Hyperloop

Apparently you can already buy cars that don’t need to run on fossil fuels…hahahahhahhahha…crazy…some one even said they hold all the top speed records and are cheaper to run and maintain than dirty vehicles…that’ll be the day…

Apparently some one has already crossed the English Channel in an electric aeroplane…hahahhahahh…likely story…

And now they are saying that soon (2021) people will travel between cities in tubes at the speed of a plain! hahahhaha…

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Transport geek alert

Musk is off his rocker with this one. Conventional high speed rail is the way forward: it’s proven tech, reliable, fast, efficient, and doesn’t involve long distance tunnelling (difficult at best, and expensive) or near-vacuum pressure.
His “The Loop” concept demonstrates he also doesn’t understand tunnelling, or urban transport networks. London Reconnections has a number of excellent articles laughing at his concepts (for example - the proposal for the Baltimore-DC loop would have a daily capacity of a thousand people, per direction, per day.
A full Victoria Line train can carry 1000 people. There are 36 per hour.

That said it’s a super exciting time to be in transport. The really fun stuff (in terms of planning) is about chucking cars out of spaces, particularly smaller towns. A couple of case studies I’ve read from Spain saw huge improvements to quality of life in the town centres, together with booms in local independent businesses thanks to increased foot traffic.

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It’s even easier to explain why this won’t work…

Imagine a 1,000 mile long tube under almost complete vacuum, all you’d have to do is cause a small fault in the pipe anywhere along it’s length to cause a complete failure of the system that would create a devastating re-pressurisation of the tube that would kill everyone when their trains suddenly hit a wall of air and are experience massive g-forces, while also destroy the entire system.

I’m sorry but let play devil advocate here.

When Elon proposed space X reusable rocket renown astronaut (Neil Armstrong) and scientists spoke person ( Neil deGrasse Tyson) expressed their biased opinion in how this would not work. You would have believed them as you thought those naysayers knew what they were talking about. Funny how wrong this opinions were wrong. Especially when space X now as paced the path for viable privatised space travel. If you doubt this check spacex schedule for 2019 who will be launching more rocket than all other agency and country all combine.

Tesla is a grandiose idea, really would you says this had been done before and killed so successful but it succeeded so well that a great percentage of non Tesla electric cars use Tesla engine under the hood and often this is ignored. So yes his original estimate have not been met to publicly take Tesla to meet there target or objective but his vision was accomplished in changing an industry that refused to change.

Should we forget PayPal who transformed online transaction model that so many followed on and changed the way internet business is being conducted.

So in the end let me be blunt it’s easy to criticize what we have little knowledge about based on biased opinion about things we think we understand as it’s much harder to believe something that hadn’t been done before. What make successful people successful is there ability to be resilient to failure in the prospect of succeeding in accomplishing their vision.

I’m not here for a debate but as stated just play devil advocate because as far as I know none of you have done anything as impossible as Elon accomplished so far.

On that note have a great night

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Great points!

I think Elon’s a great example of someone who looks for solutions not problems…

…or you could say, looks for the worlds biggest problems and then applies himself to come up with solutions for them.

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Respectfully, I think you’re comparing apples and oranges.

Yes, his companies did great things, and I think took on both space flight and electric cars in interesting ways. But both those things had their adherents within the industry: people have been advocating for programmes like SpaceX and a move towards electric vehicles for a number of years, Musk was just one of those willing to address the problem in a new way (in space terms it’s worth noting that Bezos is doing it too, and in electric vehicle terms Musk had a first mover/new starter advantage in that he was trying to steal conventional car market share rather than edging out his own market share the way a conventional car company would). Nobody - and I mean nobody, not a single transport engineer I have met - is enthusiastic about the Loop or Hyperloop.

Moreover, both those things were problems without current solutions. This is a problem which has a solution. The solution is socialised mass transport, and high speed rail, and moving away from personal vehicles in urban environments). This is not a technical question, it’s an ideological one.

You can fund the Loop, or you can build conventional HS rail at a fraction of the cost, and fund multiple projects at once.

I give credit to Musk for his acheivements. But he’s talking out of his arse when it comes to mass transit.

(Source, FWIW - chartered engineer working in public transportation and rail)

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I wish we had Elon Musk doing tool control :joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy::rofl::joy:

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Btw , Neil Armstrong it’s a soldier , it doesn’t have any scientific background.

Lol btw Neil Armstrong finished his career as professor of aeronautical engineering so yes he started in the military as pilot. I can find if it was ever called a scientist and neither did I if you read the post.

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An interesting update on several projects that are moving in the right direction towards the first Hyperloop!

For now, it’s a bit like an episode of Tomorrows World, but none the less still interesting to see who will be the first to get something working…

The Race to Build the First Hyperloop:

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I heard Musk made a lot of money selling Paypal to Ebay.

I also heard that he gave away the patents for electric vehicles to create competition in the market. Thus enabling manufacturers to produce electric vehicles far faster than would otherwise have been possible.

He’s an example of achieving the ‘impossible’ like many great thinkers throughout history who often get called ‘crazy’ and their ideas ridiculed.

We desperately need people who think ‘outside of the box’ and challenge the status quo or conventional wisdom, otherwise we stagnate.

Not much was achieved by thinking conventionally.

Many FTSE 100 CEOs spend upto 40% of their time working on their vision.

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I think Hyperloop will eventually result in some clever technologies being ported back to conventional high speed rail - maybe signalling or train construction, idk - but by itself it’s not really a great solution as I don’t think anyone has figured out how stations will look like, or how you’d handle junctions and crossings. I’d like to be proved wrong though because it is a very cool concept!

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whispers in NUMTOT we can wait twenty years for a hyperloop tech which may or may not appear, or we can build high speed rail networks and properly integrated public transport systems.

Also, Elon Musk is… Not a great person or innovator (at least as far as public transport is concerned) is probably the polite way to put it, and I treat anything he says on the topic with a large (Everest-sized) grain of salt.

Edited at moderator request.

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You could be right. And I wish they’d put some effort into electric bikes and infrastructure which would be far more efficient and ecological.

All the big manufacturers make them but there’s almost no publicity or infrastructure, compared to cars.

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Things are getting a bit better on that front. Infrastructure is harder to do with bikes Vs e cars I think - but both electric bikes and cars are boosted by the recent progress in battery density and motor efficiency.

We’re gradually getting better at it. If we had proper funding and education about national infrastructure then we’d be in a better place I think.

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Initally:
Quick note, It would be nice for me to be able to post about someone i admire without you each time posting how much you hate the guy and think he’s evil and stupid or whatever it you are trying to say? With all the other perceived or real criticisms and attacks that i face whenever i post on serious matters or in this case fairly trivial, a bit of leeway to be able to talk about something with the hope of finding like minded people in the community without someone trolling how much they hate someone would be great. Writing a post that ends with the statement that you think this is going to get people annoyed probably isn’t a post worth posting and if i was to do something like that would end a lot worse for me.

In response to your points

I dont think this is a case of one or the other. Both can be done and one won’t take money or detract from the other one. There isn’t a pot of gold that funds all projects in the world that works like someones household budget that means if we go into hyperloop we can’t do rail. it simply doesnt work like that. both solutions are oppurtunites for entrepruneering intelligent and focsed people who can make buesineess out of either.
Funding from people or businesses comes from private individuals and companies and they are allowed to spend it on anything they want. If they see potential in something they can spend their money on any thing they want. If projects are feasible enough they can also get money and investment from governments etc - if they create jobs, opportunities and revenue.

If you think it’s worth a shot to do high speed rail [or any industry or device] then you would need to get quite a lot of capital and investment to do this. you would probably need some influence in the industry and you would probably need a team with you. You would also need a plan, some gumsion and a thick skin for all the keyboard critics.

Elon has managed to do this with Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX. He has the boring company as a side line and the neural link. Starting from scratch each time and reinventing an industry from the ground up. He’s paid millions in taxes, he’s created thousands of jobs for real people and is contributing significant towards three of human kinds largest problems - becoming multiplanatary and decarbonising our lives.

eugene

crying%20withlaughter

I fail to see how posting with the intention of provoking an argument doesn’t breach our guidlines. moderators?

Could moderators also please note the “likes” placed on a post that breaks the spaces guidelines

I think it’s fair to say Musk is a controversial person - my comment at the end was intended as a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the fact that discussion of the fact that any discussion of him and his work will lead to disagreements - I certainly wasn’t trying to start an argument, but forums are for discussion, and sometimes discussion leads to differences of opinion. None of the above was intended to be me having a go at you, by the way, and I sincerely apologise if it’s upset you.

For the record, I don’t hate Elon Musk - but I do think his approach to public infrastructure is wrong-headed, and his attitude towards his employees is negligent (on mobile, but I’m happy to dig out sources if people want later). That’s the basis for my personal opinion of him.

Perhaps if I explain myself a little better you’ll understand where I’m coming from - public transport and urban planning ideas are something I’m excited and passionate about (I’d get out more, but WHO advice prevents this under the current circumstances). I’ll limit my points to Hyperloop and The Loop, since that’s the topic of the thread and they’re both infrastructure projects using similar technologies.

You’re absolutely right that private companies can do as they want (within reason and the law), but any infrastructure, even a private railway, relies on public planning permission and funding. The type of public transport which is built has implications at a political level: for example, The Loop is a system which would serve only those rich enough to run a car in a city: and the capacity would be significantly lower than conventional trains. A light rail system has significantly higher capacity, is accessible to everyone, has a far more frequent service, and uses technology which is tried, tested, safe, highly reliable and ubiquitous. The last point is especially relevant because that makes it cheaper! I’d be happy to point towards more detailed articles which examine the two. Building trains delivers higher public benefit than the Loop, right off the bat.

Some of these points pertain to Hyperloop as well (as Musk has said, Loop is a stepping stone to Hyperloop). Others in this thread have pointed out the technological issues with maintaining low pressure or vacuum over an extended asset like a tunnel. Nobody (to my knowledge) has achieved this over a tunnel of that length and diameter. It’s probably possible - but very, very expensive and some way off time wise. On the other hand, high speed rail could be built today, and at an order of magnitude less cost wise because you’re not paying for the development of a new technology to build the line.

Finally, on funding generally: there is a single pot of gold, albeit one generated by political limitations. These projects don’t get funded privately, and if a government builds Hyperloop, it won’t be building high speed rail. If Hyperloop doesn’t work or doesn’t serve all their citizens, then that becomes a very big problem.

Look at it this way: I want cereal. I’m going to develop the technology to hold cornflakes and milk in place while I eat them using jets of air, without getting them all over the kitchen. It’s certainly possible - probably - but nobody has done it yet, and while I’m messing about with the compressor the bowls in the cupboard are gathering dust, and my stomach is rumbling.

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