I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.
It's true that LA traffic sucks, but the only solution you need is good transit planning with existing technology. Throw in self-driving mini-busses (which I bet Tesla is working on) and you'd never be stuck in traffic again. Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. with just good transit planning.
The problems with US transit are political. We have political problems that makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long. Hyperloop can't solve those problems with better engineering. And if we fix those political problems, you don't need Hyperloop.
I don't see what Hyperloop has to do with LA. It's a whole new transit technology for long distance. And it's funny you mention Japan, since they're working on developing new transit tech in the form of mag lev to link their biggest cities [1].
It's a transit technology for medium distance. Jets spend a significant portion of a trip from LA to SF ascending to and descending from cruising altitude, where they perform most efficiently. To my understanding, Hyperloop is specifically targeted at those distances where jets don't have much time at their efficient altitude.which is what makes it somewhat competitive.
Tokyo's subways and railroads are privately owned and ticket costs are based on the distance traveled. Americans always seem to want to pay $2 whether they go 5 blocks or 5 miles, among other unreasonable expectations for public transport.
All true. But the base of the pyramid is that Japan doesn't have the legal and regulatory barriers to construction we do, so their infrastructure just costs a lot less. That makes everything else (like fares) more affordable, which increases usage. It's a virtuous cycle.
> I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.
Solar City wasn't viable and had to be "bought" by Tesla to avoid bankruptcy.
> The problems with US transit are political.
Absolutely. There are too many people with vested financial interests who throw roadblocks to sensible public planning.
The irony here is that so much of elon musk and his company exist out of political "help". I don't know how musk does it but he has access to levers of power to keep himself afloat. The guy must have been a smooth talker.
> I don't know how musk does it but he has access to levers of power to keep himself afloat.
A well run PR machine that keeps the constant hype going. The right misdirection at the right times (we totally need to worry about the mythical smart AI, oh but don't worry about the timeline or the dangers of self driving cars). The Hyperloop and Tunnels are totally amazing building blocks for Mars so we have to build them.
I think Musk is a brilliant guy, but the cult around him is pretty ridiculous.
> I love Solar City, Tesla, and SpaceX, but I just don't see Hyperloop/Boring Co as viable or useful.
This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think they've thought of something that someone who's been thinking about this stuff for a very long time, and has the money and track record to back it up, disagrees.
You seem to have a very narrow view of the technology being proposed - the announcement is about New York to Washington, USA - but presumably this is a proof of concept build with modest scope.
> Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. ..
> ... makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long.
One should be careful with throwing around orders of magnitude claims willy nilly.
Tokyo's population is is just shy of 10 million, Los Angeles about 4 million.
Thanks to good, cheap and fast public transport, people regularly commute to Tokyo from all over Japan. That is what 'manages' implies.
I know that is difficult to imagine in the US, but please have an open mind.
Populations depend very much on how you count, but I'd think density matters more and Tokyo's density is somewhere between 14 to 36 times LA (allowing for different ways of counting), and 40 million use just the rail system every day), so the parent's point is still very valid.
> This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think
I would say this is the only occasion that I read people telling others they shouldn't write their critical thinking about an issue because of the person who is behind.
> This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think they've thought of something that someone who's been thinking about this stuff for a very long time, and has the money and track record to back it up, disagrees.
I'm super skeptical about Hyperloop and I was vehemently opposed to "wasting" tax money to build it but I'm pretty happy that he's giving it a try for real, obviously he believes in the project. Hopefully he'll prove naysayers like me wrong and we'll get a kickass futuristic mode of transportation out of it.
At least it puts to rest the conspiracy theory that he came up with the Hyperloop concept only to undermine the current bullet train projects .
I only hope that if it doesn't pan out it won't hurt his other ventures too much, but I suppose he knows what he's doing.
It's long distance maglev project that's already under construction, using proven technology, and it aims to cut travel times in half relative to the existing high speed line.
I find this project far more exciting than the vague plans and ideas surrounding Hyperloop.
That technology is only proven because they started working on it about 50 years ago. So, I'm not holding my breath for working Hyperloop installations, but supposing the Hyperloop proves to have fundamental advantages over mag lev (not sure if it does or not, just supposing), then it seems worth pursuing.
I love new technology especially when it comes to transportation, but as a people mover this thing seems to have unsolvable problems. You're trapped in a tin can in a vacuum tunnel 20 feet or 50 feet below the surface -- what if it stops? You can't get out.
Obviously we put up with a similar predicament in air transportation, and for that matter train derailment and automobile collisions are a real and not uncommon risk of above-ground transportation systems.
But Hyperloop has this inherent issue that doesn't have any obvious solution. For transporting goods, it sounds fantastic. Move tons of cargo from SF to LA in 30 minutes, or from D.C. to Boston in 40 minutes. If nothing else, it would be great for USPS and FedEx. If it at least partially relieves the interstates of the stress and damage caused by 18-wheelers, another point in its favor (sorry, drivers).
I'll be happy with better/cheaper Amtrak service. Nothing beats working at the cafe car and watching the scenery roll by. Plain old rail travel is way too expensive in the US compared to the alternatives (bus or rental).
Heck, I'd even be excited about wifi upgrades in the NE corridor.
Hyperloop appears to be a niche solution to a specific transportation situation. It may work (be profitable/useful) for a time between specific destinations. Then the population situation (density, distribution) will change and it will become less profitable or even be discarded.
Its not clear that any current pair of cities currently fit the sweet spot for hyperloop. Even if some did, its not clear a hyperloop could be built in time, before the situation changes and they exit the sweet spot.
Execution and timing will be especially critical to a successful venture.
Probably true, but at the same time, there's a build-it-and-they-will-come effect that accompanies major public transportation projects, for example the Metro light rail in Phoenix. By running it from the airport to the downtown convention center district and then uptown to Bethany Home Rd. on 19th Ave., they have provided some significant convenience and cachet to the downtown area that has been struggling for decades with revitalization. Millennials are parking themselves in trendy apartment buildings near the downtown and the light rail has contributed to that lifestyle.
Will it last? Time will tell, but the trend today is to increase usage. The biggest complaint about the light rail is that it doesn't go far enough, though there are plans afoot to extend it over time.
There's plans to extend it to Metro Center (at the time they made the plans, it made sense - today, not so much). It's also pretty much extended to downtown Mesa (stops somewhere near - maybe in front of? - the HeatSync Labs hackerspace...
There are also very real technical questions to be considered with holding a vacuum over that much pipe, especially when there's gonna be some seismic activity, potential for sabotage etc. I'm not sure that it really is economically viable unless there's some kind of incredibly durable and flexible material to be had which is as easy to use as concrete, about as cheap as concrete, but basically magical spiderwebs.
I was wondering if there were updates about this myself. There's been lots of work talked about researching the fluid / heat & weight dynamics, but very little about maintaining the vacuum - which seems to me a more fundamental problem here...
It's worth noting that conventional railways tend to sacrifice a bit of speed (relative to what you could engineer them for) in favour of being flexible in terms of how much passenger capacity can be provided, supporting a mixture of local/express services, and so forth. So the 'sweet spot' for a conventional or high-speed rail line between two locations may tend to be larger.
When the first wave of criticism came after Musk presented his Hyperloop concept the argument I found the most compelling was that at those speeds if you change direction very fast or the lateral and vertical accelerations felt by the passenger quickly becomes uncomfortable or even unbearable.
That means that if you have some kind of obstacle on the way, such as a mountain, lake or even a city you can't easily swerve around to avoid it. You either have to anticipate your turn extremely early (huge turn radius) or you basically have to tunnel through it (extremely expensive).
For the same reason if you decide to pass over mountains you might have to start elevating the track well before you meet the slope because you can't brutally change your inclination from 0 to, say, 20 degrees brutally without inflicting a few gees to the passengers. So you'd basically build a ramp to smooth it up, which would also be quite expensive.
Also, what if landscapes shift due to tectonic plate movement?
I'm scared to fly as it is, but hurtling through the air at mach 1 there is far less chance of an obstacle than hurtling through a cramped vacuum tube at mach 1.
I remember the throughput was also fairly low compared to high speed rail, and many of the savings came from questionable areas (running the tube through highway medians, stopping the hyperloop at the outskirts of the city instead of going into the city like rail does).
Agreed. I'm not sure how Hyperloop scales to population changes especially if it is below ground. Sounds like a very expensive infrastructure investment.
There's still some part of me which wonders if the "Rolling Roads" vision of Heinlein's wouldn't be a better long-term solution (even if requiring much more in terms of space and materials) over rails, the Hyperloop, etc.
The concept is effectively a series of moving sidewalk (like you see in airports) loops scaled up to run at 100+ mph, with its own ecosystem of shops, restaurants, inns, etc. They would replace the highways, and be powered by solar panels on the enclosure of the road. Getting on and off is handled by a series of parallel belts which go progressively slower at reasonable increments.
No need for "stops" where the entire system must come to a halt to disgorge passengers, no need for negative pressure systems, it could power itself (and surrounding communities)... But the impact of the roads "stopping" would be pretty major and widespread (if mitigable via multiple smaller loops).
There was an interesting AMA on reddit awhile back, that's since been deleted.
SpaceX money, working out of SpaceX facilities, using SpaceX tooling department, the person giving the AMA was recruited by a SpaceX employee.
There's a fairly large number of legal entities making up SpaceX, but I haven't been able to find anything that looks like the boring company. Not clear to me if it's a seperate legal entity.
You can find a list here (with a few additions in the comments, and links to up to date sources): https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4ifvir/spacex_subsi... I checked the sources, searched for companies with the name "boring" in California, etc. Nothing stood out.
The above helpful comments being said, my question now is, how long is he going to be able to run these companies separately without a shareholder revolt saying they should be put under one roof to create more value for the investors in Tesla? Right now it feels like I'm an unofficial investor in TeSpaceBoringLink as opposed to just the former.
I expect to get some hate for the comment as it's a Wall Street type complaint, but to my eye, it seems like these companies are becoming ever more similar.
The impression I get from googling it is that it is, in fact, a separate entity from Elon's other venture, or rather as separate as an Elon company can be.
Readit News
It's true that LA traffic sucks, but the only solution you need is good transit planning with existing technology. Throw in self-driving mini-busses (which I bet Tesla is working on) and you'd never be stuck in traffic again. Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. with just good transit planning.
The problems with US transit are political. We have political problems that makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long. Hyperloop can't solve those problems with better engineering. And if we fix those political problems, you don't need Hyperloop.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev#Japan
Solar City wasn't viable and had to be "bought" by Tesla to avoid bankruptcy.
> The problems with US transit are political.
Absolutely. There are too many people with vested financial interests who throw roadblocks to sensible public planning.
The irony here is that so much of elon musk and his company exist out of political "help". I don't know how musk does it but he has access to levers of power to keep himself afloat. The guy must have been a smooth talker.
That one's pretty easy to disprove...
A well run PR machine that keeps the constant hype going. The right misdirection at the right times (we totally need to worry about the mythical smart AI, oh but don't worry about the timeline or the dangers of self driving cars). The Hyperloop and Tunnels are totally amazing building blocks for Mars so we have to build them.
I think Musk is a brilliant guy, but the cult around him is pretty ridiculous.
This is one of those occasions where a Hacker News appears to think they've thought of something that someone who's been thinking about this stuff for a very long time, and has the money and track record to back it up, disagrees.
You seem to have a very narrow view of the technology being proposed - the announcement is about New York to Washington, USA - but presumably this is a proof of concept build with modest scope.
> Tokyo manages a population more than 10x that of L.A. ..
> ... makes building infrastructure cost 10x too much and take 10x too long.
One should be careful with throwing around orders of magnitude claims willy nilly.
Tokyo's population is is just shy of 10 million, Los Angeles about 4 million.
I would say this is the only occasion that I read people telling others they shouldn't write their critical thinking about an issue because of the person who is behind.
How dare I disagree with the Perfect Musk!
At least it puts to rest the conspiracy theory that he came up with the Hyperloop concept only to undermine the current bullet train projects .
I only hope that if it doesn't pan out it won't hurt his other ventures too much, but I suppose he knows what he's doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen
It's long distance maglev project that's already under construction, using proven technology, and it aims to cut travel times in half relative to the existing high speed line.
I find this project far more exciting than the vague plans and ideas surrounding Hyperloop.
Deleted Comment
Obviously we put up with a similar predicament in air transportation, and for that matter train derailment and automobile collisions are a real and not uncommon risk of above-ground transportation systems.
But Hyperloop has this inherent issue that doesn't have any obvious solution. For transporting goods, it sounds fantastic. Move tons of cargo from SF to LA in 30 minutes, or from D.C. to Boston in 40 minutes. If nothing else, it would be great for USPS and FedEx. If it at least partially relieves the interstates of the stress and damage caused by 18-wheelers, another point in its favor (sorry, drivers).
Heck, I'd even be excited about wifi upgrades in the NE corridor.
Its not clear that any current pair of cities currently fit the sweet spot for hyperloop. Even if some did, its not clear a hyperloop could be built in time, before the situation changes and they exit the sweet spot.
Execution and timing will be especially critical to a successful venture.
Will it last? Time will tell, but the trend today is to increase usage. The biggest complaint about the light rail is that it doesn't go far enough, though there are plans afoot to extend it over time.
That means that if you have some kind of obstacle on the way, such as a mountain, lake or even a city you can't easily swerve around to avoid it. You either have to anticipate your turn extremely early (huge turn radius) or you basically have to tunnel through it (extremely expensive).
For the same reason if you decide to pass over mountains you might have to start elevating the track well before you meet the slope because you can't brutally change your inclination from 0 to, say, 20 degrees brutally without inflicting a few gees to the passengers. So you'd basically build a ramp to smooth it up, which would also be quite expensive.
Has this been addressed?
I'm scared to fly as it is, but hurtling through the air at mach 1 there is far less chance of an obstacle than hurtling through a cramped vacuum tube at mach 1.
The concept is effectively a series of moving sidewalk (like you see in airports) loops scaled up to run at 100+ mph, with its own ecosystem of shops, restaurants, inns, etc. They would replace the highways, and be powered by solar panels on the enclosure of the road. Getting on and off is handled by a series of parallel belts which go progressively slower at reasonable increments.
No need for "stops" where the entire system must come to a halt to disgorge passengers, no need for negative pressure systems, it could power itself (and surrounding communities)... But the impact of the roads "stopping" would be pretty major and widespread (if mitigable via multiple smaller loops).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll
SpaceX money, working out of SpaceX facilities, using SpaceX tooling department, the person giving the AMA was recruited by a SpaceX employee.
There's a fairly large number of legal entities making up SpaceX, but I haven't been able to find anything that looks like the boring company. Not clear to me if it's a seperate legal entity.
You can find a list here (with a few additions in the comments, and links to up to date sources): https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/4ifvir/spacex_subsi... I checked the sources, searched for companies with the name "boring" in California, etc. Nothing stood out.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/6kw70z/rspacex_disc...
I expect to get some hate for the comment as it's a Wall Street type complaint, but to my eye, it seems like these companies are becoming ever more similar.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572