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

Hyperloop One to shut down

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 490 posts

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#251

Post by MBCook »

bobthepanda wrote: post #225
abathur wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not no weather--water intrusion/management will still matter.

Also as a practical matter, a lot of systems stop running to discourage traveling; the underground may be safe but you still have to travel on the surface to your final destination

Subways work well, but I have a hard time seeing people travel long distances such as between metro areas knowing their entire journey would be underground.

Maybe people would get used to it. I don’t know.

I was only thinking of freight really since it doesn’t matter.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#252

Post by runarberg »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #144
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.

It is not in excellent shape. It is riding the coattails of investments made a century ago, optimizing profits through consolidation, relentless squeezing of costs, and minimal investment in growth. Freight rail companies have constantly reduced routes and cargo types while increasing latency, discarding just about everything in order to focus on low-cost bulk transportation of extremely high-tonnage regular loads li…

At the same time the infrastructure and their rolling stock is in horrible shape and in desperate need of upgrades and basic maintenance. Anybody who has ever taken an Amtrak knows all to well the hour long delays experienced because of a broken down freight train holding up the tracks further up. And those are on the shared tracks which are supposedly better maintained, I can only imagine how things are on the rest of the system.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#253

Post by seanp2k2 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #243
acdha wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>The reality is that cars are freedom and still superior from a continence and comfort standpoint.

Ask any Amazon driver; they much prefer peeing in bottles in the comfort of their own delivery trucks vs on trains.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#254

Post by hutzlibu »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #237
iampims wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's not half the battle. Undoing the zoning is 90% of the battle. Cycle paths can be added at a step by step basis and keeping some gaps isn't an issue and if some paths aren't used much initially there isn't a big problem. Also sometime a single line painted on the road is enough for a start. If businesses settle in dezoned area they need to attract an audience quickly, but the will be less attractive than the hy…

"Also sometime a single line painted on the road is enough for a start."

I have seldom seen this solution get respected by cars.

It is better than nothing, but it is a weak start, when the goal is save cycling.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#255

Post by bluGill »

GuB-42 wrote: post #242
GuB-42 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

We get the same about airplanes despite demonstration that it doesn't happen. Material science is far enough along to avoid anything with problems.

of course cost is something we can also make good estimates of.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#256

Post by diebeforei485 »

The original Hyperloop paper had a lot of gaps. How does the thing move in low speed until it's fast enough to have aerodynamic lift? Does it use wheels? I don't think the paper talked about it.

You do need a good business model and a solid technical foundation. Hyperloop needs a lot of technical work still. Arguably this was also true of SpaceX in the early days, but Elon (and the team he assembled) could execute before running out of runway.

I still think Hyperloop is worth working on, but it needs a lot of funding. The Boring Company will get to it eventually, because something like Hyperloop is required for the Mars colony.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#257

Post by hparadiz »

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…

I live in a place where sidewalks are everywhere but driving is just much more convenient. I'm lucky that there's a store within 1 mile. If I got a model 3 the payment would replace my current gas expenditure completely.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#258

Post by huytersd »

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.

But why? In the US we have so much room it just makes sense to lay more surface rail, which we already don’t seem to be able to do efficiently.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#259

Post by huytersd »

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!

Then the first time one of those little shuttles gets stuck in the tubes you’re gonna have to start digging things up. Not to mention the bad actors that have a pipeline to deliver all kinds of dangerous things right into people’s homes or you know just mess up the pipe system completely. It’s a terrible idea. Why not just have functional drone delivery, it just makes way more sense.

Re: Hyperloop One to shut down

#260

Post by bluGill »

api wrote: post #119
samtho wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Full self driving trains have been in servics for 20 years. nothing to innovate there
Post reply on HN