
Hyperloop: Pipes of Fancy - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/08/08/could-dawdling-america-lead-the-world-in-a-new-form-of-transport
======
AlexandrB
This is evergreen when talking about Hyperloop: [http://www.cat-
bus.com/2017/12/gadgetbahn/](http://www.cat-bus.com/2017/12/gadgetbahn/)

The problems with building this have nothing to do with technology but with
right-of-way, investment, and politics. If those factors were solved, we'd
already have high-speed rail in places where Hyperloop has been proposed. The
fact that we don't says that Hyperloop is unlikely to be feasible as well.

~~~
owenversteeg
That "Gadgetbahn" article is great, but I do have one criticism.

From the article: "If the idea is viable and the people behind it are
competent, it should have attracted private investment, as there should be a
potential to make profit selling the technology. After all, the proposal has
been around for 23 years."

High speed rail on a large scale is really something that has to come from the
government. While there are small private HSR projects (e.x. Brightline,
covering some 60 miles of the Florida coast), the big successes have all been
governmental, and that shouldn't be surprising.

The uncomfortable part of HSR, of course, is that no matter how perfect your
government is, it's going to involve bulldozing some people's homes,
conflicting with other government projects, and interfering with nature. Don't
get me wrong, I'm not part of team "screw the law, bulldoze straight lines
between cities, people and nature be damned". But there do need to be
sacrifices made. And a strong, coordinated government can pass the laws and
write the checks to make that happen.

The interesting thing with HSR is that it is not about the technology. The TGV
was operating at 300 km/h nearly 50 years ago, and that's the speed that most
of the network operates at today. It's not about the safety (the TGV has never
had a fatal accident in normal service) or even the cost (the TGV is also
profitable!)

It's about the land. A fairly small strip of land in a straight line. My hope
is that as people realize this, we'll do what has to be done and tear down a
few villages in order to save the planet. But that's politically unpalatable,
so instead we have Gadgetbahnen.

~~~
privong
> the TGV is also profitable

Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that this is only true if one
excludes the capital costs associated with the railroad (tracks, right of way,
and I think also rolling stock). If you factor in the infrastructure
construction costs (and reasonable lifetimes for replacing rolling stock), a
high speed trail line will never be profitable without significantly higher
fare prices than are presently charged.

But that goes to further support your point that high speed rail can only be
accomplished with government input.

To be fair, I think that the same argument can be made for the costs of
interstate highway systems and passenger air travel.

~~~
klipt
Public transit is almost always unprofitable without some way of capturing the
increased land value near the stations.

Supposedly some subways (eg Hong Kong?) own the land near the stations and use
the rents to fund the subway, rather than just using fares.

A land value tax that goes back into public transit would probably work too.

~~~
freeone3000
Regular property tax works fine. Montreal recaptures the increase as values
rise through transfer taxes and ocassional reassesments.

~~~
wombatpm
Transfer taxes are avoided by the wealthy. See London and NYC. An LLC
purchased property. From that point the LLC is bought/sold/merged and the
assets never change ownership

~~~
andrepd
Maybe that ought to be fixed as well.

------
auganov
Read it as Pipes of Fantasy.

Years ago I remember reading about miles long test tracks being built. I
haven't been following developments surrounding this at all, but as far as I
can tell there are still no serious test tracks, why?

The ones that are out there are supposedly too short to get to full speed (or
anywhere close to it!).

Given the hype surrounding it I have a hard time believing money is the
limiting factor here. Sounds to me like the tech just isn't there and won't be
anytime soon. And having a full test track would simply kill the deal flow.

EDIT: so just to make sure I'm not misremembering anything, here's a story
from 2015 [https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873014/hyperloop-
technol...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873014/hyperloop-technologies-
elon-musk-las-vegas-land-purchase)

"The near-term goal is to construct a 3-kilometer test track to conduct a
full-speed prototype."

And it appears to me that what was supposed to be this 3km test track is a
500m Virgin Hyperloop test track today at the same location with some of the
same people involved. So they might have land secured for the original length
already.

"That startup has plans to build an 8-kilometer in Quay Valley"

"he expects to conduct the first test with live passengers in 32 months"

~~~
jccooper
Elon seems to have moved on to non-vaccuum underground tunnels via The Boring
Company, which is actually doing real projects.

Though apparently there are still Hyperloop competitions planned. The 2020 one
was supposed to be "in a 10km vacuum tunnel with a curve", though that may be
stalled by, well, obvious current events.

[https://tunnelinsider.com/the-2020-hyperloop-competition-
wil...](https://tunnelinsider.com/the-2020-hyperloop-competition-will-be-in-a-
six-mile-curved-tunnel/)

No one else seems to have quite the combination of money and crazy to go much
further with Hyperloop.

~~~
grishka
> Elon seems to have moved on to non-vaccuum underground tunnels via The
> Boring Company

So, a subway?

~~~
thescriptkiddie
But with cars. No, I'm not making this up.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1285819565407002624](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1285819565407002624)

~~~
ashtonkem
This seems worse than a subway in pretty much every metric, unless if you
happen to be same person who's selling the cars that it's compatible with.

~~~
TigeriusKirk
There are a number of metrics where it's clearly better.

Scheduling and routing. Not waiting 10-30 minutes for the next train depending
on time of day. Not stopping anywhere but your destination. No connections or
changeovers.

Personal space. Privacy, safety. Regardless of how you personally feel about
this factor, it matters enough to some people to significantly impact usage.

Those factors may or may not be enough to warrant changing the systems, but
they certainly are metrics by which Musk's systems are better.

~~~
andbberger
Waiting 10-30 minutes for a train isn't a technological consequence of rail
transportation, it's a symptom of a catastrophically inept transit agency.

What's stopping, say, Caltrain, from running trains at peak frequency all day?
Incompetent leadership. They have the trains (which spend all day sitting idle
_at_ terminus platforms), the have the crew (who also sit idle during the
day), they have the capacity to run more trains off peak. They made a
deliberate choice to not run the trains.

You might make the case that running more trains off-peak would increase
maintenance costs. But I would wager that such maintenance costs pale in
comparison to the cost of building enough platforms at your downtown termini
to store trains all day. Moreover who cares about maintenance costs? It's
insane to think that public transit should be profitable.

loop is an elitist perversion of transit

~~~
jcranmer
> You might make the case that running more trains off-peak would increase
> maintenance costs.

Alon Levy has done the math [1] and found that providing extra off-peak
service is about 20% the cost of providing extra peak service, since the
capital costs and labor costs dominate the actual operational costs.

[1] [https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-
ser...](https://pedestrianobservations.com/2018/01/22/base-train-service-is-
cheap-peak-train-service-is-expensive/)

~~~
andbberger
Yup essentially getting all of that directly from Alon's various posts on
Caltrain's incompetence.

------
MengerSponge
Did you know that LIGO designers had to add earthen berms to protect their
vacuum pipes from bullets?

Not to mention the throughput issues, the energy budget, the cost of
construction, the right-of-way issues...

Let's be frank: Hyperloop is dumb, and people who are spending money on it are
too. You have better things to do with your time than analyzing it or
defending it, and so do I.

~~~
jjoonathan
> Did you know that LIGO designers had to add earthen berms to protect their
> vacuum pipes from bullets?

No, that's hilarious, where can I read more?

~~~
Miraste
This article[0] talks about how locals were shooting at it, although it
doesn't mention the berms (talking to the sheriff must not have worked out). I
think a hyperloop could avoid this problem by not locating in Louisiana.

[0] [https://www.225batonrouge.com/article/good-
vibrations](https://www.225batonrouge.com/article/good-vibrations)

~~~
sudosysgen
What do you do when a terrorist shoots a hyperloop tube causing a pressure
wave that will kill everyone inside?

~~~
The_Double
What do you do when a terrorist places a derailing device [0] on a piece of
rail track that will harm and potentially kill many people inside?

[0]:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derail)

~~~
sudosysgen
Derailing a railroad is a complicated endeavor that will likely get detected
and the train stopped, and even in the most catastrophic event only a very
small fraction of the occupancy of one train will be killed.

Whereas a catastrophic dépressurisation event on a hyperloop will assuredly
kill everyone inside. The amount of energy stored in such a pressure
differential is equivalent to many hundreds of tons of TNT. It's not
comparable at all.

------
Animats
The Dubai hyperloop project is supposedly proceeding. The 10km test track was
supposed to open this year. Can't find any info later than January 2020.

The Dubai to Abu Dhabi link is the ideal case. The route is mostly flat, open
desert. Funding is available. There is government support. There's
considerable traffic between those points. If that doesn't work, not much else
will.

~~~
9nGQluzmnq3M
If built, it would compete directly with Etihad Rail, which is building a
regular rail network throughout the entire UAE and already has its first phase
operational:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etihad_Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etihad_Rail)

This focuses primarily on cargo, but is built with passenger trains at up to
200 km/h in mind. And most Hyperloop business plans also seem to rely heavily
on freight.

~~~
Animats
Interesting. The locomotives are Diesel-electrics made by what used to be a
locomotive recycling company in the US. Then Caterpillar bought them, and they
now have some decent products, apparently. The railroad's main job is
transporting mined sulfur to ports for export.

This is a total contrast to "hyperloops". It does a useful but boring job with
useful but boring technology.

------
manigandham
The vac-train concept is from 1799. Maglev tech is decades in production. I
remember a Discovery Channel show 20 years ago about trains traveling 5000mph
through tunnels at the bottom of the ocean to cross continents in an hour.

Hyperloop is fantastical renaming of old tech without solving any of the
fundamental problems of economy, geography, energy and politics. We're capable
of building incredible projects if only we had unlimited funding and will.

It's nice to see Tesla and Spacex changing global transportation so maybe
better train systems will finally get some attention, but right now this is
just not realistic.

~~~
qayxc
Please remind me again how a company with a market share of 0.6% [1] is
changing _global_ transportation?

It's fascinating to me how people seem to vastly underestimate the actual
volume of the global car market while overestimating the impact of unicorns.

In order to even make a dent in the global market, getting into the double
digits would be required.

Even in the market "dominated" by Tesla (e.g. plug-in EVs), their market share
is a combined 16.6%, meaning more than 83% of EVs are made by other companies
[2]...

Tesla is to the car market quite literally what Apple is in the desktop PC and
smartphone markets - a "dominating force" with a tiny market share in the
global market.

[1] [https://www.best-selling-cars.com/international/2019-full-
ye...](https://www.best-selling-cars.com/international/2019-full-year-
international-worldwide-car-sales/)

[2] [https://insideevs.com/news/396177/global-ev-sales-
december-2...](https://insideevs.com/news/396177/global-ev-sales-
december-2019/)

~~~
marvin
Tesla _already_ changed global transportation, by dragging auto manufacturers
kicking and screaming to make real investments in electric transportation.
They've averaged a CAGR of 40% or so for the fast decade and have no
intentions of slowing down.

Obviously they won't get 100% of the global auto market, but they're much more
influential and dangerous than you'd be led to believe just by looking at
their market share.

By the way, SpaceX performed 65% of all the orbital space launches that
happened in 2018. Worldwide. Competitors mainly being the ULA and the space
programs of sovereign state actors.

~~~
qayxc
These investments are due to changes and mandates from _legislation_ , though,
not market pressure [1]. Governments are pushing for total fleet emission
limits and automakers are forced to either build EVs or pay fines (or Tesla -
same deal).

> By the way, SpaceX performed 65% of all the orbital space launches that
> happened in 2018.

And that has what to do with EVs and Tesla? Whataboutism at its finest...

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300393/tesla-fiat-
chrysl...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300393/tesla-fiat-chrysler-
credits-european-union-emissions-fines)

~~~
marvin
I was referring to GP, who said

>It's nice to see Tesla and Spacex changing global transportation

------
jeffreyrogers
Hyperloop has sex appeal, but it seems like Maglev or just plain old high
speed rail makes more sense from an economics perspective. I can't imagine
it's cheap to keep a tube evacuated. Either way, it seems good to try and
build these sort of high-tech industries in the US.

~~~
riffic
common misconception.

Hyperloop tubes were never meant to be fully evacuated, they operate at
pressure differentials with air bearings (imagine a cylindrical air hockey
table).

~~~
captainbland
It may not be totally evacuated but the pressure difference between it and the
outside world is still supposed to be very large isn't it? And if you want a
hyperloop that actually goes anywhere that's going to represent quite a large
volume of low pressure space that you need to create and maintain.

Surely this has to be quite energy intensive and generally difficult to
maintain, especially since you have to get people in and out of it all the
time. I'm not saying these problems are physically insurmountable but they
sure sound expensive.

~~~
sudosysgen
Another thing, is that anyone that punches a hole big enough in the tube
basically transforms half of the hyperloop into a bomb. Energy = pressure *
volume. That's a lot of energy smashing through a hyperloop capsule.
Basically, imagine if 3% of the tube was filled with pipe bombs, but in
reverse.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Also, what happens if the pods leak? Seems like the air in the pods will
diffuse through the tube and the people will suffocate.

~~~
vidarh
As long as pod moves, there's a constant pressure build-up of air in front of
it, to the point that the design includes a compressor to pump air from the
front of the pods because passively preventing the buildup by letting it blow
through the pod would be insufficient.

So a leak would be a piffling little annoyance in comparison - there'd not be
enough volume of air inside the pods to cause a problem compared to the air
the compressor on the pod will be actively pumping from the front of the pod
to get it out of the way.

~~~
sudosysgen
That compressor is absent from every single design we've seen right now, The
duct for air to go from front to back would also use up a significant amount
of cabin space, and the electric-powered multi-stage high compression ratio
high-speed compressor would have massive power usage, weight, and cost. Power
usage that would have to be palliated via batteries, as the capsule supposedly
has no contact with the tube.

Because of this, no full-scale design yet has incorporated a compressor.

------
smikhanov
3.5 years on my prediction holds well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13811365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13811365)

~~~
chroma
With any new technology, the likelihood of failure is high but the expected
value is positive. As Nat Friedman (CEO of GitHub) said: "Pessimists sound
smart. Optimists make money."

~~~
smikhanov
> the likelihood of failure is high but the expected value is positive

Except when the new technology was proposed and marketed by a loony, of
course.

~~~
marvin
Yes, all those poor Tesla IPO investors who got misled by a loony are lining
up for shareholder lawsuits and yelling for prosecution, due to the obviously
financially irresponsible management of their investment.

(Refresh my memory here - would an 88X return on investment _after_ IPO be
classified as high returns on a high-risk investment?)

~~~
smikhanov
I sense some notes of disagreement with calling the Tesla CEO "a loony"

------
scoopertrooper
> “Mostly this would be for freight,” says Mark Patton, who oversees transport
> plans for the Columbus region. Paul Judge, who runs a thriving plastics
> manufacturer, Axium, in the city, says he would welcome it if it meant he
> could run a big factory, cheaply, in one spot and ship his billions of units
> of shampoo bottles, hand-sanitisers and the like to markets in the region.

This makes zero sense to me. Surely, there must be a law of decreasing returns
in supply chain latency. How could reducing delivery times times to hyperloop
levels possibly provide a reasonable pay-off period, given the considerable
cost of building and maintaining a subterranean vacuum tube train network?

~~~
richardw
Let’s think it out (as in: add your thoughts). If it’s for goods, you don’t
need a human size pod. You can scale pods to a size that represents goods that
make sense to transport quickly. Obviously you want benefits that come from
standardisation, like containers give you.

Fully automated transport between all major cities for anything less than a
metre diameter? I think that looks like the future. Mail, Amazon, fresh
produce, run as a stream rather than in large batches, automatically routed,
staying off highways. More efficient stock management that can react to surges
in demand. Charge for it with spot pricing so high value items get priority.

Edit: produce sounds a bit silly but taken to extremes might be interesting.
When you deliver a ton of lettuce, it’s sold as a stream. Someone gets the
fresh stuff and someone gets the three-day old stuff. If you can reorder every
30m, everyone gets fresh. Smaller shelves and stores, maybe no store except
online.

~~~
ashtonkem
There are two huge problems here:

First, very little freight is latency sensitive. The vast majority of cargo is
cost sensitive, which is why most bulk goods coming from abroad arrive via
cargo ship rather than airplane. There are a ton of companies that’ll accept
days or weeks of delay to reduce overall cost; so a loop must compete with
rail freight and semi trucks on cost.

Theoretically a cargo hyper loop network could compete with domestic air
freight, but I find the idea that air freight alone could cover the cost of a
hyper loop network hard to buy. This is doubly true when you consider the fact
that air freight shares costs with commercial passenger travel, both in terms
of infrastructure and vehicle development.

Second, they’re already working on automating existing railroads. There’s no
particular reason why a hyper loop is necessary to automate a train, and we’re
already seeing some of the very long haul train routes in Australia being
automated. This comes with the benefit of much lower development time and
cost, since it allows for the reuse of the most expensive bit of
infrastructure: the rails themselves.

~~~
richardw
I never mentioned bulk goods. I mentioned items that are time sensitive. Most
e-commerce is latency sensitive. I recently started getting groceries on an
hour delivery. It’s a game changer. Amazon could probably power a network like
that by itself. What would a 2 hour Amazon delivery to most cities do? What
markets does it enable access to? How do you compete with that?

It’s too easy to think of why something won’t work. Rather think “is there a
customer and a product for which latency is important but is unfulfilled by
current infrastructure”. Don’t use my examples, make your own. Saying “no” to
that question is to bet against human desires and ingenuity.

Freshest (anything) from 200km away within 2 hours. Will top restaurants pay
for that? Latest widget from a warehouse 500km away in 2 hours. Allows Amazon
to compete with local stores. Allows medical supplies to get there in a surge.
I’m sure you can think of something.

~~~
ashtonkem
> Don’t use my examples, make your own.

That’s ... not how arguments work. You’ve got to provide your own examples.
I’m not going to do your work for you.

> Saying “no” to that question is to bet against human desires and ingenuity

This is genuinely a bad way to approach these things, as you’re presuming that
it’ll work based on enthusiasm and not evidence. This exact same logic
would’ve led you to advocate for flying cars, as you would’ve assumed that
ingenuity would triumph over the practical issues that have so far prevented
them from working. Ingenuity is great, but market demand actually pays for the
bills.

And predicting exactly what the market will do is impossible, but given the
fact that this will cost trillions of dollars to actually build, it should be
possible to predict use cases that’ll bring in billions of revenue.

> Allow Amazon to compete with local stores.

Amazon is already crushing local stores on _price_. It turns out that
consumers value delivery speed but not as much as they value low cost.

A hyper loop might improve the speed of goods between Amazon warehouses (or
run fewer), but it would do nothing to improve the “last mile” problem, which
is where all the cost is.

Drone delivery + a hyper loop would actually be faster; but I’m dubious that
this use case alone covers said trillions of dollars of cost; especially when
drone delivery from local warehouses would work too.

> Will top restaurants pay for that?

No. Restaurants can barely afford the delivery fees of _people with cars_.
Maybe Michelin Star restaurants can afford a bit more, but not that much.

> Allows medical supplies to get there in a surge.

Much easier to just shove it in the back of a C130J. And it requires us to
invest a grand total of $0 in new infrastructure or hardware.

> I’m sure you can think of something.

Again, if you’re going to advocate that it will work, that’s your job.

~~~
richardw
I said let’s think it out. That’s an invitation to consider possibilities that
might work, not a declaration that I’ve found the perfect example. Brainstorm,
not argue.

But hey, argue gets your rocks off, go right ahead. Feel smarter pointing out
that something very hard probably won’t work? We knew that already.

------
yodelshady
For "short" (< 500 mile?) journeys, a plane wastes a lot of fuel climbing to
altitude. Hyperloop has an advantage there. But for those journeys, high-speed
or even regular-speed rail is tolerable. The challenge a train has in enabling
those journeys is the last mile, which is why trains work in older cities. I
can, and do, get off a train terminus in the town centre and walk/cycle/bus to
my destination.

For longer journeys, I'm not sure there's a technical case for hyperloop over
a plane even with zero land cost - planes at altitude are good at what they
do. The challenge a plane has in enabling those journeys is that, whilst a
plane doesn't need much land in total, it needs an awful lot at the terminus.
So it's a last ten miles, not a last mile. However, a good shuttle service can
solve that.

~~~
bagacrap
it's not that planes need a lot of space, it's that many airports are
ridiculously large to accommodate many planes, and far away from city centers.
Those are choices made perhaps due to noise or pollution, but there are
exceptions where airports are inside the city and small enough to walk from
end to end, such as Burbank in Southern California. Why is there a tendency to
build a few huge airports instead of smaller regional ones?

------
LordHeini
All this stuff does not solve the simple problem of moving the people to the
rails to begin with.

Living in Germany, i can get onto an ICE and tear through the country at 280
km/h at any time (usually with huge delays though).

But often people still don't, for a few reasons which will be true for any
technology, replacing the standard trains.

One reason is, that transportation is always a door to door problem and if the
transport from and to the train stations sucks, the whole system will not be
used.

Who wants to deal with changeovers from buses to trains all the time, if those
have horrible working hours, constant delays or long waiting times?

The whole public transport system must be comprehensive, always available,
reliable and fast. Being partially fast solves nothing.

------
brunoqc
[https://youtu.be/2h6Cz4hwuEI](https://youtu.be/2h6Cz4hwuEI) How legit is that
video and YouTuber?

~~~
vwat
It’s not legit at all. I’ve always been a fan, and all his busted videos in
the past featured one very important feature: the violation of thermodynamics.
He always showed why a product was physically impossible. But he doesn’t do
that with a hyperloop. And ultimately, if you see through the repetition and
downright nastiness, you see that his argument is essentially “hyperloop is
very expensive, it would be unsafe and render artists don’t know science.” I
wouldn’t have minded if he hadn’t taken that low shot at Elon when a rocket
blew up on the pad. Honestly, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he started
targeting Elon, with the sudden and notable lack of violation-of-physics,
around the same time he started pushing his channel to have more engagement
and make more money.

TLDR: I’ve seen all his videos and his hyperloop videos basically lack
substance. Scott Manley is a much better source of opinions on such things.

~~~
jcranmer
The problem with criticizing hyperloop on technical grounds is that there
often isn't even enough substance to really criticize. There are several
designs, which only really have "you put it a vehicle in a vacuum tube and go
zoom!" in common--and even then, there's contention about vacuum.

So the only way you can really criticize it is on gadgetbahn grounds: it's
shiny new technology [1], that's safer, cheaper, faster, better, stronger,
etc. than the stodgy old infrastructure plans. It'll come in sooner and
cheaper than them, we just need a few years [2] to finish designing them, and
a couple million dollars [3] as well.

And if you've read all of my footnotes, you'll realize why this pitch is too
good to be true. I'm personally not bothered by that so much as I'm bothered
by the argument to _stop_ investing in infrastructure because gadgetbahn is
the future.

[1] Except "put trains in a vacuum tube" is a really old concept. But
hyperloop is something "new," and the differences from vactrains is, uh, see
above about the difficulty of pinning down any technical details.

[2] Looking to be 2 decades from "initial" concept to first implementation at
this point.

[3] If you tot up all the grants so far, we're past $1 billion at this point
to just study how to build this thing.

~~~
_ph_
Perhaps then wait with critisizing the hyperloop on technical grounds until
there is enough with substance instead of making up fake technical facts?
Currently the Hyperloop is basically just a concept and a couple of startups
which are not connected to Elon Musk in any sense. Of course, as with any new
startups, there is a lot of marketing and little substance. And yes, as with
any startup in a completely new technological domain, one should be highly
sceptical about their success chance. These kind of tech startups do have a
huge chance of failing indeed. If it were trivial to pick up a completely new
technology and bring it to the market successfully, everyone would be doing
it. Also, there is quite a bit of shady business going on. A lot of startup
companies are run just to finance large salaries, while the investment money
lasts and to vanish after investment money ends[1]. But all of this is not a
valid technical criticism of the hyperloop. There are certainly valid points
to be made against the feasibility of the concept, but then these points
should be made and not artificial ones invented.

1: I could once watch this from close-up. As a grad student, I was involved in
optical data storage. We were able to store a few gigabytes in a small
crystal. This work was financed by a startup company created by a consulting
company. This startup would collect money - largely from state research
investments to match to the private money promised to be invested by the
consulting company. This did finance our work for some years and paid a couple
of salaried employees of the startup - related to the consulting company. When
the public investments ran out and no third party investments had arrived, the
startup would fade away. And with that the project in spite of what we had
achieved so far.

------
johnwalkr
This is such a joke. I remember when it was first described, I predicted that
it would do nothing but derail legitimate rail projects, and that's exactly
what's happened in California city councils. People have been sold the idea of
taking their car on the train like a ferry, for $5 instead of proper public
transit, and it will never happen.

Vacuum equipment is notoriously difficult to maintain, especially sealing of
moving parts. It was proposed to be cheap in part because you "just" make let
the tube thermally expand and contract at the stations, rather than at regular
intervals like rail. Based on the distances proposed, at California
temperatures, you'd need roughly +/-20m of expansion capability, at each
station. And you need this at the point where you are sealing things, and
starting/stopping cars, having people move in and out (well, not many people
because the capacity is a joke), and cleaning up vomit _. To the safety
standards for transportation. Plus all the same problems a normal train has,
like getting right-of-way. Good luck with that.

_ One of the points in the proposal was "assuming 2.5G is an acceptable
acceleration..." 2.5-3G is typical of a roller coaster, although the more
intense one go to 5G or so.

Should have never made if off the napkin.

------
masswerk
What I'm failing to understand about the Hyperloop concept (apart from all the
issues with thermal expansion, maintaining a near vacuum, safety consideration
and passenger capacity):

In real life tracks will have to include curves, as there's already terrain,
existing buildings, etc. Trains have to lean into curves, just like
motorbikes. With high speeds, anything exceeding a more traditional maglev
train, the angles required will become rather extreme with the track climbing
up the sides of the tube. What is supposed to happen, if the train has to
decrease speed below the planned cruising speed for the given section or even
to halt? What about passengers inside? How could this pass any safety checks
for mass transport operations?

(Notably, this was the only new thing addressed by Musk's original "air hockey
puck", front fan driven air cushion concept, as this could have avoided any
fixed installations, like rails or guards, (at the cost of other stability
issues) and could have allowed a variable leaning angle. But, since this
feature has been universally dismissed, how is this supposed to work?)

~~~
johnwalkr
No problem, 2.5G was mentioned as an acceptable value for experienced
acceleration. Do you like roller coasters?

~~~
masswerk
It's about roll counteracting the parallelogram of (lateral) forces and
resulting orientation in space, not linear acceleration.

------
woodandsteel
The article presents the expert case for why hyperloop is doomed to fail.
Normally in this sort of situation, I assume the experts are correct, but not
in this case. Let me explain why.

The reason is that we have been in this situation several times before with a
Musk idea. The experts all said it was completely crazy, but nonetheless it
succeeded spectacularly.

The reason the ideas succeeded is Musk is a genius and as a consequence he
thinks things out much better than the experts, who are not geniuses, do.

I am not saying that hyperloop will succeed. No one succeeds all the time, and
perhaps this time Musk will fail. I am just saying it seems to me virtually
certain he is quite aware of all the factors that the experts say would cause
hyperloop to succeed, and has developed surprising solutions to them, and
there is a good chance these solutions will succeed.

------
rdiddly
"Dawdling America" seems pretty unlikely to come from behind or even catch up,
which is why we need fantasies.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
[http://archive.is/oy1hF](http://archive.is/oy1hF)

------
cs702
_" A hyperloop system involves passengers or freight transported by pods
elevated by magnets, which travel within raised pipes. The pods can be
propelled at 620mph (1,000kph), says Jay Walder, boss of Virgin Hyperloop One,
one of the firms pushing the idea. At that pace 'you could move between
Columbus and Chicago in 40 minutes', he says, so covering the 460 miles many
hours quicker than by driving and at a cost (and overall carbon impact) that
he says would be lower than flying."_

If the economics work, for both people and goods, and if the environmental
externalities are lower than cars/trucks/trains/planes, then it would be great
to have regional networks of hyperloops in the US. I say, bring it on!

~~~
ClumsyPilot
Lower than flying. Train are the most efficient, simplest and oldest form of
land transport. Where do you get the idea that hyperloop can even approach
efficiency of a car, with all the energy wasted on high speed and keeping up
near vacuum?

------
louisblytrhe
[https://insidethemagic-119e2.kxcdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/20...](https://insidethemagic-119e2.kxcdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/monorailcolorWATER.jpg)

------
sudosysgen
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dn6ZVpJLxs)

This video has most of the points about why the Hyperloop is a ridiculous idea
that will never work.

~~~
pilaf
That video doesn't talk about the Hyperloop at all. You're getting the Boring
Company's Loop mixed up with the Hyperloop, which despite the similar-sounding
names have close to no relation.

~~~
sudosysgen
Ah yes, I posted the wrong video. My bad.

------
hawski
Off-topic: whenever I see a post here with much more comments then up-votes I
suspect a train wreck of a comment section. Looking through it confirms my
suspicion. I wonder how many unique commenters are here, and whether unique
commenters to overall comments ratio is also a good indicator of quality.

From my perspective the best links have not more then around 350 up-votes
(often less then 200) and less then third of that comments.

------
GuB-42
Can someone explain me how Hyperloop is supposed to work? There are so many
things wrong with it.

\- Hyperloop is a vactrain, a century old idea, and to this day, despite
numerous attempts, nothing came close to a working prototype, let alone
something production-ready.

\- By contrast, high-speed trains carries millions of passengers every day in
many parts of the world. They are safe, comfortable, and commercially viable.
And for hyperloop-like distances (500-1000km), you can expect a 3h trip. It is
not 40 minutes, but considering that high speed trains typically go downtown
to downtown and usually don't require you to show up more than a few minutes
in advance, it is often the fastest way to go in practice. Hyperloop doesn't
bring much to the table compared to high speed trains.

\- The individual pods are tiny compared to a train. And because of the high
speeds involved, they certainly require a lot of spacing to stay safe, it
means low capacities.

\- There is a long list of technical challenges, most of them require
engineering feats that have never been done on a large scale. It is an Apollo-
scale experimental project presented as a commercial venture.

\- Progress so far has been laughable, none of the hard problems have been
solved. What about thermal expansion, the ability to maintain a vacuum while
allowing people in and out, safety systems, the civil engineering required...
The experimental pods are scaled down with no space for passengers. They can
go fast, which is nice, but at 460 km/h they are still below conventional full
scale high-speed train records.

Not really a technical challenge but it still ticks me off:

\- Hyperloop is championed by Elon Musk, but he actually has very little
involvement in it. He owns none of the hyperloop companies, it is all "open-
source", "community", etc.. Basically, besides being a sponsor for
"competitions", it is all talk.

I know that Elon Musk is far from stupid, he is a world-class businessman and
a competent engineer. I can't believe he really sees Hyperloop as something
viable.

So for me it just a daring publicity stunt (a borderline scam IMHO), something
that Elon Musk is also known to be good at. After all, the story says that
SpaceX started as a publicity stunt. He wanted to buy a Russian ICBM,
repurposed to plant something on Mars. It didn't work, and the fact that he
couldn't do it gave him the idea that he could be a market for a rocket
company.

If you look at Hyperloop, it is essentially a battery powered electric car
running inside a tunnel. And guess what, he makes battery powered electric
cars, and now tunnels. I have a few doubts about Boring, but at least, it is
concrete, and there is always a need for tunnels, even if it is just to dig
sewer pipes.

~~~
liability
> _" Can someone explain me how Hyperloop is supposed to work?"_

1) Mass transit competes with cars.

2) Elon Musk sells cars.

3) High speed rail projects get derailed by people saying _" but if we wait N
years we could build a hyperloop instead"_

That's how Elon Musk intends Hyperloop to work.

~~~
kanox
This is one of the sillier Elon conspiracy theories.

Tesla competes with gas cars, not trains.

~~~
sudosysgen
Once Tesla is done competing with gas cars, it will also compete with trains
and airplanes. Remember GM trying to scrap public transport projects?

~~~
jcranmer
> Remember GM trying to scrap public transport projects?

I'm assuming you're referring to the GM streetcar conspiracy here. What GM
actually did was try to monopolize the supply of buses--which is still a form
public transport. They also did buy out several streetcar lines, but the
streetcar systems they bought were already bankrupt or on the verge of
bankruptcy. There's no real difference in the trajectory of streetcars in the
cities which were bought out by GM and those in the cities were they were not
bought out.

------
floppiplopp
A car salesman who talks the public into investing huge budgets into a mass
transportation system that will never efficiently work and is basically a huge
was of taxpayer money? Why would Elongated Muskrat do that, I wonder?

------
ajuc
Hyperloop makes much more sense on Mars than on Earth. You need shielding
anyway and the pressure gradient is much smaller, so the pipes don't need to
be so thick, and leaks aren't so dangerous.

------
SubiculumCode
High speed transportation could cause an exodus to areas with sparser
populations but maneable commutes to city centers. Live in Utah, work in SF

------
gumby
What is the economic value of transporting factory output from point to point
that fast? You’ll likely have to truck it from there.

------
Havoc
The mere fact that Musk is pushing it makes me very wary of betting against
it. Sure he's not Tony Stark...but doesn't seem that far off either.

