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Hypnotized by Hyperloop
- kfk 9y agoDifficult 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.
- easytiger 9y agoYou have more than one pod?
- kuschku 9y agoDo you link them physically, do you have enough braking distances, or do you, as musk suggests, run pods that are separate close enough that in case of a disaster all pods will crash?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- easytiger 9y agoI believe they have gaps and the original design had safety stops, breaks, and wheeled propulsion to get you to safety
- kuschku 9y agoThe issue is the required gap to slow down from those speeds. You might want to take a look at the train crash in Emden at the Transrapid facility. A maglev train crashed into a maintenance vehicle at a speed of 500km/h because it takes too long to slow down. The required gaps to operate a maglev system efficiently would end up with one capsule every 10 seconds - which means it can carry less passengers than a lane of highway. The only way to get more capacity is by running actual trains.
- zeigotaro 9y agoVery much agreed, lots of FUD for a technology that's only now being prototyped. Would the author rather technologists not get excited by interesting possible solutions to long-standing problems?
- Asdfbla 9y ago>You could have made the same arguments about smartphones 10 years ago That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? Besides, smartphones didn't come from nothing. Prototypes and similar things had been around since the 90s. And they are arguably a much easier problem than infrastructure.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> That true, but the lesson from that is that no criticism of speculative sci-fi projects is allowed anymore or what? No, but maybe the lesson is, people should chill a bit with criticism. It's easy to armchair-criticize anything, but the west has serious problems with infrastructure projects right now. Shooting down any attempt at doing something large-scale is counterproductive to the growth and survival of our society.
- hsitz 9y ago"I am still not clear how a pod that can carry max 12 people can compete with trains that can carry hundreds." Max persons per trip seems a metric of little relevance, if a pod is much faster and can make many more trips within the same time period. In any case, that would point to how the pod could compete: carry just as many people each day, but each person would reach his/her destination much faster than if they used the train. (Wouldn't even need to carry as many people, if each person were motivated to pay more to reach destination in much shorter time.)
- jcranmer 9y agoHigh-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, with similar or higher frequency for local trains on the same line. Even if you ignore the low-speed alternatives, you'd have to dispatch pods in the region of one per minute to achieve the same passenger throughput. Well, there's the real problem with Hyperloop. It's not really feasible to operate switches more frequently than 45-second headways, even on conventional rail. Modern approaches generally have a capacity of 30 trains per hour, which means the same approach can service a dozen different routes. In Hyperloop, you would have to build a different approach for each of those routes, which requires duplicating the most expensive part of the infrastructure.
- com2kid 9y ago> High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Which seems in itself to be a huge problem. If Hyperloop can dispatch pods at shorter intervals, then high speed transit becomes a lot more user friendly. For the same reasons buses that run every half an hour are not the solution to mass transit, but put buses out that run every 5 or 10 minutes and the usefulness shoots way up.
- kwhitefoot 9y ago> High-speed trains are dispatched around one train per hour between major city pairs, Depends on what you mean by high speed. Currently high speed in the US means the speed that the British HST achieved in the early '70s, about 200kph. The airport train in Norway (Drammen to Gardermoen) can do that where the track and traffic allows and runs every 20 minutes. And you are right about local trains, last time I was in Bonn (about 15 years ago) there was a train leaving the station every two minutes (not to the same destination of course).
- protomyth 9y agoIf 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 9y agoI would want to see such throughput numbers scaled to cost. (because if one or the other wins by spending 10x, well, duh)
- protomyth 9y agoOh, 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 9y agoI bet trains win bigly for servicing bedroom communities. A stop is just a stop.
- protomyth 9y agoMaybe, 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 9y agoI 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.
- jonstewart 9y agoYou can make this argument on any new transformative tech, but in the case of the Hyperloop, there's actually no new transformative tech as of yet. It's merely science fiction, which is the point of the article: it's more fun to talk about science fiction and less fun to maintain and improve the solutions we already have.
- tommynicholas 9y agoI'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.
- alexandros 9y agoCouldn'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.
- angstrom 9y agoI lost faith in the average tech writer's ability to not trigger Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect a long time ago. Thanks for saving me the time. Nothing more annoying than reading a journalist with a soap box and more time for word count than correctness.
- platz 9y agoThe job of a being a good conservative is to push back on every progressive idea.
- seibelj 9y ago
- 11thEarlOfMar 9y agoFor 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 9y agoWouldn'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.
- kome 9y ago> 2. We live in a world where private space companies build profitable space transportation systems that can land themselves after orbiting the Earth. yeah, but mainly with public money.
- kpil 9y agoSome 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-hyperloop-is-a-step-closer----test-section--getting-started-in-finland-2017-3/ http://nordic.businessinsider.com/stockholm-helsinki-hyperlo... 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 9y ago> 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.
- ethn 9y agoThis is largely a fallacy in the understanding of economics. Profitable, at least shouldn't, mean profitable to the government but to the shareholders of the government, its citizens. Costly government projects on large-scale speculative technology detracts from budgets of other presently needed services. There is not one existing branch of government that can't definitively improve its services to the benefit of its citizens and therefore the entire system.
- fiatjaf 9y ago"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 9y agoCity 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?
- rattray 9y agoThis 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.
- albertTJames 9y agoWe 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 ? ...
- njarboe 9y agoSuch 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.
- sixQuarks 9y agoI was thinking the same thing. Armchair critic that has nothing better to do than criticize people who are actually trying to innovate and improve society.
- dwaltrip 9y agoObviously, 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 9y agoFive 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 9y agoI 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
- dalbasal 9y agoOne 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 9y agoYes, 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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dalbasal 9y ago
- mcguire 9y ago"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 9y agoThe 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 9y agoAs 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 9y agoExcept 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 9y agoOk, 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.
- ethn 9y agoThe 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 9y agoHuh? 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 9y agoIsn'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 9y agoWell 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.
- mark212 9y agoThis 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 9y agoHow 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.
- Retra 9y agoHas that not already been tried? And if not, why not? LA has a government and they're surely aware of the transportation problems. One would think they could just pour their funds into this sensible approach and the problem would have been fixed two decades ago. And if that's not going to happen, maybe a desperate move is warranted.
- JBReefer 9y agoLook up Measure R. LA has mostly given up on roads and is very aggressively building new public transportation lines. The city has repeatedly voted for taxes to fund these endeavors.
- brentdax 9y agoLA 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 9y agoTrue, it's easy to forget that LA even has a subway.
- DannyBee 9y agoI 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 9y agoI 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 9y agoI 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.
- kome 9y agoHyperloop 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.
- JKCalhoun 9y agoAgreed. The idea of the "pneumatic train" (http://nycsubway.org.s3.amazonaws.com/images/articles/beach-car.jpg http://nycsubway.org.s3.amazonaws.com/images/articles/beach-...) has been around for at least 100 years, so why does everyone with high-speed ground transportation go rail? Existing lines and infrastructure? Perhaps. But we too have existing lines and infrastructure (train stations on those lines). Or is it perhaps that building and maintaining miles and miles of rails, vs. tubes, is just way, way more cost effective?
- methodin 9y agoIt definitely seems problematic to put your entire foundation of travel in the hands of government or companies, though. They especially do not represent the concerns of all people. A car on the other hand is complete freedom. I would have expected to hear that driverless cars are the future since it's not contingent on an non-existent infrastructure, rather on the roads that already exist.
- kome 9y ago> It definitely seems problematic to put your entire foundation of travel in the hands of government (...) They especially do not represent the concerns of all people. A car, on the other hand, is complete freedom. Well, car needs roads and roads are public goods. And, of course, they need a lot of public funding, planning and maintenance. All with public money. Governments pushed for cars as a mean of transportation because in the Keynesian era was good for the whole economy (car factories employed a lot of people), and nature was less of a concern. But pushing for cars was a deliberate public policy that involved a lot of public infrastructure, city planning, etc... Driverless cars would need a lot of infrastructure as well, but I don't think they are a good investment for the whole economy like normal cars were in the '50s. With putting a lot of public money for infrastructure to help a few companies that do not employ so many people anymore? The future is not for cars, IMHO. But who knows...
- tehabe 9y agoWhen 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 9y agoHis 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".
- Tiktaalik 9y agoThe 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 9y agoOne 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.
- Tiktaalik 9y agoIn discussions of supply and demand, something that isn't often discussed is the real, physical limits of supply creation in terms of construction time, costs, manpower and such. Demand is more flexible. This reality is also frequently ignored in the housing conversation when people advocate the solution to high prices is to simply add more supply, as if it's a given that supply could be created fast enough to overtake demand. I find that no one really ever does the work, taking into account the friction of real life on supply creation, to figure out if that's likely to be the case.
- puranjay 9y ago> 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
- Animats 9y agoJapan'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.
- eesmith 9y agoCould 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 9y agoYou 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 9y agoAnd 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.
- aphextron 9y agoHyperloop 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.
- deepGem 9y agoThe 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 9y agoYes, 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 9y agoah, thanks for pointing out. I had the Times and this article in consecutive tabs and mistook this for the times. Classic context switching issues.
- ojosilva 9y agoFuture-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.
- had2makeanacct 9y agoHyperloop One just crossed 309 kmph. Cool.