Comments by "Lepi Doptera" (@lepidoptera9337) on "Is the Hyperloop just Hype?" video.

  1. I have a $75 vacuum pump from China that does better than 99% vacuum, kid. It's really hard to buy, though... you have to know how to use the internet and you have to have a credit card. ;-)
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  2. Dude! That's exactly what they said about the horse!
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  3. You are a very attractive man... beard like a gnome and fingers in your ears all the time... that must be a huge hit with the ladies... ;-)
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  4. How is she advocating for science here or in most of her other videos? Please explain.
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  5.  @kchannel5317  You probably also believe that Trump is still president. ;-)
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  6. One does not have to lower the pressure in a tunnel for a car. The aerodynamic resistance is the least of the problems there. The problem is the absence of a track. Cars colliding with walls at high speed are not such a good idea. Electronic track guidance works, until it doesn't. There has to be a passive failsafe to prevent the worst kinds of accidents in high speed tunnels. I think that is probably some that Tesla and Boring still have to work out... a vehicle platform that has enough safety margin to allow high speed underground transportation. Having said this, high speed is not necessary for tunnels to be useful. The core problem for cities is that major roads are blocked during peak hours and the transportation capacity collapses. What we really need are low speed bypasses that retain the ability of a city to function even during peak hours. Getting across Manhattan or L.A. at 35mph is a lot better than at 1.5mph in stop and go traffic.
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  7. You got one at home, already. Just let them suck little toy trains through your vacuum cleaner's hose.
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  8. It is a technology like a subway, Love. :-)
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  9.  @Napoleonic_S  Yes, that's exactly what they said about trains in the 19th century. Horses were believed to be far superior. :-)
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  10. Are people through, yet, fantasizing about imploding vacuum tubes? Such a silly idea that a half inch steel tube simply collapses. Anybody who believes that never had to cut their way through a piece of cold rolled steel with a hand saw. :-)
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  11.  @lexlayabout5757  That's the number one bullshit argument against the system, that the tube just has to implode. Or that a guy with a pea shooter can just shoot a hole in it and then everybody within ten miles dies from the rupture. Oh, and then there are earthquakes and terrorists and liberals. Especially the liberals are constantly causing vacuum implosions. ;-) And did you figure out yet how you are better than Elon Musk? Because, see, he is even the better troll than you. :-)
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  12.  @lexlayabout5757  Nooooo! Now you are making me do the Elon Musk internet drinking game: take a drink every time somebody on the internet claims that they are better than Elon Musk! Drink up, everybody!
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  13. It's only quiet on the inside. The noise on the outside is infernal. You wouldn't know that. The people who have to live close to one of these tracks do.
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  14. Can you please show me the equations of science that make hyperloop impossible? I want to have a good laugh. :-)
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  15. Probably less than that. Maybe 15.
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  16. Yes, that's cool. Especially if you have the right of way for new tracks. Oh, wait...
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  17. The curious thing is that high energy physicists have solved all of the vacuum tube problems (like expansion compensation with bellows) in accelerators many decades ago. She should know this. :-)
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  18.  @gp1157  The main cost of the CERN installations were actually the tunnel and the engineering necessary for the giant cavities. Then it's the magnets and their cryogenic systems, I believe. The vacuum system is a trivial part of the system cost. That's a UHV system, by the way. What we are talking about here is not even vacuum by physics standards. It's just low pressure weather. :-)
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  19.  @gp1157  Do yourself a favor, kid, and read the LHC beam pipe design document before you are making a fool of yourself on the internet. Oh, too late. :-)
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  20. Yep, he really did not make those re-usable rockets work, did he? He went completely bankrupt on those boondoggles. :-)
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  21. Nice trolling. Could be a bit shorter, but still.
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  22.  @lexlayabout5757  He said he was going to make an electric car. He made millions. He said he was going to ferry astronauts to the ISS. He is ferrying astronauts to the ISS. What have you been doing lately, other than trolling, that is? ;-)
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  23. You may be a small minded person if you think that all vacuum tubes implode all the time.
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  24. And when you do the actual math, then it doesn't. I take it that you didn't do the actual math.
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  25.  @zoltaniii9534  That would assume that you have head space to waste. If I were you, then I wouldn't make that assumption. :-)
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  26.  @zoltaniii9534  And now you are feeling sorry for yourself. :-)
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  27.  @zoltaniii9534  So why are you feeling sorry for yourself? Poor childhood? :-)
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  28. We could have built this 50 years ago. There is nothing here that is new, except for the can-do attitude. Guess why that was missing? One word: boomers.
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  29. That's exactly what they said about the horse...
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  30. NIMBY.
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  31. How can India reject Elon Musk in a project that he had no involvement in? You aren't making any sense here. :-)
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  32. That's what they said about every new mode of transportation since the invention of the horse. :-)
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  33. Boring.
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  34. The German government should hire you. There is always need for genius in government. ;-)
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  35. Yes, because you are running in an absolute vacuum. Oh, wait, you are not. You can actually vent stale air in the back and get fresh air from the front of the pod. And just imagine that in case of an emergency you can flood the entire system within a minute with air. Hmmm... what a concept.
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  36.  @alphaxion  20% oxygen is 20% oxygen at any pressure. :-) And what is it with the anti-hyperloop crowd and peashooters? You guys are just obsessed with people shooting at equipment, aren't you? :-)
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  37. Why does hyperloop fail economically? Please explain.
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  38.  @lordanonimmo7699  Yes, public transportation is not profitable. It doesn't have to be. That's why it's called "public transportation" and not "profitable transportation". You know what's also not profitable? The education system, the police force, firefighters, the military and social security. Shall we get rid of all of these because they are not profitable?
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  39.  @lordanonimmo7699  All of government makes one big loss and you seem upset about that. Maybe you would feel better about being in a country that does not have government? I have heard that Afghanistan is nice this time of the year. :-) Anyway, which government is investing billions in hyperloop? I am not aware of any. :-)
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  40. What is it with these morbid fantasies? You are all happy to sit in a 75-90mil aluminum tube going at 700mph at 30,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. :-)
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  41. China has plenty of high speed rail. So does Europe. So does Japan.
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  42. A private jet that pollutes less than a train and for a ticket price of $50? I want to ride that. :-)
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  43. Yes, that's why this thing will only be boring for half an hour and not three hours. I take it. :-)
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  44. That's exactly what they said about the horse!
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  45. A quarter kWh per meter tunnel. Trivial.
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  46.  @jlmassir  Sorry that you failed high school science. I can't help with that. That's entirely your own fault, we certainly paid for the teacher for you. And, no, flow in a 1000km long tube is not happening at the speed of sound either, kid. That's just your failed physics intuition making up sh*t. :-)
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  47. There is nothing to license. Ligo didn't patent their design and it's probably not even patentable. Moreover, the main use case for hyperloop is in underground tunnels.
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  48. No of course not. The LHC is a ploy of the illuminati. :-)
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  49.  @esvegateban  You are right. It is completely impossible to make a large vacuum. It says so already in the bible. Thadeus 7:28 : "And you shall carry no empty bag for the glory of the Lord. Your bag shall always be full with air and straw. For if the Lord seeth an empty bag, he weepeth." ;-)
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  50. Dude! That's exactly what they said about the horse!
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  51. That's no different from the highway system, then. That, too, was built with tax dollars and it just can't make any money on its own. It is kind of true of pretty much every road built in history. By your arguments we should be getting rid of all the roads. They are not profitable. :-)
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  52. Dozens of meters underground? Are you coming with a tactical nuclear weapon or a drill rig?
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  53. Please point me to a slow public transportation system that has been consistently profitable without any public subsidies. Thank you very much.
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  54. But why do it in 90 minutes if you can do it 25 with the same system?
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  55.  @Treblaine  The system is not competing against airlines. It's a unique solution that it better, not just equivalent to planes for the 100-1000km range. I don't quite understand the security issue here. I have ridden trains for much of my adult life. Terrorist attacks on trains have been carried out periodically, even in Europe and Japan, but we never implemented any sort of cargo checks. Why is this supposed to be a problem for hyperloop when it never was one for low speed and high speed trains???? Are we exercising a double standard here or what? In any case, you don't need any cargo on a 25 minute ride. You don't even need your handbag. It can ride in a cargo pod that leaves a few minutes before the passenger pod. I don't believe you are thinking straight here. If anything, this system can solve the security issue much better than other systems, including aviation, that puts cargo on the same plane as passengers.
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  56.  @Treblaine  A bomb on a regular train also has the ability to kill everyone in the car, and such incidents have happened. Yet we are allowed to carry a 50kg piece of luggage onto these trains without any checks. You and other critics aren't making any sense here. Hyperloop security is easy: absolutely no luggage in the passenger pod. One and done.
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  57.  @Treblaine  You aren't making any sense just now about the terrorism threat. Please get yourselves better arguments. :-) A small hole in a pod will leak a small amount of air. The oxygen masks will deploy, like on every plane. The pod will be slowed down and the tube will be flooded within a minute. You still aren't making any sense.
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  58.  @Treblaine  Dude: pay attention to my words: the entire tube would be filled with air after a minute in case of an accident.
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  59.  @Treblaine It's impractical because you say so? That's exactly what they said about the horse. :-) In any case, my electric leaf blower disagrees. It can fill up ten cubic meters of volume in less than a minute. In other words... the inrushing air to refill the tube is the equivalent of one electric leaf blower every meter, or so. Next you are going to say that a half inch thick steel tube will explode if a leaf blower blows into it, right? :-)
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  60.  @Treblaine  Nobody has died from the air coming out of a leaf blower, yet, kid. :-)
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  61.  @Treblaine  Tell you what, kid. You can buy a cheap vacuum pump and vacuum chambers up to 15 gallons on Amazon. That's approx. one two hundredths of the volume of one meter of hyperloop tube. Modify it so that you can let the air back in in a fraction of a second. Watch and learn how little happens inside the chamber when you do that. That's roughly what will happen if you refill the hyperloop tube in one minute. Take care. :-)
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  62.  @Treblaine  The cheap Chinese vacuum pump that I got makes about the level of pressure that hyperloop uses. You are obviously scared to do the hands on research yourself. :-)
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  63.  @Treblaine  So what you are really telling me is that you can't be bothered to evacuate a turkey fryer pot with a $75 vacuum pump to prove yourself right and you don't know how to scale experiments. Well, in that case, I am afraid, you will have to wait for someone to build the hyperloop to demonstrate that the DK effect was strong in you. :-)
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  64.  @Treblaine  I never understood people who don't even have the courage to test their own bullshit against reality. :-)
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  65.  @Treblaine  Then make your own full size. Until you do you are merely a troll. :-)
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  66.  @Treblaine  I don't have to. I actually know how the physics works. :-)
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  67.  @Treblaine  Education pays. :-)
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  68.  @Treblaine  The vacuum pump? I am making electronic components with it that I am reselling for roughly hundred times my cost. :-)
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  69.  @Treblaine  I am repackaging matched bipolar transistors (five cents a piece) on aluminum core PCBs for improved thermal stability. The vacuum pump is needed to get a bubble-free epoxy potting around the module. Audiophiles are crazy for stuff like that and will pay tens of dollars per package. :-)
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  70.  @Treblaine  I am selling components that are roughly equivalent to ones that you could buy from Analog Devices a long time ago and that were typically used in precision analog circuits for military use (like analog computers in missile guidance systems). Of course all of this is completely obsolete technologically, but it has its lovers and where there is love, there is money to be made. Do I agree with you that it's a snake oil niche? Absolutely. But why should an old man not improve his retirement income with an easy to make product for which there is demand and which no semiconductor company wants to make any longer? 🙂
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  71. Yep, that roughly reflects the level of depth of the thought processes of the internet engineering crowd. :-)
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  72. No. One does have to dig trenches for high speed trains all the time (because of the noise and because the track can't follow the ground level). If you think that that brings cost down, think again.
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  73.  @herlescraft  There are plenty of examples of hundreds of miles of trenches for modern high speed rail... just not cheap ones. The problem is always right of way. Only tunnels avoid right of way issues. In countries like China right of way is sorted out at the tip of a government spear, so that's easy. In the US it's sorted out in the courts at enormous expense. Europe is somewhere in-between.
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  74. I have never seen leaks in a 10mm thick welded steel pipe. Have you?
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  75. So you have never actually built a vacuum system. OK. :-)
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  76. There is no high speed rail within 4000 miles from where I live, or so. Why? Right of way and NIMBY make construction impossible in the US. Hyperloop does not suffer from those limitations. You clearly don't know much about transportation.
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  77. I am just a simple passenger. Please let me know which airline you are flying for. I don't want to be on any plane that might be piloted by you. You have a very morbid fantasy there. Like the German guy who flew his plane into a mountain. Oh, wait... it doesn't take any explosives to crash a plane. Now we are getting somewhere. :-)
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  78.  @Soordhin  I am thinking about my own safety, too. I don't want to fly with a guy who keeps thinking about clever ways to bring planes down all the time.
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  79.  @herlescraft  Yes, radiation... in a hyperloop. Sure. :-)
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  80.  @Soordhin  If one of the pilots wants to fly it into the ground, there is nothing we can do. The pilots are the biggest threat on every flight these days.
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  81.  @Soordhin  We were talking about risk. The largest risk to a modern passenger flight are the pilots. If they mess up, it's game over. You know that, I know that. Let's call it a day.
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  82.  @Soordhin  Were we? I thought we were talking about how you are the best pilot on the planet. Never mind, I am getting confused. The other guy a few posts up or down just claimed that he is a better engineer than Elon Musk and I was having a drink to that. Now I need to do the "I am a pilot, hence Hyperloop can never work!" drinking game in addition. Drink up, everybody. :-)
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  83.  @Soordhin  Let me know when we are ready to take off, Captain. But then, maybe you are already flying high? I take a drink to that. :-)
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  84. What's the contradiction? Elon Musk is the richest man in the world and he can do with his money as he wishes. Unless, of course, you are one of those damn communists? You do have a very suspicious sounding name... ;-)
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  85. You got bullets that can penetrate 20 yards of earth? Must be a hell of a peashooter, kid. The US military is considering nuclear warheads for that much overburden. :-)
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  86. Are you trying to compete for the biggest and brightest burning straw man? Mach 5... what???? :-)
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  87.  @chaosopher23  OK. Now you are making sense. Honestly, travel is overrated. Flying is great the first and second and third time, then the novelty of being locked into an aluminum tube with hundreds of others wears off quickly. And, no, hyperloop does not scale to cross-continental distances, planes are better at those. It could go up and down the East and West Coast in the US and connect places in large states like Texas and California and that's that. I doubt there is enough demand for most of that, though. Where it could shine might be cross-metro traffic. A typical rapid transit system is limited to an average speed of roughly 20-30 miles per hour. That's not fast enough for many large metro areas. Suburbs are now 50-60 miles outside of the city centers. This requires 200mph transportation systems to be comfortably reachable.
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  88.  @chaosopher23  There are more problems than just acceleration. Frequent stops slow trains to a crawl. Single rail lines make it next to impossible to run a fast train with less frequent stops in parallel with slow ones that stop everywhere. You are correct that frequency is also a problem, so are connections. I had a commute where the bus would leave empty just as the train would roll into the station. Then fifteen people would be waiting at the bus stop for half an hour.
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  89.  @chaosopher23  Yes, we can, depending on the area. In places that had train lines built before we built houses like Europe and Japan that's fine. In places like China where they can tear down whatever they want at any time, it's fine. In most of the rest of the world... not so easy. I am not betting on rail as the solution to these intermediate distance problems in the US. Faster cars are much more likely to solve the problem. We have the highways, we just have to double the speed limit (Germany has seen those kinds of driving conditions on the Autobahn for many decades). What we lack are highway on- and off-ramps. I think that's really where tunneling will come in handy. We can double or triple the transportation capacity of old highways by building short tunneled ramps and we can tunnel underneath residential areas without triggering any NIMBY.
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  90.  @chaosopher23  I think Boston's big dig showed that it can be done, if at high cost. Roads are, whether we like it or not, the only solution to the last mile problem. We aren't going to build a monorail to every neighborhood. Having said this, the US has unique transportation problems. What does not work here works just fine in many European and Asian cities.
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  91. That's exactly what they said about horses... :-)
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  92.  @anthonyb5279  Yes, lot of things. I am dealing with tons of electronics and photonics. My stuff usually goes close to the speed of light, kid. :-)
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  93.  @anthonyb5279  Did that sting just now? I am so sorry. Next time I will be wearing my velvet gloves for you, kid. :-)
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  94. That's exactly what they said about horses... :-)
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  95. What's up with your hate for successful people? :-)
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  96. It costs next to nothing to maintain the vacuum and less than 1kWh per meter of tube to create it. That can be done on a sunny day with one strip of solar panels along the tube. Just too bad the Elon Musk doesn't own a photovoltaics business. Oh, wait... :-)
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  97. So you are the genius who doesn't even know that Boring tunnels are too small in diameter for conventional trains? Way to go, kid, way to go!
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  98. Look, Ma! I have found the jealous person on the internet. $300 billion. That's Musk's net worth, Baby! Richest man on the planet and getting richer by the day. ;-)
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  99. Yes, because that is exactly what happens on every train line in the entire world all the time. :-)
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  100. Planes are also falling out of the sky all the time, aren't they?
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  101. And there is the local vacuum expert. He practices daily vacuous internet broadcasts. :-)
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  102. And there is the little minded person who will not. How are you today, little minded person? All comfy in your small world? ;-)
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  103.  @blakemerrithew9162  I am always feeling great while rolling on the floor laughing.
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  104.  @blakemerrithew9162  Is that your attempt to appear bigger than you are?
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  105.  @blakemerrithew9162  You would have made a debate easier if you didn't start out with total bullshit. Why are you complaining now that you are being called out for it? You simply reap what you sow and I am a biblical atheist. :-)
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  106. Did you notice how she didn't mention how accelerator facilities like CERN have solved all these vacuum tube problems many decades ago? I did. :-)
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  107.  @andersjjensen  And there is the great wall of bullshit on the internet by a person who has never worked with a vacuum. Go to Amazon, kid, and buy yourself a $75 vacuum pump. Then even you can experience how easy vacuum is. :-)
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  108.  @andersjjensen  None of the technological stuff in hyperloop is either hard or new. We have been doing maglev for half a century now, if not more. We can do any size vacuum system you like basically on custom order. The train's passenger cabin is, essentially, a narrow body jet. All the technical criticism of the system is total bullshit. One can talk about economics and demand and that, if anything, is a serious problem for any and all transportation systems. The talk about implosions is just male teenage phantasies gone wild. People had billions of large, evacuated glass tubes at home for more than half a century and very few of them imploded. Yes, one can make thin walled vessels implode. Can one make thinned walled vessel implode that have proper wall thickness and welds and an occasional stabilization ring? No. One can not. At least not without doubling or tripling the pressure of Earth's atmosphere. Unless you are god that's not going to happen. What happens when there is a leak? Nothing. The system detects it and slows the trains down to a safe velocity. What happens when there is a really large leak? The system detects it and slows trains down while flooding the tube along the entire length in a minute or so. Even a shock wave that might spreads from one of your "imploded" sections could only do so at the speed of sound. That's approx. 20km per minute. After that it hits the air that's already in the tube and that's that. That's where things stop. Look, "chemist". I know that you have no intuition for physics and engineering. Why don't you leave this stuff to those of us who do this for a living?
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  109. That's exactly what they said about the horse!
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  110. You are correct. Traveling for 12 hours on a bus at an average 50mph is exactly what people have been waiting for.
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  111. Yes, the exact same thing would happen as in an airplane: the oxygen masks would drop from the ceiling. Then the tube would be flooded with air within a minute, or so, just like a passenger jet descends to an altitude where everyone can breath within a couple of minutes. Bingo. Smart boy. :-)
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  112. Who is making the money here? Not Elon Musk, he isn't even involved. :-)
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  113. And what, exactly, prevents a hyperloop from going at 300mph?
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  114. What vacuum seals? The whole thing is either a tunnel or a welded steel tube.
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  115.  @AdrieKooijman  A flexible airtight vacuum connection is called a bellows. Check it out on the internet. It's a basically fool-proof technology. Having said that, I think a self-sealing piston-ring architecture is probably cheaper. The trick with pressure seals is to make the higher pressure side do the sealing. You never want to rely on the material itself to provide the necessary pressure on the gasket materials. In any case, the Elon Musk proposal puts the train into a tunnel, in which case there is no change in geometry, to begin with.
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  116. So you didn't pay attention in high school science. What were you doing? Thinking about girls and drugs, maybe? ;-)
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  117. I am amazed at the sheer number of total losers who are constantly arguing with the success of a man who is truly greater than life. :-)
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  118. 0.25kWh per meter of track. That much energy can be produced with a single strip of solar panels. You are welcome, kid. :-)
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  119.  @el3ctr1csix22  10 square meter cross section. Can be done in a few minutes, if needed. You are welcome, kid.
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  120. So you are one of those dudes who has never heard about vacuum bellows. Makes you a real expert in the field, then. :-)
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  121. Yes, because people shoot at all aboveground trains all day long and terrorists are blowing them up daily.
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  122. Why don't you ask Jeff Bezos for a quote? He seems afraid of actual orbital flight.
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  123.  @herlescraft  No, he doesn't know that. He didn't pay attention in science class. Most people here didn't. They are flying by the seat of their pants, intellectually speaking. :-)
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  124. Times announced today that their man of the year are the Hyperloop critics. Oh, wait... no, they announced that it is Elon Musk. :-)
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  125. There is a lot of demand for the system, just not in long distance travel. You can take pretty much any metro-area of the world and you will see that the limits of expansion of suburbs is given by commute times. If you want to have connect to suburbs that are more than roughly 50 miles away, then you need to have a fast transit system. Hyperloop running at e.g. 400mph in a tunnel can connect in a quarter of an hour without any of the right of way penalties that come with systems above ground.
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  126. Dude... how did you know? That's exactly what they said about the horse! Crazy people, that's the problem with horses, too! ;-)
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  127. Look, Ma! I found a guy with a broken bullshit meter! :-)
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  128. When all else fails Sabine Hossenfelder decides to troll the anti-Elon Musk crowd, I guess.
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  129. Why would anybody die if air gets into the tunnel? A small leak will raise the pressure very gradually and all that will happen is that trains will have to slow down. The system will remain fully functional at lower operating speeds.
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  130. They hyperloop would have been technically viable 50 years ago. The main problems are commercial markets and funding.
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  131.  @herlescraft  I hear you. I have been riding those things for half my adult life. The problem is that they don't scale to American distances. Suburbs are 40 to 60 miles from city centers now. That's two hours on slow trains that stop every mile or two. I had a 2.5 hour commute like that once in my life. I had to quit the job. I couldn't do it anymore after nine months. I did 80 minutes each way for six years before I had enough of that and I could only do it because that place was very, very nice to work for. You can forget about all of that. The only solution to intermediate distance transport in the US are faster cars and faster highways and that goes hand in hand with a total reorganization of highway on and off-ramps to handle two to four times the capacity. Musk is right that this can only be achieved with tunnels. We are not going to build fly-overs over entire communities.
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  132. So you are basically the horse and buggy manufacturer of signage. Everybody with half a brain has switched over to LEDs. That makes you a real technical expert, then. :-)
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  133. Cars are not a safe transportation system. Your chances of dying in a traffic accident in the US are 12.4 per year per 100,000 in the US and 18 worldwide. That's pretty similar to the death rates for the most common cancers with exception of lung cancer, which is mostly preventable.
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  134. Japan is over three times the length of the UK, kid. Maybe you should take a few more lessons in geography?
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  135. Both solutions use the same level of vacuum, actually.
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  136. Ich bin mir sicher dass Du in der Schule geschlafen hast.
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  137. Didn't they give up on the full plans, already? The phase1/2 approach sounds like a political emergency break to me.
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  138. I would ride it just for the fun of it, kid. :-)
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  139. It's roughly a quarter kWh per meter. Not a whole lot. You are welcome.
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  140.  @kwyj  The only leaks I am seeing here are in your mind. Maintaining those takes about 100W in food. :-)
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  141.  @kwyj  And there is the wall of bullshit on the internet. :-)
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  142. What did that get him? A YouTube button? :-)
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  143. Maglevs don't solve any of the problems of high speed train systems. They have right of way issues and are extremely noisy. The critical element here is the cheap tunnel. The vacuum is only a direct physical consequence of the attempt to eliminate right of way and noise. People really don't seem to get that.
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  144. This is a transportation solution. Nobody ever said that it was going to save society from its idiots. It can only move idiots from A to B, but they will stay idiots. :-)
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  145. The vacuum is needed because the train acts like a giant piston. In a tunnel that has a diameter that is only slightly larger than car diameter the aerodynamics are very unfavorable. This can be avoided with large diameter tunnels, of course, but then we are looking at the cost problem, yet again. The usual criticism against the vacuum problems are purely made up. Well designed vacuum systems don't suffer from catastrophic failures.
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  146. Gramps, you are so wise for your years. That is exactly what they said about the horse! :-)
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  147. He also said that Trump is still president, didn't he? ;-)
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  148. You mean the 3 billion people who are flying every year? Yes, they are putting their lives in horrible, horrible danger. Millions are perishing every year. Oh, wait... :-)
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  149. You managed to squeeze so many falsehoods into one sentence, I don't even know where to start... :-)
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  150.  @richardmetzler7909  That would be a huge waste of my time. :-)
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  151. So how do you feel about sitting 30,000 feet above the ocean in an aluminum tube that's 75-90 thousands of an inch thick? :-)
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  152. Roughly $100 per km. You are welcome. I can do these calculations all day long in my mind, by the way. Can you? :-)
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  153.  @infini_ryu9461  dW = pdV. You are welcome. :-)
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  154. You can't run a dozen pods in the same tube per hour? That's five minutes between pods. at 200m/s five minutes work out to a pod to pod distance of 60km.
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  155. Why would the physics not work, kid? Because you didn't pay attention in school?
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  156. Can you explain in detail why? With calculations, please. ;-)
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  157.  @alandavis6429  In other words, you don't know anything about either vacuum or welding but you are trying to appear like a strong, smart man on the internet. Got you, kid. :-)
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  158.  @alandavis6429 Ma! I just found the great wall of bullshit on the internet! :-)
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  159.  @alandavis6429  Ma! Now the bullshitter feels sorry for himself. :-)
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  160.  @alandavis6429  And now the bullshitter is craving attention. :-)
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  161.  @alandavis6429  About you? He doesn't know you, kid. Neither do any girls, it seems. :-)
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  162.  @alandavis6429  Ma! There is the little wall of bullshit from the same troll. :-)
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  163.  @alandavis6429  In any case, why does a man who has been married for 32 years talk like a sexually frustrated teenager who can't stand that other men are more successful than him? Is the Missis not interested in marital relations any longer? ;-)
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  164.  @alandavis6429  You know what the worst thing is for you, though? I am also both the better bullshitter and the better troll than you. :-)
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  165. Vacuum is fairly trivial these days. I got a really nice vacuum pump from China on Amazon for less than $100 a couple of years ago. Works like a charm. I have built a couple of vacuum chambers from half inch acrylic with nothing but glue. Not a problem.
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  166. Elon will probably die as Emperor of Mars in 2051. :-)
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  167. That's exactly what they said about the horse... let's try to make better shoes, first. ;-)
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  168. Dude. That is exactly what they said about the horse! :-)
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  169. Planes are actually quite efficient. They are also usually cheaper than trains from coast to coast. You are welcome to look up ticket prices.
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  170. They also told Elon Musk that electric cars can't be done. And what did he do? He wasted all of his money on Tesla and he bankrupted the company. Oh, wait... that's not what happened. Tesla made him the richest man on Earth. $300 billion, is it? :-)
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  171. So why did you have to tell us that you are clueless about engineering? We knew that, already.
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  172. Whenever great people suggested something new, little people began shouting "It can't be done! It will implode the universe!". How are my little people today? :-)
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  173.  @TheSpartan3669  What criticism? Terrorists and imploding tubes? Dude, that's teenage fantasies, not an honest analysis of actual problems with the proposed systems.
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  174.  @TheSpartan3669  What resonance problem? The one that goes away once you make the system irregular? Sure, that, too, is teenage ninja engineering.
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  175.  @TheSpartan3669  Yes, and that's not how you fight resonances in modern engineering. You fight resonances by removing the symmetry conditions that cause them in the first place.
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  176.  @TheSpartan3669  Don't worry, they will discover this in time on their own. Buildings a hundred years from now won't look anything like buildings today. :-)
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  177. Yes, the same thing happened when he proposed that he can make an electric car company profitable. Ridiculous. And landing and re-flying rockets? Preposterous and completely impossible. :-)
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  178.  @andrewreynolds9371  And by five you mean ten. And soon it will be fifteen. ;-)
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  179.  @pygmalion8952  So you are telling me that Elon Musk is not the richest man in the world who will launch approx. one reusable rocket per week this year and he won't sell a million of the world's best electric cars? Cool delusion you go there, kid. :-)
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  180. Did you just feel sorry about yourself? :-)
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  181. Wake me up when they do. :-)
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  182. The centripetal acceleration of a hyperloop in the LHC tunnel would be between 1-2g, which is a mild roller coaster. :-)
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  183. The hyperloop is a 100-1000km distance transport solution. Nobody is going to launch a hypersonic rocket from e.g. San Francisco to L.A.. Not even Elon Musk.
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  184.  @htannberg  Yes, of course you can, even in the US. In the US the ticket will cost you a multiple of the cost of flying and it's a sightseeing train.
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  185. There is a difference between can and does, kid.
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  186.  @llllllblodllllll  Obviously faster than your mind can move. :-)
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  187.  @llllllblodllllll  That's exactly what I meant, kid. Now you are catching up, not quite as fast as a Boring tunneling machine, which we know is still not quite as fast as a snail. :-)
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  188.  @llllllblodllllll  Yeah, you really stepped into that one, kid. Or, better... you just stood there and had your slow mind handed to you. ;-)
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  189. That's what they said about horses.
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  190. The problem with all high speed trains is noise. Above a couple hundred km/h the aerodynamic noise seems to exceed all other noise sources. They are working very hard on reducing it because it makes faster surface trains virtually impossible in densely populated areas unless they are acoustically shielded by trenches or berms. The next problem are curve radii. A high speed train can't hug existing terrain. It has to be built on almost straight tracks. That is the same problem as faced by Hyperloop, of course. These two factors almost certainly require tunnels (or bridges) in geographies that are not completely flat. A high speed train in a tunnel is an aerodynamic problem that can only be solved in two ways: 1) large tunnel diameter (expensive) or 2) vacuum. In the latter case your costs explode for large diameter trains. As you can see, the physics of it almost forces you to a Hyperloop like solution.
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  191. If it is a scam, who is getting scammed? :-)
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  192. Yes, YouTube content creators have been trolling you with this thing for years and you are falling for it every single time.
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  193. That's because we could have built this 100 years ago, Love. This isn't a hard technology. Magnetic confinement fusion is.
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  194. Yes, that is exactly why he is selling the best electric cars in the world and why his rockets are ferrying US astronauts to the ISS... because it's all show. :-)
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  195.  @Jeffrey314159  You are wrong. Everything is already mentioned in the Indian Vedas. :-)
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  196.  @Jeffrey314159  Why would I give a frell about what person X thinks about person Y? This ain't high school, my friend. As soon as Sabine makes a better electric car than Elon Musk we talk business. Or how about she makes a better rocket? :-)
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  197. Yes, you are right. Putting 9 engines on a rocket and landing the first stage over and over again is way too risky. It just can't be done. NASA has proven this more than once by not even trying. :-)
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  198. That's exactly what they said about trains and steam ships in the early 19th century. You are a technological visionary. :-)
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  199. A vacuum expansion joint is called a bellows. They are commercially available in all shapes and sizes. You are welcome.
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  200. What's involved about stepping through a door?
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  201.  @sternmg  I never had trouble stepping into an airplane, either. I do not remember anybody checking for the pressure seals of an airplane door. The captain tells the flight attendants to close the doors, they close the doors and the plane takes off. Maybe you are living in a different universe, but in mine it takes about 60 seconds to get a commercial jet ready for takeoff. :-)
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  202. And there is the person who didn't pay any attention at all. :-)
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  203. Sure. I will let you walk from San Francisco to L.A. and enjoy the smell of the large cattle farms that are lining the roads. :-)
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  204. There are a lot of very small minded people in the crowd who can't stand the idea that great minds are doing things they are afraid of.
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  205. You should build that in your garage. :-)
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  206.  @edwardbarnett6571  Well, Jeff Bezos built Amazon in his garage, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got Apple started that way and Hewlett and Packard are the forefathers of garage entrepreneurship, for sure. :-)
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  207.  @edwardbarnett6571  I am sure your name is not Elon Musk, too. :-)
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  208.  @edwardbarnett6571  To be honest, I can't give a frell.
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  209.  @edwardbarnett6571  What is frell? See "Farscape".
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  210.  @edwardbarnett6571  Dictator? Where the frell did that come from? If anything, Elon Musk's businesses are practicing some of the most democratic engineering methods in use by anybody. If you have a good idea he wants to hear it. Personally. Try that in other places like at Boeing. You will be laid off in no time, even if you could have prevented that the planes are falling out of the sky.
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  211.  @edwardbarnett6571  Dude. The man has a fortune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Can you let him do with his money whatever he wishes? Because if you can not, then you have to ask yourself who the one with the dictatorial tendencies really is. Hint: it's you.
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  212.  @edwardbarnett6571  That's what they said about the horse... :-)
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  213.  @edwardbarnett6571  You are still awfully young if you haven't learned the lesson, yet, that somebody out there always knows way more than you. :-)
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  214. That's exactly what they said about horses. Then horse carts. Then steam engines. Then trains with steam engines. Then cars with diesel engines. Then cars with gasoline engines. Then trains with diesel engines. Then trains with electric engines. Then planes. Then rockets. Then cars with electric motors. Then reusable rockets. Hey, wait a minute, didn't this guy Musk start a profitable car factory that makes cars with electric motors and doesn't his rocket factory re-fly rockets? ;-)
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  215. Curiously, we actually could have built this 100 years ago. They were already very good at making very large steel structures during that time.
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  216. Ah, there is the local vacuum implosion expert. How are you today? All good in implosion land, buddy?
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  217.  @feandil666  Air rushing at 1 atmosphere? That's called "wind", kid. :-)
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  218. Sounds like first class plane seats, to me. After all, we all know that if god had wanted man to fly, he would have given us wings, like his angels. Right? ;-)
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