Virgin Hyperloop hosts first human ride on new transport system
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ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
People here have seen the names "Musk" and "Branson" and decided the technology much be a fraud and subsequently sought a rationalisation to validate their emotions.
I watched 20 minutes of the first Thunderf00t video. It is a classic example of a "gish gallop",
en.wikipedia.org
Very reminiscent of the arguments we used to get against renewable energy. It assumes that any problem they can think of is insurmountable and evidence of their staggering genius. Its starts with the usual childish nonsense of "its never been done before therefore it cannot be done" in terms of the size of the vacuum tube. Its makes a farcical comparison with the Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook Station as "proof" you cannot enclose a vacuum of the hypothesised volume. That structure is a open area dome where the loading has to be taken by the dome and spread to the side walls. Where as the hyperloop would be a tube. This will have a fraction of the mass in terms of the structural loading it has to bear. Submarine pipes and submarines the vehicles carry vastly greater pressure loads. This is pure bad faith argumentation.
They go on a bit about expansion. A legitimate engineering problem but one found in surface gas pipes around the world. We have airtight pipes in the deserts of Arabia and the wastes of Siberia. How this is supposed to be a gotcha is beyond me. Its more like the video creator thought of a problem and did zero research to see if others had come across the problem and had existing solutions.
They then go on in lurid details about the problems of a failure. It is not a balanced look at what could break a tube strong enough to hold a vacuum. Not a look at similar existing structures and how often they fail, just making the trite point that a failure would be catastrophic over and over again. They seem to have made zero effort to ask people who have knowledge of the project what their response to these issues would be.
I see nothing constructive or of value being offered as a critique.
I do see emotive people seeking validation.
The validity of the technology will depend on the costs and scalability. Like every other technology. The prototypes will work badly, fail, be very costly and easy to mock. Like every other new technology. Criticism is easy. Engineering is hard.
People here have seen the names "Musk" and "Branson" and decided the technology much be a fraud and subsequently sought a rationalisation to validate their emotions.
I watched 20 minutes of the first Thunderf00t video. It is a classic example of a "gish gallop",
Gish gallop - Wikipedia
They go on a bit about expansion. A legitimate engineering problem but one found in surface gas pipes around the world. We have airtight pipes in the deserts of Arabia and the wastes of Siberia. How this is supposed to be a gotcha is beyond me. Its more like the video creator thought of a problem and did zero research to see if others had come across the problem and had existing solutions.
They then go on in lurid details about the problems of a failure. It is not a balanced look at what could break a tube strong enough to hold a vacuum. Not a look at similar existing structures and how often they fail, just making the trite point that a failure would be catastrophic over and over again. They seem to have made zero effort to ask people who have knowledge of the project what their response to these issues would be.
I see nothing constructive or of value being offered as a critique.
I do see emotive people seeking validation.
The validity of the technology will depend on the costs and scalability. Like every other technology. The prototypes will work badly, fail, be very costly and easy to mock. Like every other new technology. Criticism is easy. Engineering is hard.
beesonthewhatnow
going deaf for a living
The main problem is that it’s pointless. High speed rail is a thing. It works.You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
People here have seen the names "Musk" and "Branson" and decided the technology much be a fraud and subsequently sought a rationalisation to validate their emotions.
I watched 20 minutes of the first Thunderf00t video. It is a classic example of a "gish gallop",
Very reminiscent of the arguments we used to get against renewable energy. It assumes that any problem they can think of is insurmountable and evidence of their staggering genius. Its starts with the usual childish nonsense of "its never been done before therefore it cannot be done" in terms of the size of the vacuum tube. Its makes a farcical comparison with the Glenn Research Center's Plum Brook Station as "proof" you cannot enclose a vacuum of the hypothesised volume. That structure is a open area dome where the loading has to be taken by the dome and spread to the side walls. Where as the hyperloop would be a tube. This will have a fraction of the mass in terms of the structural loading it has to bear. Submarine pipes and submarines the vehicles carry vastly greater pressure loads. This is pure bad faith argumentation.Gish gallop - Wikipedia
They go on a bit about expansion. A legitimate engineering problem but one found in surface gas pipes around the world. We have airtight pipes in the deserts of Arabia and the wastes of Siberia. How this is supposed to be a gotcha is beyond me. Its more like the video creator thought of a problem and did zero research to see if others had come across the problem and had existing solutions.
They then go on in lurid details about the problems of a failure. It is not a balanced look at what could break a tube strong enough to hold a vacuum. Not a look at similar existing structures and how often they fail, just making the trite point that a failure would be catastrophic over and over again. They seem to have made zero effort to ask people who have knowledge of the project what their response to these issues would be.
I see nothing constructive or of value being offered as a critique.
I do see emotive people seeking validation.
The validity of the technology will depend on the costs and scalability. Like every other technology. The prototypes will work badly, fail, be very costly and easy to mock. Like every other new technology. Criticism is easy. Engineering is hard.
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
That would have been a much shorter and far less twattish video.
The US rail system is all about freight, it is the single biggest means of moving freight (40% vs road haulages 33%). Passenger services are slow due to have to move on lines that pay their way by heavy goods. Gaining land access and permission for new for a new network of rail is expensive. The upper projections for CAHSR are in the $90 billion range for about 520 miles with sections only getting up to 110mph, though other sections would get up to and around 200mph (its a bit of a complex mess in how much it will cost, how fast it will go on what sections and how much of it will eventually get built) The US also is huge. 2800 miles from NY to Seattle. That would be 14 hours travel if anyone could ever afford to build a high speed train between the cities. This is vs 3ish hours by plane.
It would take trillions and decades to build a high speed network for the US and then it would quadruple journey times for point to point travel let alone getting to places not on the high speed network.
But as I said, this is not about the viability of transport technologies. Its about reaction to names.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
So you admit that firing people down tubes is stupid ?
When I glanced at your post, the coincidence of the lorries trapped at Dover made me wonder if they might at least transport goods down a tube the way they used to send money in Woolworth ...
Thunderf00t sadly has some of the Carl Benjamin about him ...
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
Just after I stopped beating my wife.
Thank you for your time.
Have a nice evening.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Did I misrepresent what you said ?
Cid
Proper break this time
Why is it good? It seems pretty devoid of content to me. ‘This early prototype isn’t that impressive, and trains exist’. Far as I can tell the amount of money raised by virgin hyperloop so far is $400m, which in context is a mile or so of hs2. I mean yeah, some of the other arguments about technical viability may stack up in the end... but not testing the viability of something just because something vaguely similar exists is a crap argument.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
At the end of the day it's all a game ... Musk even managed to make others pay for his prototypes ...
A distraction while the planet slowly cooks ...
A distraction while the planet slowly cooks ...
ferrelhadley
There is no love between us anymore.
The big threat for this suit of technologies will be low\zero carbon jet fuels. One of the main reasons air travel is so cheap compared with other forms is that it tends to only need a a large area close to cities for an airport. It does not have to buy and develop the huge physical amount of land between two destinations to connect them. If the purported low carbon jet fuel technologies (fitting some of the direct atmospheric sequestration among these) turns out cheaper than paying for access for thousands of miles of new trackway\tubeway whatever then neither this technology nor new traditional rail will compete with it. Modern high speed rail does work well where the distances are around 50-200 miles between cities. This is why European cities are so well connected with newer built lines. Having multimillion metropolitan areas like Greater London, West Midlands then Greater Manchester with about 100 miles between them (and large towns to help generate farebox revenue) seems to be the last real sweetspot for where paying for the land (and that is very expensive in modern developed economies) and out competing air travel on convenience and just about cost. Pushing out past 300 miles and then air travel is pretty much in the mix. Here the advantage modern high speed rail would generally be in carbon. This is why either of hyperloop or high speed rail could be the future competitor, hence why the alterative is the costs of whatever solution they try for jet fuel.
America specific problem is the low density of their cities and the often high cost of land near city centres etc. Then tends to push the distance between big multi million populations out to a couple of hundred miles type distances. Point to point by car can be much quicker than getting into the centre of a big metro area, getting a high speed train between the metro areas then getting out to your destination.
The large East Asian economies more resemble Europe in their dense cities and of short distances between them. No surprise that China, Japan and South Korea found big enough fair box takes to pay for the land between the cities to be converted to rail (though in Japan that is when it was still economically developing so cheaper and in China, well government power to obtain land is rather ....... unbridled).
Different geographies and populations will have different needs and issues when determining which technologies will be the most suited to their needs in the coming decades. Its not a question of "yes this will work" or "thats nonsense". It about trying to develop the new technologies and compare the costs for each region (things like autonomous cars, new high speed rail, however hyperloop-esque technologies evolve and low carbon jet fuel).
America specific problem is the low density of their cities and the often high cost of land near city centres etc. Then tends to push the distance between big multi million populations out to a couple of hundred miles type distances. Point to point by car can be much quicker than getting into the centre of a big metro area, getting a high speed train between the metro areas then getting out to your destination.
The large East Asian economies more resemble Europe in their dense cities and of short distances between them. No surprise that China, Japan and South Korea found big enough fair box takes to pay for the land between the cities to be converted to rail (though in Japan that is when it was still economically developing so cheaper and in China, well government power to obtain land is rather ....... unbridled).
Different geographies and populations will have different needs and issues when determining which technologies will be the most suited to their needs in the coming decades. Its not a question of "yes this will work" or "thats nonsense". It about trying to develop the new technologies and compare the costs for each region (things like autonomous cars, new high speed rail, however hyperloop-esque technologies evolve and low carbon jet fuel).
