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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

Why? Cargo is what we do best in the US and it doesn't care how fast it gets to the destination. Further, the car shown is far too small to replace the 125 car unit trains we send around the US. We have a larger, harder to replace cargo infrastructure than any passenger system.

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It doesn't care about speed? I think UPS, FedEx, Amazon Prime, yadda yadda, would all disagree with you strongly. Moving cargo quickly across the world is probably a multi-trillion dollar industry. And the car shown is just a proof of concept prototype.

Musk himself said this is inefficient over distance so talking about the world is wrong. Speed in the local we are talking is not that important and the current system is efficient. FedEx, etc. needs supersonic aircraft more than tubes. The car size is limited by the tech.

Do there exist any small packages that we would like to get between these points faster than they currently do?

> Do there exist any small packages that we would like to get between these points faster than they currently do?

We already have a trans- (and inter-) continental system that works quite well for transporting smaller packages faster than trains.

Now I understand the backlash against people having legitimate complaints about Tesla and Musk.

We are getting downvoted by people who don't get the current system and haven't even read the paper and why supersonic planes are needed for distance.

There are many intercity distances for which a plane is sub-optimal but could definitely benefit from a faster terrestrial solution. This thing doesn't need to get to 30000 ft to achieve high speed. One could leave every X minutes because you don't have to fill a whole jetliner to make it cost effective.

> There are many intercity distances for which a plane is sub-optimal but could definitely benefit from a faster terrestrial solution.

Can you explain the benefit of faster solutions to package delivery over the proposed network? Coast to coast is not likely given the layout. Many of the regions shown already have a network of supply centers that serve the local area. It seems like a much better investment would be automated delivery vehicles for the terminal delivery phase.

> you don't have to fill a whole jetliner to make it cost effective.

Is there a reference in any of the documents that show the cost of shipping good via the hyperloop? Is there any references to maximum capacity of the hyperloop given safe distances between cars?

Automated delivery would be perfect within a city. Coast-to-coast suits planes. Distances of 50-300 miles with high-volume commercial package traffic could easily benefit from something more like a subway than an airport experience, that doesn't bring the energy requirements of raising a 75-ton object tens of thousands of feet in minutes, or require an hour-long wait before it starts to move.

You said "cargo doesn't care how fast it gets to the destination". Well, some cargo does. You also said the cargo system is larger than the passenger system. Well, that just means there's obviously demand and maybe Musk should have put that in his white paper.

You're sure it'll never happen, I'm suggesting it might. Not that it will, just that you're a bit too confident in your position, considering it's a bet against out ability to innovate around problems.

> Distances of 50-300 miles

Are the current domain of trucks that have a lot more access than any hyperloop is going to have.

> You said "cargo doesn't care how fast it gets to the destination". Well, some cargo does.

The speed difference between truck and a new hyperloop-based system is not going to be enough to justify the complications involved in including another element. Automation is going be the governing innovation, not a hyperloop.

> You also said the cargo system is larger than the passenger system. Well, that just means there's obviously demand and maybe Musk should have put that in his white paper.

Yes, its much bigger and the US has been optimizing for it for a long time. The demand is being met in a variety of ways with self-driving and drones being the next, more flexible step. I am pretty sure that's why its not in the white paper.

> You're sure it'll never happen, I'm suggesting it might. Not that it will, just that you're a bit too confident in your position, considering it's a bet against out ability to innovate around problems.

I not betting against innovation, I'm betting against the premise that we have a problem that further automation (e.g. self driving vehicles) and drones won't take care of. I see it very much like putting a generator on a bicycle to warm the handlebars[1] as opposed to just wearing gloves.

1) http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Glove...

The picture depicts one car though. That would likely imply that you could send multiples though the tube, kind of like rail cars are sent along the rails.

The big thing is that these will travel much faster.

Look at the volume of the car, it is tiny compared to rail. Faster isn't a big help since we already have efficient air for that. Heck, we still use barges for cargo. Plus, the whole evacuated tube would play hell on cargo loading because of the added requirements. Speed buys very little given cargo is fine with traveling all night.

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