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Comment by CodeWriter23 | Hacker News Reader

I remember during my lifetime people also said electric cars and self-landing reusable rockets were impossible.

Contrasting that with Branson biting off more than his collection of Virgin brands could chew (which are all failing/reorganizing) is not really the hit piece this author thinks it is.

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Electric cars have been around for over a century. The space shuttle re-used the solid rocket boosters and its own engines. I don't know anyone could possibly consider those "impossible". Not to diminish to achievements of Tesla and Space X, but they were not entirely novel systems invented out of whole cloth.

This is mostly Musk mythmaking. Both vertical launch, reusable rockets and electric cars predate the current era. Unless you are 100+ years old electric cars were demonstrated possible before you were born.

Does your lifetime extend to before 1970? We had reusable launch vehicles at that time. We had propulsive rocket landings in the 80's. Electric cars have existed for longer than gas-powered cars.

By contrast, no analog for the "hyperloop" has ever existed outside of sci-fi novels.

> We had propulsive rocket landings in the 80's.

Didn't the Apollo project use propulsive rocket landings to land on the moon (which was kind of necessary due to the moon's lack of a dense enough atmosphere)? IIRC, that was much earlier than the 1980s.

Please cite your source about reusable rocket boosters. And yes, my life does extend prior to 1970.

Space shuttle boosters were reusable.

We have had pneumatic tubes as well since 1799 and they've been used by many companies in the past. The only thing novel about the idea was the scale and technology behind scaling it.

I don't see what the feasibility of Hyperloop has to do with the article. It was never intended to succeed.

Just because we put a man on the Moon, does not mean we can put a man on the Sun.

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