The problem with hyperloop is that is does not solve the main problem of bullet trains: infrastructure costs. Nobody complains about the TGV/Shinkansen/ICE being slow.<p>Building a new train line cost millions of €/$ per km/mi because you need to expropriate properties, build tunnels and bridges, fine tune the tracks (any small distortion in the tracks will cause significant annoyance for the travelers). Hyperloop will have all these issues, but worse, as the speed is higher, and as the hyperloop trains will not be able to run on existing tracks.
This article is rather uncharitable. While maglevs have been in operation for a long time, I believe this is the one of the few examples of an inductrack. Iirc The technology hasn't really made it out as much because it has only recently come off patent.<p>A key advantage of inductrack is that it requires relatively little energy to achieve it's levitation, but the technology is still very new in the engineering sense, so you really wouldn't expect it to go fast. I'm frankly impressed that they were able to get a decently fast human trial up an running so quickly.
I already bought the popcorn and just waiting for the next Thunderfoot video...<p>This and the "Solar Freakin' Roadways" are the absolute pinnacles of human stupidity and ignorance...<p>...and let all my wishes be granted so fast: <a href="https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/VrbstnzbhZA</a>
Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think any high speed train can go as fast as Hyperloop is aiming for. If you want high speed trains why not complain to your politicians?<p>If your problem is wasting money there are probably thousands of projects and companies right now whose only purpose is to waste money. At least Hyperloop has something to show for all that money it "wasted".<p>> working just fine even in backward-ass doofus countries like freaking Italy<p>Nice. I don't know why useless rants like this gets upvoted here.
Part of the problem is an american political practice where once someone's "team" (party) wins, then instead of the voters saying "good, now it's time to exercise our power and make them do our bidding" they instead do exactly the opposite and say "good now we can go to sleep and not pay attention".<p>Combine that with the cheerleading and party loyalty and the idea that pushing the people you voted for to exercise their power is somehow a form of faithless heresy (where you don't "trust" them or you're "against" them) and we get this.<p>It'd be like working hard to get a pile of money. Someone then places all the cash on a table for you to take and you sigh "finally!" and turn around and exit, leaving it all behind on the table.<p>"Empower and walk away" is the american way and until that changes good luck trying to get HSR or anything that benefits the well-being of society.
Hyperloop is just another of Elon Musk's dumb "what if" ideas he dreamed up while stuck in gridlock on the 405.<p>"Wouldn't it be great if we had a magic underground tube that whisked you to your destination without traffic?"<p>"You mean like a subway?"<p>"No, no! For rich people, with private pods designed to look like an Apple store."
Hyperloop solves two problems that challenge the adoption of high speed rail.<p>1. Infrequent departure times. There are about 100 flights from New York to LA a day. Plenty of departure time options. Are there going to be 100 departure choices with a train? No, it would probably be 15 at most. In Canada, we have relatively fast rail between Toronto and Montreal, two of our major cities. Even with similar travel times all in, they struggle to get people on the trains because of the lack of departure times. There are about 50 departure time options by air.<p>If you can have 30 people a pod, then you can have tons of departure options or even could be flexible about them.<p>2. 367 miles per hour is slow for a country the size of the USA. That is 7 hours point to point from New York to LA. Probably 11 hours with stops and not being able to go that speed along the whole way.
So when this is done you'll get 20-30 people in a pod, but it will be faster than other railways? Why are they optimising for latency over bandwidth? What actually is the point of this? Just so that a few very rich people can live very far from work?
While there are many good critiques of Hyperloop, comparing its speed on half-kilometer test track to established technologies is not one. The article is joyfully bashing a strawman it has built on its own.
Amazed by the negativity of this article and comments. We haven't invented a new form of transport since the Second World War, don't you think we're overdue? And to Americans who think that getting high speed trains is just a matter of government willpower, might be worth remembering that railways were originally private ventures which only stopped being profitable once they could no longer compete with the newer technologies of cars+highways and air travel.
"Backward-ass Doofus Country"<p>Kind of right but also kind of not.
The tone of the article is trying too hard to sound edgy and it ruins the underlying message it is trying to convey.
It's a symptom of modern supply-side economics.
It's all about job creation. The people who are working on this project are the only ones getting anything out of it. It's CaaS 'Career as a Service'.<p>The people who work for this company are probably a bunch of kids whose rich daddies wanted them to experience what it feels like to succeed in their careers and so daddy kept injecting millions of dollars into their projects.
But their career is about as real as a roller-coaster ride in a Disney theme park.<p>I've worked for many different companies over the past decade and I've seen this everywhere, over and over.<p>Nowadays, when I look for a job, the only question I ask myself is: "Do these founders have rich daddies?".
I only work for companies whose founders have rich daddies because they're the only ones which can 'succeed'. It doesn't matter what the project is or whether it adds any value anymore.<p>It doesn't matter how much value I can produce in any other capacity because other people's daddies have access to the money printer and no one can compete with the money printer.
one of the things rail can do that an airliner increasingly cant do. is land downtown. maybe this hyperloop thing has a chance if its cheaper to build than rail.<p>not many places have that many 5m+ cities within 500km of each other like china.
I live in Calif. and have been watching the HSR debacle.<p>- You know, the Central Valley "ezpath" wouldn't be such a bad idea if it included a planned city with HSR to relieve SV congestion, rather than just being a "rail to nowhere."<p>- I like the idea of finishing the HSR terminals in SF and San Jose for long-term use<p>- I like the idea of blasting through any mountains on the route from SF to LA over time, for long-term use.<p>Somehow the state is fixated on a trillion dollars or bust right now, which just isn't going to happen.<p>And state politicians focus on HSR as a jobs program/scam, rather than a transportation project.<p>The corona lockdown is a great time to work on the San Jose terminal.
I'm not sure if I've ever found a worst piece on HN. There may be valid criticisms of Hyperloop tech, but they are not in this article. It's just low effort sarcasm and strange arguments based on a very silly strawman.