13 ms·

The Hyperloop was always a scam

161 points by zzzeek 3y ago

KingOfCoders 3y ago
Musk not doing it himself should have been a clear sign. "I have no time so you can become a billionaire with it" - sure, then buy X and spend all the time fighting "for free speech" on X.
hintymad 3y ago
When I visited China's city Chengdu back in 2015, there was a single subway line, and it was about less than 5 miles long. 8 years later, including 3 years in Covid, this is what Chengdu's subway network looks like: http://m.cd.bendibao.com/news/123545.shtm#&gid=1&pid=1 http://m.cd.bendibao.com/news/123545.shtm#&gid=1&pid=1 It looks to me the problem is not engineering or technical but political. It's a shame that the US can't build any more, no matter what excuses we produce.
junon 3y ago
Related thunderf00t videos: https://youtu.be/ZHjrFKfyZrw https://youtu.be/ZHjrFKfyZrw and https://youtu.be/RNFesa01llk https://youtu.be/RNFesa01llk Those are for Elon's; Virgin also has a hyperloop which he's covered too: https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA and https://youtu.be/EeWcQf9QCmg https://youtu.be/EeWcQf9QCmg
- Closi 3y ago
  This (thunderf00t) is the same person that said that the Falcon 9 was a scam and a reusable rocket wasn't going to work. The defence of Musk is "Musk has lots of ideas, and some worked out and some didn't".
  - junon 3y ago
    He had one bad take in your opinion and you discredit his entire existence? Hmm.
  - x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
    I really appreciated thunderf00t for a long time and liked his debunking videos. There came a point where he had such a hard-on for hating Musk that he seemed to lose a lot of objectivity, particularly when it comes to SpaceX.
    - delecti 3y ago
      That seems to be a pretty big and weird theme of his. For a long time he was focused on creationists (first VenomFangX, then Ray Comfort), and at the time that didn't seem to be a big deal, because creationism deserves mockery. Then he did a hard pivot and obsessed over Anita Sarkeesian for years, and that started to make it clear that it he was more interested in hosting a 2 Minutes Hate, and didn't care as much about the subject his targets cared about.
      - dmix 3y ago
        Got to do what sells. There’s more than one subreddit dedicated to hating on everything he does up to the minute. I’d imagine there’s a large market for it on YouTube. View counts push creators to certain niches as much as personal beliefs.
      - networkchad 3y ago
        > Anita Sarkeesian To be fair she's very easy to hate. She has no identity but to be a victim.
  - preisschild 3y ago
    The fastest Falcon 9 turnaround time was still 54 days, the same as the fastest Space Shuttle refurbishment. Gwyne Shotwell herself said that it needs to come down to a few hours.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - kusakata 3y ago
      The shortest turnaround time was 21 days, and it gets shorter and shorter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...
    - modeless 3y ago
      Falcon 9 isn't designed for a few hours turnaround time. That's what Starship is for.
    - Fatnino 3y ago
      I don't see why that matters since they already have a fleet of some 20 or so falcon 9s. They launched almost 2 times a week all this year. I think if we had built 10-20 shuttle orbiters turnaround wouldn't have been an issue either. (not really, shuttles were eyewateringly expensive).
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    The economics of Falcon 9 do suggest that it currently is a lot worse than space shuttle on cost per unit of mass to orbit, and that the promise of cheaper launches due to reusability has not happened. Sure, the rockets are somewhat reusable (with a lot of reconditioning, it seems), but that definitely hasn't translated to lower costs to orbit.
    - epups 3y ago
      "Somewhat reusable"? One Falcon 9 has already flown a record 18 times!
    - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
      What are you talking about? According to NASA (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001093/downloads/20200001093.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001093/downloads/20...) Falcon 9 is 20x cheaper than the space shuttle in terms of $/kg to LEO
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Space shuttle cost $54,500 per kg to orbit, Falcon 9 costs $2720 per kg to orbit. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093
      - modeless 3y ago
        Yeah even if there's an order of magnitude error in those calculations Falcon 9 still comes out on top. Plus, the proof is in the pudding, SpaceX is launching more frequently and putting more mass into orbit than anyone else. They could never afford it if Falcon 9 was more expensive than the Shuttle. It's crazy the mental gymnastics people will do once they've decided to hate someone.
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        Ah yes, the one NASA paper that Musk fans love to cite, including all of Space shuttle's R&D costs and a very low estimate of the Falcon 9 cost. Falcon 9 launches currently sell for about $80k per kg to LEO.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    None of the stuff that worked was his idea. The difference between Musk's companies and more tradition one is professional managers as Steve Jobs said are bozo's.
- RetpolineDrama 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - cantours 3y ago
    >idiot-tier youtubers His youtube is cringeworthy sometimes, but he is actually a serious scientist with a phd and some pretty decent cred in chemistry.
quanto 3y ago
The entire thesis hinges on this quote from Ashlee Vance, who corrected/retracted said quote years later: >>Musk told me that the idea originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system. … He insisted the Hyperloop would cost about $6 billion to $10 billion, go faster than a plane, and let people drive their cars onto a pod and drive out into a new city. At the time, it seemed that Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train. He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. … With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement. I have no divine insight into Musk's or any tech billionaire's minds, but if this article's thesis is that the billionaires' are conspiring to put down viable public transit, I would like to see more evidence. I do not disagree, however, that Hyperloop was an infeasible project from the get-go.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  The problem with California High Speed Rail is that they literally have no plans for the section that goes through the mountains. There are huge elevation changes in a seismically active area and its not clear that they'll ever figure it out.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - tjpnz 3y ago
    The Japanese figured it out decades ago. Get them to build it.
    - davidw 3y ago
      Heck, the line from Florence to Rome in Italy goes through mountains and is pretty fast.
    - ch4s3 3y ago
      California sure hasn't. They're billions over budget, and years behind schedule and keep putting off the part of the project that is the most challenging which is a hallmark of failed endeavors.
izzydata 3y ago
The next obvious conclusion once it is established that the hyperloop concept was a con is that the person proposing it and other ideas is a con artist.
- borissk 3y ago
  Don't think calling Elon a con artist is fair - he built two of the most important companies of the 21st century.
  - htk 3y ago
    I would say three, if you count StarLink separately from SpaceX.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - randomdata 3y ago
      If we are willing to count 'built' as companies already going before he arrived, then we can also throw in Tesla, Paypal, and Twitter as well.
    - treyfitty 3y ago
      4, if you count his early influence and, I believe, founding of OpenAI. Albeit, he was not instrumental in the OpenAI as we know it today, but he set it in motion by hiring Sam Altman as the CEO, among other things.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - randomdata 3y ago
        You have to count OpenAI. It is the only other company he has built alongside SpaceX (unless you count the unimportant ones like The Boring Company; the original comment implies we are not counting them). He has certainly helped maintain Twitter, Tesla, and PayPal at different points, but they were already built before he arrived.
LanceJones 3y ago
And what is this author’s motivation for writing an entire series of vitriolic articles about bad man Elon Musk? I’ve noticed lately that such articles get upvoted a lot on HN.
- Kapura 3y ago
  He's done a lot of bad things? Things that are bad for the public? In a very public way? Feels like the sort of thing that a series of articles was invented exactly to address.
- creaturemachine 3y ago
  Look, Elon had a good run but he's no messiah.
- HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Maybe people are tiring of all the billionaire worshiping. Especially when our current crop are just not great people.
  - RetpolineDrama 3y ago
    I don't see anyone "worshiping", I see neutrals and haters. Haters spend a lot of time talking about these supposed worshipers, but I don't see them in comment sections.
    - paulryanrogers 3y ago
      They exist. Have had a few in my circles here in the Midwest, especially since he went hard right. You can find them on YouTube and Reddit and FB.
      - snovv_crash 3y ago
        Did he go hard right? Can you give some examples?
borissk 3y ago
Very interesting article. Given that most of Elon's fortune comes from owning a big share of a car company, I think it's understandable (but unethical) if he uses his huge media influence to sabotage a public transport project. IMHO currently a Hyperloop will require much more investments than what is reasonable to expect, but in 20 or 30 or 50 years if the human progress continues new technologies will make it viable.
grecy 3y ago
Heaven forbid someone has a radical new idea for fusion power or to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to cure cancer. They may just keep it to themselves knowing the reaction they'll get. I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. Back in the day Musk and SpaceX engineers put out a white paper about Hyperloop. In it they laid out as much of the work and calculations they had done, and they said "We're pretty sure this can work, but it's a first draft, and it needs more input and refinement and testing and all the rest. We're not going to do that. But hopefully others will pick it up and run with it." Then some test tracks were built to foster student input/learning/ideas (Great!), then everyone called Musk a scam artist and says it was a crock of shit from the start. I wish we lived in a world where new ideas were encouraged and discussed in a productive manner so that we can all learn and improve the world around us. Of course not all of them will "work out", but that is the whole point of learning and trying new experimental things.
- seattle_spring 3y ago
  If you think people are calling Musk and his ideas names purely because of his company's "whitepaper", then you really aren't paying attention. Any negative press happening to Musk is purely his own doing.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  >I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. I was open minded, until I read the white paper.
  - grecy 3y ago
    > I was open minded, until I read the white paper. OK, so your feedback is "I don't think this will work for reasons x, y and z." We can learn from that and either modify the design until it does work, or move on with other projects that do work (i.e. High Speed Rail). In either case, anger, hatred and vitriol are not required for a productive outcome. We should not shoot down people for sharing information about possibly new and better ways of doing things, lest we discourage everyone from doing so.
throw310822 3y ago
Seems far-fetched that Musk would try to derail one single railway construction project to benefit his cars and industry- the impact of that project on his economic interests seems too small and indirect. But I can imagine Musk being outraged at the idea of spending an enormous amount of money to build a project that is already old and uninspiring by the current standards. And it's not like Musk's perception of how public administrations waste money by applying the same old schemes again and again is entirely naive and wrong- he revolutionised the world's space industry based on those perceptions. He probably wanted to say "hey, with some imagination and research you can build something new and better for less".
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > But I can imagine Musk being outraged at the idea of spending an enormous amount of money to build a project that is already old and uninspiring by the current standards. The thing about the current standards is they demonstrably work, whereas vactrains have been the epitome of “nice idea, won’t work” for over a century (there were quite serious engineering studies in the 70s and they did not end well). And the US probably shouldn’t be trying to run before it can walk here; its first real high-speed line (Accela hardly counts) should probably use proven tech.
- Kapura 3y ago
  Everything I've seen from Musk makes me believe that he wants to win, on his terms, full stop. The undermining of public will to invest in public transportation is real. A functioning subway and rail system in LA would dramatically cut down on the number of cars on the roads, which would be reflected in fewer cars sold. This fairly straightforward and logical: Musk loses if there are more trains built. He also didn't try to build something better; he floated an idea for something worse. Transportation doesn't need some "new technology" to solve the problems of moving people around; trains have existed for a very long time now.
  - kgwxd 3y ago
    > he wants to win, on his terms He wants full control over transportation and communication infrastructure. It's really just that simple. Doesn't matter what it cost, profit (for shareholders at least) has never been the primary goal.
deleted 3y ago
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RetpolineDrama 3y ago
Low quality/trash article. I wasted a few minutes of my time so you can save yours. >Ten years after Elon Musk unveiled the white paper for the vacuum-tube transport system he dubbed the Hyperloop, it’s time to drive the final nail into its coffin. Opens with Elon Musk jab for the clicks, meanwhile a few paragraphs down >To be clear, Hyperloop One is not associated with Musk himself. Nice, top quality post. >The technology was never really meant to go anywhere. Its main goal was always to stop a better transport future from being realized. Conspiracy theory take, I'm probably going to get a lecture about how shitty city buses and 100 year old metro trains are better >In the early 2010s, there was a big debate around California’s plan to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with further extensions to San Diego and Sacramento to follow. Naturally, conservative, automotive, and airline interests were vehemently opposed to a technology that Japan and Europe had been living with for decades arriving on American shores because it threatened their commercial interests. More conspiracy theories, meanwhile californias (not-high) speed rail system is insanely over-budget and behind schedule. >Elon Musk, as an automaker and (let’s be honest) somewhat of a conservative himself, eagerly adopted the arguments against the bullet train with his own spin Yes, because a slow train for tens of billions of dollars is going to magically transform the world into a carless bike-transit utopia >with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in 2013, calling it, “the slowest bullet train in the world and the most expensive bullet train per mile in the world” — and that meant it not only had to be opposed, but that the geniuses in Silicon Valley could surely do better than people who actually had a clue about trains and transportation. All of this is true, note that he has zero rebuttal to these facts. Instead he resorts to deflection. >hat figure was immediately debunked by people who actually understood what went into building that kind of infrastructure, with the real cost estimated around at least $100 billion, even though it would have far less capacity than a high-speed train. Zero sourcing for this claim, meanwhile california's low-speed train project is going to deliver inferior results for $88-$128B https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/why-californias-high-speed-rail-is-taking-so-long-to-complete.html#:~:text=The%20latest%20estimates%20from%20the,to%20the%20high%20price%20tag https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/why-californias-high-speed-r.... Seems like the tunnel + hyperloop would have been a steal at "just" $100B >And that was the point. Musk never had any intention of building the Hyperloop. He only needed it to help kill or substantially delay the high-speed rail project and the alternate vision of sustainable collective transportation it offered. What a complete joke of an article, nothing was killed. Nothing was "substantially delayed" due to Musk or anyone else speaking about hyperloop. This article is a pathetically transparent attempt to rewrite history and transfer the blame of californias systemic failures on... some news articles? Get this trash off of HN
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pfdietz 3y ago
I've wondered if something like Hyperloop could make sense for high speed package transport, say between Fedex hubs. Smaller tubes, no need for life support, easier safety case, and packages could be designed to withstand higher accelerations (for sharper turns).
- rsynnott 3y ago
  You’ve just reinvented pneumatic/vactrain freight transport, which has been knocking around as a concept since the mid-19th century. In practice, it’s just really not competitive with conventional high speed rail or air freight.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Hyperloop is technically distinct from those. Indeed, the distinctions are what made it interesting.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Are you thinking about pneumatic tubes? Or private underground rail? I fail to see what the hyperloop nonsense brings to the equation.
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    As I understand it, the concept allows for smaller vehicles with frequent departures and arrivals. It makes some sense to send shipments of packages between delivery hubs often rather than waiting to fill a whole train enough to make it economical, while not being subject to a vehicle propelled by pressure in the tube. I can't say whether it would be effective (or even beneficial enough to justify the construction cost) but it sounds more plausible than high speed mass transit for passengers.
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    Hyperloop is technically distinct from either of those.
- nonfamous 3y ago
CodeWriter23 3y ago
I remember during my lifetime people also said electric cars and self-landing reusable rockets were impossible. Contrasting that with Branson biting off more than his collection of Virgin brands could chew (which are all failing/reorganizing) is not really the hit piece this author thinks it is.
- belter 3y ago
  Just because we put a man on the Moon, does not mean we can put a man on the Sun.
- bashinator 3y ago
  I don't see what the feasibility of Hyperloop has to do with the article. It was never intended to succeed.
- openasocket 3y ago
  Electric cars have been around for over a century. The space shuttle re-used the solid rocket boosters and its own engines. I don't know anyone could possibly consider those "impossible". Not to diminish to achievements of Tesla and Space X, but they were not entirely novel systems invented out of whole cloth.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  Does your lifetime extend to before 1970? We had reusable launch vehicles at that time. We had propulsive rocket landings in the 80's. Electric cars have existed for longer than gas-powered cars. By contrast, no analog for the "hyperloop" has ever existed outside of sci-fi novels.
  - SmartJerry 3y ago
    We have had pneumatic tubes as well since 1799 and they've been used by many companies in the past. The only thing novel about the idea was the scale and technology behind scaling it.
  - cesarb 3y ago
    > We had propulsive rocket landings in the 80's. Didn't the Apollo project use propulsive rocket landings to land on the moon (which was kind of necessary due to the moon's lack of a dense enough atmosphere)? IIRC, that was much earlier than the 1980s.
xvilka 3y ago
Vacuum super-high-speed trains make sense over long distances, but building something like that is beyond current levels of technology. Maybe in a century or later, it could be a better alternative to flying between continents or big cities.
mondomondo 3y ago
[dead]
taylodl 3y ago
FTA - "The technology was never really meant to go anywhere." What an excellent pun! Meanwhile, out here in the real world, we know it costs 5x more, on average, to build passenger trains underground than above ground. Hyperloop was always a means for developing mining technologies - specifically, lithium mining. That sounds boring (see what I did there?!) so you frame the discussion as passenger transport to lure in investors. Technology was developed, knowledge was learned, investors were duped, and we move on.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > Hyperloop was always a means for developing mining technologies - specifically, lithium mining. That sounds boring (see what I did there?!) I think you're thinking about "The Boring Company" which is entirely separate from Hyperloop One. Hyperloop was always a transportation fantasy. They didn't even hire people with civil engineering or mining experience, as some early employees are starting to explain on Twitter now that the company is gone. > Technology was developed, knowledge was learned, investors were duped, and we move on. Again, I think you're confusing different companies. Hyperloop specifically worked on transportation, not mining/digging/tunneling. The Boring Company is the Elon Company supposedly targeted at digging tunnels.
- kolinko 3y ago
  What? Hyperloop is supposed to be above the ground, not below
  - mcny 3y ago
    You're making assumptions here. As far as I know there is no requirement that hyperloop has to be above ground. While I imagine it would reduce cost to build one at ground level, I think it makes sense to go underground or high up on pillars at least where it intersects roads, rivers, or things like that. Also there's boring company that seems to fit perfectly with hyperloop.
    - theptip 3y ago
      The original designs had the hyperloop above ground. The later ”loop” (no hyper, drive a car onto a skate that then shunts around under the city) were underground; there might have been an early iteration of that urban design that contemplated vacuum though. Of course you _can_ go underground but that doesn’t make sense economically for long-range (nobody is digging a tunnel SF-LA). And the hyper bit (vacuum pump and acceleration at each stop) makes less sense for short-range transport in urban environments.
epups 3y ago
I don't buy this theory that what Musk primarily wanted with the hyperloop was to undermine the high-speed train. Yes I've read TFA and I'm aware of that indirect quote, and its retraction for that matter. Nevertheless, it seems to me much easier to believe that what Musk actually wanted was publicity. This is a pattern that you can see over and over: hyperloop, boring company, saving kids in caves, colonising Mars, self driving cars, X will be a financial app, etc etc etc. All empty promises that grab headlines and inflate his importance at the time. Public attention span is very low so when these promises are later not fulfilled or even revealed to be complete fabrications, it doesn't really matter because the billions in stock value do not melt so easily.
porphyra 3y ago
The nuance about "Elon making Hyperloop just to oppose high speed rail" is that he isn't intrinsically opposed to high speed rail itself. He's just opposed to the fact that California high speed rail is way more expensive and way slower than high speed rail elsewhere. If we could build high speed rail that's as fast as the ones in China, Japan, and Europe and cost the same amount, then that would truly be amazing and there would be no need for hyperloops. Anyway, a lot of these "hyperloops are scams" articles just talk about how Elon hates high speed rail and never delve into the technical details of why hyperloops don't work (so far, anyway). The main idea of hyperloop is to use a compressor in the front of the pod to send air to the back, avoiding the inefficiency of pushing a lot of air in front of it like a syringe. This would allow the tube to contain some air, making it cheaper to maintain than a truly vacuum tube. The idea was explored in the 1990s for the similarly ill-fated SwissMetro project. However, aerodynamic simulations showed that the Hyperloop pod design would need to be redesigned to avoid supersonic flow, and the tube would need to be much bigger. I'm not sure if anyone has actually managed to make an active bypass pod that uses a compressor in front to improve efficiency in a tunnel and would be very curious to learn more.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  > If we could build high speed rail that's as fast as the ones in China, Japan, and Europe CAHSR design speed is 10% faster than anything in service in Japan or Europe, and the same as the fastest China trains, excluding maglevs.
  - porphyra 3y ago
    Proposition 1A says: * San Francisco–San Jose: 30 minutes; this would require about 100 mph (160 km/h) on average * San Jose–Los Angeles: 2 hours, 10 minutes; this would require about 200 mph (320 km/h) on average Which is rather uninspiring compared to traveling by air, and somewhat worse than the Nozomi Shinkansen travelling between Tokyo and Osaka. The slow leg between SF-SJ reminds me of taking the TGV from Paris to Nice. The part between Marseille and Nice took just as long as from Paris to Marseille. With all that said though, I would still take the CA HSR once it is built and I am looking forward to its completion.
debacle 3y ago
I am so, so happy that between me seeing this link and it loading in a new tab, it was properly flagged. Merry Christmas, HN.
- zzzeek 3y ago
  I don't see why. The post is well written and makes a very compelling point. Plenty of evidence is given that the hyperloop idea was entirely unserious and was more about billionaires placing their enormous weight on the scales in order to kill a change in public transit that would threaten their profits and lifestyles. I mean sure, it challenges the narrative that billionaires aren't selfish parasites that shouldn't exist, so right, not very pro Y combinator of me.
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SmartJerry 3y ago
Just a Musk hate porn article with zero substance behind it trying to get clicks by naming one of the richest and smartest people in the world. These are popping up more and more since he purchased Twitter. Somehow the $400M Hyperloop One project that Musk didn't fund, operate, or touch fails and he's being blamed for it. Don't blame the cities that make a simple train cost $10B, don't blame the investors who spent $400M on the problem, blame Musk, the guy who released a free open source design, how rude of him.
- oluwie 3y ago
  The author seems pretty credible to me. Maybe try to look at this a bit more objectively.
  - SmartJerry 3y ago
    I am judging the author on this article alone and it is not credible. Maybe he just got emotionally charged for some reason or is looking to build an audience by getting the clicks that come with hating on a popular person. I think objectively it is glossing over the fact that Musk has nothing to do with the current Hyperloop project. Musk has done nothing but put free research into the world then this author makes a very grande assumption that he released free research out of some evil conspiracy that releasing free research would make governments stop building trains. Not only that but its been less than 10 years since that was idea was released and the author speaks as if its been tried and failed everywhere. I don't see how much less credible the author could be.
  - SmartJerry 3y ago
    Might I add the other articles suggested by this author you call credible are titled "Elon Musk is a Racist" and "Elon Musk wants to relive his start-up days. He's repeating the same mistakes"

161 points by zzzeek 3y ago

Musk not doing it himself should have been a clear sign. "I have no time so you can become a billionaire with it" - sure, then buy X and spend all the time fighting "for free speech" on X.

hintymad 3y ago

When I visited China's city Chengdu back in 2015, there was a single subway line, and it was about less than 5 miles long. 8 years later, including 3 years in Covid, this is what Chengdu's subway network looks like: http://m.cd.bendibao.com/news/123545.shtm#&gid=1&pid=1 http://m.cd.bendibao.com/news/123545.shtm#&gid=1&pid=1 It looks to me the problem is not engineering or technical but political. It's a shame that the US can't build any more, no matter what excuses we produce.

junon 3y ago

Related thunderf00t videos: https://youtu.be/ZHjrFKfyZrw https://youtu.be/ZHjrFKfyZrw and https://youtu.be/RNFesa01llk https://youtu.be/RNFesa01llk Those are for Elon's; Virgin also has a hyperloop which he's covered too: https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA and https://youtu.be/EeWcQf9QCmg https://youtu.be/EeWcQf9QCmg

Closi 3y ago
This (thunderf00t) is the same person that said that the Falcon 9 was a scam and a reusable rocket wasn't going to work. The defence of Musk is "Musk has lots of ideas, and some worked out and some didn't".
- junon 3y ago
  He had one bad take in your opinion and you discredit his entire existence? Hmm.
- x3n0ph3n3 3y ago
  I really appreciated thunderf00t for a long time and liked his debunking videos. There came a point where he had such a hard-on for hating Musk that he seemed to lose a lot of objectivity, particularly when it comes to SpaceX.
  - delecti 3y ago
    That seems to be a pretty big and weird theme of his. For a long time he was focused on creationists (first VenomFangX, then Ray Comfort), and at the time that didn't seem to be a big deal, because creationism deserves mockery. Then he did a hard pivot and obsessed over Anita Sarkeesian for years, and that started to make it clear that it he was more interested in hosting a 2 Minutes Hate, and didn't care as much about the subject his targets cared about.
    - dmix 3y ago
      Got to do what sells. There’s more than one subreddit dedicated to hating on everything he does up to the minute. I’d imagine there’s a large market for it on YouTube. View counts push creators to certain niches as much as personal beliefs.
    - networkchad 3y ago
      > Anita Sarkeesian To be fair she's very easy to hate. She has no identity but to be a victim.
- preisschild 3y ago
  The fastest Falcon 9 turnaround time was still 54 days, the same as the fastest Space Shuttle refurbishment. Gwyne Shotwell herself said that it needs to come down to a few hours.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kusakata 3y ago
    The shortest turnaround time was 21 days, and it gets shorter and shorter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_b...
  - modeless 3y ago
    Falcon 9 isn't designed for a few hours turnaround time. That's what Starship is for.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    I don't see why that matters since they already have a fleet of some 20 or so falcon 9s. They launched almost 2 times a week all this year. I think if we had built 10-20 shuttle orbiters turnaround wouldn't have been an issue either. (not really, shuttles were eyewateringly expensive).
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  The economics of Falcon 9 do suggest that it currently is a lot worse than space shuttle on cost per unit of mass to orbit, and that the promise of cheaper launches due to reusability has not happened. Sure, the rockets are somewhat reusable (with a lot of reconditioning, it seems), but that definitely hasn't translated to lower costs to orbit.
  - epups 3y ago
    "Somewhat reusable"? One Falcon 9 has already flown a record 18 times!
  - adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
    What are you talking about? According to NASA (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001093/downloads/20200001093.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001093/downloads/20...) Falcon 9 is 20x cheaper than the space shuttle in terms of $/kg to LEO
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Space shuttle cost $54,500 per kg to orbit, Falcon 9 costs $2720 per kg to orbit. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20200001093
    - modeless 3y ago
      Yeah even if there's an order of magnitude error in those calculations Falcon 9 still comes out on top. Plus, the proof is in the pudding, SpaceX is launching more frequently and putting more mass into orbit than anyone else. They could never afford it if Falcon 9 was more expensive than the Shuttle. It's crazy the mental gymnastics people will do once they've decided to hate someone.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      Ah yes, the one NASA paper that Musk fans love to cite, including all of Space shuttle's R&D costs and a very low estimate of the Falcon 9 cost. Falcon 9 launches currently sell for about $80k per kg to LEO.
- Gibbon1 3y ago
  None of the stuff that worked was his idea. The difference between Musk's companies and more tradition one is professional managers as Steve Jobs said are bozo's.
RetpolineDrama 3y ago
[flagged]
- cantours 3y ago
  >idiot-tier youtubers His youtube is cringeworthy sometimes, but he is actually a serious scientist with a phd and some pretty decent cred in chemistry.

quanto 3y ago

The entire thesis hinges on this quote from Ashlee Vance, who corrected/retracted said quote years later: >>Musk told me that the idea originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system. … He insisted the Hyperloop would cost about $6 billion to $10 billion, go faster than a plane, and let people drive their cars onto a pod and drive out into a new city. At the time, it seemed that Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train. He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. … With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement. I have no divine insight into Musk's or any tech billionaire's minds, but if this article's thesis is that the billionaires' are conspiring to put down viable public transit, I would like to see more evidence. I do not disagree, however, that Hyperloop was an infeasible project from the get-go.

ch4s3 3y ago
The problem with California High Speed Rail is that they literally have no plans for the section that goes through the mountains. There are huge elevation changes in a seismically active area and its not clear that they'll ever figure it out.
- deleted 3y ago
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- tjpnz 3y ago
  The Japanese figured it out decades ago. Get them to build it.
  - davidw 3y ago
    Heck, the line from Florence to Rome in Italy goes through mountains and is pretty fast.
  - ch4s3 3y ago
    California sure hasn't. They're billions over budget, and years behind schedule and keep putting off the part of the project that is the most challenging which is a hallmark of failed endeavors.

izzydata 3y ago

The next obvious conclusion once it is established that the hyperloop concept was a con is that the person proposing it and other ideas is a con artist.

borissk 3y ago
Don't think calling Elon a con artist is fair - he built two of the most important companies of the 21st century.
- htk 3y ago
  I would say three, if you count StarLink separately from SpaceX.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - randomdata 3y ago
    If we are willing to count 'built' as companies already going before he arrived, then we can also throw in Tesla, Paypal, and Twitter as well.
  - treyfitty 3y ago
    4, if you count his early influence and, I believe, founding of OpenAI. Albeit, he was not instrumental in the OpenAI as we know it today, but he set it in motion by hiring Sam Altman as the CEO, among other things.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - randomdata 3y ago
      You have to count OpenAI. It is the only other company he has built alongside SpaceX (unless you count the unimportant ones like The Boring Company; the original comment implies we are not counting them). He has certainly helped maintain Twitter, Tesla, and PayPal at different points, but they were already built before he arrived.

LanceJones 3y ago

And what is this author’s motivation for writing an entire series of vitriolic articles about bad man Elon Musk? I’ve noticed lately that such articles get upvoted a lot on HN.

Kapura 3y ago
He's done a lot of bad things? Things that are bad for the public? In a very public way? Feels like the sort of thing that a series of articles was invented exactly to address.
creaturemachine 3y ago
Look, Elon had a good run but he's no messiah.
HumblyTossed 3y ago
Maybe people are tiring of all the billionaire worshiping. Especially when our current crop are just not great people.
- RetpolineDrama 3y ago
  I don't see anyone "worshiping", I see neutrals and haters. Haters spend a lot of time talking about these supposed worshipers, but I don't see them in comment sections.
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    They exist. Have had a few in my circles here in the Midwest, especially since he went hard right. You can find them on YouTube and Reddit and FB.
    - snovv_crash 3y ago
      Did he go hard right? Can you give some examples?

borissk 3y ago

Very interesting article. Given that most of Elon's fortune comes from owning a big share of a car company, I think it's understandable (but unethical) if he uses his huge media influence to sabotage a public transport project. IMHO currently a Hyperloop will require much more investments than what is reasonable to expect, but in 20 or 30 or 50 years if the human progress continues new technologies will make it viable.

grecy 3y ago

Heaven forbid someone has a radical new idea for fusion power or to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to cure cancer. They may just keep it to themselves knowing the reaction they'll get. I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. Back in the day Musk and SpaceX engineers put out a white paper about Hyperloop. In it they laid out as much of the work and calculations they had done, and they said "We're pretty sure this can work, but it's a first draft, and it needs more input and refinement and testing and all the rest. We're not going to do that. But hopefully others will pick it up and run with it." Then some test tracks were built to foster student input/learning/ideas (Great!), then everyone called Musk a scam artist and says it was a crock of shit from the start. I wish we lived in a world where new ideas were encouraged and discussed in a productive manner so that we can all learn and improve the world around us. Of course not all of them will "work out", but that is the whole point of learning and trying new experimental things.

seattle_spring 3y ago
If you think people are calling Musk and his ideas names purely because of his company's "whitepaper", then you really aren't paying attention. Any negative press happening to Musk is purely his own doing.
tjpnz 3y ago
>I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. I was open minded, until I read the white paper.
- grecy 3y ago
  > I was open minded, until I read the white paper. OK, so your feedback is "I don't think this will work for reasons x, y and z." We can learn from that and either modify the design until it does work, or move on with other projects that do work (i.e. High Speed Rail). In either case, anger, hatred and vitriol are not required for a productive outcome. We should not shoot down people for sharing information about possibly new and better ways of doing things, lest we discourage everyone from doing so.

throw310822 3y ago

Seems far-fetched that Musk would try to derail one single railway construction project to benefit his cars and industry- the impact of that project on his economic interests seems too small and indirect. But I can imagine Musk being outraged at the idea of spending an enormous amount of money to build a project that is already old and uninspiring by the current standards. And it's not like Musk's perception of how public administrations waste money by applying the same old schemes again and again is entirely naive and wrong- he revolutionised the world's space industry based on those perceptions. He probably wanted to say "hey, with some imagination and research you can build something new and better for less".

rsynnott 3y ago
> But I can imagine Musk being outraged at the idea of spending an enormous amount of money to build a project that is already old and uninspiring by the current standards. The thing about the current standards is they demonstrably work, whereas vactrains have been the epitome of “nice idea, won’t work” for over a century (there were quite serious engineering studies in the 70s and they did not end well). And the US probably shouldn’t be trying to run before it can walk here; its first real high-speed line (Accela hardly counts) should probably use proven tech.
Kapura 3y ago
Everything I've seen from Musk makes me believe that he wants to win, on his terms, full stop. The undermining of public will to invest in public transportation is real. A functioning subway and rail system in LA would dramatically cut down on the number of cars on the roads, which would be reflected in fewer cars sold. This fairly straightforward and logical: Musk loses if there are more trains built. He also didn't try to build something better; he floated an idea for something worse. Transportation doesn't need some "new technology" to solve the problems of moving people around; trains have existed for a very long time now.
- kgwxd 3y ago
  > he wants to win, on his terms He wants full control over transportation and communication infrastructure. It's really just that simple. Doesn't matter what it cost, profit (for shareholders at least) has never been the primary goal.

deleted 3y ago

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RetpolineDrama 3y ago

Low quality/trash article. I wasted a few minutes of my time so you can save yours. >Ten years after Elon Musk unveiled the white paper for the vacuum-tube transport system he dubbed the Hyperloop, it’s time to drive the final nail into its coffin. Opens with Elon Musk jab for the clicks, meanwhile a few paragraphs down >To be clear, Hyperloop One is not associated with Musk himself. Nice, top quality post. >The technology was never really meant to go anywhere. Its main goal was always to stop a better transport future from being realized. Conspiracy theory take, I'm probably going to get a lecture about how shitty city buses and 100 year old metro trains are better >In the early 2010s, there was a big debate around California’s plan to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with further extensions to San Diego and Sacramento to follow. Naturally, conservative, automotive, and airline interests were vehemently opposed to a technology that Japan and Europe had been living with for decades arriving on American shores because it threatened their commercial interests. More conspiracy theories, meanwhile californias (not-high) speed rail system is insanely over-budget and behind schedule. >Elon Musk, as an automaker and (let’s be honest) somewhat of a conservative himself, eagerly adopted the arguments against the bullet train with his own spin Yes, because a slow train for tens of billions of dollars is going to magically transform the world into a carless bike-transit utopia >with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in 2013, calling it, “the slowest bullet train in the world and the most expensive bullet train per mile in the world” — and that meant it not only had to be opposed, but that the geniuses in Silicon Valley could surely do better than people who actually had a clue about trains and transportation. All of this is true, note that he has zero rebuttal to these facts. Instead he resorts to deflection. >hat figure was immediately debunked by people who actually understood what went into building that kind of infrastructure, with the real cost estimated around at least $100 billion, even though it would have far less capacity than a high-speed train. Zero sourcing for this claim, meanwhile california's low-speed train project is going to deliver inferior results for $88-$128B https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/why-californias-high-speed-rail-is-taking-so-long-to-complete.html#:~:text=The%20latest%20estimates%20from%20the,to%20the%20high%20price%20tag https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/17/why-californias-high-speed-r.... Seems like the tunnel + hyperloop would have been a steal at "just" $100B >And that was the point. Musk never had any intention of building the Hyperloop. He only needed it to help kill or substantially delay the high-speed rail project and the alternate vision of sustainable collective transportation it offered. What a complete joke of an article, nothing was killed. Nothing was "substantially delayed" due to Musk or anyone else speaking about hyperloop. This article is a pathetically transparent attempt to rewrite history and transfer the blame of californias systemic failures on... some news articles? Get this trash off of HN

deleted 3y ago

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pfdietz 3y ago

I've wondered if something like Hyperloop could make sense for high speed package transport, say between Fedex hubs. Smaller tubes, no need for life support, easier safety case, and packages could be designed to withstand higher accelerations (for sharper turns).

rsynnott 3y ago
You’ve just reinvented pneumatic/vactrain freight transport, which has been knocking around as a concept since the mid-19th century. In practice, it’s just really not competitive with conventional high speed rail or air freight.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Hyperloop is technically distinct from those. Indeed, the distinctions are what made it interesting.
masklinn 3y ago
Are you thinking about pneumatic tubes? Or private underground rail? I fail to see what the hyperloop nonsense brings to the equation.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  As I understand it, the concept allows for smaller vehicles with frequent departures and arrivals. It makes some sense to send shipments of packages between delivery hubs often rather than waiting to fill a whole train enough to make it economical, while not being subject to a vehicle propelled by pressure in the tube. I can't say whether it would be effective (or even beneficial enough to justify the construction cost) but it sounds more plausible than high speed mass transit for passengers.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  Hyperloop is technically distinct from either of those.
nonfamous 3y ago

CodeWriter23 3y ago

I remember during my lifetime people also said electric cars and self-landing reusable rockets were impossible. Contrasting that with Branson biting off more than his collection of Virgin brands could chew (which are all failing/reorganizing) is not really the hit piece this author thinks it is.

belter 3y ago
Just because we put a man on the Moon, does not mean we can put a man on the Sun.
bashinator 3y ago
I don't see what the feasibility of Hyperloop has to do with the article. It was never intended to succeed.
openasocket 3y ago
Electric cars have been around for over a century. The space shuttle re-used the solid rocket boosters and its own engines. I don't know anyone could possibly consider those "impossible". Not to diminish to achievements of Tesla and Space X, but they were not entirely novel systems invented out of whole cloth.
pclmulqdq 3y ago
Does your lifetime extend to before 1970? We had reusable launch vehicles at that time. We had propulsive rocket landings in the 80's. Electric cars have existed for longer than gas-powered cars. By contrast, no analog for the "hyperloop" has ever existed outside of sci-fi novels.
- SmartJerry 3y ago
  We have had pneumatic tubes as well since 1799 and they've been used by many companies in the past. The only thing novel about the idea was the scale and technology behind scaling it.
- cesarb 3y ago
  > We had propulsive rocket landings in the 80's. Didn't the Apollo project use propulsive rocket landings to land on the moon (which was kind of necessary due to the moon's lack of a dense enough atmosphere)? IIRC, that was much earlier than the 1980s.

xvilka 3y ago

Vacuum super-high-speed trains make sense over long distances, but building something like that is beyond current levels of technology. Maybe in a century or later, it could be a better alternative to flying between continents or big cities.

mondomondo 3y ago

[dead]

taylodl 3y ago

FTA - "The technology was never really meant to go anywhere." What an excellent pun! Meanwhile, out here in the real world, we know it costs 5x more, on average, to build passenger trains underground than above ground. Hyperloop was always a means for developing mining technologies - specifically, lithium mining. That sounds boring (see what I did there?!) so you frame the discussion as passenger transport to lure in investors. Technology was developed, knowledge was learned, investors were duped, and we move on.

Aurornis 3y ago
> Hyperloop was always a means for developing mining technologies - specifically, lithium mining. That sounds boring (see what I did there?!) I think you're thinking about "The Boring Company" which is entirely separate from Hyperloop One. Hyperloop was always a transportation fantasy. They didn't even hire people with civil engineering or mining experience, as some early employees are starting to explain on Twitter now that the company is gone. > Technology was developed, knowledge was learned, investors were duped, and we move on. Again, I think you're confusing different companies. Hyperloop specifically worked on transportation, not mining/digging/tunneling. The Boring Company is the Elon Company supposedly targeted at digging tunnels.
kolinko 3y ago
What? Hyperloop is supposed to be above the ground, not below
- mcny 3y ago
  You're making assumptions here. As far as I know there is no requirement that hyperloop has to be above ground. While I imagine it would reduce cost to build one at ground level, I think it makes sense to go underground or high up on pillars at least where it intersects roads, rivers, or things like that. Also there's boring company that seems to fit perfectly with hyperloop.
  - theptip 3y ago
    The original designs had the hyperloop above ground. The later ”loop” (no hyper, drive a car onto a skate that then shunts around under the city) were underground; there might have been an early iteration of that urban design that contemplated vacuum though. Of course you _can_ go underground but that doesn’t make sense economically for long-range (nobody is digging a tunnel SF-LA). And the hyper bit (vacuum pump and acceleration at each stop) makes less sense for short-range transport in urban environments.

epups 3y ago

I don't buy this theory that what Musk primarily wanted with the hyperloop was to undermine the high-speed train. Yes I've read TFA and I'm aware of that indirect quote, and its retraction for that matter. Nevertheless, it seems to me much easier to believe that what Musk actually wanted was publicity. This is a pattern that you can see over and over: hyperloop, boring company, saving kids in caves, colonising Mars, self driving cars, X will be a financial app, etc etc etc. All empty promises that grab headlines and inflate his importance at the time. Public attention span is very low so when these promises are later not fulfilled or even revealed to be complete fabrications, it doesn't really matter because the billions in stock value do not melt so easily.

porphyra 3y ago

The nuance about "Elon making Hyperloop just to oppose high speed rail" is that he isn't intrinsically opposed to high speed rail itself. He's just opposed to the fact that California high speed rail is way more expensive and way slower than high speed rail elsewhere. If we could build high speed rail that's as fast as the ones in China, Japan, and Europe and cost the same amount, then that would truly be amazing and there would be no need for hyperloops. Anyway, a lot of these "hyperloops are scams" articles just talk about how Elon hates high speed rail and never delve into the technical details of why hyperloops don't work (so far, anyway). The main idea of hyperloop is to use a compressor in the front of the pod to send air to the back, avoiding the inefficiency of pushing a lot of air in front of it like a syringe. This would allow the tube to contain some air, making it cheaper to maintain than a truly vacuum tube. The idea was explored in the 1990s for the similarly ill-fated SwissMetro project. However, aerodynamic simulations showed that the Hyperloop pod design would need to be redesigned to avoid supersonic flow, and the tube would need to be much bigger. I'm not sure if anyone has actually managed to make an active bypass pod that uses a compressor in front to improve efficiency in a tunnel and would be very curious to learn more.

jeffbee 3y ago
> If we could build high speed rail that's as fast as the ones in China, Japan, and Europe CAHSR design speed is 10% faster than anything in service in Japan or Europe, and the same as the fastest China trains, excluding maglevs.
- porphyra 3y ago
  Proposition 1A says: * San Francisco–San Jose: 30 minutes; this would require about 100 mph (160 km/h) on average * San Jose–Los Angeles: 2 hours, 10 minutes; this would require about 200 mph (320 km/h) on average Which is rather uninspiring compared to traveling by air, and somewhat worse than the Nozomi Shinkansen travelling between Tokyo and Osaka. The slow leg between SF-SJ reminds me of taking the TGV from Paris to Nice. The part between Marseille and Nice took just as long as from Paris to Marseille. With all that said though, I would still take the CA HSR once it is built and I am looking forward to its completion.

debacle 3y ago

I am so, so happy that between me seeing this link and it loading in a new tab, it was properly flagged. Merry Christmas, HN.

zzzeek 3y ago
I don't see why. The post is well written and makes a very compelling point. Plenty of evidence is given that the hyperloop idea was entirely unserious and was more about billionaires placing their enormous weight on the scales in order to kill a change in public transit that would threaten their profits and lifestyles. I mean sure, it challenges the narrative that billionaires aren't selfish parasites that shouldn't exist, so right, not very pro Y combinator of me.

deleted 3y ago

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SmartJerry 3y ago

Just a Musk hate porn article with zero substance behind it trying to get clicks by naming one of the richest and smartest people in the world. These are popping up more and more since he purchased Twitter. Somehow the $400M Hyperloop One project that Musk didn't fund, operate, or touch fails and he's being blamed for it. Don't blame the cities that make a simple train cost $10B, don't blame the investors who spent $400M on the problem, blame Musk, the guy who released a free open source design, how rude of him.

oluwie 3y ago
The author seems pretty credible to me. Maybe try to look at this a bit more objectively.
- SmartJerry 3y ago
  I am judging the author on this article alone and it is not credible. Maybe he just got emotionally charged for some reason or is looking to build an audience by getting the clicks that come with hating on a popular person. I think objectively it is glossing over the fact that Musk has nothing to do with the current Hyperloop project. Musk has done nothing but put free research into the world then this author makes a very grande assumption that he released free research out of some evil conspiracy that releasing free research would make governments stop building trains. Not only that but its been less than 10 years since that was idea was released and the author speaks as if its been tried and failed everywhere. I don't see how much less credible the author could be.
- SmartJerry 3y ago
  Might I add the other articles suggested by this author you call credible are titled "Elon Musk is a Racist" and "Elon Musk wants to relive his start-up days. He's repeating the same mistakes"