
Hypnotized by Hyperloop - awiesenhofer
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/hypnotized-by-elon-musks-hyperloop
======
dalbasal
One feature of the transport market (from a mile high view) is that demand is
almost infinite.

If you can get 40kms in 45 minutes, then you can live within 40 miles of work
and commute in that time. If you could go 400kms, then that becomes your
commuting radius. We've seen people spread this way as earlier mechanized
transport was invented. IE, average commute times didn't go down because of
faster transport, distance traveled (KMs consumed) went up. Total commuting
time can even increase as transport gets faster/cheaper.

If I could get to hong kong in 15 minutes, I might go there this afternoon for
some dumplings.

That creates some strangeness in transport. You can't really solve transport
the way people want, which is to make getting where they're going
better/faster. If you could get there faster, more people would be going there
(congestion) or maybe you would be living farther away.

This definitely doesn't mean it's not worth innovating, just that predicting
how this will play out can be unintuitive.

~~~
ardit33
Yes, but it creates huge economic positive impacts

1\. You can live in a less expensive area, (i.e. miles away), and work in a
major center. This makes both possible of talent being able to live cheaper,
and be able to work where they want (less geographical restrictions), which
unlocks greater efficiency of the work place.

2\. The alternative? Most people living with few tens of miles of workplaces,
prices of living raise up of these hubs, you end up with both more expensive
workforce, and less flexibility, and some people just decide to leave. The
only winners in this scenario are current landlords.

Right now SF is experiencing scenario #2.

Basically once you have super fast transportation, it relieves pressure to
housing prices on the work hubs/city centers, and the values of homes where
the high speed train/hyperloop/whatever stops increase to match the new
accessibility.

Real Scenarios: You can comfortably live in Baltimore or Philadelphia (2hrs of
driving currently) and be able to work in NYC if this commute was cut to
40mins or less.

It is a win win scenario, as all these cities become part of one single hub.

~~~
gutnor
Why commute ? Remote working is a thing and everything the topic comes up,
something that a significant part of HN is already enjoying. No need to pour
billions in public transport.

Also companies have proven that they are more than willing to outsource
everywhere, hiring people anywhere. There are reason they still hire in very
expensive place like SF. You bet that it is a problem that will go away at
some point, and very likely a significant part of HN readership is working
hard solving it.

You need to realise that moving commuter to the city centre is a race to the
bottom. Stuff like hyperloop are a perfectly fine way to spend private
investment money, but as far as public money is concerned, that would be
better to invest it in area that look beyond a world where physical location
is an employee primary competitive advantage.

~~~
rjeli
I would be lonely doing remote work. I prefer to go to an office and interact
with people every day. Sometimes I don't want to interact with them, but I
wouldn't want to spend 8 hours a day alone in my house.

Coworking spaces might work. I haven't tried it, but I imagine its different
interacting with people who aren't relevant to what you're doing all day.

~~~
pdimitar
That sounds suspiciously close to "I go to work to drown my loneliness". Might
have not been your intention but it definitely sounded that way.

To me, work is work -- no attachments. I happen to like several of my remote
colleagues quite a bit but I am doing just fine in my life if I don't chat
with them for a month or two.

------
Tiktaalik
The vague notion of Hyperloop is awful for cities for the reasons mentioned in
this article. Municipal governments are fighting a very hard, uphill battle
right now to get basic funding for proven conventional public transit services
which would dramatically make life better for everyone. Musk dropping the
promise of Hyperloop (with no interest on following up on the idea) has
provided ammo for transit cynics and opponents of public transit to seed
doubt, delay and derail the public transit conversation by inquiring why
investment in conventional tech is necessary when Hyperloop is surely on the
horizon. Even keen pro public transit futurists may find that they're
accidentally injuring progress in public transport doing the same thing.

The Boring Company's "cars in tunnels (maybe on sleds?) idea", which Musk is
following up on, is even more dangerous and has worse impacts on cities. For
one thing Induced Demand is a well studied, proven fact, so we know that the
expansion of road infrastructure will incentivize more people to drive and
create more traffic in the long term. This means not only that these tunnels
will inevitably get as full as the roads above, but more importantly that the
broader road network of the region will be severely negatively impacted by the
new traffic induced by the tunnels. This is precisely the wrong solution at a
time when municipal governments are more interested in reducing car use,
because they understand very well the benefits in pivoting toward creating
denser, more walkable, cities and are currently engaged in making this shift.

~~~
TeMPOraL
One thing I don't understand about the "induced demand" thing - surely there
must be a limit to this? If you keep expanding roads, at some point you must
hit the situation in which your capacity is greater than the number of people
even remotely interested in traveling the road...

I suppose the limit might be quite high, but I've never seen it discussed _at
all_.

~~~
ComradeTaco
There is a functional limit for induced demand! But it effectively can't be
reached in urban and suburban areas because cars scale really poorly. Cars
don't scale well for three main reasons:

(1) Cost. Building roads and highways inflicts both huge upfront capital costs
and maintenance costs. A typical highway line has a throughput of 2,000 cars
per hour. (2) Real Estate. Building the level of roads necessary to meet
induced demand+ would take up an extremely large amount of land that can only
be used for vehicles. (3) Local Roads. Local roads can only absorb so much
capacity and they have functional throughput limits. If you wanted to make
them faster, homeowners couldn't have driveways.

If you really wanted to, you could possibly make a city where driving is king
and there is effectively no congestion. It would just be absurdly expensive
and hostile to everyone who doesn't have access to car.

~~~
pas
Only cost is important for tunnels, because there's still space sufficient for
hundreds of layers of tunnels below cities.

~~~
jcranmer
Only if you build tunnels that no one can get to. Road tunnels still need to
obey grade and (horizontal and vertical) curvature restrictions. For example,
every story down you push a tunnel, every city block longer an access ramp
needs to be. And the deeper you make tunnels, the more difficult ventilation
and pumping becomes.

~~~
zootam
theoretically one could avoid vertical curvature issues by connecting the
tunnels with large shafts, similar to elevators in skyscrapers.

~~~
chiefofgxbxl
This may slow down traffic, based on the vertical speed of the elevators and
how quickly people in cars can board the elevator.

I'm not sure which one would be quicker: having a really long access ramp
(long because of the tunnel's depth), or having to wait in line to board an
elevator that moves quite slowly.

------
ethn
The problem with the Hyper-loop and Elon Musk in general, isn't that Elon Musk
is wrong or that the Hyper-loop won't work. The problem is that he engages in
a nepotistic political-industrial complex. That is, he subsidizes his risk for
the benefit of the shareholders and himself at the expense of the taxpayer.
The same tax payers who are often in a state of financial uncertainty and
destitution of education. The same tax payers who know if they get sick, they
won't be able to pay for it.

The result of this political-industrial complex, at least in this case, is a
large benefit to the upper class (not that I'm a classist) who can afford a
foray into the city for brunch at the cost of the livelihood of everyone less
financially fortunate and vigilant. It is often the case, and continues to be
so, that the political-industrial complex taxes everyone for the benefit of
the wealthiest.

~~~
stale2002
Huh? Transportation technology massively benefits the poor more than it does
the rich.

The biggest expense that the working class pay is rent.

If you can cut long distance commute times in half, then that means that
someone who works in the city is able to save 50% or more on rent by living
outside the extremely expensive city.

Transportation and housing (2 sides of the same coin) is arguably the single
most important issue facing the working class.

~~~
_delirium
Isn't the hyperloop focused on fast city-center-to-city-center transportation
between major commercial districts? I don't see how making it fast to go
nonstop between Manhattan and D.C. (the current proposal) helps the working
class with affordable housing.

~~~
methodin
Well I suppose it would open up job opportunities assuming the price to go
city-to-city is comparable to say, driving multiple hours each way in order to
get to work. Of course that assumes you live near one city in order to get to
another. Wouldn't help rural folks I'm afraid but there really isn't a
transportation solution that can function on sparsely populated areas. Even
the trains in London, for example, go through suburban areas that are still
relatively densely populated.

------
kome
Hyperloop is such a bad idea on so many levels. Mass transportation is the
future: trains, suburban trains and metros. Not cars or "mini metros for
cars".

Super fast trains are already there. Europe lives in the future compared to
the USA.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"Europe lives in the future compared to the USA."

Europe is the size of a postage stamp compared to the USA (or even worse,
Canada).

Oregon is larger than the UK. Texas is larger than France. Alaska is larger
than all of Western Europe.

~~~
haspok
This is false.

Europe North-South is comparable to the US East-West coast distance. Europe
East-West is comparable to the US North-South.

The US has more land mass (and there is Alaska, which is the jolly joker card
here - we can counterbalance this with the russian-speaking regions of the
European continent, it is debatable whether they are "Europe" or not), let's
say the lower 48 US is maybe two times the area of "classical" Europe. Europe
is also much more densely populated.

So if you consider the USA to be the size of two postage stamps, then you
might actually be correct :)

ps. [http://www.comparea.org/USA+EU](http://www.comparea.org/USA+EU)

~~~
Turing_Machine
No, it is not.

Area of Oregon: 254,806 km2

Area of UK: 242,495 km2

Area of Texas: 696,241 km2

Area of France: 643,801 km2

Area of Alaska: 1,717,856 km2

Area of Western Europe: depends on which definition you use. But smaller than
Alaska by most.

"Europe is also much more densely populated."

Yes, it is. It is smaller and more densely populated, which means that rail
transportation makes sense (note that you also see rail transportation in the
more densely populated regions of the United States, such as the BosWash
Corridor, Chicagoland, etc.)

------
njarboe
Such a negative, do-nothing article. "taking every billionaire’s quirky
visions at face value". Elon Musk is a bit different than every billionaire.
Re-usable orbital class boosters and the Model S is what gives Elon the street
cred others don't have. "so-called Boring Company" WTF? The New Yorker was
always a purveyor of a certain type of elitism, but since the Trump election
they have really upped the intensity. Not sure if I'll renew my subscription
I've had for decades when it expires.

~~~
dwaltrip
Obviously, Musk is killing it with Tesla and SpaceX. There is no doubt about
that. He will be remembered in the history books for this.

But is he really serious about this Boring company stuff? The whole thing
sounds ludicrous. Even if he reduces cost 10x, they are still crazy expensive
and have a lot sorts of strange complications. I don't get it.

~~~
bronson
Five years ago people were saying that about both Tesla and SpaceX.

"Is he really serious about going into space? The whole thing sounds
ludicrous. Even if he reduces the cost 10X, launches are still crazy expensive
and have al sorts of strange complications."

"Is he really serious about electric cars? The whole thing..." etc.

~~~
divanvisagie
I dont think its the same at all

Have we gont to space before? Yes

Have we done electric cars before? Yes

Have we solved congestion by increasing the speed of a transport medium?
Concorde

~~~
bronson
That's a trick question. Have we solved congestion? No, and we won't any time
soon.

But have we improved travel speed and convenience before? Sure: high speed
trains, commuter airlines, superhighways, etc. And, maybe one day, Hyperloop?

------
mcguire
" _Musk’s visions are valuable because they show that even people far outside
the field of urban planning can be frustrated with the world others have built
for us. They, too, should have a say._ "

That is a good point. Taking Musk and the HyperLoop seriously is a mistake---
unless something has changed that hasn't percolate down to me, it has major
problems and probably wouldn't solve the problem it purports to solve in the
same way the Concord never revolutionized air travel---but it is a valid
criticism of the state of things.

On the other hand, if you take it seriously, it distracts attention from
actual solutions.

~~~
puranjay
The problem with not taking Musk seriously is that his track records shows you
can, indeed, take him seriously.

His company made a rocket capable of re-entry ffs

~~~
mamon
As someone else in this thread noticed: so far all Musk did was incremental
improvements to existing technologies (electric cars, autopilot, space
rockets). He has no track of record of actually creating a new technology.

~~~
jacquesm
Except that the established players in those markets did not manage to do any
of that stuff. Not a huge Musk fan but still let's give credit where credit is
due. I see people that have built two web apps call themselves serial
entrepreneur, I think Musk is actually worthy of that title and so far he did
deliver the goods.

~~~
mamon
Ok, so he is a great entrepreneur: knows how to run the company to be
profitable, low cost, high revenue, knows how to advertise, how to make a lot
of hype. Those are great skills, but have nothing to do with technology. There
are many companies that are better at creating new, disrupting technologies:
Google with all of its AI research and Android, Amazon with a cloud platform,
even Microsoft with Windows and Office was more disruptive than Tesla or
SpaceX will ever be.

~~~
ClassyJacket
How can you possibly call Tesla not disruptive? They're a shining example of a
disruptive company. They're turning the automotive industry on its head. No
other company has made any comparable, widespread, viable attempt at a good
electric car.

~~~
mhermher
Does the automotive industry appear to you to be on its head? What are the
indications? If anything, government subsidies for evs have caused any changes
you see more than Tesla itself. I think you might be engaging in a bit of
wishful thinking.

------
kfk
Difficult topic. You can make this argument on any new transformative tech.
You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago. On the
other hand, I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can
compete with trains that can carry hundreds.

~~~
protomyth
If we take two lines (one rail and one hyperloop) and compare the number of
people that can be transported in an hour, then we can judge if multiple 12
person pods can transport more/less than trains over the same period. I
suspect that pods might have a pretty good shot at winning.

~~~
maxerickson
I would want to see such throughput numbers scaled to cost.

(because if one or the other wins by spending 10x, well, duh)

~~~
protomyth
Oh, absolutely, cost is a huge factor. I’m sure Californians are well aware of
the cost of a rail project these days.

I do hope part of the cos analysis is likely rent / housing costs paid by the
commuters as a result of the build. I tend to think an extended range from
higher speeds would decrease total housing costs but I too would want to see
figures.

~~~
maxerickson
I bet trains win bigly for servicing bedroom communities. A stop is just a
stop.

~~~
protomyth
Maybe, but a stop that can be twice as far away while taking the same commute
time will probably yield lower housing costs since the amount of housing in an
acceptable commute area is going to be much larger.

~~~
maxerickson
I was thinking about the amount of infrastructure needed to service the whole
project corridor.

Of course it isn't clear how the hyperloop would work in practice, but I doubt
a station would be less footprint than a train stop. And running the services
simultaneously is probably harder with small shuttles than with a train that
just stops at each station. Likely faster, but a lot more complicated.

------
deepGem
The article has a taste of criticism but offers no points of criticism. Sort
of a passive-aggressive play on words, which is ok just for a read, but not
something that I expect from New Yorker. Comparing Hyperloop to Concorde and
it's eventual demise does seem valid at a cursory level. What's key to
understand is that Concorde's failure can mostly be attributed to a
combination of design, safety and maintenance factors (sonic boom being the
foremost). In addition, what plagued the Concorde was the upkeep and
maintenance of the aircrafts, and of course the spiraling fuel costs. Are
there such equivalents in the Hyperloop world. If so, can they be resolved.

~~~
mirimir
Yes, that's a classic style for negative reviews. The reviewer implies all
sorts of bad, but makes no disputable arguments. And yes, that's not what
you'd expect from NY Times (except for some book and theater reviews). But
this is the New Yorker, and pretty typical for them.

~~~
deepGem
ah, thanks for pointing out. I had the Times and this article in consecutive
tabs and mistook this for the times. Classic context switching issues.

------
Animats
Japan's maglev project is much more impressive than Hyperloop. Japan is
building a maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka. 438km in 67 minutes. The
first 42km section is already running. The trainsets work. Tourists can ride
it.

------
rattray
This was a disappointing "article" which conflated The Boring Company
(intracity tunnels) and the hyperloop (usually conceptualized aboveground) and
never really made a concrete point, just provided FUD about anything that
smells like a Concord or SciFi.

The general idea that the hyperloop is more of a North Star than a proposal
stands, but that was always its stated nature.

------
mark212
This is written by someone who's never lived in LA. "Trains that run on the
tracks" is a joke in a region with virtually zero effective public transport.

~~~
m-s
How about improving public transport by investing in existing technologies
that work for other cities? I'd consider that a more sensible approach than
pouring public funds into an experimental technology which may or may not
solve LA's transportation woes in 20 years.

~~~
brentdax
LA has as many bus stops as New York City, but about a third of the daily
riders. It has as much subway track as Washington, D.C., but about half the
daily riders. The city just isn't suited to traditional mass transit—it's too
sprawled out.

~~~
droidist2
True, it's easy to forget that LA even has a subway.

------
eesmith
Could someone tell me how these tunnels will be cooled and vented?

Sure, put a car on an electric sled. But the people want A/C (or heat), and
lights, the wheels provide friction. If the car was running beforehand then
the engine block is cooling off. Even if it's an electric car, the brakes,
tires, and skin will be hot, dumping heat into the well-insulated tunnel.

This is a well-known problem in London, where decades of heat have built up in
the Underground. Putting new cooling in is expensive, because they require
expensive surface access.

If the goal is to have multiple layers of tunnels under a city, then how are
they all cooled? How much surface access does each one need?

The same question applies to a hyperloop tunnel.

There must also be vents, for people to breath of course, and also for smoke
and evacuation management in case of fire. How many are needed?

~~~
pas
You can transport heat quite efficiently in pipes (via water), it just takes a
lot of money to build a cooling network. And a lot of energy to run it (both
the regular and the heat pumps).

~~~
eesmith
And surface area for the cooling towers, or a convenient body of water for
dumping the heat.

Thinking about it some more, I believe one way to answer my question is to
look at what Helsinki has done with their underground city. But their surface
density is nothing like the US Eastern Seaboard, and they have perhaps one of
the best places for doing an underground tunnel system, with excellent rock,
cool temperatures, and easy access to the Baltic.

------
kpil
Some hypnotized people think that a Hyperloop in tunnel under the Baltic sea
between Stockholm and Helsinki is a good idea - two sparsely populated capital
cities of two small countries.

[http://nordic.businessinsider.com/stockholm-helsinki-
hyperlo...](http://nordic.businessinsider.com/stockholm-helsinki-hyperloop-is-
a-step-closer----test-section--getting-started-in-finland-2017-3/)

Even if it's only there to siphon of some taxpayer's money to someone or
another, I just can't fathom how things like this can be allowed to go on.
Even if the entire population will spend half of their income on tickets, it
will not be economically viable.

~~~
paulcole
> it will not be economically viable

Government projects don't (and shouldn't) have to be "economically viable."
They can be services to the citizens with no hope of profitability.

~~~
fiatjaf
"services to the citizens" that no one wishes, no one would pay for if had a
chance (considering the actual prices), but still somehow paid by the
citizens.

~~~
isostatic
City parks wouldn't be economically beneficial, who would pay to go to a city
park? Could that really justify the land use.

However the fact those parks are there does make life better.

Measuring that though is tricky. How much is a child's laugh worth?

~~~
fiatjaf
You've never lived in a place without city parks.

~~~
isostatic
I can't think of any city or even town without a park. The hamlet my sister
lives in doesn't have a shop, but it does have a park.

The village my children go to school in has a population of about 300, no
park, but it does have common open ground.

------
albertTJames
We live in a time when journalism is not about promoting good or truth. But
about finding flaws in the most sensationalistic way. Was it ever different ?
...

------
DannyBee
I feel like one could have written this article back in the days of Tesla and
Edison. The problem Geoff bemoans - that it's not good city planning, may even
be true. That is rarely the only reason why things happen or not happen
though, and that's been true as long as people have had cities.

While wanting "whatever is really the best, boring or not, gets done" is a
great ideal, it's simply unrealistic for how the world works, and as any city
planner who plans on a 50 year timeline will tell you - that isn't going to
change without more fundamental changes in what drives people.

Instead, yes, PR, coolness/desire, and will play a significant part in what
actually ends up being done. Saying we'd be better off if that wasn't true is
not a particularly interesting insight. The more interesting insight would be
giving some mechanism for convincing people to achieve that. Because this
article doesnt' do anything real on that front.

~~~
JKCalhoun
I don't know. Since I see "hyperloop" as more akin to a pipe-dream, dangling
this "cool" idea in front of people is destructive if a) it never gets done
(probably because it's not cost-feasible, not from alack of imagination on the
part of the public) and thus b) money to fund systems that actually do work
and need funding (Amtrak) get short shrift.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I disagree. We're very short on dreams these days. And I also don't think
"pipe dreams" will siphon money away from work that needs to be done - it's
the general lack of will to do anything other than very incremental fixes that
currently eats that money.

------
11thEarlOfMar
For fun, let's say we'd sat Geoff down 20 years ago and asked him to rate the
following futures in units of 'preposterousness': "Geoff, how preposterous is
it to believe that in 20 years..."

1\. We live in a world of self-driving, all electric automobiles, the safest
and fastest ever built in mass production.

2\. We live in a world where private space companies build profitable space
transportation systems that can land themselves after orbiting the Earth.

3\. We travel from city to city in vacuum tubes that enable 700+ mph speeds on
land.

4\. The mind-numbing gridlock of urban auto traffic is relieved by tunnels
that whiz cars across town at speeds exceeding 120 MPH.

I'm pretty sure he'd scoff at all of it. I would have, too, but then I'd be
pretty giddy that even one of them had materialized.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Wouldn't Geoff be correct? None of those have materialized. Maybe another 20
years? 3 and 4 still haven't scaled past prototypes and might never exist in
quantity.

~~~
moocow01
Despite the down votes, yes Geoff would be correct. We (meaning us the masses)
don't live in a world of any of those things yet.

------
tehabe
When I look at what Elon Musk has done in recent years is, that he improved
existing technologies.

Imagine that Musk would build a autonomous tram or light rail system with an
induction contact rail instead of an overhead line.

Most of the technology exist, it just need to be combined into one train.

~~~
JKCalhoun
His ventures have also has catered to deep pockets. I'm not saying that's easy
(or we could all be billionaires) but that's a fairly reliable way to make a
go at a business.

Unless his hyperloop were framed as rapid-transit for the hyper-rich, it would
be quite a departure for Musk to succeed in an area that benefits the "common
man".

------
ojosilva
Future-proof public transportation needs to steer away from the word "mass" as
much as possible.

Mass transit, of any kind, is doomed by increasing security risks and
vulnerabilities. Its strict timetables and geographic scopes are incompatible
with a world that is now connected, 24/7 and mostly wants to move away from
big urban centers.

We need more _shared_ or individual transportation instead. Cars, planes and
pods that are efficient and low cost. That's the only way humanity can scale
and better adapt to the planet while freeing people that want to desperately
break away from 9 to 5, rush hour and suburbs.

------
alexandros
Couldn't finish this. It started off badly by calling the hyperloop "vacuum-
powered". First, it's not even vacuum sealed (just low air pressure), and
second, how can something even be powered by the vacuum? Are we just throwing
terms around for effect here?

Then, the author continues with more material errors. The hyperloop/tunnel
combo apparently "requires a hard reboot" of the modern city. No it does not.
The whole point is that it is tunnels underneath the modern city.

Finally, it starts mentioning ambitious projects that didn't work, such as the
Concorde. Yes, people have tried things that failed before. And then it talks
about putting more money into Amtrak, when Musk's prime concern has been how
slow and expensive the high-speed rail project in CA has been, precisely
because of how hard it is to get land rights. Getting around existing
commitments of surface land is the whole point of tunelling!

As far as I was able to read, not a single mention that Musk has been able to
take two or three other previously considered impossible tasks and bring them
to completion. Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is
evidence-based.

It seems the author's point is "Let's never fund anything else speculative
ever again". What's that network you're using to blast this tripe straight to
my eyeballs right now? The inter-what? Who ever funded that waste of money?
Why didn't they just fund the post office a little more?

The fact that we've lost faith in humanity's ability to improve things by
taking on large, ambitious projects, even if some, even if most, will fail,
saddens me every day. It doesn't prevent me from trying to make the world a
better place though, and I hope nobody else was discouraged by low-quality,
knee-jerk thinking like this, either.

~~~
aaron-lebo
He's writing this to people like you.

 _As far as I was able to read, not a single mention that Musk has been able
to take two or three other previously considered impossible tasks and bring
them to completion. Call me a fanboy if you will, but at least my fanboyism is
evidence-based._

It's not personal. Musk is not anyone's personal juvenile delinquent (cable TV
edit). Why do you care so much whether a single billionaire is validated or
not? Why is every time there is an article like this, there's half a dozen
Musk fans complaining that someone dare challenge the great Musk?

 _The fact that we 've lost faith in humanity's ability to improve things by
taking on large, ambitious projects, even if some, even if most, will fail,
saddens me every day. It doesn't prevent me from trying to make the world a
better place though, and I hope nobody else was discouraged by low-quality,
knee-jerk thinking like this, either._

No, there are simpler questions, like why build inefficient systems like
Hyperloops and car sleds when we have tech that works at scale already for the
former and we have solutions to the latter that don't require right of way
under the most expensive real-estate in the world to build transport systems
for transport systems (that Musk just happens to be selling), and will make
our urban centers car based for the forseable future when we could be going
the other direction?

It's good to praise vision and have heroes but one of the constants of history
is that heroes fail (because they're people) and that rate increases as they
get further and further outside their original domain. We should be thankful
for the visionaries but the way of refining their visions is criticism, not
bristling when someone dare do that.

Napoleon ruled the world right up until he didn't.

~~~
angstrom
Could care less about challenging Musk's reputation, that's his problem. It's
the fallacies of argument. Good engineers are awash in self doubt and
questioning.

~~~
aaron-lebo
And when those responding to those arguments say stuff like "my faith is more
evidence based than yours", the rebuttal is just as fallacious. It's turning
into "X must be right because they are X", which isn't any better.

~~~
angstrom
I'm not the person that wrote that. My discord is the state of journalism.
This article doesn't inform anything that prevents the business model from
working. People also attempted flight many centuries before succeeding.
Arguing why the physics won't work or the ROI is not possible would be
informative. This is just sad click bait.

------
tommynicholas
I'm a fan of the hyperloop concept and I hope it gets implemented. However,
the Concorde example is useful to think about to me. Perhaps the reason we
don't have better city-to-city transportation when there are options available
and even implemented in other countries is actually that we lack the true will
to build them.

This article does make the common mistake of suggesting the Hyerloop competes
with intra-city subway systems though. I find the "just fix the subways"
response to the Hyperloop disingenuous.

------
puranjay
> In a lecture several years ago at the University of Southern California, the
> architect Rem Koolhaas suggested that the city of Dubai had reached a
> logical dead end. By locking itself into the premise that every new building
> had to be a unique formal or structural experiment, he argued, Dubai had
> become not a paradise for ambitious architects and their engineers but
> something more like a series of ever-louder action films.

I wonder how much did Steve Jobs lock up Apple's fate the same way. The
breathless hype for all Apple's products ultimately doomed Apple's future
offerings to the same fate. If it didn't excite audiences as much as the
iPhone or the iPad, it wouldn't survive on the Apple ecosystem.

If Apple has been circumspect of late, I attribute part of it to this

------
aphextron
Hyperloop would be incredible some day if it's techically possible. But I
can't help thinking that Elon is a 21st century Brunel, and this is his
Atmospheric Railway.

------
had2makeanacct
Hyperloop One just crossed 309 kmph. Cool.

