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Comment by garindra | Hacker News Reader

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garindra

With the addition of Hyperloop, Elon Musk is basically transforming transportation in all possible ranges:

- Short-range (in-city, cross-city): Tesla

- Medium-range/long-range (cross-state, possibly cross-country & cross-continent): Hyperloop

- Ultra-long-range (cross-planetary, possibly cross-galactic): SpaceX

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"possibly cross-galactic"

Hyperbole? Or do you know something about the physics of cross-galactic travel that the rest of us don't?

Bring back Project Orion and generation ships to alpha centauri become feasible, just hard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...

I don't know of anyone that is seriously looking at Orion anymore though. I suspect that whatever will eventually take us there will be to Orion as the Flying Scotsman is to Hero's Engine.

A trip to Alpha Centauri would be decidedly intra-galactic; the distance from the Sun to the edge of our galaxy is on the order of 4300 times the distance from the Sun to Alpha Centauri.

Yes, calling it "cross" galactic would certainly be stretching the definition of "cross". Though I suppose a "cross country" race is across the "countryside" though not across the country. ;)

Interstellar?

What is the best term for inter-solar-system travel? (Or, is that the best term?)

"Interstellar" probably. Between the stars.

I agree. I think I actually meant to ask about "intra-solar-system" travel.

Judging from the last two space operas i have read, the fashion is sending transhumans on single generation ships ( and playing with internal clocks to manage the subjective boredom).

And there are certainly a few people looking at interstellar travel. A great blog about this is

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/

Charles Stross's (HN: cstross) Accelerando has a nice treatment of this.

I think Orion ships are something that we could attempt to start building today though, no need to wait until the singularity.

I would be more intrigued how Hyperloop would play as a competing technology vs Tesla for short range commutes say SF to San Jose. Would hyperloop be discouraged for such "short-range" routes because Tesla could then pick up the slack? Or would they assume that those who used Hyperloop were probably never going to buy a car?

I don't think Tesla would worry for Hyperloop in the case of SF-to-SJ type commutes -- BART and Caltrain would probably be the ones who should worry. In fact in the US, I don't think there'd be a case where Tesla would worry about Hyperloop at all, as it's pretty car-driven culturally and architecturally -- people in general are walking-averse and still need cars to get to places that are between "stations". It might be different in other places like Europe or Asia though.

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