Yes please!
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Elon Musk is building a five-mile Hyperloop test track
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Yes please!
jamesinclair
Banned
Actually, what he's done so far is part of the problem.
With Tesla, he took 100 year of car technology and is making improvements. Fantastic improvements, but he's building on a very deep foundation.
With SpaceX he took 50 years of space technology is making improvements. Fantastic improvements, but he's building on a very deep foundation. He also hasn't quite succeeded. Last I check, his rocket crash landed and exploded last week and someone died a couple of months ago.
With Hyperloop, there's no foundation. He's claiming he can create a new technology from scratch, perfect it, and then build it in under ten years. Even worse, he has no actual experience with transportation planning. With Tesla, he builds cars, not highways. He might be a genius when it comes to engineering, but that doesn't mean he knows anything about real estate or public transit.
I have no problem with him developing Hyperloop TECHNOLOGY. My problem is his ridiculous claims about hyperloop IMPLEMENTATION.
whatever77
Banned
I don't understand this technology. So its just a smaller/lower version of the current high speed rail in tubes? There is no space to pack any travel luggage.
Whats the point? It's like a vanity project to live up to his reputation?
Whats the point? It's like a vanity project to live up to his reputation?
What is the problem with what he's done with Tesla? Unless you're waiting on a Tesla car currently, I don't see what the problem is. Pretty sure if they could currently build them faster they would.
With Space X, what you bring up last week is regarding him attempting to recover a rocket coming from resupplying the ISS and land on a moving ship. This is being done so that rockets can be re-used and refueld quickly in the future. They did actually make it to the 300x100 ship, the hydraulic fluid ran out so the fins basically lost control at the last second. They'll get that sorted quickly.
The timetable for implementation, sure. I think he's thinking strictly in terms of building the thing, not in terms of negotiating right of way, though from what I remember from reading through the papers, his plan was to use existing right of way owned by the government. Wasn't it in the median or on the side?
whatever77
Banned
Your link brought me to the t-shirt section of Discovery Store.
What? His rocket did not "crash and explode". The mission last week was successful.
In addition to the mission, they attempted an experimental relanding of the first stage which has never been done in the history of spaceflight. They said it has 50% of success and indeed it failed (not catastrophically-- it still hit the mark) and they will try again at the end of this month.
That sort of thing could start a revolution in rocketry, if most rocket parts will become reusable you can decrease the costs drastically. How is that for "improvement"?
"Someone died" - you're thinking of SpaceShipTwo, a totally unrelated spacecraft from a different company.
It could be great as an additional transport, not something to replace trains, cars or planes.
jamesinclair
Banned
No, you misunderstood. The problem isn't that he does Telsa and SpaceX, it is that he has no proven history of creating something from scratch. That is, saying "look at tesla!" isnt a great point because it's too different.
Creating a brand new form of transportation from scratch is much harder than making incremental improvements.
I love Tesla, I cant wait until there are more of them, but he didnt exactly start making Teslas when the only technology around was the bicycle.
The problem is in 2013 when he proposed it, it was an attempt to derail the California project, because he explicitly said he could have it done by like 2020 for $6 billion. That was 100% bullshit.
Incidentally, just last week the Texas HSR people announced theyre moving forward, so this also seems like a way to derail a legitimate project with hypothetical lies.
The whole reason the rail projects take so long is because of the need for environmental reports and acquiring land. Being Mr Musk doesnt mean he can skip that phase.
And no, there is no ROW available for free.
Well sure, I'm not claiming he invented the automobile, but he started a company from scratch, almost lost everything during that, and has made electric cars that people actually want to own. So far, they're much more advanced than anything else out there. The supercharger network that Tesla is building is doing more to advance the industry than anything I can think of, really.
titiklabingapat
Member
Elon is brilliant but doesn't know a thing about urban planning and mass transit. At the end of the day, he wants to sell cars and you can only fit so much of those in any given space. I'd love to be proven wrong by you, though, Elon if you can successfully create a hyperloop network.
jamesinclair
Banned
See my edit above btw.
The Supercharger network is great, except for one minor detail - it's 100% proprietary and blocks out all competing brand. If he really wanted to grow EVs, he wouldnt have done that. It's anti consumer.
Nissan lets you charge up your competing brand at their dealerships btw.
whatever77
Banned
The cost of road transportation in America is so heavily subsidized it's not possible to make it competitive with bus/car. I can buy a NYC to Boston bus ticket for $22-25 and it comes with tons of leg room and free wifi.
There is just to possible way for a private company to offer fast railway transportation at reasonable competitive price. How much time can you save from the 4 hr bus ride? 2hr at best.
people are scared by men taking their own children to a public park
titiklabingapat
Member
That bus ticket is already subsidized by the even more massive highway spending though. It's the reason why car and bus travel is so cheap compared to trains. Ergo, trains need to be subsidized more.
No one at SpaceX has died due to anything SpaceX does. An employee died ~6 months ago in a car crash, which is hardly the fault of SpaceX. I think you're thinking of SpaceShip2, which has had a death due to in-flight breakup, as well as a multi-death(3) scenario due to an oxidizer experiment.
Also, don't believe everything you read in the media, as they don't know shit. The latest test wasn't a failure like they claim. He's trying to capture and re-use(almost immediately, rather than multi-month retrofits) the launch vehicle/boosters. The media made the latest launch sound like some kind of "OMFG IT BLEW UP WTF ROCKETS ARE DANGEROUS" nypost nonsense, when in-reality they(SpaceX) have been successfully doing this time and time again. The new method was landing on a floating barge and the ONLY issue was minor: they underestimated the total required hydraulic fluids.
People said the same thing about the Model S before it came out and look at what all of the development time game them: the most critically acclaimed car in recent memory, the safest car ever, a stock price jump of $20 a share to $190, and a legion of supporters. He has said that he is a perfectionist and I guarantee you that the same thing is happening with the Model X. People bemoan it being delayed and late and when it hits, it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's like the Valve fans before HL2 was released.
Is Elon Musk overly optimistic (to the point of being misleading) on timing? Absolutely. It is his biggest fault. When it comes to quality and pricing however, he has a goddamn great track record.
Think you're missing the forest for the trees. These are able to recharge a car that travels 200-250 miles on a charge to 80% in 30 minutes. Yes, you can't charge other cars at Tesla stations (yet), but that's a pretty cool thing. One would assume that once there is more of a standard on electric cars that Tesla would start to support other cars, but I think right now they're more worried about themselves.
Though him opening up all of their patents to other manufacturers is a pretty nice thing.
No other EV can use the supercharger network because the cars cannot handle the amps being pumped from the supercharger. The roadster can't use the superchargers because of this. Musk has stated multiple times that he's open to other car manufacturers using the supercharger network if they build cars that are capable of using it. The main reasons it was started was because there was no fast charging network in existence and the fast chargers that did exist were too slow.
"Elon is brilliant but doesn't know a thing about rocketry and rocket production. At the end of the day, he wants to sell online banking and you can only fit so many customers in that market. I'd love to be proven wrong by you, though, Elon if you can successfully create SpaceX." - Anyone with any common sense circa-2002
titiklabingapat
Member
He is indeed brilliant when it comes to cars and space ships, but I am still highly skeptical of his hyperloop idea. Part of me thinks he did it as a sort of FUD to derail California's HSR efforts, as that will ultimately compete with his electric cars down the road.
I'm not talking about the market, I'm talking about the actual space on the roads and streets, and in his hyperloop idea, pod space. The best way to still move a lot of people in any given space are trains and mass transit in general, which Elon doesn't have an inkling of an idea about. Indeed, it actually directly competes with his all electric car future.
Depends on the implementation and route distance, but the supposed top speed is something over 1200 km/h. The average speed for long distance could be well over 400 km/h. Which means, even with some regulations and security check, you should be able to save more than 2 hr from the 4 hr bus ride.
Anyway, I'm more interested in the implementation than the speed. For example, the most impressive aspect of the shinkansen isn't the top speed; it's the fact that you can get a train every 15 or 20 minutes.
titiklabingapat
Member
And can fit 500+ people in one go.
Woops, changed it to the Youtube version
TarpitCarnivore
Member
Technically it's not proprietary since he "open sourced" the patents; he still controls the patents though. The whole idea was kind of brilliant from a business perspective though. He effectively said "Come use my tech so you don't have to spend R&D on it" and at the same time will likely cash in on it through batteries or patent agreements.
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