Then why has no one made a wooden gun or ATM skimmer?
Hint: it's because you're full of shit.
There used to be guns made out of cheap plastic with wooden parts that were sold in toy stores that used to be able to take real bullets and were deadly to potential targets. They had the side effect of sometimes jamming up, being incredibly unreliable, and sometimes blowing up in the hand of the guy firing the gun (aka something not really recommended except when you are extremely desperate), but it was done.
The point is that a wooden gun has been made that could even use gunpowder if you wanted. The steel is simply to make it more reliable, accurate, and doesn't really cost all that much more.
Ditto for the ATM skimmers, where you could certainly take a pile of sawdust with some resin and make nearly the identical devices these guys are using with the 3D printers. It just takes some brains.
In other words, you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
As if it really took much in the way of even tools to make stuff like they are describing. A trip to Home Depot or Lowe's will get you a pretty wide variety of things including base building materials, buttons, switches, and the ability to simply get kits to build a great many items.... including items that could be used for "illegal purposes" if you had a clue.
Of course you can even buy these tools at these stores together with taking classes on how to use them and books for sale that can teach you most of the techniques needed to make what you want.... assuming you wanted to take the initiative. Watching some YouTube videos wouldn't hurt either, at least for getting some ideas about how to do stuff too.
I read stories like this that try to diss the use of "3D Printers" as if somehow banning the use of those devices is somehow going to stop criminals from engaging in acts like this. What utter nonsense.
How many other stories about ATM skimmers emphasized any of the tools used to make the devices used to make their devices? Why such a strong emphasis on the 3D printing technology? It sounds like a cool buzz word, but means absolutely nothing other than an attempt to make something new sound frightening because the reporters and police officers involved don't have a clue about how the technology works.... therefore it must be some kind of dark magic that must be brought before the Inquisition and those involved banished to Hell (or some equivalent).
While I don't mind seeing stories like this on Slashdot as it does talk about emerging technologies and their impact upon society as a whole, it still turns my stomach to see such awful reporting overemphasizing the manufacturing technology (it was the lead paragraph) instead of describing what people were doing first. Had the technology being used been mentioned much further into the article, I think it would have been much more appropriate.
The scale of things here is something to point out. The LEM was just 18 feet tall, where as the Grasshopper was a full 10 stories tall (a little over 100 feet). That much larger size has many more problems that need to be addressed as not everything scales upward as just simply larger parts on everything. Quite often things that work on a scale model simply won't work on a larger version of the idea.
As far as why this wasn't done in 1969 but can be done today, it is missing that a whole lot of technological progress has happened in the meantime. I agree with you that it has take time to develop things like guidance computers which weigh as much as a mouse along with some significant progress in materials science that has allowed for some of the current generation of rockets to be developed. Simply put, the Grasshopper couldn't have been built much earlier.
First of all, the booster stage is never going to have people on it when that "buffer fuel" is going to be used. If it needs to be used for safety purposes, the booster stage can be thrown away afterward just as it currently is being done right now for rockets like the Falcon 9 (where the 1st stage is being thrown away into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and soon to be Pacific Ocean). You plan on having that buffer for emergencies, but can you do something with it after that contingency is no longer needed?
Also, the reusable Falcon 9 is being designed with a slightly more powerful 2nd stage to compensate for additional mass (from a slightly larger buffer in the 1st stage) that won't be there. It is indeed on the razor's edge here, but I'd say that the guys at SpaceX know what the hell they are doing as they really are rocket scientists that have flown actual objects into space. It is remotely possible that they have knowledge of the rocket equation and can put it to practical use.
That is much of the whole philosophy of Elon Musk's design in total, as he is doing things like using the fuel for the launch escape system as maneuvering thrust when the spacecraft reaches orbit. The LES only needs to be used for the first few minutes of the flight.... so why do most rocket engineers discard that mass and even potential fuel? The same thing applies to the "buffers" when they are no longer needed for the main spacecraft, where those buffers can be turned into fuel to help save a pile of money.
While I love the DC-X, and I thought it should have continued development, the Grasshopper is a bit more impressive as it is a few times larger. It should be pointed out that much of the engineering research that went into the DC-X has been "borrowed" by SpaceX and used on a practical basis.
Then again, it should be a cautionary tale as there were some disasters with the DC-X as well.
The sad thing is that John Carmack has all but shut down Armadillo Aerospace, primarily due to a lack of funds. They had several projects which seemed to be doing pretty well and might have even started to earn some money to sustain the company, but the current recession has pretty much dried up any funds they were going to get from the entrepreneurs involved. It was always a skeleton crew anyway, but there are some signs of collapse as well.
On the other hand, if the American economy picks up again and real economic growth happens in both America and Europe, I would have to agree with you that the "New Space" companies are going to start really turning out some impressive things. I know Robert Bigelow is just waiting in the wings for a few companies to get their act together so he can start flying some space stations... and he has also booked a flight on a Falcon 9 (it is on the SpaceX manifest for 2015) in a couple years as insurance hoping that Elon will succeed as well.
I think this is especially important to note. A friggin 10 story tall structure with sloshing liquids and a very high center of gravity was able to land after moving about a half mile away from its starting point laterally and landed back on nearly the very same spot where it started. This is basically the 1st stage of a future Falcon 9 rocket which is being tested right now.
The only comparable rocket that did something similar was an Atlas 1 rocket which "launched" by going up a half inch then came back down.... with everybody on the launch pad and mission control scrambling like there was no tomorrow and literally praying to God that it wouldn't fall over. More than a few other rockets in similar situations did fall over and blow up (like the N1 rocket in the old USSR that became one of the top largest man-made explosions in human history).
My gosh, what does it take to impress some of these idiots posting on Slashdot today?
Actually, I do think there are some political considerations and non-engineering reasons for the extreme costs as well as comparatively slow speed that the California "high speed rail" system is being developed. Those political considerations in particular are the kind of thing escalating the costs making it unaffordable, just like similar spiraling costs are killing NASA.
I am quite certain that there are some really decent engineers working on that project who could do an excellent job if they were given a chance. Unfortunately the current way that the project is being developed that they will never be given a chance or even be allowed to even know if they could be given the chance.
I also think this crazy idea could become just as big of a government boondoggle as the Las Vegas Monorail. Big on hype even if a "demonstrator" is built with paying passengers. Regardless, I do think that some of the statements by what I must consider to be utter jerks commenting here on/. as well as elsewhere don't deserve anything more than a slap on the face with a trout and told to go away. There are legitimate concerns about this project that can be raised, but raise those objections based upon knowledge.... by at least reading the f'ing paper that describes the project in the first place. Being closed minded that it is impossible for Elon to ever pull this off or that others can't run with the idea and try to build it is also just as stupid as those who may be claiming that Elon is Tony Stark and can turn all into gold.
I'm sure there will be some kind of shipping container that can fit down the tube... either that or the tube will be enlarged to fit standard shipping containers or some sort or another even if it needs to be dismounted from the truck proper.
I'm not going to dismiss that this is a trivial issue, as I think you are correct that it will be one of the major issues to solve, perhaps THE major issue to solve as you are suggesting. By Elon Musk's own calculations there will be a "hot spot" produced by the pods themselves that will be about 500 degrees C (obviously momentary for the tube proper, but it will be a design consideration). The partial vacuum is going to be an interesting challenge as well.
One of the interesting things about the proposal is that it depends on a distributed power generation grid instead of a central power generation authority. I think this is sort of betraying his experience at Solar City where this kind of thinking is presumed, but I think that is almost as revolutionary as the tube itself as he sort of hinted that the tube will end up generating a surplus of electricity that could be sold to power customers along the route. Perhaps he has also been reading a few too many Heinlein novels as I think that was one of the ways that D. Delos Harriman (fictionally) made his billions to pay for the Luna City construction project. At least it wasn't the rolling roads idea that Musk proposed.
While the pneumatic tubes is a fair analogy, that isn't perfect here. In those tubes, the capsule is propelled by high pressure air pushing against the back of the capsule and perhaps "sucked" forward as well with a low pressure partial vacuum. The hyperloop uses a slightly different system where the capsule is accelerated using some sort of launching system, then there is a turbofan on the front of the vehicle (similar to a jet airplane engine and acts on a similar principle) that is used to compress the air in the tunnel and push it past the capsule as well as use that air to act as an air bearing to support the vehicle (like a hovercraft or air hockey table).
There are some practical limits to the pneumatic tube system, which is why it hasn't been used for mass transit. It was thought that the pneumatic tubes could be used for large scale postal delivery, and some buildings in NYC had some extensive networks installed. I've also seen them used in hospitals where pharmacies and various wings of the hospital were linked together to rapidly transport medicine or documents (like x-ray images.... now done via computer networks so that isn't really as big of a deal any more).
As if neither SpaceX nor Tesla engineers have ever needed to worry about thermal expansion nor high acceleration or shock issues in their engineering designs. Just look at what they've built then say that again with a straight face. This particular issue you are complaining about is a solved engineering problem as having large diameter tubes dealing with these issues over distances of hundreds of miles is currently being done in many places, including earthquake prone areas of the world.
Don't get me started on "cold fusion", as you obviously don't have a clue about that technology either... or are you talking about a practical "Mr. Fusion" device using banana peels and left over soda as an energy source?
The problem is that Elon Musk is busy with trying to get a new automobile product line released (he is working on the Model X right now) not to mention rolling out the "version 2.0" of the Falcon 9 rocket. Either one would be a full time job by itself, and here he is doing both? And you think he should be building a high speed transportation system between LA and SF too?
Heck, I don't think Buckaroo Bonsai ever did something that insane.
I'm curious why it must be aluminum. I suppose Elon is very comfortable with building Aluminum structures given his background building rockets, and the Aluminum does help with making the supporting pylons further apart and not so bulky like would be needed for steel tubes, but I still wonder why it is necessary?
Steel tubes would seem to work just as well, although they would need to be thicker and require more materials to get them to work in the same way.
There will be magnetic fields produced by what amounts to be a rail gun like structure used for acceleration of the pods. it won't be used for levitation as you are saying, but it will be used for propulsion. Then again, such propulsion technologies have already been used for moving people in amusement parks, so it is a proven technology so far as moving vehicles is concerned.
Either that or they could use a steam catapult similar to how aircraft carriers launch fighters into the ocean. That would get you the acceleration needed to get to several hundred miles per hour in a relatively short distance.
America has a tendency of doing things like you are suggesting lately. The Demming methods of "Total Quality Management" was based upon a study commissioned by General Motors but was later set aside only to be followed up by Toyota (and copied by the other Japanese manufacturers)... and led to the Japanese dominance of the automobile industry.
I would not doubt that some Sultan or Emir on the Arabian peninsula would want to connect Abu Dhabi with Mecca (and a spur to Riyadh) so they can perform their ritual prayers at the Grand Mosque at least once a day. If anything, Elon ought to ask them to help build the proof of concept first instead of building it on the I-5 corridor, not to mention that the land acquisition costs would likely be trivial in that part of the world too.
There have been a few aerospace part suppliers that Elon Musk simply went to the company and made an offer to buy their company completely, offered them shop space in the El Segundo plant, set them up with newer tools and higher pay, and let them work on the Falcon rockets in other areas of the plant if they were interested. Elon said he didn't want them to start making parts for a competitor and making SpaceX a lower priority, so he was willing to bring them into the company at technically a loss.
The nice thing about his vertical integration of rocket construction is that he can control the quality at every step making sure that suppliers (since they are mostly in-house) don't cut corners pushing for some quota. It also doesn't hurt that his production rate is so freaking high right now where he is turning out a new Merlin engine about every other week (or is that every week now?) on the assembly line and trying to ramp that up to an even higher production rate. I don't know of anybody else in the aerospace industry doing something like that in terms of mass producing rockets. If the folks in Texas destroy a few engines, it really isn't that big of a deal as more are coming off of the production line to take care of any needs for upcoming launches. In short, SpaceX is getting very good at building rocket engines.
Elon Musk has done some preliminary engineering and at least modeled the concepts to come up with some pretty reasonable guesses for the prices. Keep in mind that SpaceX (one of the companies he runs) happens to make aluminum tubes of about the diameter he is proposing with the hyperloop and knows to the penny how much they cost to build and to ensure the quality needed for a project like this. Land acquisition costs are something that numerous studies by the California Department of Transportation alone has done several studies for high speed rail lines, not to mention monorail fans and other groups including AmTrack that have at least studied many of the costs involved with establishing a transportation corridor.
On top of that, his experience with Tesla Motors is more than sufficient to make reasonable guesses in terms of how much each pod is going to cost. Mind you, many of the technologies in the hyperloop were things he was considering as additional lines of business in the future for Tesla (like electric turbofans) and he also knows how to build a passenger vehicle where you can travel in style.
While the costs might be preliminary, I'd bet they are good +/- 50% of the figures he is quoting. He did a pretty good job of coming up with a price on the Falcon 1/5 as well as the Tesla Roadster back when people like you were saying he was a nut case that didn't have a clue what he was doing with those vehicles.
That is the thing about Elon Musk. You might dismiss him as a crackpot spouting off at the mouth, but he has a track record of tacking crazy ideas like this and making them into reality. A whole lot of actual engineering effort has gone into this idea, where some people experienced in mechanical and aerospace engineering (actual rocket scientists I'll add) have contributed to its design specifications. That is how engineering works, where somebody with a bold vision puts out an idea, digs into the details for how it might work, draws up some diagrams, and uses real-world physics and knowledge gained by doing previous projects to come up with a way to take that crazy idea into reality.
Otherwise, I suppose you are a Luddite who thinks we need to sit on our hands all day wishing that civilization can collapse along with 99.9% of humanity so the few remaining can return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Good luck with that.
Obviously you didn't RTFA as a ordinary idiot. Part of the proposal is to turn that boundary layer problem into an advantage by turning it into an air bearing and having a turbo fan engine (electrically powered... another of Elon Musk's ideas he has toyed with so far as to make electrically powered airplanes) suck up the air in front of the pod and blast it out of the back of the pod.
The air itself in the tube isn't really moving. The tube is kept at a partial vacuum, but it doesn't have to be a perfect vacuum. Essentially, the pod is "flying" through the tube in a fashion similar to an airplane.
At least download the PDF file and make some intelligent comments rather than suggesting the guy is insane based upon wild ass speculation of what folks thought the concept might be prior to Musk's announcement.
While I would agree that "driver errors" including having 16 year olds who still have wet ink on their first driver's licenses operating vehicles traveling at 75 mph at night, there are other things that can cause highway fatalities. Some vehicles are poorly maintained and can fail (I know of several highway deaths due to vehicle malfunctions), poor highway maintenance, and even random events like somebody "going postal" or even a cow or deer wandering onto the road when it isn't expected. Poor highway maintenance can be having chunks of concrete falling onto the road, pot holes forming, sink holes, or something like a bridge collapse (like Interstate 880... admittedly during an earthquake).
All that said, if the concept of the hyperloop can be put into a practical form, the likelihood of most of the problems of personal vehicle transportation causing a death could certainly be mitigated. Interestingly enough, part of Elon Musk's proposal includes the idea you could drive your automobile or even a semi-truck into one of the pods and travel the distance of the tube but then drive a short distance to your ultimate destination. The tube itself would need some considerable maintenance, but from what I see in the proposal it would be easier and cheaper to maintain than highway repairs. I assume that the tube could be shut down for maintenance ranging from adjusting a couple of the tubes, repairing broken air pumps, or even replacing whole sections of the tube as needed.
The only amendment that I think is currently being observed, mainly out of practical considerations rather than any sort of effort to try and find ways to avoid its observation, is the 3rd amendment.
I suppose it is just a matter of time before the military bases start requiring citizens in the area to involuntarily put up soldiers with food and shelter.
There were three built in ways to control Congress from exceeding its constitutional boundaries (aside from the crazy thing about having Congress granting authority to the judiciary to overturn its decisions... technically a power it can grab back for itself at any time if it choose):
** Senators being chosen by state legislatures. In theory, this was to be a huge check against the federal government as senators could be recalled, censured, or at the very least not chosen again if they pissed off the legislature of the state they were from. While party politics certainly could rear its head (and indeed did), senators chosen in this manner didn't have direct issues of dealing with lobbyists and other similar "corrupting" issues. This was however eliminated with the passage of the 17th Amendment where the U.S. Senate simply became a disproportionate and smaller copy of the House of Representatives.
** States could engage in articles of secession. Unfortunately Abraham Lincoln pretty much ended that as a viable option through what could be arguably called an unconstitutional method.
** Citizens technically have the 2nd Amendment. This is a "nuclear option" for citizens to destroy the government itself if it got out of hand. Unfortunately the interpretation of this amendment has so completely gutted the original intent that its role in scaling back unconstitutional acts of Congress has pretty much been destroyed as an option.
In terms of civil rights, the last line of defense is now just the U.S. Supreme Court.... and when they are in the tank with Congress (as is pretty much the case right now.... explicitly stated as such in numerous recent judicial opinions) there is no hope at all.
He is talking about the Big Bang. AKA the "creation event" as defined by current scientific cosmology. You may think this kind of cosmology is just as silly as other kinds of cosmology, but that is personal opinion and belief.
I would say that event has more than enough energy concentrated to produce small black holes. Likely a few rather large ones too.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why has no one made a wooden gun or ATM skimmer?
Hint: it's because you're full of shit.
There used to be guns made out of cheap plastic with wooden parts that were sold in toy stores that used to be able to take real bullets and were deadly to potential targets. They had the side effect of sometimes jamming up, being incredibly unreliable, and sometimes blowing up in the hand of the guy firing the gun (aka something not really recommended except when you are extremely desperate), but it was done.
The point is that a wooden gun has been made that could even use gunpowder if you wanted. The steel is simply to make it more reliable, accurate, and doesn't really cost all that much more.
Ditto for the ATM skimmers, where you could certainly take a pile of sawdust with some resin and make nearly the identical devices these guys are using with the 3D printers. It just takes some brains.
In other words, you don't have a clue what you are talking about.
As if it really took much in the way of even tools to make stuff like they are describing. A trip to Home Depot or Lowe's will get you a pretty wide variety of things including base building materials, buttons, switches, and the ability to simply get kits to build a great many items.... including items that could be used for "illegal purposes" if you had a clue.
Of course you can even buy these tools at these stores together with taking classes on how to use them and books for sale that can teach you most of the techniques needed to make what you want.... assuming you wanted to take the initiative. Watching some YouTube videos wouldn't hurt either, at least for getting some ideas about how to do stuff too.
I read stories like this that try to diss the use of "3D Printers" as if somehow banning the use of those devices is somehow going to stop criminals from engaging in acts like this. What utter nonsense.
How many other stories about ATM skimmers emphasized any of the tools used to make the devices used to make their devices? Why such a strong emphasis on the 3D printing technology? It sounds like a cool buzz word, but means absolutely nothing other than an attempt to make something new sound frightening because the reporters and police officers involved don't have a clue about how the technology works.... therefore it must be some kind of dark magic that must be brought before the Inquisition and those involved banished to Hell (or some equivalent).
While I don't mind seeing stories like this on Slashdot as it does talk about emerging technologies and their impact upon society as a whole, it still turns my stomach to see such awful reporting overemphasizing the manufacturing technology (it was the lead paragraph) instead of describing what people were doing first. Had the technology being used been mentioned much further into the article, I think it would have been much more appropriate.
The scale of things here is something to point out. The LEM was just 18 feet tall, where as the Grasshopper was a full 10 stories tall (a little over 100 feet). That much larger size has many more problems that need to be addressed as not everything scales upward as just simply larger parts on everything. Quite often things that work on a scale model simply won't work on a larger version of the idea.
As far as why this wasn't done in 1969 but can be done today, it is missing that a whole lot of technological progress has happened in the meantime. I agree with you that it has take time to develop things like guidance computers which weigh as much as a mouse along with some significant progress in materials science that has allowed for some of the current generation of rockets to be developed. Simply put, the Grasshopper couldn't have been built much earlier.
First of all, the booster stage is never going to have people on it when that "buffer fuel" is going to be used. If it needs to be used for safety purposes, the booster stage can be thrown away afterward just as it currently is being done right now for rockets like the Falcon 9 (where the 1st stage is being thrown away into the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and soon to be Pacific Ocean). You plan on having that buffer for emergencies, but can you do something with it after that contingency is no longer needed?
Also, the reusable Falcon 9 is being designed with a slightly more powerful 2nd stage to compensate for additional mass (from a slightly larger buffer in the 1st stage) that won't be there. It is indeed on the razor's edge here, but I'd say that the guys at SpaceX know what the hell they are doing as they really are rocket scientists that have flown actual objects into space. It is remotely possible that they have knowledge of the rocket equation and can put it to practical use.
That is much of the whole philosophy of Elon Musk's design in total, as he is doing things like using the fuel for the launch escape system as maneuvering thrust when the spacecraft reaches orbit. The LES only needs to be used for the first few minutes of the flight.... so why do most rocket engineers discard that mass and even potential fuel? The same thing applies to the "buffers" when they are no longer needed for the main spacecraft, where those buffers can be turned into fuel to help save a pile of money.
While I love the DC-X, and I thought it should have continued development, the Grasshopper is a bit more impressive as it is a few times larger. It should be pointed out that much of the engineering research that went into the DC-X has been "borrowed" by SpaceX and used on a practical basis.
Then again, it should be a cautionary tale as there were some disasters with the DC-X as well.
The sad thing is that John Carmack has all but shut down Armadillo Aerospace, primarily due to a lack of funds. They had several projects which seemed to be doing pretty well and might have even started to earn some money to sustain the company, but the current recession has pretty much dried up any funds they were going to get from the entrepreneurs involved. It was always a skeleton crew anyway, but there are some signs of collapse as well.
On the other hand, if the American economy picks up again and real economic growth happens in both America and Europe, I would have to agree with you that the "New Space" companies are going to start really turning out some impressive things. I know Robert Bigelow is just waiting in the wings for a few companies to get their act together so he can start flying some space stations... and he has also booked a flight on a Falcon 9 (it is on the SpaceX manifest for 2015) in a couple years as insurance hoping that Elon will succeed as well.
I think this is especially important to note. A friggin 10 story tall structure with sloshing liquids and a very high center of gravity was able to land after moving about a half mile away from its starting point laterally and landed back on nearly the very same spot where it started. This is basically the 1st stage of a future Falcon 9 rocket which is being tested right now.
The only comparable rocket that did something similar was an Atlas 1 rocket which "launched" by going up a half inch then came back down.... with everybody on the launch pad and mission control scrambling like there was no tomorrow and literally praying to God that it wouldn't fall over. More than a few other rockets in similar situations did fall over and blow up (like the N1 rocket in the old USSR that became one of the top largest man-made explosions in human history).
My gosh, what does it take to impress some of these idiots posting on Slashdot today?
Actually, I do think there are some political considerations and non-engineering reasons for the extreme costs as well as comparatively slow speed that the California "high speed rail" system is being developed. Those political considerations in particular are the kind of thing escalating the costs making it unaffordable, just like similar spiraling costs are killing NASA.
I am quite certain that there are some really decent engineers working on that project who could do an excellent job if they were given a chance. Unfortunately the current way that the project is being developed that they will never be given a chance or even be allowed to even know if they could be given the chance.
I also think this crazy idea could become just as big of a government boondoggle as the Las Vegas Monorail. Big on hype even if a "demonstrator" is built with paying passengers. Regardless, I do think that some of the statements by what I must consider to be utter jerks commenting here on /. as well as elsewhere don't deserve anything more than a slap on the face with a trout and told to go away. There are legitimate concerns about this project that can be raised, but raise those objections based upon knowledge.... by at least reading the f'ing paper that describes the project in the first place. Being closed minded that it is impossible for Elon to ever pull this off or that others can't run with the idea and try to build it is also just as stupid as those who may be claiming that Elon is Tony Stark and can turn all into gold.
I'm sure there will be some kind of shipping container that can fit down the tube... either that or the tube will be enlarged to fit standard shipping containers or some sort or another even if it needs to be dismounted from the truck proper.
I'm not going to dismiss that this is a trivial issue, as I think you are correct that it will be one of the major issues to solve, perhaps THE major issue to solve as you are suggesting. By Elon Musk's own calculations there will be a "hot spot" produced by the pods themselves that will be about 500 degrees C (obviously momentary for the tube proper, but it will be a design consideration). The partial vacuum is going to be an interesting challenge as well.
One of the interesting things about the proposal is that it depends on a distributed power generation grid instead of a central power generation authority. I think this is sort of betraying his experience at Solar City where this kind of thinking is presumed, but I think that is almost as revolutionary as the tube itself as he sort of hinted that the tube will end up generating a surplus of electricity that could be sold to power customers along the route. Perhaps he has also been reading a few too many Heinlein novels as I think that was one of the ways that D. Delos Harriman (fictionally) made his billions to pay for the Luna City construction project. At least it wasn't the rolling roads idea that Musk proposed.
While the pneumatic tubes is a fair analogy, that isn't perfect here. In those tubes, the capsule is propelled by high pressure air pushing against the back of the capsule and perhaps "sucked" forward as well with a low pressure partial vacuum. The hyperloop uses a slightly different system where the capsule is accelerated using some sort of launching system, then there is a turbofan on the front of the vehicle (similar to a jet airplane engine and acts on a similar principle) that is used to compress the air in the tunnel and push it past the capsule as well as use that air to act as an air bearing to support the vehicle (like a hovercraft or air hockey table).
There are some practical limits to the pneumatic tube system, which is why it hasn't been used for mass transit. It was thought that the pneumatic tubes could be used for large scale postal delivery, and some buildings in NYC had some extensive networks installed. I've also seen them used in hospitals where pharmacies and various wings of the hospital were linked together to rapidly transport medicine or documents (like x-ray images.... now done via computer networks so that isn't really as big of a deal any more).
While the linear accelerator is one idea being offered, there are other ways to perform a similar level of acceleration. Besides, the use of a Faraday Cage can mitigate many of the problems involved. This is a question best asked not of a medical doctor who doesn't have a clue about magnetic fields (that is something way outside of his specialty) but rather an electrical engineer. If it would be a "doctor", at least make it a professor of electrical engineering.
I think this particular physician is a bit paranoid, but also keep in mind that the amusement park ride was also not in an enclosed vehicle as well.
As if neither SpaceX nor Tesla engineers have ever needed to worry about thermal expansion nor high acceleration or shock issues in their engineering designs. Just look at what they've built then say that again with a straight face. This particular issue you are complaining about is a solved engineering problem as having large diameter tubes dealing with these issues over distances of hundreds of miles is currently being done in many places, including earthquake prone areas of the world.
Don't get me started on "cold fusion", as you obviously don't have a clue about that technology either... or are you talking about a practical "Mr. Fusion" device using banana peels and left over soda as an energy source?
The problem is that Elon Musk is busy with trying to get a new automobile product line released (he is working on the Model X right now) not to mention rolling out the "version 2.0" of the Falcon 9 rocket. Either one would be a full time job by itself, and here he is doing both? And you think he should be building a high speed transportation system between LA and SF too?
Heck, I don't think Buckaroo Bonsai ever did something that insane.
I'm curious why it must be aluminum. I suppose Elon is very comfortable with building Aluminum structures given his background building rockets, and the Aluminum does help with making the supporting pylons further apart and not so bulky like would be needed for steel tubes, but I still wonder why it is necessary?
Steel tubes would seem to work just as well, although they would need to be thicker and require more materials to get them to work in the same way.
There will be magnetic fields produced by what amounts to be a rail gun like structure used for acceleration of the pods. it won't be used for levitation as you are saying, but it will be used for propulsion. Then again, such propulsion technologies have already been used for moving people in amusement parks, so it is a proven technology so far as moving vehicles is concerned.
Either that or they could use a steam catapult similar to how aircraft carriers launch fighters into the ocean. That would get you the acceleration needed to get to several hundred miles per hour in a relatively short distance.
America has a tendency of doing things like you are suggesting lately. The Demming methods of "Total Quality Management" was based upon a study commissioned by General Motors but was later set aside only to be followed up by Toyota (and copied by the other Japanese manufacturers)... and led to the Japanese dominance of the automobile industry.
I would not doubt that some Sultan or Emir on the Arabian peninsula would want to connect Abu Dhabi with Mecca (and a spur to Riyadh) so they can perform their ritual prayers at the Grand Mosque at least once a day. If anything, Elon ought to ask them to help build the proof of concept first instead of building it on the I-5 corridor, not to mention that the land acquisition costs would likely be trivial in that part of the world too.
There have been a few aerospace part suppliers that Elon Musk simply went to the company and made an offer to buy their company completely, offered them shop space in the El Segundo plant, set them up with newer tools and higher pay, and let them work on the Falcon rockets in other areas of the plant if they were interested. Elon said he didn't want them to start making parts for a competitor and making SpaceX a lower priority, so he was willing to bring them into the company at technically a loss.
The nice thing about his vertical integration of rocket construction is that he can control the quality at every step making sure that suppliers (since they are mostly in-house) don't cut corners pushing for some quota. It also doesn't hurt that his production rate is so freaking high right now where he is turning out a new Merlin engine about every other week (or is that every week now?) on the assembly line and trying to ramp that up to an even higher production rate. I don't know of anybody else in the aerospace industry doing something like that in terms of mass producing rockets. If the folks in Texas destroy a few engines, it really isn't that big of a deal as more are coming off of the production line to take care of any needs for upcoming launches. In short, SpaceX is getting very good at building rocket engines.
Elon Musk has done some preliminary engineering and at least modeled the concepts to come up with some pretty reasonable guesses for the prices. Keep in mind that SpaceX (one of the companies he runs) happens to make aluminum tubes of about the diameter he is proposing with the hyperloop and knows to the penny how much they cost to build and to ensure the quality needed for a project like this. Land acquisition costs are something that numerous studies by the California Department of Transportation alone has done several studies for high speed rail lines, not to mention monorail fans and other groups including AmTrack that have at least studied many of the costs involved with establishing a transportation corridor.
On top of that, his experience with Tesla Motors is more than sufficient to make reasonable guesses in terms of how much each pod is going to cost. Mind you, many of the technologies in the hyperloop were things he was considering as additional lines of business in the future for Tesla (like electric turbofans) and he also knows how to build a passenger vehicle where you can travel in style.
While the costs might be preliminary, I'd bet they are good +/- 50% of the figures he is quoting. He did a pretty good job of coming up with a price on the Falcon 1/5 as well as the Tesla Roadster back when people like you were saying he was a nut case that didn't have a clue what he was doing with those vehicles.
That is the thing about Elon Musk. You might dismiss him as a crackpot spouting off at the mouth, but he has a track record of tacking crazy ideas like this and making them into reality. A whole lot of actual engineering effort has gone into this idea, where some people experienced in mechanical and aerospace engineering (actual rocket scientists I'll add) have contributed to its design specifications. That is how engineering works, where somebody with a bold vision puts out an idea, digs into the details for how it might work, draws up some diagrams, and uses real-world physics and knowledge gained by doing previous projects to come up with a way to take that crazy idea into reality.
Otherwise, I suppose you are a Luddite who thinks we need to sit on our hands all day wishing that civilization can collapse along with 99.9% of humanity so the few remaining can return to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Good luck with that.
Obviously you didn't RTFA as a ordinary idiot. Part of the proposal is to turn that boundary layer problem into an advantage by turning it into an air bearing and having a turbo fan engine (electrically powered... another of Elon Musk's ideas he has toyed with so far as to make electrically powered airplanes) suck up the air in front of the pod and blast it out of the back of the pod.
The air itself in the tube isn't really moving. The tube is kept at a partial vacuum, but it doesn't have to be a perfect vacuum. Essentially, the pod is "flying" through the tube in a fashion similar to an airplane.
At least download the PDF file and make some intelligent comments rather than suggesting the guy is insane based upon wild ass speculation of what folks thought the concept might be prior to Musk's announcement.
While I would agree that "driver errors" including having 16 year olds who still have wet ink on their first driver's licenses operating vehicles traveling at 75 mph at night, there are other things that can cause highway fatalities. Some vehicles are poorly maintained and can fail (I know of several highway deaths due to vehicle malfunctions), poor highway maintenance, and even random events like somebody "going postal" or even a cow or deer wandering onto the road when it isn't expected. Poor highway maintenance can be having chunks of concrete falling onto the road, pot holes forming, sink holes, or something like a bridge collapse (like Interstate 880... admittedly during an earthquake).
All that said, if the concept of the hyperloop can be put into a practical form, the likelihood of most of the problems of personal vehicle transportation causing a death could certainly be mitigated. Interestingly enough, part of Elon Musk's proposal includes the idea you could drive your automobile or even a semi-truck into one of the pods and travel the distance of the tube but then drive a short distance to your ultimate destination. The tube itself would need some considerable maintenance, but from what I see in the proposal it would be easier and cheaper to maintain than highway repairs. I assume that the tube could be shut down for maintenance ranging from adjusting a couple of the tubes, repairing broken air pumps, or even replacing whole sections of the tube as needed.
The only amendment that I think is currently being observed, mainly out of practical considerations rather than any sort of effort to try and find ways to avoid its observation, is the 3rd amendment.
I suppose it is just a matter of time before the military bases start requiring citizens in the area to involuntarily put up soldiers with food and shelter.
There were three built in ways to control Congress from exceeding its constitutional boundaries (aside from the crazy thing about having Congress granting authority to the judiciary to overturn its decisions... technically a power it can grab back for itself at any time if it choose):
** Senators being chosen by state legislatures. In theory, this was to be a huge check against the federal government as senators could be recalled, censured, or at the very least not chosen again if they pissed off the legislature of the state they were from. While party politics certainly could rear its head (and indeed did), senators chosen in this manner didn't have direct issues of dealing with lobbyists and other similar "corrupting" issues. This was however eliminated with the passage of the 17th Amendment where the U.S. Senate simply became a disproportionate and smaller copy of the House of Representatives.
** States could engage in articles of secession. Unfortunately Abraham Lincoln pretty much ended that as a viable option through what could be arguably called an unconstitutional method.
** Citizens technically have the 2nd Amendment. This is a "nuclear option" for citizens to destroy the government itself if it got out of hand. Unfortunately the interpretation of this amendment has so completely gutted the original intent that its role in scaling back unconstitutional acts of Congress has pretty much been destroyed as an option.
In terms of civil rights, the last line of defense is now just the U.S. Supreme Court.... and when they are in the tank with Congress (as is pretty much the case right now.... explicitly stated as such in numerous recent judicial opinions) there is no hope at all.
He is talking about the Big Bang. AKA the "creation event" as defined by current scientific cosmology. You may think this kind of cosmology is just as silly as other kinds of cosmology, but that is personal opinion and belief.
I would say that event has more than enough energy concentrated to produce small black holes. Likely a few rather large ones too.