Comment by geezerjay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geezerjay | Hacker News Reader

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> I thought the depth and narrowness of the tunnels was to address this?

No, changing the stress field within the soil layers changes that. Digging a tunnel through soil causes a decompression that isn't balanced by either the tunneler or the supporting structure. That happens even if the tunnel is pre-grouted, which takes a considerable amount of time and money.

Musk's team excels at marketing, but if you ask any civil engineer who has any knowledge of tunneling (the boring company) or railway systems (hyperloop) he'll be able to point out about a dozen basic and major technical and economical problems that they simply fail to address or even consider. The reason things are the way they are isn't due to a major conspiracy, or widespread stupidity. In fact, the only stupidity I see is in how these projects promise magical solutions to problems they even failed to identify adequately.

I believe there are strong reasons why all these business pitches end with requests for investors to cough up cash to pay for the projects themselves, even though these million-dollar projects are proposed by a billionaire with a net worth of around 20 billion dollars.

Thanks for the post!

I guess there are a few things that might make these projects less of an unmitigated disaster than your analysis suggests:

1. Musk is clearly working off the common delusion that 'getting in at the ground floor' is a good idea. In reality, innovators and groundbreakers typically go bankrupt. Investors who buy the bankrupt company are the ones who typically profit off the expensive research and development, without the associated risks.

2. If you consider similar examples, for instance, the English railway system - early investors losing money is by no means a bad thing. Even if 'getting in early' is bad business strategy, it's good for society in general if moonshots get funded, even if they never turn out to be profitable.

3. These projects, while obviously unsound and based on false premisses, will typically produce useful technology, knowledge, or techniques - that can later be taken up by governments (as in the case of railways) or private investors.

So I mean, sure, these projects are stupid and will end in stupidity. But they're also a better (from a human perspective) use of investor capital than pretty much everything else it could be spent on - more Walmarts, Amazon surveillance devices, or oil exploration - even if those things are certainly safer bets in terms of profits.

To be fair, that’s also what rocket engineers said about spacex’s plans originally. The difference with musk is one of perseverance and the assumption of possibility. Instead of seeing problems, see challenges to be solved.

Purely from a business perspective isn't it smarter to use other people's money for such risky projects? Musk certainly didn't become a billionaire by gambling!

> Purely from a business perspective isn't it smarter to use other people's money for such risky projects?

IIRC Musk wants nothing to do with Hyperloop, and the boring company appears to be the marketing name they gave to a purchase of a pretty standard tunnel boring machine to dig a pretty standard, good old fashined tunnel at SpaceX's.

That's it. The rest is marketing.

Comparing with the level of investment in Tesla and SpaceX, both with regards to personal time and money poured in, it's pretty easy to notice which projects are handled seriously and what projects amount to marketing.

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