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Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

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Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#471

Post by aninhumer »

speedplane wrote: post #458
danmaz74 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but the point of survivor bias is that there were 10 million people flipping coins for the first "moonshot" idea, and let's say 1000 succeeded; then those tossed the coin for the second moonshot and only 1 succeeded. Was the one who succeeded so much better than the other 1000, or mostly luckier?

But my point is that he didn't flip thousands of coins. He made thousands of calculated decisions. His thousands of decisions resulted in success. Others, with their own thousands of decisions did not. I don't see the "luck" here.

The point is, if enough of people are making decisions, success is not sufficient to distinguish a "calculated decision" from a lucky one.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#472

Post by dTal »

zimpenfish wrote: post #443
jdietrich wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you kidding? The Virgin carriages are insanely nicer than all the other ones; they feel like airline cabins, while other carriages feel like buses.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#473

Post by timthelion »

detritus wrote: post #179
dom96 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about that, but ever since the 'Traingate'[1] spectacle I've lost all respect for Branson. 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47fqjA8CwGE

For me the sheen came off his lustre a bit back when I was trading at festivals, and at his 'V' festival the only cola drink that was allowed to be sold on-site was the God-awful 'Virgin Cola'. Minded me of the sort of criticisms he'd level at the likes of BA back in days of yore...

There was never any lustre for me, the first thing I ever knew about "Virgin" was "virgin mobil, which was "free" if you'd click through ads. It was aimed at youth who didn't have much pocket money and I thought that was just awful that teens were clicking through ads to answer the phone.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#474

Post by timthelion »

Robotbeat wrote: post #323
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Elon Musk just waltzed into the high speed rail debate and Dunning-Krugered some crazy scheme I think it's incredibly important to segregate Musk's work, i.e. SpaceX and Tesla, from his proposals, e.g. the Hyperloop, modular infrastructure and other things.

Nah, the Dunning-Kruger thing applies equally well to Tesla and SpaceX. He had no experience in either field before starting those companies. It's just that he has, in spite of all probability, succeeded and so you see them in a different light.

I think having no experience is an advantage in industries which have become stagnant. If the industry is stagnant, than in a sense, most people in the industry is a failure. I'd compare this to visual programming. There is a small click of people in visual programming who have been at it for decades. They are failures, as none of their projects or ideas have had any value. Taking advice from them is worse than useless.

Edit: I changed what I wrote, so as to not claim that "everyone" is a failure, some people worling in visual programming are still having fresh ideas. But they don't have the attitude of being "industry insiders" the ones with fresh ideas are the least arogant and offputting to outsiders. They are the ones who are least likely to put someone like Elon down as being inexperienced.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#475

Post by dsfyu404ed »

ZoFreX wrote: post #460
bertil wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d separate: - longitudinal, predictable acceleration, where you can safely tell people to stay in their seats and all will be fine, I’m quite confident most humans would be comfortable with 1G horizontal that adds up to 1.5G diagonal: that’s basically a roller-coaster; it’s not too bad if you ease people into it, i.e. you minimise the jerk; - lateral, predictable acceleration, like one would expect in turns: not fa…

Lateral acceleration is much more annoying to deal with than longitudinal or vertical, even if it's constant. Perhaps they could tilt in bends to convert some of that lateral to vertical?

Banked corners are a thing. The problem is that when you have delays and vehicles operating at low speeds the track is still banked

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#476

Post by matt4077 »

biztos wrote: post #438
Robotbeat wrote: post #296

The biggest problem people have with Hyperloop is because it certainly seems like Elon Musk just waltzed into the high speed rail debate and Dunning-Krugered some crazy scheme that doesn't look anything at all like conventional approaches to the problem and thus doesn't jive with any common sense we might have built up around different transport methods. But that's kind of what Elon Musk does: he Dunning-Krugers hims…

In case anybody else was not familiar with David Dunning and Justin Kruger: "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability as greater than it is."[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

..and it's quite the charge to throw at the guy with the first commercial spacecraft and the leading electrical vehicle.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#477

Post by gsnedders »

zimpenfish wrote: post #469
gsnedders wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Virgin Trains (51% Virgin Group) and Virgin Trains East Coast (10% Virgin Group) pay large net premiums to the government (£153 million and £204 million respectively). The huge government subsidies go to Network Rail, a company wholly owned by HM Government, and are never seen by any of the train operating companies (except insofar as they are indirectly subsidised given they don't pay the full cost of maintaini…

https://www.tuc.org.uk/news/private-rail-operators-using-pub... Has a total net of -£225M from Virgin in 2013/4. This shows them as still being net-subsidised: http://orr.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/25757/rail-fin...

Both of those are including the Network Grant; note the ORR document gives Virgin Trains East Coast as paying a net premium in 2016–7 (which I hadn't been able to find figures for before) even including the Network Grant.

Note that apportioning the Network Grant based on percentage of track access charges isn't entirely fair: Virgin Trains notably pays above average per km as a result of funding agreements for the WCML Modernisation programme in the 90s/00s, and as such given the different funding agreements for different network improvements (with the shortfall mostly coming from the Network Grant since the demise of Railtrack plc) it doesn't really make sense to apportion the Network Grant in that way.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#478

Post by matt4077 »

Hypx wrote: post #437
Robotbeat wrote: post #296

The biggest problem people have with Hyperloop is because it certainly seems like Elon Musk just waltzed into the high speed rail debate and Dunning-Krugered some crazy scheme that doesn't look anything at all like conventional approaches to the problem and thus doesn't jive with any common sense we might have built up around different transport methods. But that's kind of what Elon Musk does: he Dunning-Krugers hims…

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.

Impress me once, you lucky. Impress me twice, I'll have to talk about survivorship bias.

Impress me four times, and I'll start misquoting Napoleon: "If he's been lucky that often, he's the General I want for this"

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#479

Post by athenot »

ZoFreX wrote: post #460
bertil wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d separate: - longitudinal, predictable acceleration, where you can safely tell people to stay in their seats and all will be fine, I’m quite confident most humans would be comfortable with 1G horizontal that adds up to 1.5G diagonal: that’s basically a roller-coaster; it’s not too bad if you ease people into it, i.e. you minimise the jerk; - lateral, predictable acceleration, like one would expect in turns: not fa…

Lateral acceleration is much more annoying to deal with than longitudinal or vertical, even if it's constant. Perhaps they could tilt in bends to convert some of that lateral to vertical?

Yes, and with no windows, there's zero correlation between acceleration and visual cues. That's a perfect recipe for motion sickness.

Re: Hyperloop One Becomes ‘Virgin Hyperloop One’

#480

Post by jcranmer »

m_mueller wrote: post #408
jcranmer wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You're starting with the wrong number. The $151B number is Amtrak's estimated cost for it's "shoot for the stars" plan. It…

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 b…

While American construction costs do seem to run higher than comparative costs in Europe and Asia, the multiplier is closer to something around 2-3×, not 10-100×.

The cost of the Gotthard Base Tunnel comes out to around $300-400 million / km. By comparison, the Second Avenue Subway comes out to around $800-1000 million / km (I'm subtracting a bit because the subway has three stops--which tend to be really expensive money pits--and the base tunnel does not).

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