Perhaps sending Burritos would be more profitable:
https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...
Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
41–50 of 155 posts
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#42I 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.
It's a fine research project, but in terms of offering actual transportation services to people, there are a thousand more effective things to do to make high-speed rail services available, convenient, and economical.
High-speed rail is slower than a plane, sure, but it's way faster than a car.
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#43Kind of OT, or maybe not. But why didn't Musk (or anyone else) go with Maglev tech? The efficiency seems ok, and it probably doesn't matter if you do it above vs below ground, and it's deployed around the world now.
Virgin Hyperloop uses maglev. The main difference between what they're doing and everyone else, is that they put their whole track in a giant airtight pipe, and pump air out of the pipe so the train can travel with less air resistance.
You don't really need to remove air resistance to beat Amtrak though.
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#44The letter “r” is also being laid off
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#45Kind of OT, or maybe not. But why didn't Musk (or anyone else) go with Maglev tech? The efficiency seems ok, and it probably doesn't matter if you do it above vs below ground, and it's deployed around the world now.
This article about Virgin Hyperloop and they did basically use Maglev.
The Musk blue paper by Musk does not.
https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperl...
> A viable technical solution is magnetic levitation; however the cost associated with material and construction is prohibitive. An alternative to these conventional options is an air bearing suspension. Air bearings offer stability and extremely low drag at a feasible cost by exploiting the ambient atmosphere in the tube.
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#46Vacuum travel in a a tube does actually make sense. It may not be viable (yet?) but the idea is sound. A big problem is a breach in your vacuum. Keeping the atmosphere out is expensive. But what if where you’re building it has no atmosphere and is geologically stable or dead? Then a lot of problems go away. You don’t even need a tunnel necessarily. Yet another reason why colonizing the Moon makes 1000x more sense tha…
Colonizing the moon makes sense because you can easily build hyperloop on it?
If you have a helium 3 reactor, yes.
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#47I still don't understand why there is any interest in this concept, either for freight or passenger transport, over a regular train.
Why do articles about fusion power keep hitting HN over regular nuclear power?
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vastly higher speeds is the reason it would be valuable if it can be made economically feasible.
How long does it make sense to investigate that question?
Practically speaking, as long as they can convince people with control of capital (including the US gov't) that it's worth investigating.
The proper answer to your question requires information you're not going to get by asking HN, it's like asking how much time we should spend investigating fusion power. It completely depends on what leads people have, how promising the those leads look, how many "hard steps" are ahead of us, the benefit if we made it past them, etc.
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#49I still don't understand why there is any interest in this concept, either for freight or passenger transport, over a regular train.
Because the current passenger rail “system” in the US is horrendous.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong, but how does putting a train in a vacuum tube solve the problems we currently have with passenger rail?
Re: Hyperloop lays off half of its employees as it pivots away from passenger travel
#50I still don't understand why there is any interest in this concept, either for freight or passenger transport, over a regular train.
Innovation is dead and its rotting corpse is used to scam foolish investors.