11-05-2013, 08:54 PM
Sure.
I don't think the hyperloop idea is a bad thing, I just don't find it all that exciting. If it becomes feasible (something that I'm still not sure is the case), it will have good uses. Sadly the 1000 mile stretch is actually something that I don't think it will ever be built to do. I'm also not sure it will avoid the 1-2 extra hours that the airports give you now either. A bomb in the tube could be pretty deadly depending on where it goes off, etc. Even the few long haul commuter trains that still operate have suffered from the post 9/11 over paranoia.
I do agree that the US is crippled by lack of choices, I actually this is an area where private industry has failed us. Transportation is infrastructure and I feel that is an area that government should have it's hands, that's how a lot of this stuff got built in Europe where as you point out, it works quite well. Private industry while interested in infrastructure is not always capable of creating or maintaining it.
But my main point is that I'm personally more excited about the privatization of low earth orbit. History has a lot of lessons that show that government backed exploration makes sense and works, and then after that is done, risks are better known and assessed you let private industry do what it does. Ferrying people and cargo to and from low earth orbit, that's a pretty well known area and I'm excited to see that no longer the domain of governments. That should help push government funded science and exploration farther out, send humans to Mars, do more tests with landing on or altering orbits of asteroids. Build that 3 Lagrange point telescope array to provide even more detailed images and data of whatever we want to look at. Get more solar observatories out there, because space weather is becoming more and more important and what we have has already been helpful in saving billions of dollars worth of damage, but we could do better.
So Space-X which is oh so close to being cleared to put humans in their vehicles makes me happy because while it's not anything radical, and it's a slim possibility that they won't even be first, it's opening doors that need to be opened. By extension it will eventually help with the push I just got done rambling about. That door they helped opened has already lead to ventures that should be successful in mining asteroids, which are very likely to make some of the important elements that are hard to get at on earth more available. Without Space-X some of those ventures might be 5 - 20 years away still. Heck they are currently contracted to launch one of the asteroid search and tag probes for the mining operations. Consider that pretty much all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, and tungsten that has ever been mined is from impact deposits, very little has come from surface flow. There are tons of all of that in the Earth, but the Earth was molten for a long time, and most of that stuff is locked up so deep we can't use it.
Getting off this planet in a repeatable fashion will be huge for the species. Zero G manufacturing, increasing available resources, hopefully getting better at harnessing more of the energy the sun is just dumping out every day, etc. Increase energy, and increase resources and lot of other problems become easier to solve. My visions and hopes are decades, perhaps centuries, away but the sooner we get started the sooner we get there.
Tesla is just another electric car company, but again, they started from the ground up and have been successful. They are helping test and push battery technologies, they are working on hydrogen fuel cells (I still think this is the way that smaller faster transit is going to end up going), etc.
Sure maybe it takes an Elon Musk to actually make these ventures work, but I'm with Jester, he isn't Tesla, he's actually closer to a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Those are rare people, but they aren't Einstein or Tesla rare.
So yes the hyperloop can help solve an issue and, again, I hope it does work because there are some tangential benefits to it as well, and unforseen benefits I'm sure too. But I don't think it helps all that much for what I feel will be bigger improvements and changes to the species.
I don't think the hyperloop idea is a bad thing, I just don't find it all that exciting. If it becomes feasible (something that I'm still not sure is the case), it will have good uses. Sadly the 1000 mile stretch is actually something that I don't think it will ever be built to do. I'm also not sure it will avoid the 1-2 extra hours that the airports give you now either. A bomb in the tube could be pretty deadly depending on where it goes off, etc. Even the few long haul commuter trains that still operate have suffered from the post 9/11 over paranoia.
I do agree that the US is crippled by lack of choices, I actually this is an area where private industry has failed us. Transportation is infrastructure and I feel that is an area that government should have it's hands, that's how a lot of this stuff got built in Europe where as you point out, it works quite well. Private industry while interested in infrastructure is not always capable of creating or maintaining it.
But my main point is that I'm personally more excited about the privatization of low earth orbit. History has a lot of lessons that show that government backed exploration makes sense and works, and then after that is done, risks are better known and assessed you let private industry do what it does. Ferrying people and cargo to and from low earth orbit, that's a pretty well known area and I'm excited to see that no longer the domain of governments. That should help push government funded science and exploration farther out, send humans to Mars, do more tests with landing on or altering orbits of asteroids. Build that 3 Lagrange point telescope array to provide even more detailed images and data of whatever we want to look at. Get more solar observatories out there, because space weather is becoming more and more important and what we have has already been helpful in saving billions of dollars worth of damage, but we could do better.
So Space-X which is oh so close to being cleared to put humans in their vehicles makes me happy because while it's not anything radical, and it's a slim possibility that they won't even be first, it's opening doors that need to be opened. By extension it will eventually help with the push I just got done rambling about. That door they helped opened has already lead to ventures that should be successful in mining asteroids, which are very likely to make some of the important elements that are hard to get at on earth more available. Without Space-X some of those ventures might be 5 - 20 years away still. Heck they are currently contracted to launch one of the asteroid search and tag probes for the mining operations. Consider that pretty much all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium, ruthenium, and tungsten that has ever been mined is from impact deposits, very little has come from surface flow. There are tons of all of that in the Earth, but the Earth was molten for a long time, and most of that stuff is locked up so deep we can't use it.
Getting off this planet in a repeatable fashion will be huge for the species. Zero G manufacturing, increasing available resources, hopefully getting better at harnessing more of the energy the sun is just dumping out every day, etc. Increase energy, and increase resources and lot of other problems become easier to solve. My visions and hopes are decades, perhaps centuries, away but the sooner we get started the sooner we get there.
Tesla is just another electric car company, but again, they started from the ground up and have been successful. They are helping test and push battery technologies, they are working on hydrogen fuel cells (I still think this is the way that smaller faster transit is going to end up going), etc.
Sure maybe it takes an Elon Musk to actually make these ventures work, but I'm with Jester, he isn't Tesla, he's actually closer to a Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Those are rare people, but they aren't Einstein or Tesla rare.
So yes the hyperloop can help solve an issue and, again, I hope it does work because there are some tangential benefits to it as well, and unforseen benefits I'm sure too. But I don't think it helps all that much for what I feel will be bigger improvements and changes to the species.
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It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.
It's all just zeroes and ones and duct tape in the end.