Hyperloop One to Shut Down After Failing to Reinvent Transit
(www.bloomberg.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 22 Dec 2023 08:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9850994
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 22 Dec 2023 08:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9850994
Hyperloop One to Shut Down After Failing to Reinvent Transit::The company is selling assets, laying off remaining employees.
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Boo. All I want is fast as fuck transport. I don’t see why maglev trains in a vacuum are so difficult
Maintaining a vacuum over long distances is really fucking hard.
You’d be better served utilising existing rail infrastructure and improving that to make high speed trains possible.
Whole purposes of hyperloop was to derail any constructive debate on existing rail network. Pun intended. I’d say hyperloop was quite successful.
The role of government needs to be entirely about removing obstacles on private entities that try to create new (or old if that works better) methods of transportation. Not supporting or hindering anyone. If they let this fucking guy, or any other fucking guy talk them into anything, they’re doing their job wrong. Even if Elon Musk is a persuasive person, this is almost entirely a failure of government.
Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong (before China at least) are good examples of how to handle all this well.
Small vaccum then. They managed to build a tunnel between France and England. Put people on the moon. Can do a lot
Why not just make a tunnel and forget the vacuum? It’s just a subway system, but it’s efficient
Edit: France & England might have dug a tunnel but Paris and London just have a subway. And train to move around the country.
Edit2: fixed wording
No it’s literally a subway system. Putting trains in tunnels isn’t something new or revolutionary, that’s literally what subways are. And we’ve been doing it for over a hundred years.
People seem to be locked in on examples in the US of bad subways to mean subways inherently suck. But there are plenty of examples of perfectly working subways, which are highly efficient, comfortable and get you from A to B fast.
There are even places with subways that currently suck, but used to be very good. But car culture has meant rich people use their car and sit in gridlock, while the poor use the subway. This lead to a class difference and the richer class in power gutting funding for public transport. That is what makes it suck, not the principal of the thing.
Everything Elon says is new or revolutionary, usually isn’t. The hyperloop (or vacuum train) concept isn’t new either, I remember reading a book in the 80s where they had vacuum trains. And there are examples of the idea going back a hundred years or more. The hyperloop idea is so dumb, it can be debunked in a couple of minutes with some back of the envelope calculations. The power requirements alone would be huge. But hey slap some solar panels on that bad boy and it regenerates it’s own power right, cause that’s how anything works.
Well that’s the boring company basically. Don’t need hyperlooo for that.
The boring company is a scam. They don’t do anything new or better and in many ways are much worse.
They took the costs of major tunnel projects, calculated the costs per meter of diameter, scaled it down to their max diameter and compared the two. Then they say OMG WE ARE SO MUCH BETTER! Well sure, because that’s in no way a fair comparison to make at all. Let alone the fact that comparing budget to actual costs is a no go, it’s not possible to just scale the costs.
If you want to make a small narrow tunnel, for example to connect two existing buildings on a existing manufacturing site with a small diameter to for example run some infrastructure and a servicing tunnel, you don’t use a tunnel boring machine. You just get out a digger, dig a big hole, drive the digger down the hole, dig forward, brace, dig forward, brace etc. It doesn’t cost much at all, doesn’t require many people or special equipment and goes pretty fast.
If you want to make a big ass tunnel, for example for a road or a railroad, you might want to use a tunnel boring machine, but mostly traditional digging is preferred. We’ve gotten pretty good at creating tunnels using diggers and explody stuff and have been for thousands of years. When it’s figured out a tunnel boring machine is actually the best option, you need a company with a lot of experience and equipment to get the job done. When you are at that point, money is mostly a non-issue and time becomes the main limitation. These projects take a long time and the public or company providing the funding needs it done, they don’t mind paying if it’s done as fast as possible. And experience is the key to getting huge projects like that done on time.
The costs come mostly from all the red tape, safety provisions and pure manhours getting it done. The costs of the machine is so much a non factor, there are times the machine is custom built for a project and a lot of it is left there because taking it out isn’t worth it. Cutting on red tape isn’t possible, regulations are regulations and they are strict for a reason. Cutting on safety is a Elon trademark, but in a lot of places you can’t get away with that. And doing that within your own company is one thing, but if it’s a job for a client, the client might not be inclined to agree to something like that. The manhours can be minimized with a super efficient setup and you can count on companies having done a lot of projects over the decades know how to do it as efficient as possible.
And on the safety point: The only tunnel the Boring Company has ever built would not be allowed to be open to the public in most places. And it actually isn’t really open, you have to sign a waiver beforehand and only certain personal is allowed in the tunnel and only with their Tesla cars. It’s only barely large enough for a car and would be considered way too small for an actual road. Real tunnels need stuff like emergency exits, guardrails and a walking space behind the guardrails to get to the emergency exits, a lot of safety infra, monitoring, ventilation, air inputs and outputs, fire safety etc. You can’t even drive in their tunnel with regular cars, the fumes have nowhere to go. And the day one of their cars catches fire in that tunnel is a dark day indeed. I’m not sure the driver can even open the doors and for sure emergency services can’t get to it. They’ve made a concrete hole and called it a tunnel, that’s not what a tunnel is.
I’m not sure what the point of it is, it’s probably an economic vessel of some kind to shift some money around. They haven’t accepted any orders and have only done that shitty Vegas thing. They say they are going to do more in Vegas, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
We do one thing. Must do other thing. Smart.
.
.
Such as ?
Engage your brain please
Take a flying leap please
Seems rude.
Keeping a vacuum in a big area is extremely inefficient and energy costly, because it is impossible not to have leaks.
A tube for 6-8 people doesn’t come close to the capacity of a train.
During an emergency, the people in those tubes are stuck with no way to get out, unlike a train.
Hyperloop is basically a fancy looking but worse train in about every aspect.
Except it would be 10 x faster. Bit fair enough
How about a 35 minute video about it?
youtu.be/RNFesa01llk?si=haCoCDo5oc1Or8JT
.
So basically every project worth doing. Obviously it would be expensive it’s train travel. Any kinda project costs a fuck tonne. Not specific to Hyperloop.
That’s fair enough. I suppose any kind of improvement on maglev would be useful. Just bumping trains to 300 would have some ability to compete with air travel
Yeah that would be very expensive and difficult. However kinda similar to if a plane fails.
All others seem fair enough. Technology moving past is kinda silly. That’s like saying don’t make trains as new tech might come and then it’s a waste.
.
Such as having to withstand over 100 tons of air pressure per square meter
😂 That’s what Muskrat wanted you to believe. Engineers and people with more than 2 brain cells have debunked the Hyperloop idea for years. Here’s one of them from 7 years ago.
And even before that the Swiss seriously studied the possiblity and gave up.
Swiss are known for nazi gold and secret banks. Not really building infrastructure for the masses
Uh. Buddy. They absolutely are known for building a shitload of trains. There’s the Gottard, which is the longest tunnel through a mountain, and I think also the steepest railtracks in the world?
You’ve never heard of swiss trains always being on time?
Japanese trains being on time. Never heard of swiss.
Haven’t heard if their engineering prestige.
When I think swiss I think corruption and chocolate. Maybe watch makers too. Apologies
Well if you’ve never heard of it, then you must be right. Or it could be that maybe you have no clue what you’re talking about. No that couldn’t be it.
It blows my mind that you’ve never heard of Swiss engineering, but I guess the whole world is wrong since you’re clueless to it. Case closed.
He didn’t even think of the cheese! I don’t think he misses many mensa meetings
He’s never even heard of those idiots.
He relented. No need to go so hard. Try to have some empathy, even if his approach was wrong.
That wasn’t me going hard. I was simply meeting their dismissiveness with sarcastic dismissiveness as a way to show them their faulty logic.
Knowing when to shut up and when to listen are valuable skills that a lot of people don’t have.
Knowing when you are a cunt is difficult too.
Kool story bra. Tell me more of your intelligence
Don’t forget they’re also known for cocaine!
Lol I didn’t get the reference before
(There was a post about Switzerland considering legalizing cocaine cus they have so much and it’s so pure & common, apparently)
Will the newly proposed tunnel under the Angeles National Forest break that record or because it’s under not through it’s in a different category?
Lol wat?
Their train infrastructure is fucking amazing.
telling me you’ve never been to switzerland without telling me you’ve never been to switzerland.
Leave your state.
Don’t live in America. Leave your country
So Japan has had maglev since the 90s. Explain?
Maglev=! Vacuum. Elon promised an existing technology inside a vacuum.
I know
Their Maglevs are not Hyperloops…
I’m aware. That wasn’t the question
It is the answer to your question tho. Maglev is feasible, Hyperloop, not so much.
And even maglev is barely done because it’s so expensive to build. Hyperloop is wrapping that same maglev train into a tube that should maintain a vacuum for kms on end, and pretty much every failure mode would end up being genuinely catastrophic.
Plus you would have to armor the whole thing and spend a bunch on security because one guy with a .50 rifle or some explosives could destroy a whole section and close the whole thing by punching one hole in it.
Haha, yeah. Remember the chaos when militia guys started shooting at transformers in substations? Every hick with a gun would be shooting at it just to shut it down.
They gave you the only answer your stupid question deserves.
Oh name calling. How very thoughtful of you.
Clearly very smert
Obviously
The vacuum is the hard part, not the maglev. You would need to enclose the entire track inside if a vacuum, and that world be ridiculously expensive and practically impossible with current technology. It’s already very expensive to build a tunnel for a train, which is why they are avoided if possible. But this would need to be all tunnel that is air tight, so even more expensive than regular train tunnels.
To put it into perspective, the current largest manmade vacuum chamber is at a NASA research facility in Ohio. It’s a cylinder with a diameter of 100 feet and a height of 122 feet. If this were laid on its side, about 1.5 New York subway cars could fit inside. The largest vacuum ever made can barely fit the vehicle inside, let alone allow it to travel between two different places where the extra speeds would be warranted.
That kinda puts it in perspective. What about particular vaccum? Or just where the tracks meet the train. That’s the only bit with drag ?
That kinda puts it in perspective. What about particular vaccum? Or just where the tracks meet the train. That’s the only bit with drag ?
That kinda puts it in perspective. What about particular vaccum? Or just where the tracks meet the train. That’s the only bit with drag ?
The drag is air against the whole body of the train, so you need vacuum everywhere.
Assuming that you could build such a big vacuum there would be safety concerns. What if there’s an accident in the tube? Does everyone in the train depressurize and die? Assuming people can survive and get out of the train car, now they’re in a tube that’s 100 miles long. How can you build emergency exits in a system designed to be as airtight as possible?
Of course. What a thiccy
Hyperloop ate half a billion $ and the only “transport” they managed to actually build is THIS
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Thunderf00t has many videos on the subject. I recommend checking them out. He’s been calling out musk’s bullshit for years, and is right every time.
But! It's just like an air hockey table! I swear it's not difficult! :P
It sounds pretty complicated, Elon!
Most engineering channels on YouTube. Guess thunderf00t has made progress recovering his public image.
He’s always been an OG.
Do you also believe the Moon is made from cheese?
I want to believe.
Don’t bother asking here, people on Lemmy blindly hate anything that has anything to do with Musk
There’s a whole lot to not like though. Are you saying people aren’t justified?
Because maintaining a train length vacuum is really difficult and doesn’t really provide that big of a benefit.
Atmospheric rail has been attempted with varying degrees of success (but never to a ‘replaces traditional rail’ degree) for 200 years.
Not mentioning that making tunnels for rail in rocky areas is already hard. And modern railways are not something simple or easy. That’s without space tech from futurism-themed magazines for teenage boys.
A normal (not high-speed, not something like TGV) railway line getting you from A city to B city 20% slower than a car, departing 5-6 times a day evenly distributed, is already an enormous dramatic change.
I think you were being sarcastic with that last line and nobody caught it. Sorry mate.
Read the rest of their posts. It doesn’t seem like they’re being sarcastic.
Then make it.
If only I could. My life’s goal is that. To build what nobody else will. Unfortunately I must acquire great wealth in order to do that. Proving particular difficult. Still have some years left.
Then I can implement my manifesto
I mean… it was elon’s idea after all.
No, it wasn’t. This shit has been common in sci-fi for decades. He just gave it a fancy name and pretended he came up with it.
So the guy who notoriously despises public transit failed to come through on his promise to revolutionize public transit?
Wow.
I mean, who could have seen that coming?
No, this was the point. He set mass transit back by at least a decade with his ridiculous projects.
Yeah, imagine if all the taxpayer money he got to build a useless tunnel in Vegas was spent on something, you know, useful.
What’s sad is, we will never see musk supporters come out and admit they were wrong. They are all gung-ho before the money changes hands, then when the grift happens and we have nothing to show for it, they all ~disappear~.
Hamas has built more tunnels than Musk. Let that sink in.
I’ve built more tunnels than his company.
And most of those were just fucking around because I could, not even for a specific purpose.
Lpt: don’t dig without telling someone exactly where you are,and without a noise maker.
Hamas is rather good at building tunnels in the hostile environment of sometimes being bombed. If they’d have funds and modern tech … ah, well, they’d embezzle the funds and use that tech for something destructive, but if they wouldn’t, they’d be great tunnel makers.
People who support musk probably aren’t big fans of public infrastructure and probably would have derogatory shit to say about people who are
Richard Branson hates public transit? Cause it’s his company that shut down, Virgin Hyperloop One.
No one reads the article, my guy. Everyone just assumes it’s Musk’s imbecilic project, when in reality it’s Branson’s imbecilic project.
Isn’t hyperloop like the opposite kind of transit to your typical public transit of the type he hates? Like, the only thing it can really compete with is airlines for long distance rapid transit.
Metro systems still going since 1863
Successful grift is successful!
Congrats, dipshits of LA and Vegas! Can’t wait to see what dumb crap you waste your money on next!
Monorail?
Is there a chance the track could bend?
Not on your life my Hindu friend!
What about us brain-dead slobs?
“You’ll be given cushy jobs!”
The ring came off my pudding can!
Use my pen knife my good man!
I hear those things are awfully loud.
But Main street’s still all cracked and broken
The ring came off my pudding can!
Vegas already has a poorly implemented monorail.
Not if the Legion has a say in it, profligate!
Ave! True to Caesar.
Hydrogen cars and trains.
Fuck this grift and all other grifts by Elmo.
Elmo muskrat lmao
How did calling him Elmo become a diss when Elmo is such an emotionally mature role model created for children to emulate.
If only we could fly like birds from LA to Vegas.
It was born to fail, because its porpoise was to delay and sabotage the California high speed train project.
Yea, it was a very fishy initiative
Elon literally came out and said it was to delay/sabotage the train project
twitter.com/parismarx/status/1571628269555826688?…
Yea, it wasn’t an ocean of stupid so much as Elon dangling the idea of a better alternative like the esca of an angler fish with the intention to gobble up the plans for the train project.
“Better” he hyped up a stupid economically non viable shit so his car company can stay relevant
Looks like the jokes sailed over your head on this one. /c/woosh
A) I applaud you for your masterful continuation of the pelagic theme of this discussion about Elon porpoisely allowing this project to flounder into Davy Jone’s locker.
B) TIL that an anglerfish lure is called an esca and that a sufficiently literate person can seamlessly weave such an unusual word into this net of fishy discourse… Bravo!
Never be surprised at what you may catch sight of in the ocean that is called The Internet
It’s not even like trains are his white whale, he’s just trying to break any alternative to cars before they can catch on
He’s trying to break any alternative to cars faster than his own cars break
This gets misquoted all the time.
The purpose wasn’t to delay the high speed rail, in favor of the hyperloop.
It was to delay/stop the high speed rail for something better as he didn’t think the existing plan was high speed enough or would be cost effective and on time. Faster high speed trains were already being built and with all the delays this would (and has) faced, it’d be even further back by the time it was finished.
The difference there is pretty important, unless you fall into the conspiracy camp of the intent was to delay it so he could sell more cars and he actually doesn’t want anything made.
But the goal was to stop it so they’d make it better than planned, not make a hyperloop.
Edit: and before people reply, it’s fast enough, it doesn’t need to be the best etc etc. That’s fine if that’s your stance. I’m just saying what was actually going on, and you don’t have to agree with him.
Just because his lie was technically a slightly different one makes no matter, it was still a lie and it was still stupid that all those government regulators and legislators fell for it.
It’s only a lie if you think his goal was to sell more cars.
Maybe it was or wasn’t.
And you think Elon Musk, the man who owns a car making company, wasn’t trying to sell more cars?
Well, one implies malice, and the other pushing for a better more futuristic future.
And he has a history of pushing for an idealistic futuristic future, with pushing spacex to figure out how to land rockets or how to make a profitable EV, so ya, I’m willing to say there’s a likely chance he was honest in thinking it was a bad idea and California, the home of silicon valley and advanced technology could maybe come up with something better.
But we’ll never really know.
I want some of what you are having, because you have a warped perception of reality.
Tom Nicholas has really good essay on this topic. Musk is not a futurism proponent. He is an apocalyptic visionaire. His view is not preparing a better future for all humans, instead he’s about using tech for rich people surviving the end of the world whilst retaining their privileges. His futurism is fake.
Yeah, he probably wasn’t, but that means there’s a chance he was. The person you’re replying to isn’t saying he was or wasn’t. You want to start an argument over that, this is all you. All you’re doing, without proof that Musk absolutely is fake in this one instance, is just changing the percentage, but not making it certain.
This isn’t Elon’s hyperloop. It’s a company called Hyperloop One, predominately funded by Richard Branson.
Distinction without a difference
I sea what you did there
Musk came rushing in like he was selling a monorail.
Oh whale…
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0c78fa28-737f-4752-8026-f387dbda3d31.jpeg">
Technosolutionism will always be a failure. It failed in the past, it fails and will fail even for the climate change.
Its maddening, we have the real solution. Its not flashy magitech that will instantaneously move you while leaving your fecal matter behind. It is just fucking hi speed rail. Turns out, putting a bunch of people that all need to take a largely similar path on a high capacity, fast moving vehicle is just really efficient.
This is like watching a children’s show where they pause before they give the answer, but instead of giving a logical answer they regurgitate nonsense.
Next you’re going to tell me that that not only does humanity already have trains that can do 200mph (320 km/h): but they’re more reliable, safer, cheaper to build/operate, and can can carry a ton of people per trip.
Psh, like that would ever work.
If you’ve ever been to Japan, you can only roll your eyes if you read about how people can fall for that “hyperloop” scam. The Hyperloop concept is just unrealistic, dangerous and expensive. The Japanese high speed train system is very efficient and absolutely reliable. 🚅
I remember seeing all the big brain French train engineers blowing the fuck out of the Hyperloop back in the 2010s, matching up with my understanding of the technology and I guess that was the moment the Musk Hypnotism broke for me. We really don’t even need maglevs, we can still move fast on iron, maglevs are only proposed to improve density by speed.
It was frustrating to see friends and cohorts think the hyperloop would solve a solved problem. And do it in a cost-efficient way. It didn’t do either.
Touching grass is not enough, I want Elon Musk to get cancer in his dick and die
For all of his fans, he also has a lot of anti-fans. I’m surprised none of them have thrown him out the window of the twitter HQ or whatever. I guess he’s paying his security team a lot.
I usually don’t wish violence on anyone, but I wouldn’t mind seeing Musk made into douchebag tartar.
I mostly agree with the statement but the Hyperloop wasn’t solving a solved problem. Isn’t mean to replace trains is meant to replace planes that rely on fossil fuels for international flights and even go faster than that. The basis of function is sound to my understanding but is probably too costly to implement mostly for economies in crisis, I never was sure if it was really as cost effective as they said it was.
Maintaining that much vacuum was never realistic.
Ok, sure, but what about hyperloop IN SPACE!
I’ll be happy to discuss my brilliant new invention with anyone who still has money left over from this project.
Sounds easy enough, create space elevators with stations at the top and then make the tubes meet in space. What could it cost like $10?
Wait, touching grass? I don’t get it…?
It’s a recent, overused phrase meaning “go outside” (and not be online).
O…utside?
I tried opening windows, but I just got a blue screen, so I don’t get it either.
I mean all this money could have been used to create incentive to make high speed rail more widely available and cheaper and I am sure that would already be super beneficial for the world. Instead they had to trash all this money. I wonder why many think that humans are some form of special creatures that deserve to exist forever. If anything we will be lucky to exist for much longer.
No way. Who could have seen that one coming?
I saw it not coming at Hyperloop speeds!
It was so obvious that this wouldn’t work that even Elon Musk didn’t want to have anything to do with it besides posting his brainfart on the Internet for the whole world to smell.
He admitted on record that he only spouted that bullshit to counter a bid for high speed transit in California. He was never interested in the slightest to ever pursue that idea in good faith. It worked, the project was canned to invest in Hyperloop and now US transit will continue to be shit because one douche bag with more money than sense opened his pie hole. And apparently US politics listens exclusively to people with more money than the average country’s budget.
…even if they (the government that is) gave him a large portion of that money.
So just a continuation of the motor vehicle industry sabotaging public transportation so people have to buy more vehicles.
Capitalist ‘innovation’ at its finest!
No way, you mean this insane nonsense that was obviously never going to work isn’t going to work after all? Damn.
Colour me shocked.
I’m impressed they could get their momentum going for so long, they were able to burn so much money and only now are investors pulling out? That was a serious hype train! Even if it was meant as lobby sponsoring against standard high speed rail, holy cow what a waste!
Hey, at least this time it really was a hype train /j
Silly question: could they evolve the infrastructure to an actual transit system?
Underground walkways?
I’d say subways but I don’t think the tunnels are big enough so they’d probably have to be re-bored larger and then re-reinforced
But probably a better use for the system than what they tried to do
Me waiting for solar underground highways.
SOLAR FREAKING ROADWAYS
What infrastructure?
Awww no waaaay maintaining a hundred mile long vacuum tube in a state that gets earthquakes more often than Seattle gets rain wasn’t viable? Who could have possibly anticipated that??
Invest in actual public transportation: I sleep
Invest in an overly expensive alternative to trains: REAL SHIT
Like all these fake trees or solar trees or carbon vacuums instead of just planting more trees.
Tech bros will call trains unviable and obsolete and then burn truckloads of money on shit like this
Who knew Elon had no engineering degree in reality?
He did it on purpose to cuck California out of public transit so he can sell more Teslas, said it himself
Looks like a pretty crap ‘loop’. It’s a straight line 100 feet long. It doesn’t even go anywhere. Of course it’s a failure.
how many miles of high speed rail has china built in that time?
It was always a grift. Go watch thunderfoot on YouTube
I had more faith in solar frickin highways and that was already 0.