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Hyperloop One to shut down

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Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#111

Post by panick21_ »

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?

Have you actually read the bluepaper on it? Its really quite a different system.

I think the idea was wrong and wouldn't actually work. But the assertion that its simply exactly the same isn't the case.

That said, even if an idea is old, that doesn't mean a new take isn't warranted. They considered rocket re-usability in the 1960 and tried in the 1970. EV are 100+ years old.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#112

Post by _ea1k »

chrisco255 wrote: post #102
_ea1k wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to guess that he didn't expect it to work. He never invested significantly, and there must be a reason. The simplest reason seems to be that he expected it not to work, at least with current technology.

The tech is fine, right? It's the long game you have to play with regulators and state and local officials to get right of way to build the tracks or tubes in the first place. Under current regulations, it would take a decade of intense focus and politickin' to probably achieve a minimal viable example.

It doesn't sound like anyone demonstrated the technology as originally described. Trains in tunnels are possible, of course, but probably not the super high speed, air cushioned thing that was envisioned.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#113

Post by midasuni »

ghaff wrote: post #69
jgeada wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Northeast, what "decent rail system" are you talking about? Acela takes 3h44m from Boston to New York. Not much faster than the scheduled buses (4h15m) and comparable to driving the distance in your own car (3h55m if you stick to the speed limits)

I hate driving into Manhattan. I'd much rather take rail relative to the alternatives even if it takes longer and maybe costs more (especially leaving aside parking). And many others do as well even if it would be faster to drive. And generally Manhattan is pretty walkable once you're there.

Boston to NY is 215m, it should take at most 90 minutes by modern train, 2 hours by century old lines.

York to London is 215m and 2 hours, along a line that’s nearly 200 years old. Paris ti Lyon is 290 miles and takes 2 hours on a 40 year old track.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#114

Post by notahacker »

yigithan wrote: post #74
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!

They built a tunnel just for mail trains between postal offices in London in the 19th century. You can even go down there now https://www.postalmuseum.org/event/tunnel-walks/

I'm... not convinced it scales well, cost-wise!

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#115

Post by r-w »

chrisco255 wrote: post #106
ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

As I recall Musk stated publicly that the only reason he pushed Hyperloop was to derail the California High Speed Rail initiative. In that regard it was somewhat successful. [1] “He admitted to his biographer that the reason the Hyperloop was announced—even though he had no intention of pursuing it—was to try to disrupt the California high-speed rail project” -- https://gizmodo.com/silicon-valleys-transportation-fail…

To "disrupt" it in that context was meant in the startup vocabulary, it means to improve some existing thing. The high speed rail project in CA is a testament to the dysfunctionality of that state when it comes to building infrastructure.

Not true. See the author: https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?lan...

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#116

Post by solardev »

mschuster91 wrote: post #43
resolutebat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US freight rail network is in excellent shape. It's the passenger network that's in shambles.

> The US freight rail network is in excellent shape. The German rail network is in shambles - but compared to how some American freight rail looks like, even that is more like Japan's excellent railways... I've seen far too many examples like [1] for my liking on youtube. This kind of shit would actually land you jail time here if you as a responsible person would let a train run there. Or this legit, on-camera derai…

In the US we really believe in efficiency and cost savings, so our freight trains double as roller doasrers. Whee!

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#117

Post by wnevets »

slyall wrote: post #100
wnevets wrote: post #47

What I never understood about that fiasco is that after it was decided to just throw some Teslas in a tunnel, why weren't they fully self driving? Isn't a one way tunnel without traffic or real world conditions like weather a perfect place to use it?

Thats The Boring Company. Musk's other tunnel idea. Dodgy but not yet bankrupt.

I thought the plan was to put hyper loops in tunnels made by the boring company? There are too many failing pieces to keep track of.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#118

Post by jibe »

Syonyk wrote: post #71
renewiltord wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

other companies had EVs out at the same time

Who? And how did they mainstream EVs more than Tesla? Fisker was in the market early, but didn’t mainstream EVs. GM was in way early, but probably held the market back.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#119

Post by api »

samtho wrote: post #54
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…

I don’t personally agree with a lot of what Musk says or does, but I do commend him for his propensity towards (literal and figurative) moonshots in the name of innovation. This is a refreshing take when most startups have a goal to exit in X number of years and the previously agile, lean, and innovative company becomes beholden to showing quarterly returns the moment they have the capital available to them to drive…

Musk succeeded where his companies tried to disrupt extremely moribund or set in their ways industries.

SpaceX disrupted the space launch industry, which had not advanced at all since the 1970s. SpaceX really just picked up and ran with the idea of vertical landing reusable rockets, which was not new. Werner von Braun was exploring it for Saturn V back in the 60s, and Lockheed finally did it at prototype scale with the DC-X in the 90s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o (You can see at the end that the DC-X even does the same "hover slam" maneuver as Falcon 9 to land with maximum propellant efficiency.)

Tesla was similar. Auto manufacture itself isn't moribund, but old school auto makers always hated EVs and resisted doing anything serious with them. Tesla's rise was a classic exploitation of the innovators' dilemma by calling them on this and forcing their hand. Now that some are embracing EVs, Tesla is facing increasingly stiff competition but has at least carved out a brand.

Musk has not been particularly successful competing in less moribund industries. The Boring Company is kind of a flop. Neuralink seems questionable so far, to say the least. The Hyperloop, even if it worked, wouldn't be competitive at all with high speed rail on cost. It'd be faster and in theory more energy efficient but nowhere near enough to compensate for the added capital cost or complexity.

Now if Musk had created, say, a rail transport division of Tesla he could have absolutely disrupted rail transport which is another fairly sluggish moribund industry. Imagine modern unmanned trains (FSD on rails is WAY easier than on roads) with batteries to allow them to span un-powered sections of track and recharge on sections with third rail or overhead catenary wires. But that would have been a threat to the car market. Innovators' dilemma anyone?

My point is that Musk isn't superman... he just picked industries that were ripe for disruption and built teams that executed well enough to succeed.

Of his companies SpaceX is by far the most impressive in its own right. What Tesla did could have been done much much better by a "legacy" car maker if they'd been willing to disrupt their ICE business. Nissan actually beat Tesla to market with an affordable mass market electric (the Leaf) but didn't put as much heart into it. The result was okay but not nearly as cool as what Tesla did, especially in Tesla's glory days. (I own a Leaf and have no complaints, but it's not sexy.)

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#120

Post by JohnFen »

resolutebat wrote: post #30
hnbad wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US rail network wasn't in such a state of disrepair and freight trains weren't miles long to cut labor costs, you wouldn't even need to dig tunnels for them. That also saves the cost of digging those tunnels and actually making them safe (i.e. having service tunnels, ventilation, fire escapes, fire suppression systems, etc etc). And of course with tunnels you'd want rail anyway because you don't want to be stu…

The US freight rail network is in excellent shape. It's the passenger network that's in shambles.

The US has no passenger network. It's all freight rail. Passenger trains run on the freight network (and freight always get priority).
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