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Hyperloop One to shut down

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Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#71

Post by Syonyk »

renewiltord wrote: post #44
Syonyk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the arrogance of modern Silicon Valley thinking is that "We are better, in every possible way, than older engineers, because we know code. " And Elon Musk seems very, very prone to this sort of thinking (or, at least, his companies do, and I think it comes from him). One example of many is the weird conversations he was having about sonic velocity robots and "lights out dreadnaught" sort of auto factories, wh…

Yeah, and because of that, today we have mainstream electric cars, an Earth blanketed with Internet from space, and the cheapest spacelift cost ever achieved. Any one of these would have cemented him as a premier industrialist. In the end, there's legions of Internet commenters who complain about Elon Musk in between complaining about their bosses or complain about Google and Facebook or what have you. And then there…

Musk was not instrumental in mainstream EVs. He was on the early wave of it, yes, but other companies had EVs out at the same time or before, and the price drop in lithium was obvious to everyone who was paying attention at the time. It would have happened one way or another.

Yes, we've ruined astronomy with a ton of LEO satellites, but we've got some internet in exchange (I'm rural, I have it, I'm quite honestly not impressed with what it delivers for how much I pay, and how inconsistent it is - on some days, it's quite good, on other days it's more or less dialup grade).

And we'll see how that lift capacity works. Everyone will continue insisting that Kessler Syndrome Won't Possibly Happen until about a year after it's happened, at which point, welp. It was fun while it lasted!

I've done computer security a bit too long, I think.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#72

Post by ghaff »

kiba wrote: post #67
ghaff wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a country with long distances, a well-developed interstate highway system, and a well-developed air transport system. There is a decent rail system in the Northeast and between some other city pairs. But there isn't and shouldn't be the political will to develop rail transport options that don't outcompete those other options especially with electric/autonomous driving becoming an increasing option over the coming…

Why would electric car improve our traffic situation? They're just more efficient than ICE cars. Maybe it will lead to smaller vehicles, but we could have used motorcycles instead. So you have self driving cars, which will probably improve traffic flow, but it's fundamentally limited by geometry. If people takes more car trips, this will reverse some if not all the benefit of self driving cars.

Traffic issues are mostly intra-city--not inter-city. I'm not sure anyone is really arguing against commuter rail (however bad it is in many cities). But about inter-city rail in many locations.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#73

Post by Syonyk »

TalkalotDragon wrote: post #62
Syonyk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the arrogance of modern Silicon Valley thinking is that "We are better, in every possible way, than older engineers, because we know code. " And Elon Musk seems very, very prone to this sort of thinking (or, at least, his companies do, and I think it comes from him). One example of many is the weird conversations he was having about sonic velocity robots and "lights out dreadnaught" sort of auto factories, wh…

There are advantages to not trusting the prevailing industry wisdom and trying things out on your own. like with Tesla they're ahead of other companies in multiple ways, but still behind in some aspects as well.

They've got a somewhat unreliable EV platform (the battery and drivetrain are fine, the rest of the car is fiddly at best), and have been instrumental in driving the auto industry away from "interfaces that work while driving" to "interfaces that assume self driving will happen any year now" in the past decade (I cannot stand touch screens while driving - they're an awful, awful interface for anything involving cars or airplanes).

And it's fine to not trust prevailing wisdom, but when you don't even bother trying to learn from them because "they're dumb dinosaur companies that don't even know code" (which has utterly nothing to do with reality), re-learning the same lessons yourself isn't some amazing foresight. It's simply a stupid waste of resources.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#74

Post by yigithan »

thechao wrote: post #12

There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.

Right, they can even do this for within city delivery. Imagine each home having a tube box, like a mailbox, that is vertically connected to the network of tubes underground. Small electric vehicles running through the tubes and carrying parcel from warehouse hubs to homes and even vice versa. Amazon Instant Delivery!

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#75

Post by seanmcdirmid »

darksaints wrote: post #55
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would want put in pure electric rail, since you don’t want to ventilate it to handle diesel fumes from the hybrid electric diesel turbine engines so common in the USA. Since the USA’s rail system is barely electrified at all, it would be a huge undertaking.

If you don't want to ventilate, it would likely need to be non-contact electric rail, unless you want the tunnels to have extremely high concentrations of ozone. The arcs from electric contact catenaries produce ozone, which is fine outdoors because of immediate dissipation and short half-life. Put it in a tunnel and you either have to invest in ventilation (what most subway systems do), or mitigation (via contactles…

There are lots of tunnels that do electric rail in Europe and China. Even that very long one in Switzerland. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel

I think it is using overhead wires.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#76

Post by vaidhy »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
Pet_Ant wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this kind of math because it really doesn't tell you much. What are the fixed costs? What's the maintenance? What are the costs to extend? If this is the cost now, what is the cost for the next phase? How much benefit are we getting out of those 2 miles? You comment reduced a complex issue to an elementary word problem in math.

> I hate this kind of math because it really doesn't tell you much. It tells you enough: Europe, more specifically Germany, builds HSR for about 40 million euros a kilometer [1]. This project here is 8 billion dollars for about 3.2km, or about 2.500 million dollars a kilometer - that is three orders of magnitude more expensive than Germany. [1] https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article171431132/Die-Beule-in...

I believe 40mill is the average across the network. The 8 billion is for a specific portion in a high CoL area with the majority being land acquisition costs. If you have a dig a new subway station in middle of Frankfurt, for an infrastructure that does not exist today, it would not be the average.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#77

Post by eesmith »

renewiltord wrote: post #63
Pet_Ant wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate this kind of math because it really doesn't tell you much. What are the fixed costs? What's the maintenance? What are the costs to extend? If this is the cost now, what is the cost for the next phase? How much benefit are we getting out of those 2 miles? You comment reduced a complex issue to an elementary word problem in math.

Ah, I see. Let me clarify. The amount of spending until it opens is at least $8 billion. It will then cost more through its usable life. Therefore, you're right. It will cost tens of billions once maintenance is included. As a comparison for how much benefit will be gained, presently 12000 people board transit at the 4th and King station every day. I suppose it's my fault for having underestimated the total cost of t…

Minor correction which changes nothing - at least $7.5 billion. Your source says "$729 million of the cost increase is attributed to a request that the federal government credit the costs of a train box at the terminal that has already been built."

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#78

Post by Gibbon1 »

renewiltord wrote: post #20
stuaxo wrote: post #6

It served its purpose of diverting attention (and so funding) from high speed rail, which is a threat to his business of selling cars. https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?lan...

CA HSR is going to spend $8b to connect 4th and King to the Transbay Terminal. That's 2 miles. At $4b/mi, the problem would be too much attention not too little https://sfstandard.com/2023/10/27/san-francisco-downtown-rai...

Well there is the plan to add a third runway to Heathrow. 1.5 miles of runway for $20B.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#79

Post by Moomoomoo309 »

ForkMeOnTinder wrote: post #40
vorticalbox wrote: post #7

Robert Goddard designed a vacuum train in the 1910s, why did Elon think it was going to work a century later?

fwiw electric cars date back to the late 1800s. There's no reason old ideas can't work well with new tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Early_development...

If there's been innovation on the fundamental problem, sure. We haven't really improved vacuum pumps that much, nor can we really fix the whole "one high-caliber bullet could implode the entire tunnel" problem yet.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#80

Post by korse »

thechao wrote: post #12

There is a world where we dig tunnels under federal highways, and stick freight trucks down there. They'd run on a monorail, at 120+ mph. Surface vehicles would be dramatically limited in terms of height, width, and length. Maybe people buses could go down there? In my imagination these tunnels are, like, 200' down. Like mole people.

Contrarian take, but tons of truck traffic on interstate highways makes driving far more fun (as long as there isn't road maintenance or undue stoppage).

I'm actually looking forward to future me being able to ride my motorcycle around a freight-train's worth of semi-automated cargo-haulers on interstates that are mostly devoid of vacationing families.

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