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Comment by _ea1k | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to guess that he didn't expect it to work. He never invested significantly, and there must be a reason.

The simplest reason seems to be that he expected it not to work, at least with current technology.

I always wondered just how bad an idea must have been. If Musk didn't go after it. Specially considering that he is the one who published it...

Elon Musk said from the outset that he was not gonna build it, he thought the idea was good and published a whitepaper on it which basically started the conversation.

He also talks about a supersonic electrical passenger jet from time to time, but he says he don't have the time to do that either.

Perhaps we should apply a bit more of a critical standard to Elon's various statements: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/

Argh those pesky regulators stopping Tesla from delivering robotaxis to their customers since 2018

He did it to divert investment into high speed trains, which have the potential to significantly reduce the number of Teslas he could hope to sell.

He successfully made investors waste hundreds of millions into these hyperloop startups, which are like real life parody of high-tech scam startups.

On the other hand, one must be quite illiterate scientifically to buy into Musks grand sci-fi projects. Should only work on 5 years old. But you don’t have to believe, you just have to pretend and take these easy millions from rich but dumb VCs.

He has the street cred to do that though. He took money to build SpaceX, and then delivered a system that can send astronauts to orbit. Unlike Jeff Bezos, Virgin Galactic or any of these other vaporware companies that promise a lot and then don't deliver.

Phase 1 of the Californian high speed rail is/was not planned to open until 2030, and is just a 275 km long. Does that really sound like something that will slow the sales of Teslas?

Why risk your reputation on something high-risk or likely impossible if you can crowdsource others to waste their time and money to verify its continued infeasibility for you?

You can say what Elon should have done with Twitter all you want, were talking about hyperloop /s

Hahaha. There are many viable businesses productive people can generate, many times more than they can delve into. As such, there is never an absence of ideas, it's almost always a lack of concentrated, deliberate execution in a category that can iterate into a viable, sustainable business. I think it's also possible to posit sketchy ideas that haven't worked before and bribe or cajole people into trying them.

> Why risk your reputation on something high-risk or likely impossible

You mean like the world's first reusable rocket, the only private company to sent astronauts to the ISS, the world's biggest rocket, or mass producing EVs?

Yeah, you're right, it's good he stuck to the easy stuff!

The tech is fine, right? It's the long game you have to play with regulators and state and local officials to get right of way to build the tracks or tubes in the first place. Under current regulations, it would take a decade of intense focus and politickin' to probably achieve a minimal viable example.

The tech is actually not fine. The initial idea was that it would be a near vacume and that the sled would use air cushion to levitate. And that simply doesn't actually work.

That is why all of the companies doing it switched to maglev. And we know the issues with maglev.

Mag lev works just fine in Japan: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev

A partial vacuum would be trivial to achieve and you could by all means use mag lev + partial vacuum in a tube.

Nobody doubts maglev works (there is also a maglev in China and Germany also had a test track since the 80s). There are a lot of things that technically work, but are not economical. The math just doesn't add up to build this in any way that is economically reasonable.

It's not economics, it's red tape.

Oh you mean the project that has been going on for like 40 years costs 100+ billion $ and isn't operational?

Yeah works great.

I hear they are gone install on in Hoboken soon.

It doesn't sound like anyone demonstrated the technology as originally described. Trains in tunnels are possible, of course, but probably not the super high speed, air cushioned thing that was envisioned.

Of course they are: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev

The tech already works even without a partial vacuum. But a partial vacuum would be all the better.

> The tech is fine, right?

No, the tech is not fine. There are really serious, showstopper issues with it. Issues that were known way back in the early 1900s and there is still no feasible way to overcome them.

Even if there was we can estimate costs and conclude cost would be too high

No, we can't. And yes there is:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev

That's just maglev, though. Nobody is asserting that maglev isn't feasible.

Yes they're so obvious that you can comment without mentioning them.

Look there are mag lev trains in Japan that run on superconductors. By all means you can put that tech in a tube and call it a hyperloop. Absolutely feasible.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev

Such as?

How to safely create and maintain a reasonable vacuum in very long tubes is the main unsolved problem, as far as I can tell.

The white paper at the very least wasn't. It contradicts itself in multiple places and it seems the author has some misunderstandings around basic physics.

What are those misunderstandings? Keep hearing comments that can't speak to anything in particular but confidently assert how unfeasible it is.

Mag lev works: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCMaglev

Nothing in the idea of a hyperloop precludes the use of a maglev propulsion system. The partial vacuum wouldn't even be necessary but might help with efficiency. Partial vacuums are just air pumps.

The author can't seem to make up their mind about the use of a vacuum. In one section where they do propose using one they also suggest sticking a giant turbine on the end of the car.

Maglevs are great. Why not build one of those instead?

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