…some of the best engineers in the world trying to build an impossible thing.
Something tells me that these were not in fact, the best engineers in the world if they knew a project was impossible and tried to make it anyway. I feel like the “best” engineers in the world would try and make things that are actually practical and possible in our reality.
Rather than looking at trains and thinking, if we build those we can sell tickets, they looked at shareholders and the government and thought, I bet we could fleece them. We’re seeing the military effects of this, too, with neoliberales looking shocked as to why more and more funding doesn’t automatically equal more and more armaments. Commodity production detached from anything with the use value that makes the commodity a commodity.
I think the practical is the most important factor, here. It’s hard to know how one of the world’s richest billionaires can get so deep into a project that has an exchange value but no use value. This is what happens when imperialists dismiss productive capital, and become parasitic on government grants, defrauded shareholders, and asset stripping. It was the same with crypto and nfts.
it is because as Vijay Prashad said US billionaires hid their monies in illicit tax havens in UK and EU. And there is no state control to put those monies back into infrastructure but Elon musk sure have his pet projects like Mars colonization and Hyperloopy , I mean why not Elon and military industrial complex don’t get why ordinary people need food and stuff.
Musk’s “Mars colonization” project will end up the exact same way as his “hyperloop”. One day it will simply and quietly be declared dead and everyone will forget about it. (Meanwhile China and Russia will be building a moon base together.)
I bet his reusable rocket also doesn’t have any future.
Rockets have always been a dead-end technology. Humanity will never get to the next step in space race, which is economical mineral mining of the asteroid belt, until the world unites and builds a space port in Peru. The very best place to launch is at the equator (fastest angular velocity) at the highest mountain–Basically, somewhere in the Andes. The way to do it is to build a tube up the side of a mountain, make it miles long, and use electromagnetic rails to accelerate the space capsule, it cuts the cost of launch by 99%. This will allow payloads to be launched and for space assembly of larger modules to go do asteroid mining. NASA has known this is the future for decades now, but instead of doing this, we have shitty rocket 1960s technology from Elon Musk. I hate him.
More on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTram
Well, to be fair, the hyperloop was in many respects a fraud used to test out technology intended for Mars (like boring). That said, I think Mars is the pie in the sky that Musk will never abandon while he is still pitching projects to rubes because it is so much easier to “postpone” than civilian infrastructure
Thats just self-patting his back lol.
“Poor economic choices” is building functioning railways that people use.
As opposed to the good economic choice of HS2 where you plan to build a London to Manchester rail in 12 years, and then proceed to spend 6 years building nothing before announcing your rail-line that doesn’t exist is actually only going to go to Birmingham now.
No, I’m not envious of china being able to actually build railways while TERF island just plans to spend ~a decade imagining how cool it’d be if they hypothetically had a railway. /s
“No rail-less nations are building rails” shows the infantile level at which this guy’s brain operates. Global north countries are steadily showing a decline in living conditions while most global south countries don’t have the economic sovereignty to invest in public infrastructure. Rail-less nations are not building rails because of neoliberal austerity not because it is not a sound investment.
The real reason why no one builds railroads (except for china) is because of automobile industry lobbying. For instance, Brazil used to have a functioning rail system until around the 60s, until a bunch of car factories moved in and started pressuring the government to not only invest more on roads, but to abandon passenger trains altogether as an “incentive” for people to buy cars. It’s also the reason why so many right wingers are so against walkable cities, they pretty much just gobble up corporate propaganda and think cars are freedom machines.
until around the 60s, until a bunch of car factories moved in and started pressuring the government to not only invest more on roads, but to abandon passenger trains altogether as an “incentive” for people to buy cars.
Is there any connection to the military dictatorship here?
Yes, actually. It was used to force the neoliberal ‘experiment’ onto the population, same as what happened in Chile and in other Latin American countries. Also, a lot of the supporters of the regime, as well as the upper echelons, were composed of capitalists. It’s a textbook example of fascists and the bourgeoisie working together to suppress leftist movements and force unpopular economic policies.
This article talks about it in more depth, but it’s in portuguese: https://app.uff.br/riuff/handle/1/24398
Thanks! Worst case scenario, I’ve got some friends who are Brazilian liberals who the article will be interesting to discuss with.
The real HSR was the profits made by consults along the way.
If you put PhD in your username I will not care about what you have to say
People that put that sort of stuff give me insecurity vibes. Same with Dr., Engineer, etc…
I work customer support currently. The worst, most rude, most entitled assholes are always those that insist on being called with their Dr. title.
I didn’t spend 15 years at Owl university to be disrespected like this
I’ll make an exception for you :)
“China doesn’t count because I don’t consider nonwhite nations to be successful”
China doesn’t count because they are ruled by the revolutionary popular power, not by a bloody dictatorship controlled by oligarchs as normal “democracies”
Billions of dollars essentially gone to shit only to come up with trains but in tunnels and failing drastically
Wasn’t the hyperloop supposed to be pod based in some far back concept iteration? It’s not even train in tunnel, that’s just a subway, it’s gadgetbahn in tunnels
It works in vacuum so it’s impossible to create. Period.
Isambard Brunel, one of history’s great engineers, tried to make one in the 1800s.
The project failed due to materials science limits of the day (leather seals for high vacuum)
So he went back to building normal, non-silly railways.
So it’s fair to say “maybe we didn’t have the technology 150 years ago” but that also means you know exactly what mistakes to not repeat. Of course, this assumes a good-faith operation, not a placebo promised to keep people from demanding normal, non-silly railways in thr first place.
Non-physicists when they try to assume a vacuum:
Imagine having a PhD in Liberalism and being proud of that.
Read the replies to the Hyperloop tweet to see what a neoliberalism-poisoned PhD brain and its worshippers looks like. Gems like “the idea would have been viable with infinite money” and that the point of failure was the tunneling, which is literally the first step of the whole concept.
“Poor economic choices”
I promise that China will collapse tomorrow.
sure, an efficient country wide logistics network is a poor economic choice compared to a gamer tunnel that glogs and you can get out
Smart people knew Hyperloop was a fraud on its face. This guy is either not smart or a grifter or both.
I love that you don’t need to debunk these freaks because they debunk themselves.
for future posts, this kind of content belongs in /c/shitreactionariessay@lemmygrad.ml
“Hype Loop go poof?” That’s all the inside story I need to hear from this douchebag.
This dude should take his diploma and whipe his arse upon it.
If you aren’t this no material analysis sort frankly they won’t consider you in some fields/schools for a PhD, its all by design. If you have seen the grass outside you are unfit for the ivory halls.
