"Journalists" confuse Musk's hyperloop snake oil with rapid transit snake oil

Mr Salk said:
He dreamt sold and delivered a Tesla into orbit.
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He also dreamt, sold and delivered reusable launch boosters to bring down the cost of launching things into space, despite being told this was unachievable.


Hyperloop is workable technology. It has been used before but never engineered to this level.
 
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Mr Salk said:
He dreamt sold and delivered a Tesla into orbit.
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Tesla is a money pit that cultists pay good money to get put on a waiting list instead of getting a drive-away car. The rocket shot was a PR stunt that quickly malfunctioned.

Falcon rocket is not and can NEVER be made economically or technologically viable.

Hyperloop and Hyperpod (fancy and LEAST efficient form of a subway) are both boondoggles that will never see commercial success.
 
smartcooky said:
He also dreamt, sold and delivered reusable launch boosters to bring down the cost of launching things into space, despite being told this was unachievable.


Hyperloop is workable technology. It has been used before but never engineered to this level.
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Watch T-foots' videos exposing the impossiblity of Hyperloop. Vaccuum trains have been studied for 100 years and cannot work.
 
Funny seeing talk of other people being "cultists" from someone so mired in their fanatic beliefs that they can't even acknowledge a company making several hundred million in quarterly profit, or a launch vehicle's demonstrated economical advantages and technological capabilities, simply because someone they don't like was involved.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Watch T-foots' videos exposing the impossiblity of Hyperloop. Vaccuum trains have been studied for 100 years and cannot work.
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Musk loves a challenge. Who cares if eccentric billionaires want to flush their fortunes on speculative tech? Beats taxation.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Tesla is a money pit that cultists pay good money to get put on a waiting list instead of getting a drive-away car. The rocket shot was a PR stunt that quickly malfunctioned.
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Apart from the centre core crash, what was the malfunction

ChristianProgressive said:
Falcon rocket is not and can NEVER be made economically or technologically viable.
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A bold prediction considering it is already both.
 
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:slp:
 
smartcooky said:
Hyperloop is workable technology. It has been used before but never engineered to this level.
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I doubt that it's workable in any way, shape or form. First off you have to create a near-vacuum in miles upon miles of tubing, which would be very vulnerable to expansion due to heat differences, vandalism, terrorism or just corrosion. Second, even a tenuous gas would get compressed by the train and increase resistance. Any failure of the system would almost certainly kill everyone in that part of the network. And how do you get trains from a vacuum environment to a breathable one? Airlocks?

The whole thing is a mess of technical near-impossibilities, delays and dream-selling.

Tesla works. SpaceX seems pretty good. But the hyperloop is just bunk.
 
smartcooky said:
He also dreamt, sold and delivered reusable launch boosters to bring down the cost of launching things into space, despite being told this was unachievable.


Hyperloop is workable technology. It has been used before but never engineered to this level.
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Where has anything like hyperloop been put to use as workable technology for transporting anything but paper work?

It has been proposed many times and generally been rejected.

Tesla works but hasn't been proven to be a sustainable business yet. If he can get an actually affordable model out, it will.
SpaceX is in a very similar position. Its not even as ground breaking as Tesla, it just remains to be seen if it is sustainable.
The boring company, totally oversold, he saying he could build tunnels at a tenth the price of current technology? I will believe it when I see it. He has dug a tunnel but do we know how much it actually costs?
The hyperloop is a pipe dream, or a dream pipe if you will.
 
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Belz... said:
I doubt that it's workable in any way, shape or form. First off you have to create a near-vacuum in miles upon miles of tubing, which would be very vulnerable to expansion due to heat differences, vandalism, terrorism or just corrosion. Second, even a tenuous gas would get compressed by the train and increase resistance. Any failure of the system would almost certainly kill everyone in that part of the network. And how do you get trains from a vacuum environment to a breathable one? Airlocks?

The whole thing is a mess of technical near-impossibilities, delays and dream-selling.

Tesla works. SpaceX seems pretty good. But the hyperloop is just bunk.
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Not all proposals for vacuum transport involve creating miles of vacuum tube all pumped down at once. I have seen at least one that involved creating a pressure differential by pumping air from in front of the capsule to behind the capsule at a very high rate to create a localised pressure gradient that will drag the capsule along.

Even if they can't get any of this to work, there is a still a lot to be learned from trying; even if you try and fail, it doesn't mean that you
didn't learn something, and the adage that you often learn more from failure than success is a valid one.

"I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have
succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have
eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will
work."
-Thomas Edison
 
Belz... said:
Why do some people hate him, and why do some people drink every single one of his words?
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Hating someone who is smarter and more successful than you is a perfectly understandable defense mechanism.

But people who 'drink every single one of his words' I have yet to see. Can you give an example?
 
ahhell said:
Where has anything like hyperloop been put to use as workable technology for transporting anything but paper work?
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https://www.telecomtubesystems.com/en/ilp/pneumatic-tube-system-industrial-buildings.html

"A pneumatic tube system can play an important part in the continuity of your production process. Since the early 1960s Telecom pneumatic tube systems are integrated in various manufacturing environments, e.g. chemicals, plastics, steel, food & beverage, automotive, pharmaceutical etc. Not only for sending documents, but mainly for sending products samples such as (hot) steel and granulate to the testing or laboratory facility. Therefore Telecom developed special steel and aluminium pneumatic tube systems for these applications.

Our pneumatic tube systems are used for fast, reliable and efficient transport of a broad range of items in numerous organizations around the world."​

ahhell said:
It has been "proposed many times and generally been rejected.
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Sending men to the moon was proposed many times, and rejected as pie in the sky... until NASA did it in the 1960's.

Returning, soft-landing and reusing rocket boosters was proposed, laughed at, and rejected, until SpaceX succeeded in 2015/16, and now does it routinely.

ahhell said:
Tesla works but hasn't been proven to be a sustainable business yet. If he can get an actually affordable model out, it will.
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It would do better if Musk kept his mouth shut long enough, and make his time targets more relaistic.

ahhell said:
SpaceX is in a very similar position. Its not even as ground breaking as Tesla, it just remains to be seen if it is sustainable.
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There is no doubt SpaceX is sustainable. The billion dollar private and government contracts for launches pretty much guarantee that in the medium to long term.

ahhell said:
The boring company, totally oversold, he saying he could build tunnels at a tenth the price of current technology? I will believe it when I see it. He has dug a tunnel but do we know how much it actually costs?
The hyperloop is a pipe dream, or a dream pipe if you will.
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It probably is, but if you don’t try, you'll never know, and as I stated earlier, you can learn a lot by trying.
 
smartcooky said:
https://www.telecomtubesystems.com/en/ilp/pneumatic-tube-system-industrial-buildings.html

"A pneumatic tube system can play an important part in the continuity of your production process. Since the early 1960s Telecom pneumatic tube systems are integrated in various manufacturing environments, e.g. chemicals, plastics, steel, food & beverage, automotive, pharmaceutical etc. Not only for sending documents, but mainly for sending products samples such as (hot) steel and granulate to the testing or laboratory facility. Therefore Telecom developed special steel and aluminium pneumatic tube systems for these applications.

Our pneumatic tube systems are used for fast, reliable and efficient transport of a broad range of items in numerous organizations around the world."​
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So, paperwork and small samples, that doesn't exactly show that its practical to scale up to people.

SpaceX, sure, he's getting paid a lot to launch rockets but it also costs a lot. It not clear to me if he can actually get stuff in to orbit with a sufficient profit margin to keep his business going. I hope he does, I just don't know if he can.

As for the rest of. I'm basically taking a wait and see attitude but I do believe that until recently, Musk was not being critically appraised in the media nor by investors. There has been an irrational exuberance around him and he has a habit of hyperbole. That's fine but there's a lot of other people's money involved. With Tesla especially there's a huge potential for a crash which will cost a lot of people a lot of money. But then, if he exceeds, he will have revolutionized cars and he has clearly pushed the auto industry in a positive direction.
 
smartcooky said:
Not all proposals for vacuum transport involve creating miles of vacuum tube all pumped down at once. I have seen at least one that involved creating a pressure differential by pumping air from in front of the capsule to behind the capsule at a very high rate to create a localised pressure gradient that will drag the capsule along.
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound particularily feasible, either.

Even if they can't get any of this to work, there is a still a lot to be learned from trying; even if you try and fail, it doesn't mean that you
didn't learn something, and the adage that you often learn more from failure than success is a valid one.
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If you know from the start that it'll fail, trying just looks foolish.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Hating someone who is smarter and more successful than you is a perfectly understandable defense mechanism.
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True. The opposite is just as understandable, but just as stupid.

But people who 'drink every single one of his words' I have yet to see. Can you give an example?
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On this forum, perhaps not. But Musk has a bunch of groupies who just lap everything he says as if it's the new Gospel. Just because he has an idea doesn't mean it's feasible, or even sane, regardless of what he's done before. Again, look at Nikola Tesla.
 
smartcooky said:
Yep, we call that "Tall Poppy Syndrome"
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Sure, but not all criticisms of Elon Musk can be attributed to Tall Poppy syndrome. I used to be less critical of Elon Musk and quite enthusiastic for his projects. Some of them, I still am, such as SpaceX and Tesla cars. But if the hyperloop turns out to be his spruce goose then it ends up taking energy away from his more useful projects. And so too does his penchant for sending out moronic tweets.
 
angrysoba said:
Sure, but not all criticisms of Elon Musk can be attributed to Tall Poppy syndrome
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Nope, but pretty much all of the emotive and dismissive rhetoric used by the OP applies...

"takedown of Musk"

"The rocket shot was a PR stunt"


"cultists pay good money"

The OP is a hater. It wouldn't matter what Musk did, he will still hate. If the unlikely happens, and they get Hyperloop to work... he will still hate Musk, probably even more.
 
Belz... said:
I doubt that it's workable in any way, shape or form. First off you have to create a near-vacuum in miles upon miles of tubing, which would be very vulnerable to expansion due to heat differences, vandalism, terrorism or just corrosion. Second, even a tenuous gas would get compressed by the train and increase resistance. Any failure of the system would almost certainly kill everyone in that part of the network. And how do you get trains from a vacuum environment to a breathable one? Airlocks?

The whole thing is a mess of technical near-impossibilities, delays and dream-selling.

Tesla works. SpaceX seems pretty good. But the hyperloop is just bunk.
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Well, at least the first part of it has been done, but in spite of the miles and miles of tubing, the diameter of the tube is very different, of course: LHC
Personally, I would be more worried about the vehicle losing its precious air (for the passengers) into the vacuum of the tunnel.
I have no idea if it's feasible or not.

Belz... said:
Why do some people hate him, and why do some people drink every single one of his words?

He's much like his car company's namesake; brilliant in his own way but with quite a number of kooky ideas.
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Too much Supergirl?
I also have no idea if Musk's a genius or a fantasist. I didn't much like his Tesla-in-space stunt or his child-rapist accusations if he had no actual reason to think so.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Falcon rocket is not and can NEVER be made economically or technologically viable.
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What are your credentials for making this assessment?

Are you an aerospace engineer? Do you have a strong interest in spaceflight or launch vehicles? Do you even KSP?

Which of the current new wave of launch vehicles has greater profit potential and why?

What pitfalls do you foresee that will render the very nearly mature (Block 5 is fixed, I think) landing and recovery process that SpaceX claim drives down costs less useful than it appears to be?


Could you be specific about why you hold this view? What do you know that I don't?
 
Belz... said:
I doubt that it's workable in any way, shape or form. First off you have to create a near-vacuum in miles upon miles of tubing, which would be very vulnerable to expansion due to heat differences, vandalism, terrorism or just corrosion. Second, even a tenuous gas would get compressed by the train and increase resistance. Any failure of the system would almost certainly kill everyone in that part of the network. And how do you get trains from a vacuum environment to a breathable one? Airlocks? bunk.
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I'm not quite as convinced as you that it won't work, but you raise some extremely relevant issues that will be all but impossible to overcome.

Er, except that last one - you answered that yourself - that's the easiest bit, surely?
 
I think the Hyperloop has a serious image problem - people won't trust being transported by something so seemingly unstable.
Instead of looking as futuristic as possible, Musk should draw on the historical precedent of the Hyperloop, the London Pneumatic Despatch Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pneumatic_Despatch_Company

And for the America Market, I suggest he evokes images of the most iconic fast US transport system: the Pony Express.

In short: Elon, send ponies with message bags in your Hyperloop, and everyone will be happy.
 
3point14 said:
I'm not quite as convinced as you that it won't work, but you raise some extremely relevant issues that will be all but impossible to overcome.
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There's a reason why it has never been done before, even though we have the tech for it. It's just better to use standard bullet trains and planes.

Er, except that last one - you answered that yourself - that's the easiest bit, surely?
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Yeah but it adds quite a bit of complexity to the system, and delays to transit times.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Tesla is a money pit that cultists pay good money to get put on a waiting list instead of getting a drive-away car. The rocket shot was a PR stunt that quickly malfunctioned.
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Evidence it malfunctioned.

Falcon rocket is not and can NEVER be made economically or technologically viable.
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Well the latter is clearly not true, the technology has been demonstrated to work time and again.

Hyperloop and Hyperpod (fancy and LEAST efficient form of a subway) are both boondoggles that will never see commercial success.
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And given your prior 'inaccuracy' why should this opinion carry any weight?
 
Garrison said:
And given your prior 'inaccuracy' why should this opinion carry any weight?
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I think the claim should be looked at on its own merit, not the merit of the person making the claim.

Is the hyperloop feasible or, if it is, is it commercially viable or desirable? Personally I don't think so, for the reasons stated prior.
 
angrysoba said:
Sure, but not all criticisms of Elon Musk can be attributed to Tall Poppy syndrome. I used to be less critical of Elon Musk and quite enthusiastic for his projects. Some of them, I still am, such as SpaceX and Tesla cars. But if the hyperloop turns out to be his spruce goose then it ends up taking energy away from his more useful projects. And so too does his penchant for sending out moronic tweets.
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I used to be more critical of him but I realized my real gripe was the rather irrational and uncritical response he seems get from most quarters.

There is also a small group of haters that say things like, "Falcon Rockets can never be viable." The haters are as irrational as muskophiles.
 
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Given that the Falcon 9 has been launching satellites for a number of years now at much cheaper prices than any of the competition, it seems pretty viable. They could raise the price quite a bit, and still be cheaper than the competition. It's not only a success, its a game changer that has the other launch companies scrambling to play catch-up.

I don't know if the Falcon heavy will be viable, but it worked on the one launch so far, they've got two more scheduled for next year. If Block 5 works anywhere close to as well as hoped and is used for Falcon heavy, the that might be a game changer as well. BFR? Who knows.

Crew Dragon seems to be coming along, staying slightly ahead of the Boeing Starliner. There are suggestions that the Starliner may have more re-usability than Crew Dragon though.

Tesla is still pretty uncertain, in my books. They still seem to be struggling to get Model 3 production up. But they are also building new factories in Europe and China, still growing fast. They have made some slight price cuts to some of the extras on the Model 3, and are producing and selling the mid-price ($45k) version of that car - still not the lowest price ($30k) version. Musk works for Tesla but does not run it anymore (because he should ban himself from Twitter). They appointed a new CEO yesterday. For now, they are viable, it might still be a few years before we really know if Tesla really has staying power.

Musk has stated he spends around 2% to 3% of his time on the Boring Company.

So far as I know, he doesn't own a majority stake in any of those companies. He didn't quite found Tesla, but invested in it early enough to be listed as one of the five founders in Tesla documents.
 
crescent said:
They appointed a new CEO yesterday. For now, they are viable, it might still be a few years before we really know if Tesla really has staying power.
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He's still CEO, he stepped down as chairman. They need to start turning a profit with the core business to be sustainable.
 
In regards to the car manufacturing, there is nothing revolutionary in that, the company is just facing the many issues low volume manufacturers face. Whether they can achieve a long term viable company making cars will simply be a matter of economics. If I had to make a prediction for the long term I'd say it will be bought out by a much larger company for its IP.

In regards to some of the other ventures he's been heavily involved in, well it certainly is rocket science! I'm glad we still have some people who are willing to flush massive amounts of other peoples money down the drain trying to do new stuff. His ideas may be fanciful, he may be wildly optimistic but he certainly isn't a con man.
 
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