541–550 of 800 posts
Did anyone else notice that cars being lowered leaves a giant fucking hole in the middle of the street?! This is a marketing fluff video untouched by engineers
uh duh??? Ever heard of a concept? How many concept cars actually get released as the "marketing fluff" that you see in auto shows?
It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on HN, but at least on general news websites). I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack…
>I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct. The latter are also aware of survivorship bias
I think that taking advice from those who failed is as important as from those who might suffer from a "survivorship bias". I am sure most of these failed startups initially followed Musk's (et al.) "impossible is nothing" mantra before venturing out into the market.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of people that can fit in 1 car is roughly maxes out at 4-7 people, depending on the car. There needs to be enough spacing between each car so that in the case of a failure, cars have space to brake to a stop without catapulting the people in it, or causing them to become overly nauseous. So there's going to be a decent amounnt of spacing between each car. The number of people that can fit on 1 bus can hit…
A well managed train system can manage 1 car per line per 5 minutes. 2000 * 60 / 5 = 24,000 people per hour. Highways can handle 2,000 - 2200 vehicles per lane or so at the low end 1/12 but that's very much an edge case. Most lines are closer to one train every 20 minutes and you can average 3 people per car which makes them equivalent. The real issue is not highways, but what happens when people try and get off or o…
This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significan…
Except the monoculture here doesn't account for just how terrible buses and trains are. Mass transit is fundamentally superior and realistically inferior. The second any rational actor has the economic advantage necessary to not ride in a box packed with people of questionable hygiene they'll chose option #2 no matter the negative externalities. I love this place but people aren't packets in your stream, they activel…
:: raises hand :: I can easily afford to drive and park. I bus to work instead. No time difference. A number of people are like me.
(the fact that buses allow people who aren't very well house trained on board is a matter that needs to be addressed, no question about it)
This looks really cool. However, boring through rock is the most expensive way to connect 2 places. It only makes sense if the land features or purchase value require it. Fundamentally, this is about short-circuiting the regular road network and establishing a managed packet network that can bypass congestion. Interestingly, that's also the value proposition of public transit, though it also runs into issues of cost,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and engineers with real knowledge and influence in this field, I'm astonished by the total lack of vision. Even in London, where you have a major, successful transport engineering project (Crossrail) completing, and an entire city de…
> He may well be out of touch, but at least Musk's suggesting a real solution to current transit problems, even if it's impractical. He's proposing the transportation equivalent of a personal computer with perfect security, completely crash free, 1000x faster than current PCs that cost lesss tha. We have today. It's not impractical, it's laughable. > On the other hand, whenever I read stuff by politicians and enginee…
This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significan…
> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem As rockets were before Space X? It costs a billion dollars per mile to dig a subway tunnel. If the costs could be brought down, it would change a lot about the way we build mass transit systems.
Also, fwiw, I think cut and cover is a much better approach, despite the street level disruption. Ce la vie.
The question is if he can drop those costs substantially. I certainly wish him the absolute best in doing so. But, if he's going to propose building transportation systems with huge operational costs (SOV tunnels), they had better be efficient in the cost per rider mile and competitive with other technologies.
It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on HN, but at least on general news websites). I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack…
I think it's more nuanced than that. You can break down the world into the 99% that "know" that it's impossible. They'll never invent that world-changing thing. That leaves 1% that "don't know" that it's impossible. Of that 1%, 99% will try and fail. The remaining 1% of the 1% succeed, like George Dantzig (who came late to a Stats class at UC Berkeley, thought some problems on the board were homework, and a few days…
The Boring Company however, yeah, he messed this one up.
HN is full of Elon fanboys. I'm one myself. The die hard, willing to say "the world is flat" fanboys are out here defending him. Look, I like Elon. But the sane fanboys are trying to save Elon a lot of headache by not pursuing this venture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding the boring expense, an NTBM[1] or subterrene[2], is said to be cheaper and faster. [1] http://www.sheepletv.com/nuclear-tunnel-boring-machines-swit... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterrene My impression is the boring feasibility and costs will not be the limiter of a very cool tech like this happening, but a more boring practical cost, probably the "zoning" cost required to get compliance and permiss…
Considering the name of the company, maybe they have invented a radical new way to reduce boring costs?