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The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

citylab.com

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Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#261

Post by britch »

ianbicking wrote: post #25
rayiner wrote: post #6

So what’s this fascination with tunnels? In Chicago, there are overhead elevated train tracks, and they work just fine. They seem a lot cheaper to build and maintain than tunnels. You can even build them over existing avenues. Why don’t we have more of that?

The El was built along with the city's expansion (often by developers who wanted to make new tracts of land accessible). That doesn't work for infill, where the intrusion and space the elevated tracks require aren't accounted for in current prices and expectations, and where right of way isn't established. If we had a Robert Moses of transit, then it could happen, just like the highways happened. There are no Robert…

How would elevation affect trip times? Is there a reason a subway would be faster than a raised platform?

I am not an expert but I don't see how digging tunnels is cheaper than building a raised platform, they both seem pretty expensive.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#262

Post by wongarsu »

bunderbunder wrote: post #170
toephu2 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has said Mars is the backup plan for earth. What if one day there is a disease or meteor that wipes out the entire human population on Earth? (e.g., see the dinosaurs) Even if the only appeal was the wild wild west and uncharted territory, what's wrong with that? Look at what exploring the Moon has brought us, many unexpected innovations and inventions useful for life on earth.

The meteor strike wiped out the dinosaurs, but not all life. Mars currently has no life. The strong implication is that, Earth post meteor strike would still be far, far, far more habitable for humans than Mars ever will be. As far as why describing Mars as Earth's backup plan rubs people the wrong way, I think it's a bit like Noah's Ark. While there is absolutely the cute story about the boat full of animals, and it…

> The meteor strike wiped out the dinosaurs, but not all life. Mars currently has no life. The strong implication is that, Earth post meteor strike would still be far, far, far more habitable for humans than Mars ever will be.

Sure, but nobody today is researching the technology to survive a post-dinosaur-meteor earth. If it gets developed at all that's due to our space programs and our desire to survive on the Moon and Mars. So unless we go there we won't survive the aftermath of that theoretical meteor.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#263

Post by SECProto »

ambicapter wrote: post #182
not_real_acct wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over a decade ago, when Amazon wasn't the powerhouse it is today, I dated someone who routinely interacted with Jeff Bezos. According to them, Bezos feels the same way. Amazon is basically a means-to-an-end, and that "end" is to get humanity into outer space, as an insurance policy in the event of a catastrophe on earth.

How come Bezos has never brought this up, ever?

He founded Blue Origin in 2000. For whatever reason, he is the opposite of Musk about his Space company - shares the barest minimum possible.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#264

Post by vkou »

petschge wrote: post #187
munk-a wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, it could be that the great filter is apathy and single world habitation for instance - maybe we've been really lucky in terms of asteroid collisions so far and putting our eggs in two baskets is the necessary step for survival. We don't know what the filter is, so it's sensible to reject pessimism and just keep on trucking.

The alt text on https://xkcd.com/893/ fits really well here: “The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.” -- Randall Munroe

And I postulate that "The universe is littered with one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic and game theory decision of having thousands of thermonuclear weapons pointed at eachother, hoping that MAD will make that whole bit of lunacy sensible." -- vkou

It's got about as much empirical evidence to back it as RM's postulate. (And a similar sample size of N=0)

Anyone care to get on the train for my pet issue, and get around to nuclear arms reduction, already?

The beauty of making arguments, based on observing experiments with a sample size of N=0, is that you can argue whatever the hell you want.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#265

Post by SECProto »

skywhopper wrote: post #162

The math on this is highly questionable: The contract posted on the LVCVA website projects an operating capacity of 4,400 passengers per hour using “autonomous electric vehicles at high speeds,” which might include a Tesla Model X or Model 3, or another Tesla chassis converted into a 16-passenger shuttle. There are two tunnels involved, so to manage to get 2,200 passengers through in one direction per hour, you're go…

> There are two tunnels involved, so to manage to get 2,200 passengers through in one direction per hour, you're going to have to get 36 passengers out of whatever vehicles and 36 passengers into those same vehicles every minute.

I have a quibble with this. The cars will have to be loaded at that rate, but they will not have to unload and load the same car in that time frame. Also, if the platform can fit multiple vehicles at a time, it gives them significantly longer to unload/load. Picture like a gondola or high speed chairlift at a ski hill - you unload on one side of the end loop, load on the other, and you're unloading/loading multiple cars at a time.

And high speed chairlift capacities easily reach thousands of passengers per hour

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#266

Post by [deleted] »

ambicapter wrote: post #182
not_real_acct wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over a decade ago, when Amazon wasn't the powerhouse it is today, I dated someone who routinely interacted with Jeff Bezos. According to them, Bezos feels the same way. Amazon is basically a means-to-an-end, and that "end" is to get humanity into outer space, as an insurance policy in the event of a catastrophe on earth.

How come Bezos has never brought this up, ever?

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#267

Post by dang »

bdcravens wrote: post #154
dang wrote: post #17

The submitted title was "No, the Las Vegas 'Loop' Is Not the Future of Public Transportation". That broke the HN guidelines, which ask submitters to use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait, and not to editorialize. We remove submission privileges from accounts who post like this, so please don't. Note: if this was the article's original title and, as sometimes happens, they changed it, then none o…

Current title is "Elon Musk’s $49 Million Las Vegas Loop Makes Perfect Sense—for Las Vegas"

Ah right, I skipped a step above: it's fine to use a subtitle if it represents the article in a more accurate and neutral way.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#268

Post by alaskamiller »

HALtheWise wrote: post #246
calgoo wrote: post #67

I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization. 1. Electric cars for transport, Check. 2. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check. 3. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport, check. 4. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check. 5. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there. Hopefully he will cont…

I see this point get made often, but I'm not sure it is an insightful way to look at the world. Tesla cars are only barely related to Mars colonization, and PayPal is not really at all, which is a product conveniently ignored in your post. Even the SpaceX internet satellite constellation looks almost nothing like what internet access on Mars will be anytime in the forseeable future. It seems like a similarly strong a…

Elon is new Steve Jobs is the new Jesus.

Anyone can foist one's own unbridled ambitions, mixed in with a dash of lottery dreaming, tossed in with a bit of hubris, to come up with whatever the bright shiny future could be.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#269

Post by wurst_case »

HALtheWise wrote: post #246
calgoo wrote: post #67

I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization. 1. Electric cars for transport, Check. 2. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check. 3. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport, check. 4. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check. 5. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there. Hopefully he will cont…

I see this point get made often, but I'm not sure it is an insightful way to look at the world. Tesla cars are only barely related to Mars colonization, and PayPal is not really at all, which is a product conveniently ignored in your post. Even the SpaceX internet satellite constellation looks almost nothing like what internet access on Mars will be anytime in the forseeable future. It seems like a similarly strong a…

The reason PayPal is ignored by most people is two reasons. 1. In its current form, it has less resemblance to what he wanted to do with it (its a better product because of this fact) and 2. He famously found the biggest hurdles for humanity and their solutions after selling PayPal and becoming a multi millionaire with nothing but time to spend it. Originally he wanted to put a mini greenhouse on mars as a media stunt.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#270

Post by indigochill »

embwbam wrote: post #213
jimmaswell wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's not our way forward. Forget the billionaires, we need to assemble, reinvest in our political system, and start building a better future from the ground up. Good luck with that. For now people like Musk and Gates are doing a pretty good job of things in various areas though.

I agree, it looks pretty hopeless sometimes, and I definitely appreciate what Musk and Gates are doing. I’d highly recommend reading “Winners Take All”, as it completely flipped my opinion on this subject. The author argues that giving up and trusting rich philanthropists to fix things further undermines our faith in the political system, requiring us to give billionaires even more power. And it distracts us from the…

Although I appreciate the sentiment, I actually think this is impossible.

Some people are going to be inherently extremely ambitious. Those people will compete/cooperate and somebody's going to come out on top.

Supposing you establish a system explicitly designed to stop this from happening, you need someone to enforce that system. Congratulations, you just created a role for the ambitious people to fight over.

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