[LINK] Hyperloop officially announced — predictions, anyone?

It would be helpful if this article included a description or definition of Hyperloop.

I thought this was an interesting critical take. Portions are certainly mind-killing, eg you can completely ignore everything he says about rich entrepreneurs, but overall it seemed sound. Especially the proving-too-much argument; the projections involve doing multiple revolutionary things, each of which would be a significant breakthroughs on its own. The fact that Musk isn't putting money into doing any of those suggests it would not be as easy/cheap as predicted (not just in a "add a factor of 5" way, but in a "the current predictions are meaningless" way).

Also, the fact he's proposing it for California seems strange. There are places with cheaper, flatter land where you could do a proof of concept before moving into a politically complicated, expensive, earthquake-prone state like California. I've seen Texas (Houston-Dallas-San Antonio) and Alberta (Edmonton-Calgary) proposed, both of which sound like much better locations.

An interesting bit about the economics of it:

By building it on pylons, you can almost entirely avoid the need to buy land by following alongside the mostly very straight California Interstate 5 highway, with only minor deviations when the highway makes a sharp turn.

The pylons are the single biggest cost, but by building it this way, they can avoid almost all the expense and delays that come from buying land and trying to get a right-of-way -- they can just use one that already exists. Upon hearing this, the cost estimates no longer sound too good to be true.

I expect p>0.99 the cost projections are underestimates, p>0.5 by at least an order of magnitude.

This could be really, really disruptive. Build it big enough to move cars, and it kills not only trains and civilian flight, it kills the intercity highway. There is no longer any point to having them, as driving aboard a shuttle is so much faster. It also makes city centers closer to each other (in terms of travel time) than they are to their own exurbs. That is going to be stupidly huge, culturally.

Other predictions: Musk is seeing this as solar powered. Yhea, no. It's electric, its going to run of whatever mix the local grid runs on.

Musk is not going to be the mover behind construction. Most likely first mover: Governments. China, Japan, Europe.. (hey, this could seriously put an end to this bloody crisis!)

Lower confidence: Someone is going to try to make a version of this that crosses ocean. If that works out, civil avionics and shipping are done. Stick a fork in them.

You should probably separate out 3 different aspects of the questions- Musk's personal desires, the technical feasibility, and the political/economic feasibility.

Elon Musk has said that he has no interest in creating a working hyperloop himself, and therefore made the design open source. This strikes me as an uninteresting question.

The technical issues are fairly likely to be more-or-less settled within the next year.

The prediction they're interested in, I think, is whether anybody will create a working hyperloop. Or, possibly, anybody in California- p(China, Japan, the EU, or India create a working hyperloop by 2100|the basic ideas behind the hyperloop are sound and there is no global catastrophe) strikes me as uncontroversially close to one.

Oil pipeline construction companies will be the first to move, using their relevant technical expertise and government connections to obtain funding.

One of the first really big (>5bn$) hyperloops will go across a body of water, using budgeting channels previously used for really long bridges.

Sorry, redundant -- ignore.

The main problem for this type of project is getting environmental and safety clearance and land rights. A particular problem with building in California is that the government there has pushed hard on their questionable HSR project and they might not want competition. There is also now a set of people who have a vested interest in keeping HSR going and won't like the idea of scrapping HSR for hyperloop.

On the other hand, Musk seems to have a lot of clout in California, so maybe it makes more sense to make his push there. If it doesn't work out for California, I hope he or someone else gets the project rolling somewhere. Texas might be a good candidate, since it has a fast-increasing population and is generally more pro-development than California.

A bunch of safety issues come to mind.

For example, what happens if the tube re-pressurizes due to a crack or something like that? The capsule flies into dense air at 700 mph and, um, that's all she wrote. There's another capsule doing 700 mph behind it, can you brake it in time?

When and if a hyperloop-like transit system is built (or not), the US will not be the first country to build it. Probably not even in the top 3.

This post reads as though it's saying "Hey, you know that hyperloop thing that we've been talking about all this time? They finally announced it!". Is that the intended meaning?