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Hyperloop One to shut down

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Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#241

Post by yuppie_scum »

midasuni wrote: post #113
ghaff wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we could just get rid of that pesky Connecticut in the way

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#242

Post by GuB-42 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #129
Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hear the "catastrophic implosion" argument a lot but it doesn't sound right to me. I never shot at a vacuum chamber but my guess is that it will just create a leak, which is bad, will probably stop traffic for a while before it is repaired and the vacuum reestablished, but nothing catastrophic. A bomb would be a serious threat, the shockwave from both the explosion and rapid decompression, but I believe it can be m…

I am fine with the downvotes but if that because I am wrong, please tell me how.

I have yet to see a convincing simulation of how a would be hyperloop would behave of one were to poke a hole in it. And by convincing situations, I mean one with an appropriate model, that is a very long tube engineered to hold a vacuum.

An then you can downvote this post too, a good explanation is well worth a few karma points :)

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#243

Post by Der_Einzige »

acdha wrote: post #230
dougmwne wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve slowly lost my innocence when it comes to public transportation in the US. At this point I can see that 95% of the country is absolutely locked into low-density single occupancy transportation at least till we invent sky cars. We have trillions in sunk cost that covers nearly every road, every home and every business in America. We will never, ever be Europe.

Yes, and we have generations of people trained to think that walking further than a hundred feet is an extreme workout to be avoided and that transit systems are full of criminals. It seems like that culture is headed for a cliff, however, as the cost of cars continues to increase (the average sale last year was a year’s median pay!), budgets for road infrastructure become tighter, and climate change becomes harder t…

The people of Singapore pay a minimum of 100K for the privilege of owning a bottom tier car and the demand for cars there is overwhelming and insatiable, despite the world class and extremely clean mass transit systems.

The reality is that cars are freedom and still superior from a continence and comfort standpoint. Americans are insanely privileged to have cheap, powerful cars.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#244

Post by fallingknife »

dangus wrote: post #223
standardUser wrote: post #195

I think we should accept that, at least in the case of the US, most future transit infrastructure will be built on existing roads. Every other options is an order of magnitude more expensive. Plus, we have so many roads! If we didn't use them it the most inefficient way possible - cramming them full of giants cars for single people who also happen to be terrible pilots - we could get a ton of bandwidth out of them. A…

Incorrect. The US is made up of a huge swath of towns and cities that wouldn’t even exist without railways. https://vividmaps.com/railroads-in-america/ You say that every other method of travel is more expensive…but that doesn’t really pass the sniff test, does it? The Big Dig in Boston adjusted for inflation cost more than New York City’s “world’s most expensive stretch of subway.” The California high speed rail pro…

In the poorest countries the most common substitutes for driving are either just not traveling long distances or busses, not trains. Working train networks are very rare in third world countries. So, yeah, they are jumping on cars and highways, just not cars they own personally.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#245

Post by Der_Einzige »

iampims wrote: post #228
dangus wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands had a very similar problem and made very simple and inexpensive changes to roadway planning. For one thing, I think a lot of American suburbs could be way more bike friendly if people just had a safe path to ride in. We are talking a half a lane worth of pavement. Another thing is that this isn’t all or nothing. Still owning and perhaps needing a car but reducing the number of trips per week is a win.…

Roads safe for cycling is half the battle. The other half is around zoning and mixing residential with businesses.

Legalize biking on the sidewalk nationwide. I don’t want to bike on the road for any reason. Bikers have far far lower chances of hurting pedestrians than cars do of bikers.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#246

Post by 1920musicman »

A bit off-topic, but still in the general domain of the future of transportation...

Is anyone building autonomous medium size containers today (about van-sized)? Basically a container without a cabin, fairly slow moving, very conservative in terms of traffic, that can drive at night within city limits and drop off reusable smaller containers with packages for entire apartment complexes? This seems to me like a reasonable solution for where we are headed in terms of buying everything online. Many apartment buildings in SF already have Luxer One systems, now we need to start delivering packages in bulk daily (or N-times per week), instead of making individual trips.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#247

Post by louthy »

heads wrote: post #166
yuliyp wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like railroads but worse. What's the advantage? Tunneling is incredibly expensive to do, yet you're proposing it in a situation where it'd need enough coverage so as to ban large freight transport over roads.

I’m not arguing with you here but it would be interesting to know what about tunnelling is fundamentally expensive. Things I can think of: it is slow, so you burn through a lot of wages. To compare with road building the only major road I can think of, built in my lifetime, was the M40. It is 90 miles long and took 4 years to build but I don’t know what the cost was. The channel tunnel is much smaller than a freeway…

London's Crossrail (Elizabeth Line) is probably a better example of the cost of a modern tunnelling project (at scale)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#248

Post by bluGill »

JohnFen wrote: post #123
chrisco255 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The tech is fine, right? No, the tech is not fine. There are really serious, showstopper issues with it. Issues that were known way back in the early 1900s and there is still no feasible way to overcome them.

Even if there was we can estimate costs and conclude cost would be too high

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#249

Post by 4death4 »

1920musicman wrote: post #246

A bit off-topic, but still in the general domain of the future of transportation... Is anyone building autonomous medium size containers today (about van-sized)? Basically a container without a cabin, fairly slow moving, very conservative in terms of traffic, that can drive at night within city limits and drop off reusable smaller containers with packages for entire apartment complexes? This seems to me like a reason…

Convenience always wins. Reusable containers are not more convenient than disposable paper, therefore it's unlikely to be successful. That and "slow moving, very conservative in terms of traffic" sound like a miserable thing to unleash on the streets, even at night.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#250

Post by seanp2k2 »

dougmwne wrote: post #201
standardUser wrote: post #195

I think we should accept that, at least in the case of the US, most future transit infrastructure will be built on existing roads. Every other options is an order of magnitude more expensive. Plus, we have so many roads! If we didn't use them it the most inefficient way possible - cramming them full of giants cars for single people who also happen to be terrible pilots - we could get a ton of bandwidth out of them. A…

I’ve slowly lost my innocence when it comes to public transportation in the US. At this point I can see that 95% of the country is absolutely locked into low-density single occupancy transportation at least till we invent sky cars. We have trillions in sunk cost that covers nearly every road, every home and every business in America. We will never, ever be Europe.

Sky cars won't happen in this lifetime due to a few factors, not least of which is inefficiency in overcoming gravity at a speed sufficient to maintain flight in air as dense as ours in here on Earth. The other factors are obviously we'd need a whole lot more airports or some kind of safe VTOL aircraft, and when it comes to safe, just look at how people currently operate motor vehicles in the US...not gonna happen. Tons of regulatory hurdles too, not to mention things like parking.

The solution to this problem as has been shown by most other civilized countries on this planet is trains, yet in the land of rugged individualism and capitalism, it's somehow not viable.

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