to two orders of magnitude if you can simply get a way around government capture.

Go here and scroll down to "Select historical production vehicles" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

I grew up in the 70s and saw production electric vehicles that are not on this list. People have been chuckling for a long time and for good reason. It's not that electric vehicles won't eventually be successful -- they must. It's that the time from, "Hey, an electric vehicle would be a good idea" to "Hey, we've figured out all the engineering challenges to make this viable" is longer than the lifetime of most of the companies that entered the fray.

Look at the list of vehicles from before 1990. That's the "getting to the market first" list. All gone. Then look at the list from 1990 to 2010. How many of those will be major players in the electric vehicle market? My point is that I'm relatively old for someone on HN and there have been production electric vehicles since well before I was born. They only started to be viable in the last few years -- and even then, we probably need a few more breakthroughs in battery technology before the market settles out.

Long distance, super fast trains in tunnels? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen I saw the tunnel the other day. I was surprised that practically the whole damn length of the maglev tracks will be in a tunnel, but it makes total sense. That's been under construction for 10 years. They are optimistically expecting to make a profit in 2026 when "costs stabilise".

Will long distance, high speed trains in low pressure tunnels be successful? I have no doubt. Will Hyperloop One be successful? Umm... frozen balls of ice remaining intact in a very hot place probably have a better chance, but I won't say they will definitely fail. If they can secure something like a trillion dollars and invest it wisely over the next 30-40 years, then their chances will improve significantly.