Hyperloop One To Shut Down (bloomberg.com) 116
Hyperloop One, the futuristic transportation company building tube-encased lines to zip passengers and freight from city to city at airplane-like speeds, is shutting down, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the situation. From the report: Once a high-profile startup, Hyperloop One raised more than $450 million since its founding in 2014, according to PitchBook. It built a small test track near Las Vegas to develop its transportation technology, and for a time took the name Virgin Hyperloop One after Richard Branson's Virgin invested. Virgin removed its branding after the startup decided last year to focus on cargo rather than people.
Now, the company has laid off most of its employees, and is trying to sell its remaining assets, including the test track and machinery, according to one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous discussing private information. In early 2022, the company employed more than 200 people. The business has also closed its Los Angeles office. The remaining workers, tasked with overseeing the asset sale, were told their employment will end on Dec. 31. DP World, the Dubai-based conglomerate, has backed Hyperloop One since 2016 and owns a majority stake. The startup's remaining intellectual property will be transferred to DP World, a person familiar with the situation said.
Now, the company has laid off most of its employees, and is trying to sell its remaining assets, including the test track and machinery, according to one of the people, who asked to remain anonymous discussing private information. In early 2022, the company employed more than 200 people. The business has also closed its Los Angeles office. The remaining workers, tasked with overseeing the asset sale, were told their employment will end on Dec. 31. DP World, the Dubai-based conglomerate, has backed Hyperloop One since 2016 and owns a majority stake. The startup's remaining intellectual property will be transferred to DP World, a person familiar with the situation said.
And nothing of real value was lost (Score:5, Interesting)
There was only imaginary value to begin with.
The required engineering and maintenance made this project almost impossible and certainly prohibitively expensive, which leads me to wonder how Virgin got involved in the first place.
Doesn't Branson have his own engineers and accountants to have a look at these types of things somewhere between when they catch his fancy and when he's laying out money?
Re:And nothing of real value was lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineers and Accountants don't save you from these kinds of situations.
For both professions, there are individuals that will tolerate as close to zero risk as they can manage. Although they exist, they very rarely rise to the positions where their opinions are asked in speculative ventures.
Most, however, when confronted with a proposition will tell you what assumptions you have to make in order for some contraption to work within a given cost or what investment risk will pay off. And often they will be correct. But ... assumptions?
What the "visionary" will do is somehow disregard those assumptions or be over optimistic about them. That's when the money starts flowing and the dream balloons rise in the air. Sometimes they overcome the problems but more often not. Hyperloop is just one example of many.
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The word "visionary" means seeing things that others don't see. Sometimes that can mean one is brilliant, but at other times the word can describe someone who's had too much too drink.
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Anyone who has "visions" should consult a shrink. With the right medication, this can be reined in.
Re:And nothing of real value was lost (Score:5, Interesting)
There was only imaginary value to begin with.
The required engineering and maintenance made this project almost impossible and certainly prohibitively expensive, which leads me to wonder how Virgin got involved in the first place.
I dunno. Looking at Branson's recent track record, it seems to fit his MO to a tee.
Doesn't Branson have his own engineers and accountants to have a look at these types of things somewhere between when they catch his fancy and when he's laying out money?
Like most folks of his wealth level? He probably has lots and lots of advisors that are experts in whatever field he needs knowledge of. And like most people of his wealth level, he's free to ignore every damned one of them if something strikes his fancy. Sometimes those big risks pay off, and sometimes they don't. When you have enough to throw around, you don't mind losing a few mill on a daydream project. To them it's the equivalent of somebody like me picking up a single Gundam model to work on throughout the year when I have a free moment, and if I don't manage to finish it by the end of the year? Oh well. Maybe I'll finish the next one.
Absolutely not true (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Absolutely not true (Score:5, Interesting)
Hyperloop successfully delayed the development of high speed rail in America by at least 10 years maybe more
Could you please cite your source.
This is the best one I could find:
https://www.fresnobee.com/opin... [fresnobee.com]
The article says that Musk *wanted to* to stop HS rail. It doesn't say why, and more importantly, doesn't say he actually contributed to stopping / did stop it.
Any for those that might not know. HS rail in California has been and endless stream of corruption and cost overruns for going on a decade, and it's going to continue to bleed CA's coffers for another half a century before it's operational. We've basically reached a point where we can't build anything.
Re: Absolutely not true (Score:3, Interesting)
"The article says that Musk *wanted to* to stop HS rail. It doesn't say why, and more importantly, doesn't say he actually contributed to stopping / did stop it."
He wanted to stop it for the same reason as the conspirators responsible for the grossly misnamed "streetcar scandal" - his investment in an automaker.
Whether he really made a strong contribution is another question. Arguably not since the same people he could influence were already anti rail.
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He wanted to stop it for the same reason as the conspirators responsible for the grossly misnamed "streetcar scandal" - his investment in an automaker.
Yes, that's a theory.
Re: Absolutely not true (Score:4, Informative)
He wanted to stop it for the same reason as the conspirators responsible for the grossly misnamed "streetcar scandal" - his investment in an automaker.
Yes, that's a theory.
It has the advantage of being supported by another Musk scheme that he ran at the same time to suppress local rail projects - and this one was very successful. That scheme was Musk's all but Potemkin Boring Company which made pitches to literally scores of communities around the country for cheap tunnel transit solutions instead of rail improvements that they had on the table. Numerous communities dropped or stalled project that were in the pipeline. And every one of the Boring pitches turned out to be swamp gas. The Boring Company started ghosting them all, and nothing more about any of those projects has been heard of since. No actual proposals were ever actually issued to anyone.
Unfortunately I have a front row seat to this because the city I live in, Rancho Cucamonga, CA, was one of the Musk targets for his scam. He actually got the local transit authority to abandon a plan to extend the LA Metrolink to Ontario International Airport in favor of a "tunnel loop". Only - the company stopped responding to communications about the supposed project a year ago. So there is no tunnel project, and any link to the airport is now hanging in limbo. Not officially abandoning the scheme is the best way for Musk to maximize the damage - local government is going to have to admit they were scammed on their own and then officially abandon it so that they can then get on with a real system. I predict that when they reach the point that they do that, Musk will suddenly "renew his offer".
The quasi-entertainment tunnel with Tesla scheme in Las Vegas, a city that basks in quasi-entertainment mass transit, is the only Boring scheme likely to ever be built.
With all that background we know Musk is setting up companies and proposing schemes specifically to kill mass transit. It is simply a fact. So the only "theory" needed here is to notice that "hyperloop" looks like exactly the same scam (hi-tech tunnel!) only targeting high speed, not local, transit.
California backed off high speed rail plans (Score:2)
If you think those two things are coincidental then honestly I don't know what to tell you....
Re:Absolutely not true (Score:5, Insightful)
We lost tremendous value to hyperloop because the entire thing with a giant scam to slow down the development of High-Speed rail so that car companies could continue to sell cars and continue to get massive subsidies for their product in the form of roads built for cars and mandatory parking requirements
Not this crap again. California is spending and going to spend obscene amounts of money on a 'high-speed rail' system that will most likely never run in my lifetime. Hyperloop had absolutely nothing to do with the piss-poor state of high-speed rail in this country.
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CA is a poster child for the worst possible way to develop "high speed" rail. Basically everything should be done the opposite of how they are doing it.
If we want it to be a reality in the USA we have to get it as far away from the hands of congress as possible. Otherwise they will just use it as a pork and jobs program, while it provides minimal public value.
Create an independent national rail commission, in the spirit of the BRAC system that was used to decide on military base consolidation in the 1980s.
Re:Absolutely not true (Score:5, Insightful)
The FRA is, of course, a captured organization that was created in 1966 to make sure nothing happens that threatens the private railway companies in the US, including HSR. The existing railroad companies have no interest in passenger rail and only see it as a nuisance at best or a threat at worst. So FRA's real purpose is to stop development of any passenger rail in the US, which has been working admirably for decades.
FRA holding up HSR? Yeah, whatever. (Score:2)
What is holding up HSR in California are property owners able to hire lawyers.
It is the same arrangement that is holding up HS2 in England. Property owners.
People who ride horses to run down a poor fox and call it "Tally, ho!" and stuff like that.
Re: Absolutely not true (Score:2)
We will never get cross country HSR without a war. Then they could make it happen.
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That's basically what led to the creation of the interstate highway system, so you're probably exactly right.
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Pork is endemic int he US. Not just in California. Every single state in the union is chock full of pork barrel projects. Red and blue states, and often the residents of those states are very happy to see other states' tax dollars paying for their infrastructure (yes, red state voters happy to see blue state money coming their way, despite their rhetoric against big government).
High speed rail is important to the US. The country needs better transportaion infrastructures. But politically it's been tainted
Because Joe Biden got elected (Score:2)
Hyperloop didn't stop high speed rail, it *delayed* it.
If you're a billionaire car company owner or the head of an airline you don't think "well shoot, it's gonna happen in 10-20 years anyway, why try to stop it?", you delay it while you make billions of dollars at the public's expense.
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Hyperloop didn't stop high speed rail, it *delayed* it.
You keep believing that if it makes you feel better.
But in case there is any doubt about why high speed rail delays itself (due to government incompetency), think about this tidbit:
The high speed rail commission in California was established in 1996. It did not put a funding proposition for this project on the ballot until 2008! Yes, it took twelve years just to put a funding plan together. Hyperloop One was not founded until 2014.
Just to recap: Hyperloop had less than zero effect on the timeline of
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Not to mention the trillions and trillions of dollars in damage done to the environment, the wars we fight constantly for oil because let's face it we wouldn't give a rat's ass what's going on in the Middle East if not for oil, and the enormous amount of damage that pollution from cars causes to our health and economy.
I have this sneaking suspicion that war in the Middle East won't magically disappear if/when the west loses its complete obsession with oil. That part of the world has been in turmoil for centuries. While we certainly don't help any, most of what we do over there is sell weapons and manipulate players to keep the wars going on a grand enough scale to make it worthwhile to buy bigger/better weapons. Just during my lifetime I've seen us either build or prop up regimes that a decade or slightly less down the l
Re:Absolutely not true (Score:4, Informative)
That part of the world has been in turmoil for centuries.
No, really it's only been in turmoil since the post colonial period or in other words, post WW2. The Middle East was as stable as anywhere else in the world prior to that and before Europeans conquered them it was in many ways more stable than Europe.
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It's like if you decide to spend a dollar on a lottery ticket. The dollar is chump change, you won't miss it, and also you won't win. But maybe you will.
It was worth a shot (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure there will be loads of comments about how this was a stupid idea and never should have had a drop of money given to it, and yeah maybe that's all true. But you know what? I'm still glad they gave it a shot. There are too many businesses out there doing uninteresting things, content to exploit the same old weaknesses in our pocketbooks, not doing much to make the world a better place. Foolish maybe, but I'm looking forward to the next moon shot, whatever that turns out to be.
Re: It was worth a shot (Score:3)
Big-balled guys need to keep trying exciting stuff - humanity demands it - and there is nothing wrong with trying and failing and trying again.
Good luck to them all.
Re: It was worth a shot (Score:3)
Except you could argue the same about people trying to make a perpetual motion machine. The laws of physics dont change just be cause you've learnt some motivational buzzwords and have been given a ton if money by idiots. Anyone with even basic engineering could have told them that running vehicles at hugh speed in near vacuum at sea level would be a horrendously complicated and near impossible challenge. And so it proved.
Re: It was worth a shot (Score:2)
If they're so brilliant, why aren't they billionaire stock-shorters?
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And plenty of people told Musk the same. If they're so brilliant, why aren't they billionaire stock-shorters?
I hope you realize that Musk's underground loop is Tesla cars driving around 35 miles per hour down a single lane tunnel between two stations in Las Vegas. Probably produced because investors wondered where the money went.
I guess it was cutting edge in the early 1800's. We have a lot of train tunnels in my area built in the 1800's. But there are cool lights in Elons invention, so they have that going for them.
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Because that’s not how shorting stocks works and you dont have to be brilliant to recognize that something is going to fail.
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And that IS how shorting works. Duh.
Re: It was worth a shot (Score:3)
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Also, didn't India just go to the moon?
Has SpaceX left LEO yet? I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be on Mars 5+ years ago at this point.
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Yes, that's good!
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Musk started X which merged with another company to form PayPal. At best, he was one of many who made PayPal happen.
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Musk had one good idea with PayPal, he got lucky with investment timing in Tesla while the rest of his ideas are just money pits.
Musk is not responsible for PayPal. Thiel is. Thiel bought out a Musk on-line banking venture, briefly installed him as CEO of the company that Thiel had founded, and renamed PayPal, and very shortly after fired Musk from the position as it was a disaster. Musk had been compensated in PayPal stock when his banking venture was bought out, and so Thiel made Musk a billionaire.
Musk's contribution to the creation of PayPal was zero.
Just like his contribution of the creation of Tesla. Although Musk got himself a
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Except you could argue the same about people trying to make a perpetual motion machine. The laws of physics dont change just be cause you've learnt some motivational buzzwords and have been given a ton if money by idiots. Anyone with even basic engineering could have told them that running vehicles at hugh speed in near vacuum at sea level would be a horrendously complicated and near impossible challenge. And so it proved.
It's so strange, the faith based physics element. I'm pretty certain that many of them believe that perpetual motion is possible, it's just something suppressed by the auto industry or the Illuminati.
A little familiarity with things like vacuum pumps and how they work, and how long it takes to pull much of a vacuum in small chambers and how to scale that up to a nationwide system without flaws, and what happens to the people inside if something fails - and they are either subjected a a fair bit of vacu
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Well said. Big-balled guys need to keep trying exciting stuff - humanity demands it - and there is nothing wrong with trying and failing and trying again. Good luck to them all.
People said the same thing about Theranos and it's convicted felon leader Elizabeth Holmes.
And if I said - her plan isn't going to work, I get told I lack vision, and how is progress going to happen if people like me are in charge.
Progress is awesome, but faith based physics isn't all that sound.
Re:It was worth a shot (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a stupid idea on its face as any engineer could tell you. First, the cost. Musk claimed (lied) that Hyperloop would be cheaper than conventional high-speed rail. A huge part of the cost is land acquisition for and preparing the right-of-way. That cost would be the same no matter the technology. Now for conventional rail, you just have to install rail and an overhead wire an you're done. For Hyperloop, you have to build some sort of track anyway and enclose the entire thing in a hundreds-of-miles-long vacuum tube. How can that possibly be cheaper?
Then the tech. Conventional high-speed rail is already pretty fast. But even if Hyperloop is faster, all it would take for the entire system to fail is an air leak anywhere along the hundreds of miles of the tube. Good luck with that.
For more detail, see here [youtube.com].
You don't just go out and try something because it's new (and vacuum tube trains, which is all the Hyperloop is, aren't even new, by the way). Before trying anything, you need to give it more than five seconds of thought to see if it's actually feasible and cheaper.
Re: It was worth a shot (Score:3)
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So hatred for a billionaire meddling in state trans
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The idea was proposed by Goddard a century earlier - Musk promoted it with a name.
Despite the luddite hoardes here, China is building them currently (test tracks).
Some whacko on YouTube with a glass tube apparently didn't dissuade China.
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There's also the capacity issues. Even if it's constructed and working perfectly, the capacity is still much less than a conventional train would be and it's not a system where you could install higher capacity cars
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A huge part of the cost is land acquisition for and preparing the right-of-way. That cost would be the same no matter the technology. Now for conventional rail, you just have to install rail and an overhead wire an you're done. For Hyperloop, you have to build some sort of track anyway and enclose the entire thing in a hundreds-of-miles-long vacuum tube. How can that possibly be cheaper?
Cheaper installation no. But the energy operating costs are probably lower, you don't need to worry about folks wandering across the track, and the speed and convenience cost can grow the user base to help make up the installation costs.
Then the tech. Conventional high-speed rail is already pretty fast. But even if Hyperloop is faster, all it would take for the entire system to fail is an air leak anywhere along the hundreds of miles of the tube. Good luck with that.
I'm not sure that's nearly as tough a problem as you think.
For one, we're already solved an arguably tougher problem. North America is covered with Natural Gas pipelines, which are both airtight and pressurized. And we have a lot of experience with airplanes that run through
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"Hyperloop would be cheaper than conventional high-speed rail"
He also said the Tesla Semi would be cheaper than rail in 2017 with production starting in 2019. Now its a week from 2024 (5-7 years later) and the only thing Tesla Semis are delivering are potato chips; and beyond a few test vehicles, it has yet to go into production. And any real specs around the test vehicles has been shrouded in secrecy.
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I'm sure there will be loads of comments about how this was a stupid idea and never should have had a drop of money given to it, and yeah maybe that's all true. But you know what? I'm still glad they gave it a shot. There are too many businesses out there doing uninteresting things, content to exploit the same old weaknesses in our pocketbooks, not doing much to make the world a better place. Foolish maybe, but I'm looking forward to the next moon shot, whatever that turns out to be.
The problem is one of physics, one proposed in the late 1700's. It was first built in 1844 as a pneumatic tube transport, and some others have built them as well. But for some reason, they all shut down. Hyperloop one managed to send one of it's revolutionary cars down it's tube at a death defying 70 miles per hour.
And Musk's effort has Tesla's running single file down his revolutionary tunnel under Las Vegas.
So while it is a great way to get money from people who are prone to grift, imagine if you wi
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It was a huge waste of time and money and was most definitely not "worth a shot," except maybe as a tax writeoff for a billionaire.
Re:It was worth a shot (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is, making the world a better place rarely requires things that are as exciting as a race to a dead space rock.
Humanity benefited from the technology that came from the Apollo program.
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/20... [npr.org]
Space, and military tech often trickles down to consumers. Ever heard of the Internet?
The so-called "Green New Deal" would've done a lot of world bettering, but it was met by our leaders with a collective shrug. Cleaning up your mess is just not as much fun as playing with rockets.
No.
https://www.americanactionforu... [americanactionforum.org]
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Humanity benefited from the technology that came from the Apollo program. ... Space, and military tech often trickles down to consumers.
Thing is, nothing about developing any of that technology required going to a dead space rock or having humans kill each other. As a society, we certainly could do technological research for its own merits, but we often don't without the motivation of some arbitrary goal or an enemy to fight.
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but we often don't without the motivation of some arbitrary goal or an enemy to fight
Whatever works. You can't argue with the results.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-h... [ourworldindata.org]
Feels a little off to call landing an atomic dunebuggy on another planet and driving it around for years performing science studies as an "arbitrary goal".
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Feels a little off to call landing an atomic dunebuggy on another planet and driving it around for years performing science studies as an "arbitrary goal".
Landing a remote-controlled vehicle on another planet is scientific research.
The "moon shot", however, was a political show of strength, determination and technology against Russia. And look where it got us...
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Landing people on the moon in 1969 was the most astounding show of technological achievement to that date, and probably in the history of mankind. It remains today more impressive than any of the more recent Mars missions.
The "moon shot", however, was a political show of strength, determination and technology against Russia. And look where it got us...
Out of the cold war?
A huge input to the economy from all the new jobs and industries?
Many technology offshoots that benefit society?
Indisputably the top space program in the world?
I don't you tell me. Where do you think it got us. I assume you're hinting that we're in some awful state beca
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Even after being shown America's massive dick, Russia continued being Russia.
And despite all the amazing technological progress of the 1960s, here we are at the end of 2023 still trying to solve the basic problems of moving humans from point A to point B on this planet without releasing a bunch of CO2 in the process. Perhaps solving that would've been more useful than putting humans on a dead space rock, but we'll never know.
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It got us into the lead in science and tech. And these days, we're falling behind.
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Sorry. Nothing in that article had a serious impact on the lives of most people.
Don't get me wrong, some of those things are nice to have. But almost nothing in that list is more than luxury.
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I don't think it was the goal of those programs to inspire a bunch of government busywork more so than it was a very public way to rattle our nuclear saber at our adversaries. If we could build rockets to put men on the moon, it would be trivial to build rockets for use as ICBMs or as launch vehicles for spy satellites. The space programs of the Soviet Union and the United States always struck me as having more sinister undertones along those lines, irrespective of the veneer of patriotism and humanity disp
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And you vastly underestimate the level of paranoia that existed in the United States regarding Russia and communism in general after the close of the Second World War. The Red Scare [wikipedia.org], also known as the Red Menace, was a very real thing. Mutually Assured Destruction [wikipedia.org] was (and probably still is) a thing. People dug bomb shelters in their back yards, convinced that a nuclear strike from Russia could happen at any moment. A junior senator from Wisconsin [wikipedia.org] became a very famous "ism" for his very public witch hunts t
It was always a scam (Score:2)
A scam, and perhaps even a grift. A YouTuber named Thunderf00t has been debunking the Elon myth for years and has a number of videos about the Hyperloop, among other Musk topics. Just search YouTube for 'thunderf00t hyperloop' to find them.
Here's an early one that questions the fundamental concept of Hyperloop using a vacuum pump, a glass tube, and a steel ball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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As well as Adam Something [youtube.com]. (That's the primary video; there is a follow-up.) He also debunks lots of other stupid transportation and construction projects.
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Well, if the muskrat makes it so easy to be right about him being a dolt, don't question why people go for the low hanging fruit.
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The Bernie Bros should have been the Sanders Sons.
PS Hillary totally had Seth Rich killed. No, silly - not that Hillary!
Re: It was always a scam (Score:2, Insightful)
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But Musk was the one that popularized the idea and got Branson interested, so that's what the videos were debunking. The technology hasn't really changed since then
Re: It was always a scam (Score:2)
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That man is borderline mentally ill at everything Musk.
1) He's done more real science than you've read about. Actual, PhD-level work.
2) He may not be your cup of tea but he usually knows exactly what he's talking about, like him or not.
3) He correctly predicted that the hyperloop would amount to nothing. His prediction was based on quite a bit of science and analysis, and he was spot-on.
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Musk has done science??? This is news, indeed. His companies are all engineering firms that build on well established technologies first developed by NASA (SpaceX) and Tesla pre-Musk. Given the time he spends in boardroom meetings, tweeting and fathering illegitimate children with some pretty crazy women, there is no way he has time to learn heat flow, let alone model it usefully.
Elon! You crazy guy, posing as "JustAnotehrOldGuy". You're not old. Just apesh
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I think you misread what I wrote, or I may not have been clear.
Thunderf00t is an actual scientist who's done real research. Like him or hate him, he usually knows what he's talking about.
Elon Musk is a rich dickhead who rides to fame on other people's successes. Like him or hate him, he almost never knows what he's talking about.
Re: It was always a scam (Score:2)
The Con Job Finally Ends (Score:2)
Milking people out of their money on a technically unfeasible project. It's money that could have gone to help solve transportation issues with solutions that can actually be implemented.
Definitely the first red flag was that it was something that Elon Musk wouldn't even devote any time or money in by "giving it away" for others to implement.
Everything is sci-fi until it isn't. (Score:2)
Re: Everything is sci-fi until it isn't. (Score:2)
The victorians explored it and rightly binned it.
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The concept was rooted well enough in real concepts to be a worthwhile exploration. And even if it takes a few generations of failed attemtpts, someday may yield a truly disruptive technology.
Disruptive technology from the early 1800's that is used today in drive through banking.
Yes, it would be disruptive in building a perfect system that holds a steady vacuum across many cities and entire countries, that never fails.
Because it's really that big a problem - perfection is needed. When the vacuum is lost at any point, the system halts. Otherwise it either cooks the passengers, or subjects them to a really quick halt.
But there is a world of difference between a system in a bank building th
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Re: Everything is sci-fi until it isn't. (Score:2)
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Not saying I'm against it,
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Obvious bad idea is obvious (Score:2)
Obvious bad idea is obvious.
In other news, The Boring Company soldiers on towards the same fate.
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Well, I always said, if it was a more interesting company it could maybe avoid that fate.
Thunderf00t video coming... (Score:2)
I can't wait for the Thunderf00t video on this. He loves to debunk things like this and especially when Musk grossly overpromises or claims to have invented 100 year old tech.
It makes you wonder if the Boring Company is next?
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IIRC he already did one a long, long time ago when that thing was started.
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And NOTHING of value was lost (Score:3)
I repeat: And NOTHING of value was lost. It was always a scam/sham/flimflam.
Gee, who could possibly have seen this coming, except for all the people who called bullshit on it from the get-go.
Pity, I thought maybe cargo had potential (Score:2)
I was kind of hoping somebody would have a run at it, not for passengers but for small cargo items--not full blown freight, that's crazy. Now, I was thinking of perhaps 35cm (roughly one foot) or even 155mm (without the warhead). You can fit a lot of interesting things through a pipe of that diameter--*legal* drugs, electronic components, hard-copy documents, etc.
The real trouble is that you can't run it along existing rights-of-way. Even if you're sending cargo that doesn't mind the crazy G-forces, you
It was still up? (Score:2)
Did the last one playing with it forget to turn it off?
Neuralink next (Score:2)
Musk is a scam artist. Hyperloop is his worst scam. The others will wither in the marketplace. X is on a very rapid crash and burn path, and Musk is stupid to thi
Inevitable (Score:2)
This is how all scams end. This is how all of those much-hyped "unicorns" are going to end. Grubhub, Uber, Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are all going to end this way as well.
Re: clear as mud (Score:3)
Given what's happened to tesla recently with recalls and a dump of emails showing tesla were aware of safety critical suspension faults plus the competition having now caught up technically, I wouldn't be surprised if its make or break for Tesla in 2024.
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Re:It does not solve land problem (Score:4, Informative)
>America has no appetite to lay tracks for a regular fast passenger trains
There, fixed that for you.
We are all remote nowadays as well (Score:2)