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It’s hard to take him seriously in terms of mass transit when he talks about vacuum trains as though they’re not a terrible idea. Then you remember he owns a co
by DmenshunlAnlsis 9y ago
It’s hard to take him seriously in terms of mass transit when he talks about vacuum trains as though they’re not a terrible idea. Then you remember he owns a company that plans to ultimately replace airlines in some markets with rockets, and a car company, and a person not overly taken with his “charisma” wonders if his interest in mass transit is in scuttling it.
If he was serious about mass transit there are existing, proven technologies he could get behind with his billions, rather than hyperloop. Instead he proposes a technology that is entrancing to people who don’t know enough about engineering and physics, and that is exciting. Unfortunately the tech isn’t workable, it’s just exciting, but it could take a decade or more for that to become apparent to most people.
Wikipedia has an excellent article which lays out the history of the concept going back to the 18th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vactrain
I love the understatement of “prohibitively expensive” too, very droll. Any experimentalist who has worked with strong vacuums knows how absurd the idea of a hyperloop is at this point. The expense, the maintence costs, the airlocks, the pumps, all would be an incredible expense that could never be recouped in the builder’s lifetime. The actual tunneling would have to be totally revolutionary too, with incredibly long, nearly straight sections. The turning radius would have to be on the order of of a commercial airliner’s turning radius, which is absurd.
Credit to the man though, it hits that sweet spot requiring specialist knowledge to see through the hype, much like promises of nuclear fusion as a major power source within a couple of decades. The big idea is so attractive, and the problems all involve technical details. It’s not quite a con, but it’s close.
- jcranmer 9y agoTo be fair, the original Hyperloop proposal is not actually a vactrain. Instead, it's something that manages to be worse than a vactrain, and so everyone who is actually interested in making it work is basically turning it back into a vactrain.
- unethical_ban 9y agoThat you think Tesla is solely a money making venture via automobiles is telling. It's a car company that could reduce our world's impact on the environment substantially over time. It is a vehicle (ha) for battery and charging technology, and for AI via their research in driver assist. It isn't unreasonable for a tech billionaire with civilization defining aspirations to want to make better cars, build better batteries, and improve public transit all at once.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 9y agoThat’s all very much not what I see when I look at Tesla, it’s just the marketing. The reality is someone getting another $2.6 billion, while desperate-to-believe people cheer him on because they think it’s part of a master plan to save them. I’m not part of the Church of Musk, sorry, I’m an empiricist.
- taylorswift_ 9y agoOnce upon a time, it was completely preposterous to think that a human could fly in the air. When I'm worth $20Billion+ from building technologies that have already impacted the world, then maybe people will take me seriously!
- Robotbeat 9y agoEmpirically, what other US car company is making as big of a difference in greening transport? No car company, particularly in the US, is in even the same league as Tesla when it comes to advancing electric cars. “Oh, but it’s just a niche”... the Model 3 is already outselling the Bolt, and the Model 3 has a lower base price and is just at the beginning of the ramp up curve. It doesn’t have to be this way. Other car makers are perfectly capable of building EVs & the associated infrastructure. Musk isn’t magic, but empirically no one else really seems to care. So of course people just tear down the only company actually doing something significant here, because modern intellectual discourse is primarily about “deconstruction” and cynicism.
- gamblor956 9y agoSure, let's pretend the Prius hasn't been around for 2 decades making eco-friendly cars fashionable...
- jacobush 9y agoKeeping them unfashionable
- st26 9y agoexisting, proven technologies he could get behind with his billions Whether hyperloop is feasible, he's pretty clearly gunning for future, unproven technologies, and very much on purpose. There's nothing wrong with wanting to spend your billions on trying to find new technologies.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 9y agoHe making his money on cars with lithium batteries, and chemical rockets. That’s where he’s spending and making his billions. He’s dropping 3.8% of his recent $2.6 billion award on this project.
- ericd 9y agoIt's not like he was already paid that, he only gets paid that if the company hits incredibly aggressive milestones that would render that amount a rounding error.
- pavs 9y agoWow. You are either willfully ignorant at best or deliverately spreading false info at worst. Musk's Tesla package is performance based. He only get 'paid' by stock if he meets some ridiculously hard performance benchmark (ie, literally have to make Tesla the the most valuable company in the world). Not only that we won't get stock options if he doesnt meet those goals, he can't sell stock for a long period of time to make sure the stock valuation is not a temp spike. Also he doesnt get paid a single penny even if tesla stock performs somewhat better or even stays the same.
- afterburner 9y agoYou kinda missed the main point. Musk's business is focused entirely on improving existing, proven, old technologies.
- kd5bjo 9y agoLike digging tunnels under populated areas to make new rights-of-way?
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoWhat proven mass transit technologies should Elon get behind with his billions?
- jmheinkle 9y agoGreat response. I’ve been disappointed by HN and it’s fairly credulous acceptance of Musk despite all the hallmark traits of hucksterism. It’s refreshing to get cogent and precise criticism. As someone who closely follows Tesla, I would love to hear your critique of its current state and likely fate.
- nickik 9y agoYou do understand that the Boring company tunnels will first benused by electric platforms rather then the hyperloop concept. That's why the call it a 'loop' rather then a 'hyperloop'. The tunnels however could letter be used for the hyperloop if the tech pans out.
- newnewpdro 9y agoMars transportation prototype is what I've always assumed the hyperloop idea really is. Prove the tech at scale on earth first while giving people a new high-speed rail system, then deploy ver 2 in the Martian environment.
- jandrese 9y agoIt seems like it's going to be a long time before there is enough population on Mars that they need a mass transit system.
- rohit2412 9y agoBut in Mars you already have low pressure density. Can you not just run regular HSR there?
- newnewpdro 9y agoOnly if everyone is expected to be wearing space suits. I wasn't thinking the engineering of the tube, more the vehicles operating within. Assuming that there's a desire to have plain-clothed passengers. On mars or the moon you might have separated habitats connected by rail, the cars themselves could utilize the mature tech from that old hyperloop thing we've been relying on for decades and millions of passengers use every day, etc..
- rohit2412 9y agoUmm what? There is still regular air pressure in a HSR. My question is why run something in vacuum when you can just run it in the regular low pressure
- buvanshak 9y ago> it hits that sweet spot requiring specialist knowledge to see through the hype Couldn't have said it better. Another real life manifestation of this is the vertical rocket landing thing. People are flabbergasted when they see one landing, despite the fact that we regularly employ control systems that are as sophisticated (or more) than required to land a rocket vertically. When they see them landing. they "feel" like they are witnessing sci fi, for real, and they worship the man behind it as their new (false?) prophet. And then there is the mars thing, and space tourism. But the most blatent display of this I have yet seen is the 'bio weapon defense mode' [1] in Tesla cars. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9421719/tesla-model-x-bioweapon-defense-mode-button https://www.theverge.com/2015/9/30/9421719/tesla-model-x-bio...
- akvadrako 9y agoI have to take issue with your example. I don't buy into the Musk hype and I even have a big short position in Tesla, but that landing was one of the coolest tech demos I've seen. Do you have examples of equally sci-fi looking control systems?
- bildung 9y agoHow about the vertical landings that happened in the early '90s?
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoHis point was that control theory is a mature field and that we field very sophisticated control systems in daily life that may be far beyond what's needed to land a rocket vertically. However, the vast majority of those systems are embedded in industrial machinery that doesn't seem particularly exciting from the outside. Engineering students build inverted pendulum control systems all the time for fun and for class projects: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWJHcI7UcuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWJHcI7UcuE If it helps, bear in mind that John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace was landing rockets vertically about 17 years ago. And that was a garage operation of about 5 people.
- 9y ago
- baq 9y agocalling tesla a car company is a mistake right there. it's like calling emacs a text editor.
- rohit2412 9y agoHSR in high density areas sound like a good idea. Metros, suburban light rails, BRT sound good in Urban areas. Better than building thousands of underground tunnels.
- flexie 9y agoHyperloop is near vacuum, not vacuum. When assessing Musk's success, note that Tesla has singlehandedly pushed the entire auto industry towards electric vehicles. Before Tesla, electric vehicles were funny experimental things for hipsters. Very few people bought electric cars, and when they did it was usually only as a second car that could drive 100 miles around town. Virtually no major manufacturer were planning on changing that. After Model 3, all major car manufacturers are changing their product development and production lines to make electric vehicles. It's now clear to everybody involved that in a number of years, it will only, or almost only, be electric vehicles. Even if Tesla were to end up being a company that only sells a few hundred thousands cars per year, their impact will have been several orders of magnitude bigger. At the end of the next decade, tens of millions of electric cars will be produced every year and Tesla is the company that not only showed the way but forced an entire industry to go in that direction. Now, why on Earth would Musk not be interested in promoting mass transit? Tesla is unlikely to produce 50 million cars yearly anyways, and - so far - electric vehicles are more expensive than ordinary cars and not much more suitable for dense city traffic than ordinary cars (although the cost is going down and although self-driving capabilities may change that a bit). But for many years to come, it's unlikely that the Boring Company or the Hyperloop is going to cannibalize on Tesla's market.
- treis 9y ago>After Model 3, all major car manufacturers are changing their product development and production lines to make electric vehicles This does not comport with reality. The Nissan Leaf, for example, came out a full 7 years before the first Model 3. The only thing unique about Tesla's electric vehicles is their willingness to lose many billions of dollars producing them.
- giancarlostoro 9y ago> Before Tesla, electric vehicles were funny experimental things for hipsters. Very few people bought electric cars, You're forgetting the biggest competitor to all-electric, the oil industry which lobbied against all-electric cars. GM had an all electric car in the 90's but people were only allowed to lease them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
- seastonATccs 9y agoI'm pretty sure Boring is building digging machines for a Mars colony just designed and tested on Earth.