Might I suggest that you never, ever take even a short peek at the FAA’s compendium of near-misses. Mother o god!
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I’d feel better traveling through the hyperloop than living in a future where an embedded video that has no sound controls or scrubbing controls is to become…normal. The horror.
At least the hyperloop offers a [mostly] instantaneous and painless death.
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It’s even harder. It’s politics, physics, and economics with a dash of civil engineering. Not to speak for others, but I don’t think they mean that making such a transport system is impossible. Most of the skepticism is merely suggesting the hyperloop might be too complicated and costly to be feasible as a mass-transit system anytime in the near future.
Space-X has done amazing things, but the economics around spaceflight make it financially feasible to go to insane lengths to recover rockets. But landing a rocket on a platform is a problem so different to creating a new form of mass transit that they aren’t even remotely comparable. As another example, even proven tech like super-sonic flight isn’t currently feasible for mainstream use due to noise concerns, fuel prices, and ticket costs. Sometimes unforeseen factors prevent promising tech from reaching the marketplace, so we should remain cautiously optimistic in the meantime.
And if all the naysayers are wrong like the ones who said cars would never become mainstream, then who cares? Musk wins and can build his volcano lair or whatever.
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ISTR that their definition of “near miss” is something like “Within 1 mile horizontally and 1,000 ft vertically.” With a system designed to keep that level of separation between aircraft, it is no wonder that ACTUAL mid-air collisions are so rare. Avoiding mid air collisions is not a trivial problem, but it pretty much seems to be a solved one, although it takes quite a bit of work and coordination.
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Ok, still. When I was working at the library and first came across those things, I was definitely unnerved 
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Yeah, but - all that aside - isn’t this what the word ‘fuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaack’ was invented for?
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What? They’re landing 11-story rockets on dinky boats all the time now? Who is ‘they’?
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In my more purile moments I call this project “diaper poop.”
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(Assuming that wasn’t just sarcasm)
This guy:
There have been 9 successful landings on the “Automated Spaceport Drone Ships” , and 7 successful landings back on land, on a landing pad not far from the launch pads.
Two of those landings involved rockets that had previously launched other missions, and were successfully landed, recovered, refurbished and then reused.
(The F9 booster is closer to 14 stories these days, though, as propellant tanks were stretched to increase load capacity in a series of upgrades.)
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I can’t wait for the Richard Hammond Hyperloop video.
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Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!
(sorry, I was unable to resist)
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You forgot one:
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The latter is really Boring.
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Look, I have an underground lair in the rainforest on a pacific island; it’s just not that big a deal anymore. Elon will be wanting to go with the private space station.
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76 posts and nobody’s wondered how that turbine works with no air?
Vacuum seems like a huge hassle. Why not just a tailwind?
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Well, let’s consider one of those cars
Bugatti Veyron 8.0 litre W16 - [2005]
Top Speed: 252 mph (405.5 kph)
In the video the Bugatti reaches a peak speed of 139.44 mph and records a time of 10.17 seconds.
Now, let’s consider the hyperloop
The fully enclosed pod designed to carry cargo and passengers reached 192 mph.
. The pod was thrust through the sealed tube with 3,151 horsepower using electric acceleration combined with custom magnetic levitation and guidance.
. It traveled farther than ever before: a quarter-mile.
It’s not the top speed that is so impressive-- but the acceleration. The Bugatti takes a lot longer to reach 192 mph. And if you’ve seen top gear, you’ll have seen that the Veyron takes quite a long time to accelerate to its top speed.
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Pretty sure the Veyron would accelerate a lot quicker if you could somehow remove all the air from in front of it without starving the engine…
IIRC, frictional losses like rolling resistance square with speed and are relatively negligible, but air resistance cubes with speed. Quite the obstacle at a decent clip.
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I’m tickled when I see a super car in a traffic jam.
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