this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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Yeah, that's why we don't have any thousands mile long tubes transporting dangerous substances. Oh, wait. We do! What happens when someone shoots a gun at them? They go to jail! (look up Daniel Carson Lewis of Livengood).
In your theory, why can't the same laws protect 'railway tubes' that protect oil and gas pipelines? Why terrorist don't shoot guns at pipelines all the time? Why don't terrorist jump on high speed rail tracks and sabotage them? Where I live there's 5000 km of high speed tracks that are not "actively defended". There's just a fence. Big rock could take out a train. Why do you think no one ever attacked it but everyone would be shooting at hyperloop pipes for fun?
Oil pipelines are often buried underground, they can have up to 60'' in diameter. Hyperloop pipe is about 90'' in diameter. It could be feasible to put it underground. I'm not saying it's a good idea or bad idea. I'm just saying that some guy commenting on a blog is not a good reason not to try. Get enough of good engineers to work on it for a while and you will know if it's feasible or not. That's what they did. I think it was a good thing to try.
None of those are vacuum tubes. This is nonsense.
They leak. Literally all the time. They keep working. This won't.
Okay well you got there eventually.
The good reason not to try is that bullet trains have proved working perfectly in other parts of the world. Sure, they would be slower than an hypothetical hyperloop but they are a working technology that would help alleviate the transportation problem.
Why invest in a project that might lead nowhere?
I'm not anti experimentation, by any means. It's just that as the article says, the hyperloop was proposed when a bullet train was being discussed by local politicians.
Test hyperloop track was supposed to be build close to where I live, in Antequera, Andalucia, Spain. There's a railway test center built specifically for testing new rail technologies. Since it was build decades ago nothing was really tested there because bullet trains already existed and no one had any new designs since then. The trains didn't really change since 1980s. At the same time bullet trains still lose to planes on longer routes because they are simply too slow. Hyperloop was supposed to change this and offer rail technology that would compete with planes on long routes. It was supposed to be the next step in rail travel that would be able to compete with air travel. Now we know it wasn't feasible but just because it's not right for USA it doesn't mean it's not worth testing.