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So many negative comments for a Saturday. This is a marvel of engineering and deserves a celebration. Humbled by our ability to re-invent more and more. Well do

by kentf 9y ago

So many negative comments for a Saturday. This is a marvel of engineering and deserves a celebration. Humbled by our ability to re-invent more and more. Well done to all involved.

occultist_throw 9y ago
Indeed! It reminds me of the root foundations of a TurboLift from Star Trek.
- sabujp 9y ago
  I always thought that they used the vacuum of space to accelerate and decelerate those
rhgbb 9y ago
hi
nabla9 9y ago
I hope HN could avoid mindless cheering and positivity related to technology matters. Negative or positive comments that only express private feeling should be discouraged. They reduce the value of the discussion. Interesting technological discussion means criticizing.
Eridrus 9y ago
I feel like they didn't really do much to motivate this. Some of the comments here about increasing throughput provide clearer motivation - they do show this super briefly in the video with elevators operating in a cycle, but the benefits didn't really click.
CydeWeys 9y ago
This might be a little bit premature. I'd want to see broad commercial success before celebrating it as a marvel of engineering. Systems like this have been invented repeatedly throughout the decades, but they never succeeded for one reason or another. The problem isn't in coming up with the concept (or, now, making animated 3D renderings), it's in making it actually work well. This, incidentally, is why so many of us are so ecstatic about SpaceX -- because they've made something amazing that actually works.
riffic 9y ago
Simplicity in design should be what we celebrate, and things that actually make it into production. All this is for now is a slick video.
- freehunter 9y ago
  Eh... Rube Goldberg Machines are often celebrated as being of interesting design, and they are created with the expressed purpose of being overly complicated. There is room in the world for very clever engineering, very complicated engineering, very elegant engineering, and everything in between.
- lathiat 9y ago
  It is actually in production, here's the working test version in a tower they built just for it, by Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI And it has it's first production project in the OVG East Side Tower Berlin (though not yet finished building)

by kentf 9y ago

So many negative comments for a Saturday. This is a marvel of engineering and deserves a celebration. Humbled by our ability to re-invent more and more. Well done to all involved.

occultist_throw 9y ago

Indeed! It reminds me of the root foundations of a TurboLift from Star Trek.

sabujp 9y ago
I always thought that they used the vacuum of space to accelerate and decelerate those

rhgbb 9y ago

nabla9 9y ago

I hope HN could avoid mindless cheering and positivity related to technology matters. Negative or positive comments that only express private feeling should be discouraged. They reduce the value of the discussion. Interesting technological discussion means criticizing.

Eridrus 9y ago

I feel like they didn't really do much to motivate this. Some of the comments here about increasing throughput provide clearer motivation - they do show this super briefly in the video with elevators operating in a cycle, but the benefits didn't really click.

CydeWeys 9y ago

This might be a little bit premature. I'd want to see broad commercial success before celebrating it as a marvel of engineering. Systems like this have been invented repeatedly throughout the decades, but they never succeeded for one reason or another. The problem isn't in coming up with the concept (or, now, making animated 3D renderings), it's in making it actually work well. This, incidentally, is why so many of us are so ecstatic about SpaceX -- because they've made something amazing that actually works.

riffic 9y ago

Simplicity in design should be what we celebrate, and things that actually make it into production. All this is for now is a slick video.

freehunter 9y ago
Eh... Rube Goldberg Machines are often celebrated as being of interesting design, and they are created with the expressed purpose of being overly complicated. There is room in the world for very clever engineering, very complicated engineering, very elegant engineering, and everything in between.
lathiat 9y ago
It is actually in production, here's the working test version in a tower they built just for it, by Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTsbFS4xmI And it has it's first production project in the OVG East Side Tower Berlin (though not yet finished building)