back to article I've got a verbal govt contract for Hyperloop, claims His Muskiness

The world's best business self-publicist since Richard Branson reckons he has been given a "verbal contract" to build an unrealistic high-speed tube train system across America. His Muskiness (for it is he) tweeted it yesterday. The announcement was met by a furious fanfare of retweets and likes on the 140-character-nugget …

  1. Snorlax Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Please complete this sentence Elon:

    "A verbal contract isn't worth --- ----- ---- ------ --."

    He reminds me of Lyle Lanley the monorail guy in The Simpsons.

    1. Aladdin Sane

      Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

      It's more a Shelbyville idea.

    2. Uncle Slacky Silver badge

      Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

      Is there a chance the track could bend?

      1. User McUser
        Alert

        Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

        But Main Street's still all cracked and broken!

        Seriously though - America has a large infrastructure problem that will eventually doom us if we don't start doing something about it soon. We need to fix the existing roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and train tracks before we invest in what's basically an oversized pneumatic tube system for people. (Which is more of a Futurama thing anyways.)

        1. oldcoder

          Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

          Who says only people would be able to use it?

          It would make a dandy cargo transport.

    3. Ian Michael Gumby
      Trollface

      @Snorlax ... Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

      A verbal contract may or may not have value.

      A 'verbal' government contract has no value.

      Maybe he was talking to Gov. Brown of California. Now that's a contract you can use as a spring board to bounce off of.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Flame

        Re: @Snorlax ... Please complete this sentence Elon:

        "Maybe he was talking to Gov. Brown of California. Now that's a contract you can use as a spring board to bounce off of."

        Yeah, when you consider the current "crazy train" nonsense that "2nd time around Brown' is wasting cali-fornicate-you tax dollars on, AND all of the "tax tax tax" legislation being crammed through sacramento at this VERY MOMENT, for no other reason than to make Demo-rats more powerful, and pay off their cronies, etc. etc. and MUSK must be one of those cronies...

        Elon - stop using GUMMINT for a REVENUE SOURCE. It _WILL_ come back to BITE YOU IN THE ASS!!!

        [when illegal alien (and other) voter fraud STOPS in calii-fornicate-you, I think the Demo-rats may lose their "majority" - I can't understand HOW things got the way they are [really really bad] without THAT as an explanation]

    4. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

      Monorails actually work reall well if you do them properly.

    5. John Savard

      Re: Please complete this sentence Elon:

      ...the paper it's written on.

      Groucho Marx

      I was wondering if someone would remember it, and I see it's in the first post!

      EDIT: It turns out my memory is wrong. The quote is attributed to Samuel Goldwyn, but in fact, he said of a trustworthy colleague that "His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it's written on", which later got garbled into the incorrect quote.

  2. deive

    errrr... if there is a problem on an airplane it is likely everyone on board will die... should we stop all flights too?

    1. Hollerithevo

      Likely to die, but not certainly

      Not all airplane accidents end with 100% death. And with a Sullenberger, not even one. Whereas if the maglev goes blooey, really, so does everyone aboard.

    2. Snorlax Silver badge

      @deive:"errrr... if there is a problem on an airplane it is likely everyone on board will die... should we stop all flights too?"

      The derp is strong in this one...

      Are you one of those people who points at airplanes passing overhead in wonderment and disbelief at mankind's hubris?

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      A bomb or similar problem on a Hyperloop would probably be as devastating to the vehicle as one on a plane, and even more so to the support infrastructure, so I presume the "29 minute" journey will have 2 hours of security theatre and 30 minutes wait in baggage claim added to it? An ordinary high-speed train would probably be faster overall.

      1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge

        I presume the "29 minute" journey will have 2 hours of security theatre and 30 minutes wait in baggage claim added to it?

        Good point. There are quite a few long-ish distance UK journeys that I prefer to make by rail, or even road, rather the supposedly faster air travel option. Once you add in the faff-factors, high-speed travel is quite often not that fast overall

      2. Richard Boyce

        Sadly, I think the security problem will also be the main obstacle preventing the contruction of a space elevator, even when we have materials of sufficient tensile strength.

      3. TonyJ

        "...A bomb or similar problem on a Hyperloop would probably be as devastating to the vehicle as one on a plane, and even more so to the support infrastructure, so I presume the "29 minute" journey will have 2 hours of security theatre and 30 minutes wait in baggage claim added to it? An ordinary high-speed train would probably be faster overall..."

        Hmm you are probably spot on there. Traditionally, bombs in tunnels aren't that effective at causing major damage to the infrastructure - the blast basically passes outwards along the tunnel but with these presumably being closed-in segments that would no longer be true.

    4. John Robson Silver badge

      More importantly I can come up with several failure modes (some of which seem quite likely in the US) which don't result in instant death for someone right next to it, let alone 200 miles away on the same track...

      1. JeffyPoooh
        Pint

        JR shot "...let alone 200 miles away on the same track..."

        Actually, one fairly detailed and seemingly plausible analysis found on an informed and skeptical-thinkers website (video?) indicates that any catastrophic depressurization will lead to a wall of 1 Atmosphere air rushing into the previously-vacuum tube, the shock wave slamming into all vehicles in the same section, leading directly to fatal level of pod-vehicle acceleration. Presumably distance would have little effect, since the shock wave would propagate quite happily along the tube for a very long distance.

        This is just one of a whole laundry list of "challenges".

        Possible solution - they could open valves to release air into the tube to dissipate the shock wave before it propagates that far.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: JR shot "...let alone 200 miles away on the same track..."

          Yes he scenario they described of a devastating 1 atmosphere pressure wave travelling a long way through the tube is far from plausible as the engineering required to counter it is so trivial. If a material pressure gradient occurs in the tube just bleed a bit of air into sections downstream. This will both act as a shock absorber between the cars and slow them down.

          1. Adam 1

            Re: JR shot "...let alone 200 miles away on the same track..."

            > Yes he scenario they described of a devastating 1 atmosphere pressure wave travelling a long way through the tube is far from plausible as the engineering required to counter it is so trivial.

            Trivial? Back of the envelope math. The speed of the air molecules entering a vacuum are in the order of 500m/s. That is about double the cruising speed of a 747. Perhaps if the failure occurred 250km+ away, you would have time to apply the emergency brakes in the pod and safely repressurise the tunnel at a safe rate. If you're close though, you're screwed. If the failure was caused by say a seismic event, you may have to deal with power outages and damaged pumps etc as well. None of which bodes well for a fast but safe repressurisation.

    5. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Boffin

      Not a great way of phrasing it, but I agree. Most of the failure modes can be factored. Maglev loses power/breaks somehow... have wheels on the bottom of the pods which can support the pod (and slow it down) for the required distance - they don't need to support it fully at high speed (aerodynamic lift) and if the wheels are unserviceable afterwards, who cares?

      Depressurisation of the tube? Well, it'll slow down the pod, but the aerodynamics will be more effective so not necessarily much more vertical loading. The pods will be able to move at low speed anyway, otherwise how will they cope in the stations?

      Cracks in the track? It can float over them (better than conventional trains!)

      et cetera, et cetera.

      1. Adam 1

        > Depressurisation of the tube? Well, it'll slow down the pod,

        You may want to check your math there. Unless you mean it will slow down the pod in the same way that coming into contact with a mountain will slow down a plane.

        That is really the engineering deal breaker for this technology safely conveying passengers. Using tunnels is clever because it solves three other challenges.

        1. The need for a direct route with only the gentlest imaginable corners. I've also include hills as part of this issue.

        2. The need to deal with thermal expansion whilst maintaining air tight seals.

        3. Having to deal with drunk idiots taking pot shots at the tube out the back of Nowheresville. I also include genuine accidents which could compromise part of the track or its supporting pillars.

        At least underground, it is less likely to have to go around things (1), will remain at a predictable temperature (2), and is unlikely to be in close proximity to (3). What isn't solved is seismic activity. Now before anyone jumps in and points out something about the proposed route being away from the plate boundaries, you wouldn't need a large event to break the air seal or the track alignment. Elon is the best person in the world to perfect this* but what is needed here is a demonstration of solutions to the things we know to be current deal breakers.

        *having a volcano lair clearly endows a level of expertise in the subject.

  3. jonha

    "to build an unrealistic high-speed tube train system across America"

    Unrealistic? If all inventors, researchers, scientists had that outlook we'd still be in the caves.

    (I don't say that HL is realistic. I just think that we need to invest a lot more time and brainpower to find out. Who would've thought when the first transistor was cobbled together what would come out of that? Not to talk about laser or indeed the ARPAnet...)

    1. Oh Matron!

      Unusually, I'd prefer that we didn't sit and talk about it for twentyteen years (I'm looking at you, UK.Gov), and just let him build it. Sometimes you have to eat a pot noodle in order to realise just how merde it is.

      1. John Riddoch

        I've said it before - a lot of Elon Musk's ideas are pie in the sky, but if we don't aim for that, we'll keep making small incremental steps. Something from his ideas will work in a real word setting and may revolutionise part of our lives or our planet and that has to be a good thing.

      2. wayne 8

        Musk thrives on Welfare

        Musk wants to suck on the Public teat to finance his ideas.

        It would be fine if he were to privately finance his train.

        Everything he is doing is heavily subsidized by Public funds.

      3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        While I agree with your sentiement

        the issues that something like this will have in the USA are on a totally different scale to say, the sort of problems that HS2 has had.

        Each state will more than likely impose its own standards on H-L.

        Each state will need huge [cough-cough] backhanders before any bills allowing this to proceed even get a hearing

        Then there are the hundreds of thousands of NIMBY's that will file suit if anything new comews within 5 miles of their home. Just go and read up on the noise levels that Vermot is imposing on Wind Power if you don't believe me. -43DbA is almost silent. That will kill off all Wind Power development in VT. Now take that NIH and NIMBY and apply it to a possible route between NYC/DC and LA.

        Back when the railways were being laid across the continent no one cared about the ownership of the land it was passing over. Things are very, very different these days.

        I forsee that unless there is a change in the Constitution the Lawyers will tie any Transcontinental H-L project up in a leagal morass for the next 20-30 years.

        1. JeffyPoooh
          Pint

          SD3 mentioned " -43DbA is almost silent."

          Yes, "-43 DbA" [you meant dBA] would be the quietist thing ever. Impossibly quiet, quite literally.

          But +43 dBA is merely fairly quiet.

          1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

            Re: SD3 mentioned " -43DbA is almost silent."

            Sorry, a typo. +43DbA

            One pro-Wind campaigner did a test at a public meeting. The Sound of the Aircon in an otherwise silent room exceeded the new limits for Wind Turbines in VT. Political Stupidity at its best.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. aeonturnip

      I think the main reason people are calling BS on the Hyperloop is that there are a lot of technical hurdles to overcome which they haven't really shown their workings for yet.

      It's very easy to sound like a Victorian train-skeptic about this, but I'm not convinced that they've figured out solutions to the problem of rapid repressurisation (huge scale evacuated tubes not being all that easy to maintain), coping with temperate-change induced expansion of the above-ground tube type of HL, and how to safely protect the rather squishy occupants from rapid decceleration in the event of a mechanical problem.

      1. theModge

        rapid repressurisation

        I've been at a rail conference where one of his snake oil sales men discussed this, they have to their credit thought about that. The intent is the long pipes stay depressurised, except for maintenance and the trains will be airlocked in and out. No idea if it'll work, but that's the idea.

        What he wouldn't tell us all is how they'll do switches (points since we're in the UK) and crossings - he kept saying they had "ideas" for junctions. If you want more than just a stop at each end, and no one wants a pipe that doesn't stop near there town, you need to get the stopped trains out the way of the one behind, or run a very infrequent service.

        1. psychonaut

          Re: rapid repressurisation

          points - you run overland from the main terminus. or a road. or a bus

        2. Jim84

          Re: rapid repressurisation

          When Musk was teasing the press about Hyperloop some guy guessed that it was a big loop with maglev and air or some other gas mix like heliox flowing around in a big loop at high speed with the pod moving not that quickly (relatively) through it.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        SpaceX vs Hyperloop.

        Space X was expensive and niche, not impossible. Hyperloop is near impossible. So while some things can be done by pushing the boundaries, other things have hard limits, or hardly practical solutions.

        See for example the changes made to the Space X plans when reality, or lack of desire (no market, or plain old safety concerns and learning curves) mean doing it the old/easy way is often the only choice.

    3. uncommon_sense
      Holmes

      Will We Ever Learn...

      In the beginning, Google was almost universally liked and admired!

      Now, someone of the same type wants to rip america a new one and run train in it...

      Please, learn from history!

    4. The First Dave

      Are you forgetting that IK Brunel already tried this? And if HE couldn't make it work then it isn't possible.

  4. disgruntled yank

    verbal contract

    As far as I know, all contracts are verbal. An oral contract, now, has no legal standing that I have ever heard of.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: verbal contract

      I wouldn't want to give/receive oral to/from any government member

    2. Snorlax Silver badge

      Re: verbal contract

      If you read through his tweet, he's asking his followers to contact their elected representatives to show their support for the idea. This would tend to suggest that he's got nothing concrete from the government...

  5. wolfetone Silver badge

    Suzi Perry, gorgeous woman who presents the motorbikes in the UK and what not, agreed to marry me when I tweeted asking her to marry me. The proviso being that she'd marry me when Wolverhampton Wanderers (her football team) won the Premiership.

    Now, the difference between this and Mr.Musk is that Suzi wrote down her agreement in a tweet. That's a lot more than what he's got, and yet both promises I feel will be broken.

    1. TonyJ

      "...and yet both promises I feel will be broken..."

      To be fair...I suspect it will be your football team that break the promise first. Well, every time.

      Forever.

      :)

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        "To be fair...I suspect it will be your football team that break the promise first. Well, every time."

        I've more sense than to follow Wolves! They're her team, not mine.

  6. Spudley

    "In addition," concluded Oldham, "travelling at those speeds means that any fault in the system would mean everyone on board would die."

    While I share a lot of the scepticism about this latest tweet, I would like to point out that the objection above is exactly the same argument that greeted the early railway pioneers like George Stephenson.

    1. uncommon_sense
      Holmes

      Back then, there were Guessing or God.

      They are still there, but now we also know about Kinetic Energy!

      Quote:

      "Most car accidents happen because the driver fails to stop in time!"

      James May

    2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      "While I share a lot of the scepticism about this latest tweet, I would like to point out that the objection above is exactly the same argument that greeted the early railway pioneers like George Stephenson."

      I would like to point out that

      1. the objections against Stephenson et al were raised by people who knew nothing about high speed travel (19th century style) because there was no high speed travel yet, while the objection you object to was uttered by an actual mechanical engineer living in the 21st century.

      2. Rocket's top speed of 47 km/h vs Hyperloop's (proposed) top speed of some 1125 km/h - do the math regarding the kinetic energy involved. Very little room for screwups in the Hyperloop tube.

      Exactly the same argument?

    3. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Can we stop using the 'They said...' argument?

      We have examples of similar technology to draw comparisons with, something the naysayers of yore did not. There are many and various very real engineering problems with the proposed HyperLoop system, and enthusiasm alone will not surmount them. HL will be incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and it's the latter part that concerns me the most if it does get built, that it will be so expensive it will be abandoned.

  7. Fred Goldstein

    Musk's plan won't happen in the US because, frankly, he'll never get a suitable right of way. Hyperloop will require an even straighter track than high-speed rail. And the fastest passenger train in the US, the Acela, hits its 130 mph (if that) peak speed on only a few short stretches. Mostly it putters along on 19th century tracks just as slowly as everything else. Land between NY and Washington is all very expensive. The 1950s highway boom required the condemnation of a lot of land, which was expensive at 1950s values when much of it was still farmland. Now that has largely, thanks to the highways, become suburban sprawl. (The US has virtually unbroken sprawl all the way from Virginia to Maine, suburbs interrupted by cities.) And eminent domain takings are far far rarer than they used to be, and harder. So laying out a super-straight path is about as likely as building an elevator to orbit. At least that only has to overcome the laws of physics.

    1. SirWired 1

      This. Boring hundreds of miles of tunnels through widely varying geology is not exactly an inexpensive or easy undertaking. (Even if he develops a magical tunnel-boring machine, you still have to truck away all that volume of dirt/rock you are boring through.)

      There's a reason rail systems run on the surface whenever possible; bridges and tunnels are difficult, expensive, and maintenance-intensive.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "bridges and tunnels are difficult, expensive, and maintenance-intensive."

        Tunnels are also a security nightmare - when you have to reach the location of an incident miles away inside a tunnel, and evacuate people (if they're still alive...).

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      "...an even straighter track than high-speed rail."

      FG offered, "...require an even straighter track than high-speed rail."

      Yes, like the wide open spaces and endless flat plains of mid-1960s downtown Japan.

      1. Francis Boyle Silver badge

        Re: "...an even straighter track than high-speed rail."

        That's the advantage of high speed conventional rail. You use tunnels, embankments and (preferably, since they're less disruptive) viaducts in the open countryside and existing track in urban areas.

  8. Arachnoid

    Verbal Contract

    Waits for updates from President Trump though the tweet may end up with some spilt Maglev Covfefe during the ride

  9. fpx
    WTF?

    Wait a second!

    So he claims that The Boring Company is getting a contract to bore a tunnel ... but from who?

    Digging the tunnel would probably be subcontracted from the company building the hyperloop itself. Even the US government would not be stupid enough to build a NY-DC tunnel without somebody to operate the entire system. And none of the contenders are remotely ready for that.

    Never mind boring through the most densely populated parts of the US. There would not be a contract before it's clear where to build it, including the terminals in the city center. NYC Grand Central to DC Union station? Good luck with that!

    Also, who would be stupid enough to give such a major many billions-US$-contract to a company that hasn't built a single meter of tunnel yet!

    1. Blank Reg

      Re: Wait a second!

      I expect boring a 200+ mile tunnel through such a densely populated area would easily cost in excess of $100 billion USD. And it would likely take many years just to complete all the geological and environmental assessments needed before the plan is ready.

      1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

        Re: Wait a second!

        For comparison, the Channel Tunnel cost the equivalent of £12Bn for 23.5 miles of tunnel. Now, that got two tunnels for trains and an access tunnel, but it's a ballpark figure. Well, it's about bang on your estimate, as I presume there would be bi-directional tunnels (or the frequency of the service is going to be limited by the time it takes for a pod to complete it's journey) plus an access tunnel for safety.

    2. fpx
      Facepalm

      Re: Wait a second!

      On second thought, digging a tunnel without any hyperpods to shoot in them is merely like building a spaceport without rockets to fly. So this is not entirely without precedent.

      Trump wanted to spend $1tn on infrastructure. Who would've thought he'd spend it all on a hyperloop link from Trump Tower to the White House to ease his daily commute!

    3. oldcoder

      Re: Wait a second!

      "Even the US government would not be stupid enough to build a NY-DC tunnel without somebody to operate the entire system"

      Certainly they would. Every road system in the US has separate contracts - one for building, another for maintenance, a third for improvements.

      That way each contract gets to underbid... and different companies get to blame the cost overruns on a different company.

  10. Phukov Andigh Bronze badge

    all about that sweet, sweet government money

    talks about solar power and batteries across the country, because he hopes to be the sole provider of both. Talks of hyperloop whenever stock prices of either Solar City or Tesla are suffering. More of the same from the same

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Two tosses

    I don't suppose Mr Musk gives two tosses about the opinions of the many armchair engineers. He's a very rich man with some outlandish ideas, some/all of which may be doomed to fail. I for one would welcome both successes and failures because at least they are interesting.

    1. Snorlax Silver badge

      Re: Two tosses

      @Anonymous Coward:"I for one would welcome both successes and failures because at least they are interesting"

      Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I don't give a damn how many times he fails or succeeds as long as he doesn't expect to taxpayers to fund his exploits. The must be venture capitalists out there with money to burn on this kind of thing...

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      Re: Two tosses

      He is a very rich man but he still needs an awful lot of funding to even get one mile of operational H-L working. He can't fund it himself and it would not surprise me to find that there is very little of his money in the 'Boring company' and Hyperloop. He's put lots into Tesla and Space-X and so far he has not had any of it back. The Model 3 may in time allow him to get his Tesla investment back.

      Until then he has to play the role of the snake-oil salesman.

  12. Rich 11

    Sounds familiar

    a "verbal contract" to build an unrealistic high-speed tube train system across America.

    Did this verbal agreement come from someone who famously talks a lot about building an unrealistic wall across America?

    "Who would pay for it? How long would it take to build? How would it be built?"

    It seems there are also similarities in the questions which go unanswered.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    He's becoming PT Barnum

    All about showmanship and self-promotion. Just shut up and build the damn thing, if you can. No need to make a bald faced lie that you have "verbal approval" for something that will take massive eminent domain takings, years of planning, years of court battles, and years of construction (in the unlikely event he gets that far)

    If it does get built, he'll be an old man by the time the first passengers are able to ride on it. Getting permission to launch your own rocket is child's play compared to what he's contemplating here.

  14. handleoclast
    FAIL

    A disastrous idea

    Even if he could actually build it at all (there's a lot of doubt about that), the slightest problem would destroy most of the tube, the vehicle and the people on board. A sudden tube breach will have some seriously nasty effects because of the release of a lot of energy as the vacuum is lost.

    Could he build it so that it would work for a while, and do so at a cost that makes the whole thing seem feasible (if you pretend none of the failure modes will ever happen)? Probably not. Pump-down is going to be very slow and they don't yet have a feasible design for letting people board the capsule without first re-pressurizing the whole system then pumping it down again (which is not just slow but requires a lot of energy).

    Then there are the failure modes. Thermal expansion is going to cause it to buckle, with disastrous results. Differential thermal expansion (top is warmer than the bottom) is going to cause it to buckle, with disastrous results. Using invar rather than steel might avoid the thermal expansion problems but invar is quite a bit more expensive. Failure of maglev on a capsule going at the speed of a bullet, even if it drops onto wheels, is going to cause the capsule to graze the tube, with disastrous results.

    If the capsule develops a leak, that won't destroy the whole system (At last, a failure mode that doesn't destroy the whole system) but the occupants will not disembark in good condition, or under their own power. But they'll probably be freeze-dried, so they'll be lighter to lift out and cost less to cremate (no water, so they'll burn more easily).

    Oh, and... A car hitting one of the supports (most of his design versions are on pillars, not underground) will have disastrous results. A bullet through the pipe will have disastrous results - no need for a bomb, just somebody with a handgun.

    For more detailed analyses, see any of these Thunderf00t videos. Note: later videos re-use some footage from the earlier ones so that each can stand alone, so if you watch the whole lot you'll see the same points several times. From oldest to newest:

    How the Hyperloop can kill you!

    The Hyperloop: BUSTED!

    Elon Musks Hyperloop: BUSTED!

    Hyperloop crashes and BURNS!!!

    Entire Hyperloop could be destroyed in SECONDS!

    Hyperloop, HyperSPEED, HYPERMADNESS!

    To be fair, there have been several attempts to debunk the Thunderf00t analyses. Most prominently by Shane Killian. However, I long ago found that when Killian talks about anything outside his areas of expertise (whatever they might be, if in fact there are any), he's wrong. You'll have to judge for yourselves.

    Then again, everybody thought Musk was crazy for trying to land the first stage of the Space-X vehicles so he could re-use them. So maybe he's right on this one. However, with Hyperloop, Musk has made the concept public domain for anyone to build. He's not risking any of his own money or any significant amount of his time on it.

    I think this concept was based on a "back of a fag packet" calculation, then announced, then Musk did more detailed calculations and realized how unworkable it was, so made it PD. Your mileage may vary. Particularly if you ride on an imploding Hyperloop.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A disastrous idea

      Who thought he was "crazy" for trying to land and re-use rockets? We already know how to land a rocket, we did it in 1969 with people on board a quarter million miles away. Yes, doing it with a taller rocket that tips more easily means you must be a lot more precise, but hopefully nearly fifty years of technological advance helped Musk along in that.

      Plus, if he's not 100% in getting rockets to land for stage re-use it costs money but doesn't cost lives. That's a bit different from if he's not 100% in mitigating every possible catastrophic failure mode of Hyperloop. I have no idea who is right in what you're referencing above (and haven't watched those videos) but obviously they won't do it without addressing those issues, or believing they have. The problem is the failure modes that weren't considered, like Tepco locating generators above what they believed was the maximum tsunami height at Fukushima.

  15. KBeee

    But it's easy! NY to DC is about 225 miles. For a 30 minute journey, you just need to build pods that can go about 600 mph so speed up/slow down times are taken into account. Rather than waste time and money digging tunnels, just put wings on the Pods and a couple of jet engines...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Given that this will become a terrorist target, the security in the stations will probably be every bit as intense as at airports, so one wonders whether you'd really save time versus just driving to DC. At least I don't need to pass through security to take my car out of the garage!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "just put wings on the Pods and a couple of jet engines..."

      For such routes, high-speed trains are killing things with wings and jet engines - because they are cheaper and more comfortable, especially because they don't need the security of airplanes, and usually arrive right in the centre of a city, not at an airport miles away.

  16. DropBear

    Bah! Humbug! The rats will eat all the seals. Just ask Brunel...

  17. OffBeatMammal

    how deep?

    just wondering how deep he's have to go in the US to avoid needing to get permission... then it's just the stations that would need an okay...

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