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Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

businessinsider.com

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Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#11

Post by tsimionescu »

ketzo wrote: post #2

Bummer. Musk-hyped moonshot or not, I thought Hyperloop presented an incredibly exciting vision for the future of mass transit. Even if it was always going to be a long shot, it’s disappointing to be right. Edit: replies saying "this never could have worked" are missing the point to a pretty hysterical degree. You don't know that. No one knows that! Unless you are from the future or are a genius-level mechanical engi…

It's a vision out of the 1800s [0], and one that is obviously never going to work. It's simply not possible/useful to create the necessary vacuum, and the requirement for near straight-line tracks is extraordinarily expensive.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#13

Post by gjs278 »

ketzo wrote: post #2

Bummer. Musk-hyped moonshot or not, I thought Hyperloop presented an incredibly exciting vision for the future of mass transit. Even if it was always going to be a long shot, it’s disappointing to be right. Edit: replies saying "this never could have worked" are missing the point to a pretty hysterical degree. You don't know that. No one knows that! Unless you are from the future or are a genius-level mechanical engi…

No post body was provided.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#14

Post by daniel-cussen »

protomyth wrote: post #5

There are a lot of reasons standard rail in the US is cargo centric. Profit and a much easier customer service case are big ones. Also, sending cargo in a new transportation system is much easier and less lawsuit prone than people. An old story in the US since the post office basically made airplane travel viable via postal contracts.

Radio too, Marconi suggested to the Italian Post they use radio for mail.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#15

Post by yread »

izzydata wrote: post #4

I find it quite surprising that they only fired half and not all of them. How can this conceptual vacuum tube pod system that has been shown to be incredibly inefficient and prohibitively expensive still have some kind of business model? To be honest I thought this whole idea got scrapped 5+ years ago.

You don't need business models when you have a reality distortion field and 450M investment

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#17

Post by sneak »

fredley wrote: post #6

I still don't understand why there is any interest in this concept, either for freight or passenger transport, over a regular train.

Vastly higher speeds is the reason it would be valuable if it can be made economically feasible.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#18

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

izzydata wrote: post #4

I find it quite surprising that they only fired half and not all of them. How can this conceptual vacuum tube pod system that has been shown to be incredibly inefficient and prohibitively expensive still have some kind of business model? To be honest I thought this whole idea got scrapped 5+ years ago.

It's a bootstrap for Mars construction. Hence the undersized tunnels. Mass transit is just a cover story.

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#19

Post by colinplamondon »

Boring Company seems clearly focused on hyperloops as the long-term goal.

They determined that construction of tunnels would be orders of magnitude faster on approvals than above-ground construction.

With that approach, tunneling construction is the key technological block. With SpaceX and Tesla's know-how, the actual construction of a hyperloop is rather de-risked.

By keeping laser-focused on tunneling tech, they build the muscle around the regulatory process, get cities and states to trust them, and show operational competence in operations.

Once they do a intra-state system in a friendly regulatory environment (FL/TX, ala Austin -> San Antonio or Tampa -> Orlando), they'll built a corporate machine that's tunneling dozens of underground highways across the country.

At that point, building new tunnels as a hyperloop will be a reasonable mid-term goal.

Loop 2020's -> Hyperloop 2030's

Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel

#20

Post by chucksta »

protomyth wrote: post #5

There are a lot of reasons standard rail in the US is cargo centric. Profit and a much easier customer service case are big ones. Also, sending cargo in a new transportation system is much easier and less lawsuit prone than people. An old story in the US since the post office basically made airplane travel viable via postal contracts.

Glossing over the fact that almost all the railways in the US are privately owned by cargo companies which prioritize their cargo over transport. Huge reason Amtrak struggles so much
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