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Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

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Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#441

Post by aninhumer »

Animats wrote: post #295

Maglev in a tube is a proven technology at full train scale. Here's the Chuo Maglev from the inside.[1] 500KPH in tunnels. They're not pumping down the tunnels, just plowing through on sheer power and money. The Chuo Maglev makes the Hyperloop One look like a toy project. Watch the video. They have a production-quality train, with tourists and whiny kids riding it, going 500km/h. They've hit 603km/h in tests, but don…

Hmm, I hadn't thought of the Chuo Shinkansen as "Maglev in a tube" before...

This makes me wonder, if hyperloop research develops reliable vacuum tubing, whether they could encase the overground sections of the Chuo Shinkansen to make it even faster...

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#442

Post by Hypx »

Matt3o12_ wrote: post #440
Hypx wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a good time to introduce the concept of survivorship bias. There's a fair chance that it was mostly luck, not ability, that it ultimately succeeded.

I don’t know there are a lot of people who have crazy ideas and succeed once despite all odds. Elon Musk did that twice at a very big scale with Tesla and SpaceX. Both companies were supposed to fail and yet the succeeded. And while it is not my generation I believe zip2 and PayPal also had pretty novel concepts which were supposed to fail back then too. He has just done it too many times to be just luck. Sure there…

There are far more people who tried crazy ideas and failed, and are promptly forgotten. The whole point of survivorship bias is that you have to be cognizant of the data points that failed and therefore aren't recorded, not just the ones that survived and are recorded.

According to this: https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reach... there are 27 million entrepreneurs in the the US. That's a large enough number that even if the chances of each individual entrepreneur having a big hit is just a few percentage points, then there are bound to be many entrepreneur who have multiple successive big hits. Especially considering how many people who are even tangentially related to a successful startup describe themselves a founder or co-founder, resulting in the padding of the success rate.

My point being is that we can't rule out the possibility of it all being luck or mostly being luck. Sure, it legitimately could be skill, but there is no way to know for sure, at least currently.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#443

Post by zimpenfish »

jdietrich wrote: post #439
biznickman wrote: post #94

The viability of Hyperloop One should not be the focus in the context of this article. That's not what this is about at all. It's that Hyperloop One needed Richard Branson on board because Elon Musk is creating his own competitor now. This is an incredibly smart move to ensure the survivability of the business from a publicity perspective. Branson has a history of doing things that people thought impossible or just a…

Branson owns both an airline and a high-speed rail service. He seems like an eminently sensible choice of partner for Hyperloop. The institutional expertise that Virgin Group are bringing to the table will be at least as important as the capital investment.

> Branson owns both an airline and a high-speed rail service.

I can't speak to the airline but the rail service is universally reknowned in the UK as "piss poor", especially since they get huge government subsidies.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#444

Post by zimpenfish »

neuronexmachina wrote: post #284
puranjay wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically Trump with more class?

...and fewer bankruptcies.

Although if you believe Private Eye about the state of Virgin's finances (convoluted, shifty, and blistering opaque), this may or may not be true.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#445

Post by flgr »

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…

> Das ist nicht gute.

Should be "Das ist nicht gut".

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#446

Post by Digit-Al »

buckminster wrote: post #208
corpMaverick wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your are correct and Branson knows it because he hired good engineering advisers. Why would Branson get involved ? - It is a cool project he wants to be part of and he is willing to pay to see. (I would probably do that) - The benefit is not to reach the goal but all the technology that will be invented trying to reach the goal.

Branson's business model is selling the right to use the Virgin brand to other companies. The article doesn't say he made an investment. It is rather more likely that they paid him.

> The article doesn't say he made an investment.

Actually, from the article:

> Hyperloop One has received a significant investment in Hyperloop One

And from the page linked to in that paragraph:

> Delighted to announce Virgin Group’s investment in Hyperloop One

Not exactly ambiguous.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#447

Post by speedplane »

Hypx wrote: post #442
Matt3o12_ wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know there are a lot of people who have crazy ideas and succeed once despite all odds. Elon Musk did that twice at a very big scale with Tesla and SpaceX. Both companies were supposed to fail and yet the succeeded. And while it is not my generation I believe zip2 and PayPal also had pretty novel concepts which were supposed to fail back then too. He has just done it too many times to be just luck. Sure there…

There are far more people who tried crazy ideas and failed, and are promptly forgotten. The whole point of survivorship bias is that you have to be cognizant of the data points that failed and therefore aren't recorded, not just the ones that survived and are recorded. According to this: https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/us-entrepreneurship-reach... there are 27 million entrepreneurs in the the US. That's a large en…

> "all being luck or mostly being luck"

Seriously? What, he flipped a coin a million times which determined what he's going to do next? How are you defining "luck"?

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#448

Post by daemin »

vidarh wrote: post #402
daemin wrote: post #165

Just as a thought experiment, could the promotion of these "hyperloop" projects be a clever political ploy to misdirect/divert attention and prevent a viable high speed rail network from being built? Elon's main business is electric cars and (one of) Branson's is airlines. So a reasonable competitor to both is fast and cheap(er) public transport along a major travel corridor in the USA. This means that by promoting t…

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 reven…

As I replied to an earlier sibling comment, Richard Branson tends to invest and distribute the Virgin name to a lot of companies, like a bigger angel investor that also helps with branding and marketing.

Also a lot of them end up going nowhere, much like with other Angel investing.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#449

Post by daemin »

jaredhansen wrote: post #185
daemin wrote: post #165

Just as a thought experiment, could the promotion of these "hyperloop" projects be a clever political ploy to misdirect/divert attention and prevent a viable high speed rail network from being built? Elon's main business is electric cars and (one of) Branson's is airlines. So a reasonable competitor to both is fast and cheap(er) public transport along a major travel corridor in the USA. This means that by promoting t…

Of all the problems facing construction of "viable high speed rail" in the US (they already exist in many other places), I don't think Hyperloop competition is among ... the top 50. Practically anything could be "a clever political ploy", but where's the evidence for this? Any in the absence of such evidence, why speculate? Just as a thought experiment, could HN user daemin's comments be part of a clever ploy to inve…

> Just as a thought experiment, could HN user daemin's comments be part of a clever ploy to invent a fake persona to distract from a SECRET AGENDA? ;)

If that were the case it would be one hell of a troll, set up an account for many years just for this one incident!

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#450

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

imron wrote: post #400
alphaalpha101 wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which won't do anything, because you can't magically make tunnelling cheap

You can't do it magically, but you can do it by improving the technology - see for example SpaceX.

SpaceX is cheap due to reuse and commercial of the shelf development compared to mostly military-government development.

Tunneling gets cheaper due to ? I would be interested.

I guess the Swiss would be interested too.

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