[ythl]

> Initially, it will explore the feasibility of building a line linking the two cities.

So now it's one of those "feasibility" projects?

Hyperloop suffers from the same problem as Solar Freakin' Roadways and Artificial Gills, I'm afraid: too much saying, not enough doing. I am instantly suspicious of projects that have lots of hyped up marketing but little to no prototypical substance.

To me, Hyperloop One still seems like a sci-fi pipe dream (pun intended).

[Fricken]

It's not our money funding this company, I don't see the utility in trying to take them down a notch. If they fail, only their investors lose. If they succeed, we all win.

If it's an HN thread about the latest social media startup, the lament is that SV doesn't innovate enough. If it's about a company tackling something hard, out come accusations of 'vapourware', and predictions of their imminent doom.

[hiou]

"If they fail, only their investors lose"

You realize that isn't actually how a capital market based economy works, right? Investors are the "command" part of the economy, responsible for allocating resources. If they decide to only invest in ridiculous, worthless ideas then we all definitely lose. So far that hasn't happened, but never forget that it is very important for us all where investors put their money.

[jessaustin]

Wealth is the only credential required for investing. If some or all of today's investors crash and burn, loads of other wealthy people will find better opportunities with reduced competition from today's foolish investors. (Maybe they aren't investing now because their risk profiles require better opportunities to get the cash out of the mattress.) If one hasn't somehow hitched her wagon to the fools, their poor investments can't hurt one at all.

This "somewhere, someone is losing money!" concern trolling fallacy is one "usefully idiotic" source of our repeated bailout follies, so I'd like never to see it again.

[hiou]

The Dot Com and Real Estate crashes(both fueled by very poor investment choices) didn't hurt anyone? Interesting take.

[jessaustin]

The particular crashes you cite didn't hurt me. We're not all in this together when Jaimie Dimon is enjoying his luxuries. Why would we all be in it together when he makes a dumb investment?

[eloff]

Because when lots of people collectively make dumb decisions, then the whole macroeconomic picture goes bad and people like you and I, otherwise not involved find ourselves out of work because of general layoffs in a down economy.

One bad decision here or there won't make much of a difference, because it doesn't dent the whole, and it likely doesn't affect anyone directly connected to us. But many bad decisions is a whole other ballgame.

[linkregister]

> This "somewhere, someone is losing money!" concern trolling fallacy is one "usefully idiotic" source of our repeated bailout follies, so I'd like never to see it again.

I had trouble parsing this, is there an idiom in here that I'm not familiar with?

Thanks!

[jessaustin]

Maybe more than one such idiom? I probably skipped some commas. Also, I'm a bit of a nut, so most people will disagree with at least part of that sentence. Piece by piece:

"somewhere, someone is losing money": Any functioning market in securities will have winners and losers, so it isn't automatically a problem that someone has lost in any particular situation.

"concern trolling": This is when e.g. I pretend that I'm worried about something bad that might happen to you, but in reality the advice I'm giving is meant to help myself instead. We see this typically when a consultant from one political party claims to be worried about consequences for the other political party.

"fallacy": Something lots of people believe, that isn't true.

"usefully idiotic": A "useful idiot" is someone who believes the bullshit peddled by class enemies to such an extent that she'll repeat that bullshit in all seriousness, to her own detriment.

"bailout follies": We've had lots of economic downturns, but somehow only those overseen by Goldman alumni as Treasury Secretaries have required the taxpayer to give Wall Street lots of money.

[mikeash]

I don't think Hyperloop is going to result in anything particularly useful. It seems to have a lot of fundamental problems. I'm sure it's no coincidence that Elon Musk tossed the idea out with minimal support rather than having one of his companies build it, or founding a new one.

However, it seems a bit premature to say that it's too much saying and not enough doing. It's only been out there for about three years. There have been scale-model pods built, and test tracks are under construction. If anything, progress seems remarkably fast for such a radical machine.

[huffpopo]

Because it is a bad idea it is probably for the best that there is more saying than doing.

[asadjb]

Just curious but why is it a bad idea?

[Someone1234]

Different poster.

The Hyperloop is technically possible. It will struggle for the same reason Maglev struggled: It won't be cost effective to build or maintain within the safety factors people are comfortable with.

You really have to look at the history of Maglev because the parallels are considerable. Maglev undeniably works, but nobody is building Maglev systems aside from a few pet vanity projects because High Speed Rail is "Good Enough" and cheap!

Hyperloop takes all of the cost issues that Maglev had and makes them worse. Even if the tube didn't have a negative pressure (just a tube with atmospheric pressure) it would be a cost nightmare, but you add in the costs of building something which can withstand negative pressures and the whole thing is just a farce.

Maglev, like Hyperloop, initially wanted to build on raised towers. But it largely wasn't because being able to escape during an emergency is kind of a big deal, same reason why the Euro-Tunnel is 2x larger than it needs to be to support escape tunnels.

A project like Hyperloop won't ever be able to win against real life problems like bombings, earthquakes, fires, extreme weather, and so on. Or at least it won't within the normal realms of cost.

[aninhumer]

> nobody is building Maglev systems aside from a few pet vanity projects because High Speed Rail is "Good Enough" and cheap!

Japan is building the Chuo Shinkansen, which will be a major intercity Maglev line. It's expected to connect Tokyo and Nagoya in 40mins, down from 100mins on the Tokaido Shinkansen (although a good chunk of that is due to a more direct route through the mountains), and later Osaka.

I could believe it's not necessarily a cost effective investment, but I don't know if I'd call it a vanity project. My impression is that they're trying to duplicate the success of the original Shinkansen, by building something similarly ahead of its time.

[asadjb]

Given this is the UAE, I'm not sure they care about the costs. :)

For them, this is just another innovation to put the country on the map of the world as an innovative and futuristic place, and that attracts tourism; which is said to be a large part of the economy here.

[knodi123]

In addition to what the other guy said, think about vulnerability to terrorism.

Blow up a support for a segment of tube in the right spot at the right time, and you turn the train into a kinetic kill weapon. (it's traveling 50% faster than a 747!) I'd hate to see that done when it was going through a city.

Blow up a support at any point at the right time, and you've murdered a tube of passengers, plus completely shut down an entire segment of transportation infrastructure for a significant amount of time. Do you know how much it cost the US to shut down all air traffic on 9/11?

Basically, hyperloop is a lot more feasible in a world without homicidal nutjobs - but, alas...

[bronson]

All your points apply to rail as well, yet rail works fine.

(what rail lacks in speed it makes up in tonnage)

Yes, the Madrid 2004 bombing happened, but events like that have been very rare. Do you think they'd be more frequent against a hyperloop?

[asadjb]

I have a different POV on this given I currently live in Dubai, UAE. They have a 74KM automated rail system (Dubai Metro) and most of it is built on raised towers. This proposed system from what I understand is going to cross mostly empty dessert area.

Secondly, UAE is a pretty safe country in terms of terrorism. At least thats the perception you get if you live here. I haven't heard of one terrorism related activity here. That may be because the media is tightly controlled, but word still gets out if something that major were to happen here. This might just be because they have very tightly controlled borders, and are surrounded by friendly states that also have a relatively good security record (Saudi, Oman).

Just my take on these issues. I don't have any hard data, this is just my perception from having spent 3 years in this country.

[Shivetya]

I am not sure even Dubai has enough money to make a hyperloop work. I mean, it sounds so good until you break out the details and examine it piece by piece and then you start to realize exactly what they are proposing