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Comment by angersock | Hacker News Reader

It's aimed at commuter traffic--as somebody who has routinely made a backpack's worth of clothing last a week on trips, I also don't think that the luggage is that much of an issue.

The bathroom critique is again silly--it's a thirty minute trip; if you can't hold it that long, you probably need to repeat preschool.

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Has it occurred to you that not everybody has perfect health all the time? You can't actually expect that you wouldn't get sick the first minute after you enter the tube. Then imagine yourself having to remain there next 29 minutes and die!

This would happen. A lot. Then imagine who'd use that cleverness after the first such case and after every next.

I'd rather say "it's aimed at astronauts" than "commuters." Astronauts are thoroughly checked by medical teams and prepared before their trips, would you suggest such checks and preparations every time for everybody entering the tube?

He said there could be branch stations, and he also gave the example of someone having an emergency right at takeoff in a normal plane, and it taking just as long to get clearance to land, turn around, land, and taxi to a gate.

In the plane people can stand up, help the one being sick ("is there a doctor on the plane? please come to the seat 34E" -- the steward is already there etc) bring him water, take him to the toilet. It's a big space. Nothing like that here -- everybody is trapped in the tube not able to leave the chair.

Imagine even worse case: fire in the pod. People burn having to remain unmovable in the seats. Again imagine the public response. Just an impression of having absolutely no chance to do anything at all is enough to scare most normal people forever.

It just has to be big enough for people to normally move inside. Everything else is good for SciFi but not for real use.

If you don't travel, then imagine your computer being connected to the control of the tube in which you are and where you can't move. Now imagine that you can't kill the program for a half an hour which is effectively killing you. Even if the chances are low for the killing process to activate, would you even want to try such an experience?

Instead of just crapping all over something that is in very, very early stages of merely ideation, maybe we could switch to positive intent and try to come up with some comparables? Having just returned from Disneyland, I nominate the Finding Nemo submarines which offer a nearly identical experience for 15-20 minutes (and are pitched as "fun" no less).

Now compare it to a car.

Same thing can technically be said about a HSR or a plane. You can't stop the train/plane because somebody got sick, and although you have a bathroom, and although the extra space helps, the resources you have inside the car/plane are very scarce anyway. Yet, very few people die inside those things nowadays.

A cruising airliner is at least half an hour away from any sort of outside medical help. On oceanic flights they can be up to three hours away. Yet few people die on them and few people use that as a reason to avoid them.

>Has it occurred to you that not everybody has perfect health all the time?

Then those people can avoid riding the hyperloop?

Luckily we didn't use the same BS excuses to stop building planes...

>You can't actually expect that you wouldn't get sick the first minute after you enter the tube.

What? That's what 100% of the population expects when entering any vehicle. "Getting sick the minute they enter" is neither a common expectation nor a common occurence.

>Then imagine yourself having to remain there next 29 minutes and die!

Well, that escalated quickly.

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