Virgin Hyperloop axes half its staff to focus on freight

[Pixel5]

 

 

Summary

Virgin Hyperloop fires half of its employees (111 in total) that were previously working on the Hyperloop that was supposed to transport passengers as they shift their focus to freight transport.

 

Quotes

Quote

Virgin Hyperloop has made almost half its staff redundant as the company developing the high-speed transport system pivots from passenger travel to freight. The US company said 111 people were laid off on Friday as it refocuses on delivering a cargo version of the experimental transport system, which propels pods through low-pressure tubes at speeds of up to 670mph. Two of the people who lost their jobs told the Financial Times that the lay-offs were announced via video conference. One said the scale of the cuts was “definitely not expected”.  “It’s allowing the company to respond in a more agile and nimble way and in a more cost-efficient manner,” Virgin Hyperloop told the FT. “These types of decisions are never taken lightly.” The company is “changing direction”, it added. “It really has more to do with global supply chain issues and all the changes due to Covid.” Virgin Hyperloop said the logistics market had changed “dramatically” and that it was responding to strong customer interest in a cargo-based service.

 

My thoughts

Totally expected that this was gonna happen sooner or later as the entire idea behind Hyperloop was heavily flawed from the get go.
Shifting to freight only seems very weird though as the entire reason we dont have any large scale freight transport on something like a maglev platform is that shipping cargo on rail only works because its a large network and you can hook up the train carts to any train to transport it further which avoids constantly having to lift the loads onto another transport medium.

Hyperloop freight transport is only gonna work if they have a gigantic network directly from producers to large logistics center and even then they still need to compete with rail which will only make financial sense if they can find customers that rely on this fast transport of a lot of very heavy goods and cant afford to wait a little longer for normal rail.

 

Im fully expecting virgin hyperloop to fully shut down in the next 5 years.

 

Sources

https://www.ft.com/content/d87f77bd-0a0a-4512-b983-197f184f5352

[jaslion]

Just build a damn higher speed train line already. The hyperloop is a stupid flawed idea that literally blows up if you throw a rock hard enough at it. Or well since it's america some random dude with a gun.

 

It's been a feverdream all the way through and really moving through a vacuum that has to be created brings so little advantages over just using already existing tech it makes no sense to try. Especially the way they were going about it.

[Avocado Diaboli]

Oh no, who could've seen it coming? You know, besides everybody. It's almost as if the majority of Elon's ideas (and yes, even though this is Virgin Hyperloop, it's the brainchild of Elon) are terrible. The biggest crime here is the utterly wasted engineering effort of all of these people who ended up getting shafted as well as those being kept on for this doomed enterprise, who could otherwise put their talents to actually solving real problems with practical solutions.

[Fasauceome]

1 hour ago, Pixel5 said:

Shifting to freight only seems very weird though as the entire reason we dont have any large scale freight transport on something like a maglev platform is that shipping cargo on rail only works because its a large network and you can hook up the train carts to any train to transport it further which avoids constantly having to lift the loads onto another transport medium.

Wow it's almost like the Hyperloop and every subsequent inspired concept totally misses the point of a rail system

 

Elon has totally poisoned the high speed travel concept space 

[Master Disaster]

Did anyone see Thunderf00ts video on this?

 

In the same time Con Man Musk and Beardie Branson wasted a half billion dollars chasing an impossible dream, the Chinese spent half that building a real high speed rail network that covers most of the country and in places goes just as fast as the "Hyperloop" was meant to.

 

 

[rcmaehl]

Train lines generally only have like one lane. What if we like, chained the hyperloop pods together if they were going the same or similar place and used less motors that way there'd be less weight. Sure it'd put more stress on a specific model but you really need to think about reducing weight. 

 

 

OH WAIT

[Forbidden Wafer]

I wouldn't say it is flawed. I'd say there are places where it would make sense to use the tech, but definitely not in most places and specially large and sparsely populated countries.

Everywhere else: just use the freaking planes, they work.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

I wouldn't say it is flawed. I'd say there are places where it would make sense to use the tech, but definitely not in most places and specially large and sparsely populated countries.

Everywhere else: just use the freaking planes, they work.

The tech 100% isn't flawed, you know why? Something that doesn't exist outside of a 3D Rendering cannot be flawed. The idea however is about as flawed as you can get.

 

Its incredibly difficult to pull such a big vacuum, costs a metric fuck tonne to keep it pulled to a vacuum, is stupendously dangerous for humans in pretty much every way (600mph inside a really thin tunnel that has no air in it), is more complex (needlessly so) than current mass transport systems and as Elon succinctly demonstrated with the Vegas loop, is pretty much impossible to pull off since you can't just dig under anywhere you feel like, turns out building owners actually own the land under their buildings and would need to be payed a nice hefty fee for the rights to dig which is pretty fucking important for something that's travelling so fast since it basically needs an arrow straight tunnel.

 

More than decade, over a half billion dollars and all we have to show for it is a 1KM tube out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere that also happens to be situated in the worst possible place it could be for what they want to achieve.

 

Its almost like they knew it would never work and just wanted to raise private capitol investment to inflate stock prices so they can sell and get out rich.

[Dracarris]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

More than decade, over a half billion dollars

I'm surprised it's not more than that, given the cost of conventional tunnel systems.

[Master Disaster]

Just now, Dracarris said:

I'm surprised it's not more than that, given the cost of conventional tunnel systems.

I honestly suspect it probably is vastly more than that, that's just the number that gets thrown around when they talk about private investor money. Good only knows how much Elon & Branson (and all the other con artists) have sunk in personally.

[Forbidden Wafer]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Its incredibly difficult to pull such a big vacuum, costs a metric fuck tonne to keep it pulled to a vacuum, is stupendously dangerous for humans in pretty much every way (600mph inside a really thin tunnel that has no air in it)

It really isn't that bad.

 

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

is pretty much impossible to pull off since you can't just dig under anywhere you feel like, turns out building owners actually own the land under their buildings and would need to be payed a nice hefty fee for the rights to dig

Because of propaganda. If digging was not safe, there would be no metro/underground trains...

 

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

More than decade, over a half billion dollars and all we have to show for it is a 1KM tube out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere that also happens to be situated in the worst possible place it could be for what they want to achieve

Yeah, developing a new technology can result in failed experiments. Did you ever try to run your own experiments? 

 

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Its almost like they knew it would never work and just wanted to raise private capitol investment to inflate stock prices so they can sell and get out rich.

Like Theranos, Nikola, etc? Also works, there is always dumb people to gamble in unproven stuff.

Edit: I say dumb, but some of them got rich and I didn't, so I guess I'm the dumb one.

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

I'd say there are places where it would make sense to use the tech, but definitely not in most places and specially large and sparsely populated countries.

Where exactly does it makes sense to provide a transportation system that can reach ~700mph if not a large and sparsely populated place? You'd want this kind of transportation system to bring distant locations, ideally large population centers, "closer" to each other. The TGV or any other high speed railway line don't stop at every dinky little town, they have a few stops along the way to make the most of increased velocity at their disposal. The same way how you don't build an airport in every town, you centralize it and use other means of transportation to get to where you want to be.

 

If you build a Hyperloop in a local setting you're not taking advantage of the top speed achievable, both because of how long it actually takes to reasonably accelerate to those speeds as well as decelerate from them safely. So as a replacement for subways this is entirely unfit for purpose. Never mind that any short distance ride will inevitably be made longer by the time it takes to depressurize the chamber. So you absolutely need to use it for the longest possible distances you can imagine.

 

Which then brings up the issue of maintaining a large enough vacuum chamber over such a distance while considering all the rest of physics to not make this into an immediate deathtrap. 

 

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Because of propaganda. If digging was not safe, there would be no metro/underground trains...

 

Nobody said anything about the safety of underground railways. Total non sequitur.

[Sauron]

Give them a few more years and they'll invent the train.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

It really isn't that bad.

What isn't? Pulling a multi mile long tube down to a vacuum? Keeping it there permanently? Pulling it back down every time a vehicle enters or exits the tunnel? Or are you saying the part where you're firing a person at ballistic speeds encased in a metal box down a tube with absolutely no way of escaping and that's, quite literally, the most dangerous environment its possible to put a human being in?

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

 

Because of propaganda. If digging was not safe, there would be no metro/underground trains...

Where did I day it wasn't safe to dig? Your response has zero relation to my point. You cannot just dig under any building you like, that's an established fact and why the Vegas loop taxi rank has to follow the state owned roads.

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

 

Yeah, developing a new technology can result in failed experiments. Did you ever try to run your own experiments? 

There was never any intent to design a new technology, like all his ideas it was simply a way for him to drum up private investment money that he could fudge into his other failing businesses.

 

You do realise that he is currently being sued in a class action brought by Tesla private investors for lying to them about the state of a business his brother owned so he could buy it and stop his brother from defaulting, right?

 

First he straight up lied to them by showing the solar roof tiles that "worked" when in reality they were plastic props, then he got them all to give him money which he used to buy Solar City, a company that was absolutely going to fail and he absolutely knew it too. He then went on to lie to his own board multiple times about the state of the company, hid financial reports from his own board and personally handled the buyout while he was supposed to be recused due the the obvious conflict of interest

 

Ya know, it was his brothers company, the very brother who just also happens to be on the board of directors at Tesla who were the same company that were buying Solar City.

 

Dude is absolutely fucked, the Delaware Chancery Court are going to goatsee him so hard he won't be able to go to Mars since his rectum will be a danger to the spacecraft.

1 hour ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

 

Like Theranos, Nikola, etc? Also works, there is always dumb people to gamble in unproven stuff.

Edit: I say dumb, but some of them got rich and I didn't, so I guess I'm the dumb one.

Fun fact, Elon got rich by accident. He was ousted as the CEO of Confinity for incompetence, kept his 49% stake in the company, the CEO who replaced him merged with another company and created a small thing called Paypal. His 49% stake got converted into Paypal stock which he sold for $100m.

 

I'm not going to compare him to Elizabeth Holmes or the Nikola guy since, to be fair, his businesses have actually created things that do exist. That said, those things were created by other actually smart people, he just rode the waves of being CEO of Tesla (another fun fact, he actually stole the CEO position at Tesla and had nothing to do with its founding or the Roadsters design) & Space X.

[Brooksie359]

17 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

What isn't? Pulling a multi mile long tube down to a vacuum? Keeping it there permanently? Pulling it back down every time a vehicle enters or exits the tunnel? Or are you saying the part where you're firing a person at ballistic speeds encased in a metal box down a tube with absolutely no way of escaping and that's, quite literally, the most dangerous environment its possible to put a human being in?

Where did I day it wasn't safe to dig? Your response has zero relation to my point. You cannot just dig under any building you like, that's an established fact and why the Vegas loop taxi rank has to follow the state owned roads.

There was never any intent to design a new technology, like all his ideas it was simply a way for him to drum up private investment money that he could fudge into his other failing businesses.

 

You do realise that he is currently being sued in a class action brought by Tesla private investors for lying to them about the state of a business his brother owned so he could buy it and stop his brother from defaulting, right?

 

First he straight up lied to them by showing the solar roof tiles that "worked" when in reality they were plastic props, then he got them all to give him money which he used to buy Solar City, a company that was absolutely going to fail and he absolutely knew it too. He then went on to lie to his own board multiple times about the state of the company, hid financial reports from his own board and personally handled the buyout while he was supposed to be recused due the the obvious conflict of interest

 

Ya know, it was his brothers company, the very brother who just also happens to be on the board of directors at Tesla who were the same company that were buying Solar City.

 

Dude is absolutely fucked, the Delaware Chancery Court are going to goatsee him so hard he won't be able to go to Mars since his rectum will be a danger to the spacecraft.

Fun fact, Elon got rich by accident. He was ousted as the CEO of Confinity for incompetence, kept his 49% stake in the company, the CEO who replaced him merged with another company and created a small thing called Paypal. His 49% stake got converted into Paypal stock which he sold for $100m.

 

I'm not going to compare him to Elizabeth Holmes or the Nikola guy since, to be fair, his businesses have actually created things that do exist. That said, those things were created by other actually smart people, he just rode the waves of being CEO of Tesla (another fun fact, he actually stole the CEO position at Tesla and had nothing to do with its founding or the Roadsters design) & Space X.

Well it sounds like he is sorta Steve Jobs type guy then. Granted Steve Jobs was objective brilliant at know what people wanted and then having his team make the things that people wanted. Compare that to Elon and it sorta shows that he isn't nearly as good at that seeing how awful the hyperloop idea is. That being said I think both Tesla and SpaceX are both companies that are fairly good at pushing us forward in both space and the electric car market. I mean without Tesla we would get electric cars eventually but I doubt we would have them so soon. 

[wanderingfool2]

In relation to this topic, it isn't much of a surprise that they are shutting down hyperloop...I mean it's pretty clear that it wouldn't work as a scalable idea.

 

2 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Did anyone see Thunderf00ts video on this?

 

In the same time Con Man Musk and Beardie Branson wasted a half billion dollars chasing an impossible dream, the Chinese spent half that building a real high speed rail network that covers most of the country and in places goes just as fast as the "Hyperloop" was meant to.

I honestly stopped watching Thunderf00t's videos because honestly anything that he says in regards to Elon Musk needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  [i.e. After Falcon9 proved reusable rockets were a good thing, he still made videos claiming it wasn't.  Even showing an excel graph which proved his math...except he intentionally chose wrong numbers that showed he was "correct"]  He's also the person who stole someone educational animated diagram without crediting and called the person essentially an entitled princess for wanting to be credited because "a 15 second video clip isn't copyrightable" in his view.  So yea, when it comes to Thunderf00t I stopped watching because overall his attitude comes across as a bully who thinks he knows better than anyone, and when you call him out he tries punishing you.

 

On a similar note, this is really about Branson...sure Musk in an interview went on about it on a spur of the wind.  The boring company (Musk's Company) I doubt will ever really look into a hyperloop, their primary goal is to reduce the cost of drilling holes.  It's one of the biggest costs of a project actually.

 

https://tunneltalk.com/TunnelTECH-Apr2015-Arup-large-diameter-soft-ground-bored-tunnel-review.php

Looking at this, some of the construction projects had a cost of $27 million/mile - $677 million/mile.  [Albeit that is construction costs as well, but in general digging out a tunnel is an expensive process].

 

If the Boring company can reduce the cost of digging by 10x-100x, then underground transportation could become more of a thing...after all the concept is having a system where you don't need to slow down to exit or enter a transfer station (thus being able to drive closer to the top speed).

 

56 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Fun fact, Elon got rich by accident. He was ousted as the CEO of Confinity for incompetence, kept his 49% stake in the company, the CEO who replaced him merged with another company and created a small thing called Paypal. His 49% stake got converted into Paypal stock which he sold for $100m.

Fun fact, that's wrong.  First, and easiest to prove wrong is the 49% stake...it was only an 11% stake [https://web.archive.org/web/20200825231531/https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205702009834/a2073071z10-k405.htm]

Second, I wouldn't necessarily say it was incompetence but a different way of approaching the business.

Third, he made $22 million by selling his zip2 company.

 

"Making" a multimillion dollar company once, sure might be an accident or happy timing.  Making it twice, it's a lot harder to say it was an accident...but given he now has 4 companies that he has brought to multi-million dollar evaluations it's wrong to say it's just by accident.

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm not going to compare him to Elizabeth Holmes or the Nikola guy since, to be fair, his businesses have actually created things that do exist. That said, those things were created by other actually smart people, he just rode the waves of being CEO of Tesla (another fun fact, he actually stole the CEO position at Tesla and had nothing to do with its founding or the Roadsters design) & Space X.

Musk actually has the say/is involved in the interview on the higher level engineers and staff.  For a CEO he is a lot more hands on than other ones (and a lot more knowledgeable) so it's not a surprise that he managed to hire the correct people to do the job.  I wouldn't say he stole it, if you are saying he stole it then I can easily claim Thiel stole paypal from Musk.  Everything is rumors.  What is 100% known is that they have a non-disparagement clause that prevents them from speaking badly about the former CEO [As the rumors were that the former CEO had covered up some stuff from the board and was wanting to take Tesla in a different direction...ie more like roadster and less like model 3].  Musk had entered the company as a major investor and was also responsible for bringing in the remaining funding.

 

Anyways, the point is Hyperloop was something that was spitballed out by Musk, but not sure he believes it (and the money invested isn't towards hyperloop per-se).  Brandon is the guy who took that though and tried running with it (and failing)

[Quackers101]

next up, virgin railgun transport (in space?).

Too much of a virgin for that.

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

You cannot just dig under any building you like, that's an established fact and why the Vegas loop taxi rank has to follow the state owned roads.

If that is how things work there, OK. Here, the underground is federal property. If they get governmental permission, they can dig all they want.

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Pulling a multi mile long tube down to a vacuum? Keeping it there permanently? Pulling it back down every time a vehicle enters or exits the tunnel? Or are you saying the part where you're firing a person at ballistic speeds encased in a metal box down a tube with absolutely no way of escaping and that's, quite literally, the most dangerous environment its possible to put a human being in?

Yes. Yes. Yes, airlocks are a thing. Not a person, but a train. You're just as screwed as you would be in a plane... 
 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

There was never any intent to design a new technology, like all his ideas it was simply a way for him to drum up private investment money that he could fudge into his other failing businesses.

Failing businesses? Really?

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

You do realise that he is currently being sued in a class action brought by Tesla private investors for lying to them about the state of a business his brother owned so he could buy it and stop his brother from defaulting, right?

Yup.

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Fun fact, Elon got rich by accident. He was ousted as the CEO of Confinity for incompetence, kept his 49% stake in the company, the CEO who replaced him merged with another company and created a small thing called Paypal. His 49% stake got converted into Paypal stock which he sold for $100m.

Got rich anyways, has the most successful rocket company in history, pretty good automaker, boring company, etc. 

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

First he straight up lied to them by showing the solar roof tiles that "worked" when in reality they were plastic props, then he got them all to give him money which he used to buy Solar City, a company that was absolutely going to fail and he absolutely knew it too. He then went on to lie to his own board multiple times about the state of the company, hid financial reports from his own board and personally handled the buyout while he was supposed to be recused due the the obvious conflict of interest

g CEO of Tesla (another fun fact, he actually stole the CEO position at Tesla and had nothing to do with its founding or the Roadsters design) & Space X.

Solar roof tiles work, there is nothing mysterious about them. People are getting their solar roof installs, but very slowly. Remember Google Fiber? It was just as bad.

[Master Disaster]

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

In relation to this topic, it isn't much of a surprise that they are shutting down hyperloop...I mean it's pretty clear that it wouldn't work as a scalable idea.

 

I honestly stopped watching Thunderf00t's videos because honestly anything that he says in regards to Elon Musk needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  [i.e. After Falcon9 proved reusable rockets were a good thing, he still made videos claiming it wasn't.  Even showing an excel graph which proved his math...except he intentionally chose wrong numbers that showed he was "correct"]  He's also the person who stole someone educational animated diagram without crediting and called the person essentially an entitled princess for wanting to be credited because "a 15 second video clip isn't copyrightable" in his view.  So yea, when it comes to Thunderf00t I stopped watching because overall his attitude comes across as a bully who thinks he knows better than anyone, and when you call him out he tries punishing you.

Yeah, I don't exactly disagree tbh. Some of his stuff is questionable however when it comes to calling out scientific illiteracy and BS he is usually bang on the money.

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

On a similar note, this is really about Branson...sure Musk in an interview went on about it on a spur of the wind.  The boring company (Musk's Company) I doubt will ever really look into a hyperloop, their primary goal is to reduce the cost of drilling holes.  It's one of the biggest costs of a project actually.

 

https://tunneltalk.com/TunnelTECH-Apr2015-Arup-large-diameter-soft-ground-bored-tunnel-review.php

Looking at this, some of the construction projects had a cost of $27 million/mile - $677 million/mile.  [Albeit that is construction costs as well, but in general digging out a tunnel is an expensive process].

 

If the Boring company can reduce the cost of digging by 10x-100x, then underground transportation could become more of a thing...after all the concept is having a system where you don't need to slow down to exit or enter a transfer station (thus being able to drive closer to the top speed).

Yeah, they can't. Musk lied and fudged his numbers. He compared his own cost for just boring to those of full projects including the cost of building stations and infrastructure, His loop took him longer to dig than conventional tunnels, was a smaller bore and ended up costing around the same.

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Fun fact, that's wrong.  First, and easiest to prove wrong is the 49% stake...it was only an 11% stake [https://web.archive.org/web/20200825231531/https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1103415/000091205702009834/a2073071z10-k405.htm]

Second, I wouldn't necessarily say it was incompetence but a different way of approaching the business.

Third, he made $22 million by selling his zip2 company.

You didn't take stock conversion into account. Musk owned X.com, it merged with Confinity leaving musk with a 49% majority stake. After it merged he was ousted for incompetence (the words of Peter Thiel who did the coup while Musk was on Honeymoon) and he was left owning 49% but no longer a board member. Those stocks got converted to an 11% stake in Paypal since by that time Confinity was worth more and Paypal was predicted to keep growing.

 

I am not calling it incompetence, the guy who ousted him from the board did. It stemmed from Elon demanding they rename the company back to x.com despite him knowing the public hated it and most believing it was a porn website.

 

Fourth, he was already rich before he started any businesses. His father was a south African diamond mine owner (yes, slaves, blood diamonds and all).

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

"Making" a multimillion dollar company once, sure might be an accident or happy timing.  Making it twice, it's a lot harder to say it was an accident...but given he now has 4 companies that he has brought to multi-million dollar evaluations it's wrong to say it's just by accident.

Paypal was an accident.

 

Tesla was outright disgusting. He used his Paypal money to buy majority ownership of Tesla (which BTW he did not found), placed himself as the CEO, replaced the rest of the board with his cronies then fired the first founder and treated the second founder so badly he quit and walked away from the car he designed.

 

Did you know the car Elon launched into Space was Roadster number 1 and should have gone to Marc Tarpenning who designed and built the thing?

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Musk actually has the say/is involved in the interview on the higher level engineers and staff.  For a CEO he is a lot more hands on than other ones (and a lot more knowledgeable) so it's not a surprise that he managed to hire the correct people to do the job.  I wouldn't say he stole it, if you are saying he stole it then I can easily claim Thiel stole paypal from Musk.  Everything is rumors.  What is 100% known is that they have a non-disparagement clause that prevents them from speaking badly about the former CEO [As the rumors were that the former CEO had covered up some stuff from the board and was wanting to take Tesla in a different direction...ie more like roadster and less like model 3].  Musk had entered the company as a major investor and was also responsible for bringing in the remaining funding.

No, these are not rumours. Elon stole Tesla away from its founders. The entire thing is documented and public record.

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Anyways, the point is Hyperloop was something that was spitballed out by Musk, but not sure he believes it (and the money invested isn't towards hyperloop per-se).  Brandon is the guy who took that though and tried running with it (and failing)

Huh? Musk built a hyperloop in Vegas, its a glorified Taxi rank with Teslas and human drivers. Not sure which is a worse failure, Branson trying to build the stupid idea or Musk saying he would build it then instead building a subway but worse.

[Master Disaster]

33 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

If that is how things work there, OK. Here, the underground is federal property. If they get governmental permission, they can dig all they want.

Yeah, no. They tried in Vegas, it didn't work. They had to follow the roads because the land they wanted to dig under was owned by a hotel and the owners said no.

33 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

 

Yes. Yes. Yes, airlocks are a thing. Not a person, but a train. You're just as screwed as you would be in a plane...

LOL. First explain how a plane could smash into the side of a tunnel at all. Second, planes have human pilots that are given oxygen and have a simple button they can push to make the plane drop down to 10,000 feet where you can breath fine. Third, a plane is not inside a full vacuum, ever (its called aerodynamic flight, kinda gives it away).

 

Flying on a plane is BY FAR and away the safest way to travel.

 

Airlocks cannot solve the simply mathematical/logistical problem of having to run enough electric pumps to empty the entire volume of an xxx mile long tube entirely of air and keep it that way forever. Airlocks have to open to let vehicles in and out, each time they do the system gains a tiny bit of air pressure which has to be pumped out continuously.

 

The electricity required for that alone would outweigh any benefits of the speed. We're talking one Nasa room sized pump every x miles running 24/7.

33 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Failing businesses? Really?

Yep, at the time Musk proposed the Hyperloop Tesla were weeks away from bankruptcy after the terrible launch of the Model 3.

33 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Got rich anyways, has the most successful rocket company in history, pretty good automaker, boring company, etc. 

Elon =/= His companies and staff that actually do the work.

33 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

 

Solar roof tiles work, there is nothing mysterious about them. People are getting their solar roof installs, but very slowly. Remember Google Fiber? It was just as bad.

No they don't, they never did. Its one of the points that is being raised in his current lawsuit. He outfitted a load of houses with plastic props, stood on stage, showed the audience a non working plastic prop, told them it was working and was going to change the world then took all their money and invested it in a company that was already dead.

 

Edit - ^Should clarify, yes I know they work now. Only at around 8% the efficiency of a normal solar panel though.

 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

Huh? Musk built a hyperloop in Vegas, its a glorified Taxi rank with Teslas and human drivers. Not sure which is a worse failure, Branson trying to build the stupid idea or Musk saying he would build it then instead building a subway but worse.

I would not really call it a hyperloop.  It's kind of been coined it (and slightly advertised as such), but it's not really....in the sense that most people I think think of hyperloop as being more of the pressurized system (which is what is generally argued as being a foolhardy move).

 

Also it's like saying Starship will never work/be feasible because it keep blowing up on landing.  It's about the education and learning that is.  Also a note on costs, publicly awarded contracts =/= cost of actually building.

 

You build first and come up with the AI to drive it later kind of approach.  There will be a time where vehicles can run the coarse without humans...again I think the ultimate goal is to be able to dig efficiently, because once that is proven you open the way to mass transit underground (and you can do it deeper to not impede on ownership).  i.e. it's the bigger picture kind of thing.

 

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

treated the second founder so badly he quit and walked away from the car he designed.

Yes, let's ignore the fact that the design was actually based on the Lotus.  Also, it's most likely that without Musk Tesla as a company itself wouldn't exist (bankruptcy)

 

You can say all you want, but he actively has his hands in hiring the employees and creating a work-force that takes on established entities.  Looking at places like Blue-origin, similar high roller billionaire who dumped money on trying to go to space (and they still haven't hit orbit).  Not all ideas will be successful (even Musk says it himself), but surrounding yourself with people who can get the job done is a major importance, which he does do.

 

 

A note of all this, the Las Vegas one is effectively a paid prototype of a new road-way system.  While some might call it a hyper-loop (and even tried being sold as one).  I view it quite differently than an actual hyper-loop (one where you have pressurized cabins running through a low pressure tube to achieve higher than typical speeds).  I have watched ThunderF00ts video on it a long time ago (and the rebuttal video to the rebuttal...which the other people were more stupid than ThunderF00t)...but man he does get a lot wrong, or overlooks a bunch of stuff.  When they won the Las Vegas project I was talking to family about it, and at the time was talking about that it was too short of a line to properly demo the technology but it was likely a building block

[Quackers101]

in the current way, hyperloop is a false promise and lying to average consumers...

Yes, tech could change in future for something similar of that from the hyperloop, but more is getting focused on cargo (not dangerous one or living creatures)

 

"Also it's like saying Starship will never work/be feasible because it keep blowing up on landing.", one is about getting a thing to work, while hyperloop you need more than a system or material or design to make it work (and for the price of installing said system), more so if you are going to get humans into a controlled gun barrel, compared to a flying controlled tin can, that can in most cases adjust to outside forces, unlike the hyperloop.

 

also some of these rich guy's projects are wasted effort and money in some of the fields they try to do something "new". like the tesla grid... oh god... more failures or just short term vision to exploit people in dire situations or that is what some of them could feel when sending a system that is not fully thought through.

[Quackers101]

which comes back to magnetic trains

Something that japan has it's focus on, while also quite expensive. it could be something for long distance.

Also quite heavy compared to regular rail (a lot of concrete and if something in it's path could delay transport), both for rail and train, due to the material that is to protect from strong magnetic forces.

 

 

[givingtnt]

I can't wait for the business to get dissolved entirely, because it's ALSO worthless for cargo.

 

[Quackers101]

1 minute ago, givingtnt said:

I can't wait for the business to get dissolved entirely, because it's ALSO worthless for cargo.

 

just have to wait for teleportation over 69G and altering brain waves