Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eesmith | Hacker News Reader

Via a hyperloop.

Points to Hardt Hyperloop, and extrapolates to a NY/SF trip. However, Hardt's own FAQ says:

> "The hyperloop is a good alternative to short-distance flights and links up seamlessly with existing modes of transport."

To estimate what "short-distance" means, the Hardt site promotes Amsterdam-Paris. That's about 250 miles, http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=AMS-CDG .

A NY/SF trip in 4 hours @ 600 mph = 2,400 miles. the great circle distance is 2,574 miles - http://www.gcmap.com/dist?P=SFO-NYC - so the author's times can only be reached with a non-stop, dedicated track between those two cities.

Which is an unrealistic waste of money as it would be a national tax that only really benefits NYC and SF, and not the nation.

The author writes:

> Under FDR’s leadership, the federal government pulled the United States out of the Great Depression, in part, by funding ambitious public works projects, like building our vast interstate highway system.

The interstate highway system was Eisenhower not FDR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt points out that FDR's expanded the "Reconstruction Finance Corporation, making it a major source of financing for railroads".

It looks like the article contains bad math, bad monetary policy, and bad history. I don't think that's a good way to promote hyperloops.

1. The article is meant to be aspirational, not literal. We're talking about 2040 and what we could accomplish, if we put our minds to it.

2. I did the same calculations you did but went with a more provocative headline for reason cited in 1. above.

3. Re: only benefiting NY & SF, if you read my article you would know that I'm advocating a network of trains to replace the antiquated, wasteful, and enviironmentally unfriendly extant network of highway systems.

4. FDR and roads, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration.

In response to your final comment about bad math, etc, I would say that your feedback is replete with the kind of overrly-literal interpretation, detail knitpicking, and generally holier than thou attitude that has given HN a bad reputation. Nonetheless, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Then use 5 hours instead of 4.

You can't aspire using the impossible. You'll drive off those who are wary of scammers and grifters, leaving only the gullible.

The WPA didn't find the interstate highway system.

Re: 5 vs. 4, again, it's aspirational. How do you know what's possible by 2040?

Re: highways, thank you for pointing that out. I've fixed the article by s/interstate highway system/public works program/ with link to the details. Btw, FDR spent over $4B on highways, roads, and streets, a considerable sum in those days.

Re: You can't aspire using the impossible." Naysayers like you are why we may hever have this.

How do you know what's possible?

How do you know it's not going to be 2 hours? Or 1 hour?

The evidence you presented requires a straight connection between the two cities. That's not going to happen, for reasons I presented and for which you yourself agreed.

If it happens it will be via regional hubs, say via Chicago and Denver. Even non-stop (with no additional acceleration and deceleration) that non-GC route will add more time. Plus there's the 10 minutes or so for acceleration/deceleration to 600mpn.

If you pigeonhole me as a naysayer then may I pigeonhole you as one of those Project Plowshare advocates who wanted to use nukes to make harbors and canals, and fracture the ground for oil production? Or as a modern Lyle Lanley?

I'm asking you to use realistic numbers which make you seem well-informed, not numbers that are easily dismissed as overly optimistic, if not ridiculous.

Just like in Marge vs. the Monorail, US infrastructure is horribly under-maintained. https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/ for example. That sort of Federal involvement in local projects is more in line with FDR's Great Depression actions than Eisenhower's interstate system.

I recommend driving from New York to San Francisco as a research project. It will take you through Omaha, across Nebraska on the Overland Route (or Lincoln Highway or I80 or the Oregon Trail -- fortunately your sister is unlikely to die of dysentery these days) and along the Platte into the Wyoming Basin, then down into Ogden, across Nevada, over Donner Pass, and down into Sacramento before finally reaching the Bay Area.

The most direct route hasn't changed because the geography hasn't changed. You'll spend a thousand miles going up and down mountains and valleys. Most of it will be sparse desert and bitterly cold in the winters and broiling hot in the summer. Sparsely populated -- even Reno is only 1/2 a million people and everyone Casper, Wyoming will fit in a Division I AA football stadium because it's all a long way from anywhere of much importance except to the people who live there.

Though I said I recommended it as a research project, I really recommend it because driving it will probably change your life. It's beautiful and remote and awe-inspiring in a way that the average place that people live isn't and doesn't convey over a few hours in the air 8km up.

There are only four practical rail routes across the US. One further north through Montana and down to Portland used by the Great Northern. One south of the Oregon Trail that follows I40 over the Colorado Plateau south of the Grand Canyon. And finally, the only all-weather line across the width of Texas through El-Paso and southern New Mexico and Arizona. It's the reason for the Gadsden Purchase.

The highway system is what public transit looks like in the US because the US is what it is. Increasingly vast, rugged and remote once you cross the Mississippi. Vast, rugged and remote in a way the tends to make it map poorly between the way we tend to think about political geography relating to physical geography.

The reason there isn't high speed rail across the US isn't in the details. It isn't because of some great conspiracy. It's in the course grain of physical geography. It's not a lack of imagination. It's an abundance of rail expertise applied over the better part of two hundred years.

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