7 ms·

Virgin Hyperloop Has Invented the World's Crappiest High-Speed Rail

84 points by Osiris30 6y ago

dnautics 6y ago
This article is rather uncharitable. While maglevs have been in operation for a long time, I believe this is the one of the few examples of an inductrack. Iirc The technology hasn't really made it out as much because it has only recently come off patent. A key advantage of inductrack is that it requires relatively little energy to achieve it's levitation, but the technology is still very new in the engineering sense, so you really wouldn't expect it to go fast. I'm frankly impressed that they were able to get a decently fast human trial up an running so quickly.
- hannob 6y ago
  This is completely not the point. The point is: You're not getting working public transport by inventing new technology. You get it by having the political willpower to fund it. If you don't have the latter then no amount of technology will save you. Also related: It's an obvious case of Bionic Duckweed (see https://medium.com/@stianstian/bionic-duckweed-using-the-future-to-fight-the-present-3e471b642c28 https://medium.com/@stianstian/bionic-duckweed-using-the-fut... )
  - j-pb 6y ago
    Exactly. But you also seem to miss it. Politicians have no will to fund old technology (and lets face it, high speed rail is PREindustrial tech). However they will fund new shiny technology that they think will make them look good and future oriented towards the general public. Don't underestimate the advertisement value inherent to "new stuff". Politicians play mind games, we just have to play them better.
    - masswerk 6y ago
      > high speed rail is PREindustrial tech No, that's canal barges.
      - j-pb 6y ago
        Trains are what helped spark the industrial revolution, thus by definition they are preindustrial.
        masswerk 6y ago
        Arguably, trains came out of the industrial revolution and amplified it. (The early phase ran on canals.) The real question, however, is: will Hyperloop meet canal barges in terms of mass moved per distance at a given interval of time (and this for an equal share of investments / at comparable costs)? Edit: Assuming you'd have to divide the track into air-locked sections for safety concerns, with just a single pod in a section at a given time, which drastically limits capacity.
        eesmith 6y ago
        "Train" is decidedly not before the industrial revolution but rather is part of it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution > The Industrial Revolution .. the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotive > Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive in 1802. Further, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport : > William Murdoch produced a working model of a self-propelled steam carriage in [1784]. The definition of "train" meaning "locomotive and the cars coupled to it" dates to 1816 or 1820 - https://www.etymonline.com/word/train https://www.etymonline.com/word/train .
        himinlomax 6y ago
        Trains require (at least) steam engines. If there's something that marks the start of the industrial revolution, it's (practical, not toy) steam engines.
    - hannob 6y ago
      We have a new highspeed rail line between Berlin and Munich. It's old tech. It was old tech when the decision to build it was made. (Not that I'm happy with the highspeed rail network in Germany. It could and should be much better. It could completely replace short distance flights. But it's quite obviously lightyears ahead of the situation in the US.)
      - j-pb 6y ago
        Yeah but you have to remember the population density of the us. It's main population centers are west and east coast, with nothing but farmland in between. For them any system needs to be a lot cheaper per mile. Also the only reason why we get some ICE tracks, is because of the 1% and politicians that want to have a convenient way to commute to and from work. Everything that is not a major business hub just get's left out. And remember when we tried to get a proper Transrapid track? It was the only thing Sheuble ever did right, and he got ridiculed for it.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      > Politicians have no will to fund old technology Then get a nice Ralph McQuarrie or Syd Mead style artwork to sell it. It's not about the thing itself, but how it's perceived.
  - djrobstep 6y ago
    The problem is that people excited by stuff like this, aren't excited by public transport. The idea of sitting on a train with the regular public is horrifying to them. They are excited by expensive fancy private transport for themselves. How the public transport themselves around, or their wider welfare, is not a concern.
    - anticristi 6y ago
      It totally is a concern for them. Too much road congestion, and the fancy private transportation is less enjoyable. I honestly had the feeling that Munich, home to an unnamed automaker, was treating public transit pretty much like that. Too much congestion? Let's improve public transit! Congestion just right? Stop investing in public transit. I feel the incentives for the government are super wrong. Every car brings taxes and parking fees. The latter often goes directly into the municipality's pocket. No wonder public transit is as it is.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint, but also there is the example of the Great Northern Railway, so it's not impossible to get working public transport without significant public investment.
- AndyMcConachie 6y ago
  Dude. As a European who used to take high speed rail regularly before Corona when I saw this video I felt exactly like the author of this article. France has had high speed rail for over 40 years that is better than this. Do Americans just simply not understand what mass transit is? The goal is to move lots of people quickly between destinations where people want to go. Three things; -lots of people -quickly -desired destinations This demo literally hit none of those marks. Give it a rest. Also this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM
  - dnautics 6y ago
    Neither did the first demo of a conventional train. It was a horse drawn cart on rails that could hold 5 or 6.
legulere 6y ago
It really shows what the Hyperloop really is: something to divert interest and money away from working mass transit options.
- newyankee 6y ago
  As long as it gets private funding and does not blow away a crazy amount on research and testing, i do not see an issue. All modes should be researched. I do not personally see any public entity funding hyperloop for at least a decade. The only ones who are interested now is the UAE govt because they have a perfect test case and $ to back it along with ambition to be a player.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    The SNCF, the main French railway company owned by the French state, did invest a bit in Hyperloop.
  - postingpals 6y ago
    What do you expect is going to happen, though? Do you think they will magically discover that hyperloop runs even faster than high speed railway and is somehow more safe? More cost effective? Like, I totally get experimenting, but this is one of those things that you can see is not even worth experimenting on.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  Given the idea was championed by a major manufacturer of cars, who has a vested interest in mass transit failing, you might be right.
- laumars 6y ago
  I wouldn’t take this article too literally. The whole Thing is full of exaggerated emotive rhetoric. It’s really more an opinion piece despite the site tagging it as “science”.
- choeger 6y ago
  There are no working mass transit options. At least not from the perspective of day-to-day travels in areas that are not extremely densely populated. Hyperloop just shifts the problems around, IMO. All kinds of trains face the same problem. Their target and destination has to be fixed in advance. Thus their cost raises linearly with every new station served. A workable subway net (say, Berlin) has so many stations that you are often quicker by bike, you often wait 10min for a connecting train, and even then the distance between two stations is often barely walkable for a lot of passengers. Oh, and the trains often run close to Max capacity. Buses are much better, as they can use roads flexibly. They suffer from high operating wage costs (one driver per dozens of passengers) and very small stations, though. Compare this to individual traffic, especially (electric) bikes: You can go point-to-point, at any time you want, at your personal speed. The only matter is that bikes need to get safer (ABS, lighting) and cities should invest into weather proof roads (coarse asphalt, managed lanes, lighting, if possible roofs). If you combine that with trains that only have to stop every 5-10km you are pretty close to a perfect mode of operations for even the largest mega city, I think. In less densely populated areas, battery-electric vehicles could substitute trains quite nicely. edit: To the downvoters. I know it sucks when someone challenges your deeply ingrained ideology. But I do live in a city with exactly the problems I mentioned and no amount of political willpower will ever change physics.
raphaelj 6y ago
The problem with hyperloop is that is does not solve the main problem of bullet trains: infrastructure costs. Nobody complains about the TGV/Shinkansen/ICE being slow. Building a new train line cost millions of €/$ per km/mi because you need to expropriate properties, build tunnels and bridges, fine tune the tracks (any small distortion in the tracks will cause significant annoyance for the travelers). Hyperloop will have all these issues, but worse, as the speed is higher, and as the hyperloop trains will not be able to run on existing tracks.
- postingpals 6y ago
  It's actually more like billions of $ per mile. How anyone looks at a figure like '1 billion per single mile of tunnel' and thinks it's feasible to run utopian pie in the sky experiments like hyperloop across hundreds of miles is beyond me.
  - timthorn 6y ago
    HS2, under construction in the UK, is 155 miles long, with a total budget of £55bn but currently expected to cost well over £80bn - some estimates have it as north of £100bn. $1bn per mile is in the same ballpark.
    - renw0rp 6y ago
      In the UK everything costs twice as much as originally estimated and takes twice as much time. I hope I will live to experience the 330km/h (operating speed of UK's HS2)
- j-pb 6y ago
  German here. ICE sucks majorly. ICE is engineered way over the limitations of the underlying technology. They break down easily and are constantly late. I'd take a hyperloop over an ICE any time. We had good tech, that that didn't get held back by the physical constraints of rail travel: Transrapid A maglev train developed in the 70s which operated flawlessly for 40 years. Sadly there was no political willpower for it's realisation due to a very strong car lobby. I see the hyperloop as a modern spin on the Transrapid, and I'd pour all of our subsidies for Deutsche Bahn into it in a heartbeat.
w_t_payne 6y ago
Just for the record, Italy is not a "backward-ass doofus country".
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  They have a claim to it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20025626 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20025626
- 9dev 6y ago
  An American ignorantly complaining about American ignorance. I found the tone of the article rather unpleasant to read.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  Yeah the tone of the whole article was really off-putting. Seems they are trying too hard to convey a 'no-bullshit' style of writing but completely overshoot and distract from whatever point they actually wanted to get across.
- C19is20 6y ago
  Resident here. Yes, it is, and that's what brought me here, and that's why I stay. Sadly, some of that quality has being eroded over time, but the further south you go the more there is. Sadly, current economics keep me northern-bound.
- wkljeklwjelwkej 6y ago
  And neither is Spain, nor France, nor any other European country with a substantial high speed rail network. These networks are the product of decades of cross-party strategic investment in rail to combat the need for short-haul domestic air travel or a proliferation of tarmac across empty countryside to link population centres. The very fact that the US has failed to invest in rail in any meaningful way since the westward expansion suggests that it's not the european countries that are backward-ass or doofus. What's the experession - 'Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'?
ForHackernews 6y ago
Hyperloop is just another of Elon Musk's dumb "what if" ideas he dreamed up while stuck in gridlock on the 405. "Wouldn't it be great if we had a magic underground tube that whisked you to your destination without traffic?" "You mean like a subway?" "No, no! For rich people, with private pods designed to look like an Apple store."
- himinlomax 6y ago
  Note how Musk is not putting any of his money in that shit. That should tell you something.
  - d3nj4l 6y ago
    Musk owns The Boring Company, which is currently building a public transit tunnel in Las Vegas.
    - himinlomax 6y ago
      ... which is not a hyperloop.
  - tompccs 6y ago
    A 5 minute Wikipedia search will show you that's not true
    - himinlomax 6y ago
      Humor me. Show me that 5 min search.
      - tompccs 6y ago
        It's ok the Hyperloop Wikipedia page. SpaceX has funded competitions, and SpaceX is majority Musk
haspok 6y ago
I already bought the popcorn and just waiting for the next Thunderfoot video... This and the "Solar Freakin' Roadways" are the absolute pinnacles of human stupidity and ignorance... ...and let all my wishes be granted so fast: https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA
- roselan 6y ago
  I'm surprised the vibration shown in the video was not addressed at all. I thought maglev trains, without friction, would ride smoothly even when accelerating.
- postingpals 6y ago
  https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs I like this video too. This guy seems to be an urban planner or civil engineer, and he gives some realistic criticism if you can get past the jokes (which are also good)
kristopolous 6y ago
Part of the problem is an american political practice where once someone's "team" (party) wins, then instead of the voters saying "good, now it's time to exercise our power and make them do our bidding" they instead do exactly the opposite and say "good now we can go to sleep and not pay attention". Combine that with the cheerleading and party loyalty and the idea that pushing the people you voted for to exercise their power is somehow a form of faithless heresy (where you don't "trust" them or you're "against" them) and we get this. It'd be like working hard to get a pile of money. Someone then places all the cash on a table for you to take and you sigh "finally!" and turn around and exit, leaving it all behind on the table. "Empower and walk away" is the american way and until that changes good luck trying to get HSR or anything that benefits the well-being of society.
nromiun 6y ago
Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think any high speed train can go as fast as Hyperloop is aiming for. If you want high speed trains why not complain to your politicians? If your problem is wasting money there are probably thousands of projects and companies right now whose only purpose is to waste money. At least Hyperloop has something to show for all that money it "wasted". > working just fine even in backward-ass doofus countries like freaking Italy Nice. I don't know why useless rants like this gets upvoted here.
- mikeymz 6y ago
  I think that was meant ironically but I agree it was a little strong. as for the speed question - the point is it may go faster in theory at some point whereas the TGV does go really fast now and is (in my limited experience) excellent value for money and a much better way to travel than flying
- MrDresden 6y ago
  What has any of the "Hyperloop" projects to show for their investments, other than very expensive pod trains?
  - nromiun 6y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/09/first-passengers-travel-in-virgins-levitating-hyperloop-pod-system https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/09/first-pas... Working prototype? True, it is expensive but they are also aiming for much higher speed than any train.
garbagetime 6y ago
And the dudes at Google who made a quantum computer invented the world's crappiest computer.
- postingpals 6y ago
  You could realistically see how a quantum computer can be improved. Hyperloop has no realistic end goal.
tompccs 6y ago
Amazed by the negativity of this article and comments. We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? And to Americans who think that getting high speed trains is just a matter of government willpower, might be worth remembering that railways were originally private ventures which only stopped being profitable once they could no longer compete with the newer technologies of cars+highways and air travel.
- erispoe 6y ago
  Highway infrastructure in the US is largely publicly funded. It's no surprise that a mode of transport which doesn't pay for its infrastructure and externalities (long-distance road transport) is more competitive than a mode that does (long-distance rail).
  - tompccs 6y ago
    Air travel is a better natural competitor than highways. Ultimately highways are already sunk costs which can be seamlessly upgraded to work with new tech (ie more efficient, and soon electric, cars). Air travel is heavily taxed rather than subsidised, and yet it's still preferable to road travel over long distances, for the simple reason that it's faster.
- matthewmacleod 6y ago
  We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? No. There is no schedule for the delivery of new forms of transport that we can be overdue on; they emerge when technology and economics make them possible. A new transport technology can emerge if it can demonstrate that it is better in some way relative to existing technologies. It would be great if Hyperloop can do something like that, and R&D should be encouraged. But it’s not at all clear how it could effectively be better than existing solutions.
  - tompccs 6y ago
    'overdue' is obviously a rhetorical device in this context. Otherwise I agree. I find however that bashing people trying new things and pushing the envelope very distasteful, especially from Americans whose culture historically supported ventures that would have been mocked in Europe, and especially from people on a website built for technologists and entrepreneurs!
huhtenberg 6y ago
Regardless of the content I really don't appreciate articles written with an explicit effort to shit on other people's work. Flagged.
- cryptica 6y ago
  By hoarding all the capital for their toy project, they're depriving other more worthy projects of that capital. This misallocation of capital is WAY, WAY more harmful than "shitting on other people's work" using mere words. Feelings should not enter the discussion. I can assure you that capitalism never gave a shit about my feelings and I never complained about that aspect. I've experienced the exact reverse of this: Glowing reviews of my work, but 0 funding. I still envy these people. Their situation is way better than mine. The article is great. I wish more people would write such articles.
krcz 6y ago
While there are many good critiques of Hyperloop, comparing its speed on half-kilometer test track to established technologies is not one. The article is joyfully bashing a strawman it has built on its own.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Hyperloop solves two problems that challenge the adoption of high speed rail. 1. Infrequent departure times. There are about 100 flights from New York to LA a day. Plenty of departure time options. Are there going to be 100 departure choices with a train? No, it would probably be 15 at most. In Canada, we have relatively fast rail between Toronto and Montreal, two of our major cities. Even with similar travel times all in, they struggle to get people on the trains because of the lack of departure times. There are about 50 departure time options by air. If you can have 30 people a pod, then you can have tons of departure options or even could be flexible about them. 2. 367 miles per hour is slow for a country the size of the USA. That is 7 hours point to point from New York to LA. Probably 11 hours with stops and not being able to go that speed along the whole way.
- renw0rp 6y ago
  Sure, the faster the better, but as long as there is a couchette option 11h doesn't sound half bad.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  Beijing-Shanghai trains run three to four times an hour in each direction. Is that not often enough for intercity connections?
- me_me_me 6y ago
  Hyperloop solves those problems like I solve those problem with my fleet of magical unicorns. The difference is no one believes me. By some accounts/promises the hyperloop should be operating now or in few years. By the looks of the demo it will be at least decade before they will build anything serious. But, I can deploy my unicorns in matter of days just need few hundred millions to R&D magical stables to keep them under control. Its future tech invest in me. /s
cryptica 6y ago
It's a symptom of modern supply-side economics. It's all about job creation. The people who are working on this project are the only ones getting anything out of it. It's CaaS 'Career as a Service'. The people who work for this company are probably a bunch of kids whose rich daddies wanted them to experience what it feels like to succeed in their careers and so daddy kept injecting millions of dollars into their projects. But their career is about as real as a roller-coaster ride in a Disney theme park. I've worked for many different companies over the past decade and I've seen this everywhere, over and over. Nowadays, when I look for a job, the only question I ask myself is: "Do these founders have rich daddies?". I only work for companies whose founders have rich daddies because they're the only ones which can 'succeed'. It doesn't matter what the project is or whether it adds any value anymore. It doesn't matter how much value I can produce in any other capacity because other people's daddies have access to the money printer and no one can compete with the money printer.
- klohto 6y ago
  This is by far the most vile comment I have read on HN. I hope it’s just a case of Poe’s law otherwise you should seek professional help.
  - cryptica 6y ago
    You're right I'm probably mentally ill by now. I was perfectly healthy 5 years ago though. I assure you, it's a lot more traumatic to actually experience the effects that I've just described over and over during 5 years than to read a single comment about it on HN. Whatever emotions my comment brings up can only help you. Creating something useful for society is very difficult and almost nobody is doing it these days. Realizing this fact is a healthy, positive step forward even though it's going to hurt a lot people's feelings.
    - klohto 6y ago
      I kinda agree with your point about CaaS, but the notes about "rich-daddy" types are just mean for no reason. They have no merit in reality.
GrumpyNl 6y ago
Not familiar with the technical details, how are they gonna handle stopping a hyperloop at 1200km per hour?
globular-toast 6y ago
So when this is done you'll get 20-30 people in a pod, but it will be faster than other railways? Why are they optimising for latency over bandwidth? What actually is the point of this? Just so that a few very rich people can live very far from work?
_imba_ 6y ago
I'm not sure if I've ever found a worst piece on HN. There may be valid criticisms of Hyperloop tech, but they are not in this article. It's just low effort sarcasm and strange arguments based on a very silly strawman.
KanyeEast 6y ago
"Backward-ass Doofus Country" Kind of right but also kind of not. The tone of the article is trying too hard to sound edgy and it ruins the underlying message it is trying to convey.
lazylizard 6y ago
one of the things rail can do that an airliner increasingly cant do. is land downtown. maybe this hyperloop thing has a chance if its cheaper to build than rail. not many places have that many 5m+ cities within 500km of each other like china.
redis_mlc 6y ago
I live in Calif. and have been watching the HSR debacle. - You know, the Central Valley "ezpath" wouldn't be such a bad idea if it included a planned city with HSR to relieve SV congestion, rather than just being a "rail to nowhere." - I like the idea of finishing the HSR terminals in SF and San Jose for long-term use - I like the idea of blasting through any mountains on the route from SF to LA over time, for long-term use. Somehow the state is fixated on a trillion dollars or bust right now, which just isn't going to happen. And state politicians focus on HSR as a jobs program/scam, rather than a transportation project. The corona lockdown is a great time to work on the San Jose terminal.
loraa 6y ago
This is what happens when you tell millennials to have an idea.
Balgair 6y ago
Quick Question: Was that tube under vacuum or not?

84 points by Osiris30 6y ago

This article is rather uncharitable. While maglevs have been in operation for a long time, I believe this is the one of the few examples of an inductrack. Iirc The technology hasn't really made it out as much because it has only recently come off patent. A key advantage of inductrack is that it requires relatively little energy to achieve it's levitation, but the technology is still very new in the engineering sense, so you really wouldn't expect it to go fast. I'm frankly impressed that they were able to get a decently fast human trial up an running so quickly.

hannob 6y ago
This is completely not the point. The point is: You're not getting working public transport by inventing new technology. You get it by having the political willpower to fund it. If you don't have the latter then no amount of technology will save you. Also related: It's an obvious case of Bionic Duckweed (see https://medium.com/@stianstian/bionic-duckweed-using-the-future-to-fight-the-present-3e471b642c28 https://medium.com/@stianstian/bionic-duckweed-using-the-fut... )
- j-pb 6y ago
  Exactly. But you also seem to miss it. Politicians have no will to fund old technology (and lets face it, high speed rail is PREindustrial tech). However they will fund new shiny technology that they think will make them look good and future oriented towards the general public. Don't underestimate the advertisement value inherent to "new stuff". Politicians play mind games, we just have to play them better.
  - masswerk 6y ago
    > high speed rail is PREindustrial tech No, that's canal barges.
    - j-pb 6y ago
      Trains are what helped spark the industrial revolution, thus by definition they are preindustrial.
      - masswerk 6y ago
        Arguably, trains came out of the industrial revolution and amplified it. (The early phase ran on canals.) The real question, however, is: will Hyperloop meet canal barges in terms of mass moved per distance at a given interval of time (and this for an equal share of investments / at comparable costs)? Edit: Assuming you'd have to divide the track into air-locked sections for safety concerns, with just a single pod in a section at a given time, which drastically limits capacity.
      - eesmith 6y ago
        "Train" is decidedly not before the industrial revolution but rather is part of it. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution > The Industrial Revolution .. the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_locomotive > Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive in 1802. Further, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transport : > William Murdoch produced a working model of a self-propelled steam carriage in [1784]. The definition of "train" meaning "locomotive and the cars coupled to it" dates to 1816 or 1820 - https://www.etymonline.com/word/train https://www.etymonline.com/word/train .
      - himinlomax 6y ago
        Trains require (at least) steam engines. If there's something that marks the start of the industrial revolution, it's (practical, not toy) steam engines.
  - hannob 6y ago
    We have a new highspeed rail line between Berlin and Munich. It's old tech. It was old tech when the decision to build it was made. (Not that I'm happy with the highspeed rail network in Germany. It could and should be much better. It could completely replace short distance flights. But it's quite obviously lightyears ahead of the situation in the US.)
    - j-pb 6y ago
      Yeah but you have to remember the population density of the us. It's main population centers are west and east coast, with nothing but farmland in between. For them any system needs to be a lot cheaper per mile. Also the only reason why we get some ICE tracks, is because of the 1% and politicians that want to have a convenient way to commute to and from work. Everything that is not a major business hub just get's left out. And remember when we tried to get a proper Transrapid track? It was the only thing Sheuble ever did right, and he got ridiculed for it.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    > Politicians have no will to fund old technology Then get a nice Ralph McQuarrie or Syd Mead style artwork to sell it. It's not about the thing itself, but how it's perceived.
- djrobstep 6y ago
  The problem is that people excited by stuff like this, aren't excited by public transport. The idea of sitting on a train with the regular public is horrifying to them. They are excited by expensive fancy private transport for themselves. How the public transport themselves around, or their wider welfare, is not a concern.
  - anticristi 6y ago
    It totally is a concern for them. Too much road congestion, and the fancy private transportation is less enjoyable. I honestly had the feeling that Munich, home to an unnamed automaker, was treating public transit pretty much like that. Too much congestion? Let's improve public transit! Congestion just right? Stop investing in public transit. I feel the incentives for the government are super wrong. Every car brings taxes and parking fees. The latter often goes directly into the municipality's pocket. No wonder public transit is as it is.
- dnautics 6y ago
  I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint, but also there is the example of the Great Northern Railway, so it's not impossible to get working public transport without significant public investment.
AndyMcConachie 6y ago
Dude. As a European who used to take high speed rail regularly before Corona when I saw this video I felt exactly like the author of this article. France has had high speed rail for over 40 years that is better than this. Do Americans just simply not understand what mass transit is? The goal is to move lots of people quickly between destinations where people want to go. Three things; -lots of people -quickly -desired destinations This demo literally hit none of those marks. Give it a rest. Also this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDOI0cq6GZM
- dnautics 6y ago
  Neither did the first demo of a conventional train. It was a horse drawn cart on rails that could hold 5 or 6.

legulere 6y ago

It really shows what the Hyperloop really is: something to divert interest and money away from working mass transit options.

newyankee 6y ago
As long as it gets private funding and does not blow away a crazy amount on research and testing, i do not see an issue. All modes should be researched. I do not personally see any public entity funding hyperloop for at least a decade. The only ones who are interested now is the UAE govt because they have a perfect test case and $ to back it along with ambition to be a player.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  The SNCF, the main French railway company owned by the French state, did invest a bit in Hyperloop.
- postingpals 6y ago
  What do you expect is going to happen, though? Do you think they will magically discover that hyperloop runs even faster than high speed railway and is somehow more safe? More cost effective? Like, I totally get experimenting, but this is one of those things that you can see is not even worth experimenting on.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Given the idea was championed by a major manufacturer of cars, who has a vested interest in mass transit failing, you might be right.
laumars 6y ago
I wouldn’t take this article too literally. The whole Thing is full of exaggerated emotive rhetoric. It’s really more an opinion piece despite the site tagging it as “science”.
choeger 6y ago
There are no working mass transit options. At least not from the perspective of day-to-day travels in areas that are not extremely densely populated. Hyperloop just shifts the problems around, IMO. All kinds of trains face the same problem. Their target and destination has to be fixed in advance. Thus their cost raises linearly with every new station served. A workable subway net (say, Berlin) has so many stations that you are often quicker by bike, you often wait 10min for a connecting train, and even then the distance between two stations is often barely walkable for a lot of passengers. Oh, and the trains often run close to Max capacity. Buses are much better, as they can use roads flexibly. They suffer from high operating wage costs (one driver per dozens of passengers) and very small stations, though. Compare this to individual traffic, especially (electric) bikes: You can go point-to-point, at any time you want, at your personal speed. The only matter is that bikes need to get safer (ABS, lighting) and cities should invest into weather proof roads (coarse asphalt, managed lanes, lighting, if possible roofs). If you combine that with trains that only have to stop every 5-10km you are pretty close to a perfect mode of operations for even the largest mega city, I think. In less densely populated areas, battery-electric vehicles could substitute trains quite nicely. edit: To the downvoters. I know it sucks when someone challenges your deeply ingrained ideology. But I do live in a city with exactly the problems I mentioned and no amount of political willpower will ever change physics.

raphaelj 6y ago

The problem with hyperloop is that is does not solve the main problem of bullet trains: infrastructure costs. Nobody complains about the TGV/Shinkansen/ICE being slow. Building a new train line cost millions of €/$ per km/mi because you need to expropriate properties, build tunnels and bridges, fine tune the tracks (any small distortion in the tracks will cause significant annoyance for the travelers). Hyperloop will have all these issues, but worse, as the speed is higher, and as the hyperloop trains will not be able to run on existing tracks.

postingpals 6y ago
It's actually more like billions of $ per mile. How anyone looks at a figure like '1 billion per single mile of tunnel' and thinks it's feasible to run utopian pie in the sky experiments like hyperloop across hundreds of miles is beyond me.
- timthorn 6y ago
  HS2, under construction in the UK, is 155 miles long, with a total budget of £55bn but currently expected to cost well over £80bn - some estimates have it as north of £100bn. $1bn per mile is in the same ballpark.
  - renw0rp 6y ago
    In the UK everything costs twice as much as originally estimated and takes twice as much time. I hope I will live to experience the 330km/h (operating speed of UK's HS2)
j-pb 6y ago
German here. ICE sucks majorly. ICE is engineered way over the limitations of the underlying technology. They break down easily and are constantly late. I'd take a hyperloop over an ICE any time. We had good tech, that that didn't get held back by the physical constraints of rail travel: Transrapid A maglev train developed in the 70s which operated flawlessly for 40 years. Sadly there was no political willpower for it's realisation due to a very strong car lobby. I see the hyperloop as a modern spin on the Transrapid, and I'd pour all of our subsidies for Deutsche Bahn into it in a heartbeat.

w_t_payne 6y ago

Just for the record, Italy is not a "backward-ass doofus country".

MattGaiser 6y ago
They have a claim to it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20025626 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20025626
9dev 6y ago
An American ignorantly complaining about American ignorance. I found the tone of the article rather unpleasant to read.
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
Yeah the tone of the whole article was really off-putting. Seems they are trying too hard to convey a 'no-bullshit' style of writing but completely overshoot and distract from whatever point they actually wanted to get across.
C19is20 6y ago
Resident here. Yes, it is, and that's what brought me here, and that's why I stay. Sadly, some of that quality has being eroded over time, but the further south you go the more there is. Sadly, current economics keep me northern-bound.
wkljeklwjelwkej 6y ago
And neither is Spain, nor France, nor any other European country with a substantial high speed rail network. These networks are the product of decades of cross-party strategic investment in rail to combat the need for short-haul domestic air travel or a proliferation of tarmac across empty countryside to link population centres. The very fact that the US has failed to invest in rail in any meaningful way since the westward expansion suggests that it's not the european countries that are backward-ass or doofus. What's the experession - 'Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones'?

ForHackernews 6y ago

Hyperloop is just another of Elon Musk's dumb "what if" ideas he dreamed up while stuck in gridlock on the 405. "Wouldn't it be great if we had a magic underground tube that whisked you to your destination without traffic?" "You mean like a subway?" "No, no! For rich people, with private pods designed to look like an Apple store."

himinlomax 6y ago
Note how Musk is not putting any of his money in that shit. That should tell you something.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  Musk owns The Boring Company, which is currently building a public transit tunnel in Las Vegas.
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    ... which is not a hyperloop.
- tompccs 6y ago
  A 5 minute Wikipedia search will show you that's not true
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    Humor me. Show me that 5 min search.
    - tompccs 6y ago
      It's ok the Hyperloop Wikipedia page. SpaceX has funded competitions, and SpaceX is majority Musk

haspok 6y ago

I already bought the popcorn and just waiting for the next Thunderfoot video... This and the "Solar Freakin' Roadways" are the absolute pinnacles of human stupidity and ignorance... ...and let all my wishes be granted so fast: https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA

roselan 6y ago
I'm surprised the vibration shown in the video was not addressed at all. I thought maglev trains, without friction, would ride smoothly even when accelerating.
postingpals 6y ago
https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs I like this video too. This guy seems to be an urban planner or civil engineer, and he gives some realistic criticism if you can get past the jokes (which are also good)

kristopolous 6y ago

Part of the problem is an american political practice where once someone's "team" (party) wins, then instead of the voters saying "good, now it's time to exercise our power and make them do our bidding" they instead do exactly the opposite and say "good now we can go to sleep and not pay attention". Combine that with the cheerleading and party loyalty and the idea that pushing the people you voted for to exercise their power is somehow a form of faithless heresy (where you don't "trust" them or you're "against" them) and we get this. It'd be like working hard to get a pile of money. Someone then places all the cash on a table for you to take and you sigh "finally!" and turn around and exit, leaving it all behind on the table. "Empower and walk away" is the american way and until that changes good luck trying to get HSR or anything that benefits the well-being of society.

nromiun 6y ago

Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think any high speed train can go as fast as Hyperloop is aiming for. If you want high speed trains why not complain to your politicians? If your problem is wasting money there are probably thousands of projects and companies right now whose only purpose is to waste money. At least Hyperloop has something to show for all that money it "wasted". > working just fine even in backward-ass doofus countries like freaking Italy Nice. I don't know why useless rants like this gets upvoted here.

mikeymz 6y ago
I think that was meant ironically but I agree it was a little strong. as for the speed question - the point is it may go faster in theory at some point whereas the TGV does go really fast now and is (in my limited experience) excellent value for money and a much better way to travel than flying
MrDresden 6y ago
What has any of the "Hyperloop" projects to show for their investments, other than very expensive pod trains?
- nromiun 6y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/09/first-passengers-travel-in-virgins-levitating-hyperloop-pod-system https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/09/first-pas... Working prototype? True, it is expensive but they are also aiming for much higher speed than any train.

garbagetime 6y ago

And the dudes at Google who made a quantum computer invented the world's crappiest computer.

postingpals 6y ago
You could realistically see how a quantum computer can be improved. Hyperloop has no realistic end goal.

tompccs 6y ago

Amazed by the negativity of this article and comments. We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? And to Americans who think that getting high speed trains is just a matter of government willpower, might be worth remembering that railways were originally private ventures which only stopped being profitable once they could no longer compete with the newer technologies of cars+highways and air travel.

erispoe 6y ago
Highway infrastructure in the US is largely publicly funded. It's no surprise that a mode of transport which doesn't pay for its infrastructure and externalities (long-distance road transport) is more competitive than a mode that does (long-distance rail).
- tompccs 6y ago
  Air travel is a better natural competitor than highways. Ultimately highways are already sunk costs which can be seamlessly upgraded to work with new tech (ie more efficient, and soon electric, cars). Air travel is heavily taxed rather than subsidised, and yet it's still preferable to road travel over long distances, for the simple reason that it's faster.
matthewmacleod 6y ago
We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? No. There is no schedule for the delivery of new forms of transport that we can be overdue on; they emerge when technology and economics make them possible. A new transport technology can emerge if it can demonstrate that it is better in some way relative to existing technologies. It would be great if Hyperloop can do something like that, and R&D should be encouraged. But it’s not at all clear how it could effectively be better than existing solutions.
- tompccs 6y ago
  'overdue' is obviously a rhetorical device in this context. Otherwise I agree. I find however that bashing people trying new things and pushing the envelope very distasteful, especially from Americans whose culture historically supported ventures that would have been mocked in Europe, and especially from people on a website built for technologists and entrepreneurs!

huhtenberg 6y ago

Regardless of the content I really don't appreciate articles written with an explicit effort to shit on other people's work. Flagged.

cryptica 6y ago
By hoarding all the capital for their toy project, they're depriving other more worthy projects of that capital. This misallocation of capital is WAY, WAY more harmful than "shitting on other people's work" using mere words. Feelings should not enter the discussion. I can assure you that capitalism never gave a shit about my feelings and I never complained about that aspect. I've experienced the exact reverse of this: Glowing reviews of my work, but 0 funding. I still envy these people. Their situation is way better than mine. The article is great. I wish more people would write such articles.

krcz 6y ago

While there are many good critiques of Hyperloop, comparing its speed on half-kilometer test track to established technologies is not one. The article is joyfully bashing a strawman it has built on its own.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Hyperloop solves two problems that challenge the adoption of high speed rail. 1. Infrequent departure times. There are about 100 flights from New York to LA a day. Plenty of departure time options. Are there going to be 100 departure choices with a train? No, it would probably be 15 at most. In Canada, we have relatively fast rail between Toronto and Montreal, two of our major cities. Even with similar travel times all in, they struggle to get people on the trains because of the lack of departure times. There are about 50 departure time options by air. If you can have 30 people a pod, then you can have tons of departure options or even could be flexible about them. 2. 367 miles per hour is slow for a country the size of the USA. That is 7 hours point to point from New York to LA. Probably 11 hours with stops and not being able to go that speed along the whole way.

renw0rp 6y ago
Sure, the faster the better, but as long as there is a couchette option 11h doesn't sound half bad.
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
Beijing-Shanghai trains run three to four times an hour in each direction. Is that not often enough for intercity connections?
me_me_me 6y ago
Hyperloop solves those problems like I solve those problem with my fleet of magical unicorns. The difference is no one believes me. By some accounts/promises the hyperloop should be operating now or in few years. By the looks of the demo it will be at least decade before they will build anything serious. But, I can deploy my unicorns in matter of days just need few hundred millions to R&D magical stables to keep them under control. Its future tech invest in me. /s

cryptica 6y ago

It's a symptom of modern supply-side economics. It's all about job creation. The people who are working on this project are the only ones getting anything out of it. It's CaaS 'Career as a Service'. The people who work for this company are probably a bunch of kids whose rich daddies wanted them to experience what it feels like to succeed in their careers and so daddy kept injecting millions of dollars into their projects. But their career is about as real as a roller-coaster ride in a Disney theme park. I've worked for many different companies over the past decade and I've seen this everywhere, over and over. Nowadays, when I look for a job, the only question I ask myself is: "Do these founders have rich daddies?". I only work for companies whose founders have rich daddies because they're the only ones which can 'succeed'. It doesn't matter what the project is or whether it adds any value anymore. It doesn't matter how much value I can produce in any other capacity because other people's daddies have access to the money printer and no one can compete with the money printer.

klohto 6y ago
This is by far the most vile comment I have read on HN. I hope it’s just a case of Poe’s law otherwise you should seek professional help.
- cryptica 6y ago
  You're right I'm probably mentally ill by now. I was perfectly healthy 5 years ago though. I assure you, it's a lot more traumatic to actually experience the effects that I've just described over and over during 5 years than to read a single comment about it on HN. Whatever emotions my comment brings up can only help you. Creating something useful for society is very difficult and almost nobody is doing it these days. Realizing this fact is a healthy, positive step forward even though it's going to hurt a lot people's feelings.
  - klohto 6y ago
    I kinda agree with your point about CaaS, but the notes about "rich-daddy" types are just mean for no reason. They have no merit in reality.

GrumpyNl 6y ago

Not familiar with the technical details, how are they gonna handle stopping a hyperloop at 1200km per hour?

globular-toast 6y ago

So when this is done you'll get 20-30 people in a pod, but it will be faster than other railways? Why are they optimising for latency over bandwidth? What actually is the point of this? Just so that a few very rich people can live very far from work?

_imba_ 6y ago

I'm not sure if I've ever found a worst piece on HN. There may be valid criticisms of Hyperloop tech, but they are not in this article. It's just low effort sarcasm and strange arguments based on a very silly strawman.

KanyeEast 6y ago

"Backward-ass Doofus Country" Kind of right but also kind of not. The tone of the article is trying too hard to sound edgy and it ruins the underlying message it is trying to convey.

lazylizard 6y ago

one of the things rail can do that an airliner increasingly cant do. is land downtown. maybe this hyperloop thing has a chance if its cheaper to build than rail. not many places have that many 5m+ cities within 500km of each other like china.

redis_mlc 6y ago

I live in Calif. and have been watching the HSR debacle. - You know, the Central Valley "ezpath" wouldn't be such a bad idea if it included a planned city with HSR to relieve SV congestion, rather than just being a "rail to nowhere." - I like the idea of finishing the HSR terminals in SF and San Jose for long-term use - I like the idea of blasting through any mountains on the route from SF to LA over time, for long-term use. Somehow the state is fixated on a trillion dollars or bust right now, which just isn't going to happen. And state politicians focus on HSR as a jobs program/scam, rather than a transportation project. The corona lockdown is a great time to work on the San Jose terminal.

loraa 6y ago

This is what happens when you tell millennials to have an idea.

Balgair 6y ago

Quick Question: Was that tube under vacuum or not?