Hyperloop One shows off its first super fast test track in the Nevada desert
theverge.com
theverge.com
How do you get [any rail-ish system] from point A to point B? You build the infrastructure from those two places. Uh-oh. Where? Want to arrive in the centre of point A? Whose land do you build over? How much does it cost to acquire or license? What regulations exist? What do the locals think, do they want a Hyperloop running past their window? What are the local unions like and how much will it cost to get the thing built?
Ultra-fast rail lines already exist. This isn't the reason there isn't one from downtown LA to SF (or Melbourne to Sydney or or London to Paris^ or New York to Boston).
^Interesting because the Eurorail was largely built on existing, upgraded track.
You are now making lots of assumptions for each mode of transport without stating them.
Given that none of the companies working on different Hyperloop concepts are even directly replicating the original proposal, your assumptions for hyperloop may or may not hold, but without stating which of revised models you're discussing throwing out numbers like this is entirely meaningless.
In contrast, a regular commuter train can carry ~1000 people per train, and you need to dispatch them at 3 minute intervals (20 trains/hour) to move 20,000 people per hour. A single lane of road traffic will carry ~2000 cars per hour. Assuming single-occupant vehicles, that's ~2000 people/hour.
And that's loading them at the lazy pace of a tourist attraction. With longer platforms, experienced commuters and more staff, you might be able to send cars out even faster.
What you should be comparing Hyperloop to is airplanes, not other land-based transport systems. Hyperloop is very fast, and is meant to compete with regional air travel. It's not likely to be cheap per-ticket, so it's not comparable to trains and cars. It's not meant to move large volumes of people cheaply, it's meant to move high fare-paying people very quickly so they don't have to deal with the problems inherent in air travel.
Rail management in Europe is also not the greatest, they tried to separate rolling stock (the cars you ride on) from the company that owns the rails, while forcing them to sublease track rights, which has created a mess as of late.
Due to topographical issues, short of another FDR style project we will not see something similar in the US in our lifetime.
We're living in such enlightened times.
"If it is built on the back of of an authoritarian regime with a human rights violations list several volumes long, it is a bit harder to appreciate the progress."
By taking the sarcastic route, you force everyone who thinks that way to agree with you.
For example, some people like to push the better part of an operating system over the browser to anyone who views their page, under the guise of client-side javascript frameworks.
By pointing this out with sarcasm, you would force them to "agree" with you, while making them realize it is absurd.
I think the parent's post wouldn't have been as powerful if they had simply straightforwardly written what they had in mind - sarcasm can get readers to see the absurdity of lauding something.
Sometimes adding a /s is advisable but not in this case, as the sarcastic part includes blatantly negative language ("authoritarian regime with a human rights violations list") and so is quite clear.
That's my problem with how deeply pervasive sarcasm is – it employs emotionality and absurdity cheaply, snidely, and often in place of a well reasoned argument.
What does this lose?
"I am troubled that the company is funded by an authoritarian regime with many human rights violations. These are modern times and we should be more judicious about who we're supporting."
The original post said nothing controversial in this audience. It was a lazy and juvenile kind of false cleverness. Irony is ubiquitous now, and employing it to wield dissonance is, to me at least, as cheap as trying to appear powerful by using hate and rage.
Go back upthread and you will realize that someone had written this "That's likely why they're looking at Saudi Arabia to make the first production track, since the Royal Family can basically do whatever they want."
Without any moral component or disagreement.
Whereas the version you just suggested sounds like a nuanced objection - the sarcastic version shows that this reasoning is absolutely abhorrent. And the sarcastic version is right.
I mean imagine if some kind of gene biotech company, decided to do its first human tests in North Korea, "because the government there can do whatever it wants". This example shows just how wrong the original reasoning is, how outrageous it is.
The version you quoted: "I am troubled that the company is funded by an authoritarian regime with many human rights violations. These are modern times and we should be more judicious about who we're supporting" simply doesn't have the outraged effect.
For my example I alluded to (but didn't quote) - if I had said, "I am troubled that browsers are frequently downloading a megabyte or more simply to serve what amounts to a static page" this "troubled" does not really relate the level of objection someone might feel.
So I personally do not subscribe to your analysis.
"This company is funded by an authoritarian regime that tortures and murders people on a regular basis. Remember that when you're staring into the banality of their app."
Don't you think irony ends up sabotaging some of the gravity?
What do you think about "New Sincerity"? http://www.salon.com/2014/04/13/david_foster_wallace_was_rig...
I enjoy our exchange, thanks again
Take something like that President Trump disallowed the BBC and CNN from his press conferences. If I wanted to mention that as a rebuttal to someone bringing up something about trump, I really have no other recourse than pointing this out, with sarcasm.
So I don't know, imagine someone says trump is committed to fair coverage and the facts, and the snide response is "yep, this is why he banned from his conferences the organizations, like the BBC, that never wanted to be there in the first place, since they were obviously perfectly happy to make up any old quote without even trying to send any correspondents."
I don't have any other point to make in this hypothetical example - isn't the sarcasm enough? How would you write it, for this hypothetical example?
Have any of the fatal flaws been fixed (sub-1000 person per hour transport volume, rail can move 20k an hour, 1 lane road moves 2k per hour), or has Elon revised his inaccurate estimate, where he estimated SF to LA rail without actually crossing the bay into SF (or acquiring the right of way), or going into LA?
I recently drove through both cities, and where Elon proposed to end the alignment would make it absolutely useless for most potential users at peak hours, as its a 2+hr drive across LA and out of it to get there. Combined with where it terminates near SF, you could spend a few hours just commuting to & from it.
Ultimately, there isn't any way to get around the topography of either city whereby you can avoid the issues California's High Speed Rail has run into. Your gonna end up with lots of landowners, large and small, pissed off that your taking their parking space (which is on railroad property, and they've been using for a few years illicitly), changing the neighborhood, or doing anything at all. This is a costly process, but you either build it now and get the right of way, or you leave it to happen 40 years from now at a much higher cost.
With regards to between city travel just get to the airport. You are bound to have plenty of parking, local mass transit, taxi services, and if necessary all the security is in place.
You write that as if you are sure it will happen.
However, I don't think this is the first underground structure in an earthquake zone.
There's really nothing special here - it should just be clear that HSR is only part of the puzzle. A dense public transport network in the served cities is just as important if not more so, but in a healthy landscape it should come automatically with demand.
> Has the Hyperloop made any significant progress recently?
> Have any of the fatal flaws been fixed [...]? Has Elon revised his inaccurate estimate?
what they need to do is create a vertical u-bend hyperloop and get a falcon 9 rocket to shoot down it and back out again repeatedly at high speed to create a space fountain.
I like the idea of the hyperloop driving technological advances, but don't see the hyperloop itself as ever* happening.
* within the next 30 years.
If little have their phones and signal they will be just fine.
Early research on airplanes and windows ran into the same issue. Nearly every row has a window to themselves despite the incredible added cost and weight to planes.