Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 175 posts

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#101

Post by andy_boot »

publicfig wrote: post #78
TheAnimus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly O/T. A buddy of mine was saying last night that his lady suggested looking at a hair regrowth product, on inspecting the packaging and marketing material he found the wonderful claim: "Up-to 4 times more effective than a placebo in clinical testing"

You would be surprised at how many medicines on the market compare effectivity to placebo. It's mostly done in instances where there is a chance that the drug may not even work. By comparing it to a placebo, you're as close to as you can be to leveling the playing field to show it is more effective than doing nothing.

ofcourse this claim also included the wonderful phrase: "Up-to " implying that several trials were not so effetive

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#102

Post by samstave »

swamp40 wrote: post #74
rorrr2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more surprised that more billionaires don't build crazy monuments of themselves or just some crazy ones with their name on it.

You mean like Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Ahyan: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2016841/Al-Futaysi-i...

WOW - he looks like an arabic George Bush.

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#103

Post by dntrkv »

btilly wrote: post #53
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is more "secret sauce" in Tesla than in SpaceX. SpaceX is doing great implementations of pretty conservative designs. In any case, both are "product" companies and benefit from patents less than "design" companies. Contrast SpaceX with Mojave Aerospace Ventures (the investment vehicle that owns the Spaceship One IP developed by Scaled Composites).

Everyone has criticized you based on how great SpaceX is. I'll go the other way. Tesla at its heart is "put a ton of batteries which were developed by other companies into an electric motor that drives a car." People have been trying this formula for over a century. Tesla happened to do it when battery technology was just good enough to work, with really good styling.

Before the Model S, purchasing an electric car would mean that you are sacrificing performance, luxury, styling, and range for a clean, efficient, electric car. With the Model S, the only sacrifice you make is the range. Everything else is on par, or better, than other vehicles in it's class. People aren't only buying it because it's electric, they're buying it because it's a great car.

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#104

Post by jmacd »

salimmadjd wrote: post #40

Every startup entrepreneur should learn image making and PR from Musk. For someone who is not very eloquent and a bit tongue-tied he has done an amazing job to become known as the premier visionaries of our time. This also includes making changes to his physical appearance by looking at his old images [1], [2] as well his name brand. [1] http://www.stepbrother.co.za/images/musk2.jpg [2] http://img.gawkerassets.com/im…

Wow, did he get hair plugs?

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#105

Post by btilly »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #63
btilly wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has criticized you based on how great SpaceX is. I'll go the other way. Tesla at its heart is "put a ton of batteries which were developed by other companies into an electric motor that drives a car." People have been trying this formula for over a century. Tesla happened to do it when battery technology was just good enough to work, with really good styling.

To say this is highly disingenuous, and disregards the massive amount of work into the energy management system researched by Tesla. Put a ton of batteries into a car? Yeah, that's how they get 265 miles to a charge. Clearly all other EV cars just need a ton of batteries to solve the range issue.

Of course it is disingenuous. Deliberately so, in exactly the same way that lightly dismissing SpaceX is disingenuous.

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#106

Post by wellboy »

ianstallings wrote: post #64

Musk is the modern day inventor/businessman of old. This project has to be the most impactful thing on my life he has proposed and I welcome it with open arms. Paypal was smart, Tesla is cool, Space X is plain bad a^^, but this could change everything. Coast to coast in hours, half hour from NY to DC. And it could make it much cheaper than air travel due to less energy usage overall.

I like the way you censored a^^ with a happy face. I will use that from now on :)

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#107

Post by schiffern »

X4 wrote: post #58
tocomment wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great idea! Wouldn't an underground tunnel be really expensive?

Let's bet whose idea comes closest, oh guess that's illegal in the USA and I don't bet anyway :) But betting for fun is legal right (seriously)? my idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046134 @cma's idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046081 ...

IANAL, but I thought enforcing a bet is what gets you into trouble.

While we're throwing out our Hyperloop hypotheses, I posted this a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4806458

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#108

Post by hnhater »

It'll work like the water system... efficiency from using gigantic pumps, safety from having so much distributed force that a problem in any point can't bleed off enough power to endanger the system.

It'll be a closed loop where the pumps take air from holes in the top of one end and push it through holes in the bottom of the other end. The holes will be spaced so that the upward-pushing force decreases over the loop as the upward-pulling force increases. This creates a slow acceleration at the beginning of the loop and a slow deceleration at the end of the loop. Some mechanical system will move cars from the end of the loop to the beginning (since there is no air force there). The speed at any given point is determined by how many of the up/down holes are behind/before the car, so speed in the center is incredibly fast.

The idea is pretty simple, it's just a matter of getting enough funding for the execution since the entire system must be constructed before any returns. Patents are a non-issue since you need government involvement to do it (even Musk isn't going to get a $6 billion loan on an unproved idea with unknown liability, need to get land rights, etc).

Re: Elon Musk to publish hyperloop design by August

#110

Post by rayiner »

btilly wrote: post #105
toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say this is highly disingenuous, and disregards the massive amount of work into the energy management system researched by Tesla. Put a ton of batteries into a car? Yeah, that's how they get 265 miles to a charge. Clearly all other EV cars just need a ton of batteries to solve the range issue.

Of course it is disingenuous. Deliberately so, in exactly the same way that lightly dismissing SpaceX is disingenuous.

I'm not "lightly dismissing SpaceX." I just think Tesla is tredding more unproven ground.
Post reply on HN