Elon Musk's grand transportation vision
At the D11 conference, transportation pioneer and Paypal founder Elon Musk briefly discussed a mass transit idea he is actively working on. He calls it the hyperloop.
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Far fetched as it may sound, if anyone can revolutionize transport it is Elon Musk. |
Musk's great great grandchildren will be so honored on opening day.
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The last "earth-shattering revolution" in transportation was the Segway, so forgive my suspicion.
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/2506/homerensegway.png |
Sorry, but this is bullshit. Maybe he knows how to make electric cars; I don't know - his cars don't function well in Northeastern weather. But he doesn't seem to know anything about trains, their power requirements, their weight requirements, etc. "Self-powering if you put solar panels on it" is the key tell that he's bullshitting; a full-length train needs 16-20 MW just to achieve regular HSR speeds, and even the expensive panels used in space, where weight costs more than platinum coating, don't have the efficiency to generate the required amount of power.
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Don't function well in the northeast but they do well in Norway where they are selling out? You know that NYT article was BS right? The NYT report on cold weather was proved to be fabricated http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most...iar-test-drive As for solar panels, I don't think he was talking about on the train but rather the track/tube. 5ft wide X 300 miles long = over 175 acres, a 20 MW solar plant usually takes about 100-200 acres depending on whether you use crystalline or amorphous solar cells. |
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I like the guy a lot. Wish we had more billionaires that had such an interest in advancing civilization. |
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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I think the real problem is the infrastructure. Are you really going to dig a 300 mile long tunnel or god forbid, build any kind of elevated structure whatsoever, in this country?
I once had this idea of the "vac-train" thing using much smaller vehicles that run in something that is more like a pipeline that the chunnel. It would just go in a trench. Even then, if it is going really fast it must be precisely engineered and I imagine they would still have to tunnel through hills and the like. |
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I see. Just because he's rich and has people working on it doesn't mean it's going to work. Bill Gates is rich and has had people working on things and Microsoft has still managed to fall behind Apple and produce abortions like Vista and Windows 8. People in the US have this fetish for listening to entrepreneurs. The idea being that if someone is tagged as an entrepreneur then his ideas are automatically worth listening to. It's frustrating. Madrid builds subways for about one fortieth the cost American cities build them for, and the CEO of Madrid Metro even talks about the way they did procurement to ensure low costs, and it gets ignored in the American media. But someone with zero experience in the subject bloviates about a technology that doesn't exist and doesn't even come close to existing and he's suddenly a great entrepreneur who probably employs people who understand. |
it WILL NOT be vaccum, Musk was clear about it.
most probably, it will be the OPPOSITE. Air will be used to move the cars inside the tubes. therefore, you can move at supersonic speeds with the problems of friction against the air, since the air moves together. |
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Every few years someone comes out with an idea like this. But it never materializes because it simply isn't feasible at this time.
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if there is someone who can create successful and inovative companies, its him. He would have my vote for president of Earth. |
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