111–120 of 196 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chemical plants, on the whole, seem to manage pressurized systems quite well.
Yeah, but these tend to be enclosed inside of a factory, with no external factors like cable-seeking machines (i.e. your average backhoe) or terrorists to take into account.
What problem is this system trying to solve? It seems to be, in this initial deployment, that the office park is too far away from the restaurants its employees want to visit, compelling them to drive there. I feel like a better solution would be permitting denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them or paying for a delivery…
They want a solution for today, not decades from today which is what urban planning would take. But also they likely want the neighborhood they built/moved to. They don’t want to live in a super dense mixed use plaza. They also want solutions that the plethora of communities like theirs can replicate. They just want a little upgrade to their bucolic life. They don’t want to hit the reset button. It seems way more reasonable to upgrade than try to reinvent it.
What problem is this system trying to solve? It seems to be, in this initial deployment, that the office park is too far away from the restaurants its employees want to visit, compelling them to drive there. I feel like a better solution would be permitting denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them or paying for a delivery…
And/or encouraging more use of things like bikes. I'd bet that painting a bike lane and putting up concrete barriers is cheaper than trenching out a three-quarter mile pseudo-pneumatic-tube-system.
> The pipe is 18 inches wide — large enough to fit 40 banana Americans will use literally anything except the metric system. And bicycles, I guess.
Heck, try to get them to use their legs. We had neighbors two houses over that would always DRIVE to visit us - from their house. They thought our car was broken down whenever I walked half a mile to the grocery. America is weird.
If any Dutch entrepreneur is listening: I have been dreaming about the same delivery mechanism for the Netherlands. Difference with Atlanta? There are canals everywhere, inside and outside the cities. It might be possible to just lay a waterproof pipe at the bottom of many existing canals to create an extremely cheap network for autonomous robotic deliveries.
It feels like repairing such a system would be significantly more difficult - if you get a crack or a leak, your whole system is suddenly flooded, and if you need to repair just one section, you have to find a way to keep the rest dry.
However we're talking about fairly shallow canals (a few metres). I wonder what is the failure rate for reasonably priced semi-flexible prefabricated pipes with a diameter of maybe a metre, or even less.
If any Dutch entrepreneur is listening: I have been dreaming about the same delivery mechanism for the Netherlands. Difference with Atlanta? There are canals everywhere, inside and outside the cities. It might be possible to just lay a waterproof pipe at the bottom of many existing canals to create an extremely cheap network for autonomous robotic deliveries.
why not use boats, on the surface of the water?
Boats are much more like traditional vehicles: they need to take in account the existing traffic, navigate a complex environment, and deal with weather conditions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And/or encouraging more use of things like bikes. I'd bet that painting a bike lane and putting up concrete barriers is cheaper than trenching out a three-quarter mile pseudo-pneumatic-tube-system.
Have you spent any time in Atlanta in August? Biking outside is not just biking, but also swimming - through the humidity. I don't mind it (avid all-season mountain biker) but most office workers wouldn't opt for that in their fancy office clothing just for a sandwich.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heck, try to get them to use their legs. We had neighbors two houses over that would always DRIVE to visit us - from their house. They thought our car was broken down whenever I walked half a mile to the grocery. America is weird.
Not sure why you're downvoted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you spent any time in Atlanta in August? Biking outside is not just biking, but also swimming - through the humidity. I don't mind it (avid all-season mountain biker) but most office workers wouldn't opt for that in their fancy office clothing just for a sandwich.
Seems to work fine for singapore / dc.
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Seems like it would be to me. So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there and it can tolerate many imperfections in the tube. Pneumatics need a tight seal to the tube and thus cannot tolerate imperfections.
> So long as you monitor your battery charge you know the vehicle will get there ahem, a BEV has __a lot__ more failure points than just "empty battery"... sending a complex machine down a tube will _always_ carry the risk of the complex machine reading down. pneumatic tube "vehicles" are simple, they can not break down. I am not an expert, I don't know which one is better or more reliable, but your claim that once y…
I don't know how the factors compare, but tubes are not perfect.