1
00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:07,160
Speaker 1: Get in test with technology with tech Stuff from how

2
00:00:07,240 --> 00:00:14,600
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to

3
00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:17,760
Speaker 1: text Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland and today I'm joined by

4
00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:21,320
Speaker 1: a very special guest host while Lauren is out watching

5
00:00:21,320 --> 00:00:22,920
Speaker 1: one of our friends get married to one of our

6
00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:26,600
Speaker 1: other friends. And that guest host is Ben Bolan. Hey, Jonathan,

7
00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:30,040
Speaker 1: thank you for having me on the show. Uh, longtime fan,

8
00:00:30,160 --> 00:00:33,280
Speaker 1: first time co host. Yep, that's true. I hope anyway,

9
00:00:33,400 --> 00:00:36,000
Speaker 1: why I know the cost part is true? Anyway, this

10
00:00:36,040 --> 00:00:38,720
Speaker 1: actually means that we have both members of a particular

11
00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:42,440
Speaker 1: house stuff works podcast as guest hosts at some point

12
00:00:42,440 --> 00:00:44,800
Speaker 1: in the history of the show. Yeah, that's right, good

13
00:00:44,800 --> 00:00:48,520
Speaker 1: call man. Uh, longtime tech stuff fans will remember that

14
00:00:48,880 --> 00:00:52,479
Speaker 1: one of my co host, uh, the legendary Matt Frederick,

15
00:00:52,640 --> 00:00:56,400
Speaker 1: made a guest appearance on tech Stuff right many many

16
00:00:56,480 --> 00:01:00,520
Speaker 1: moons ago. So anyway, we are great full to have

17
00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:03,840
Speaker 1: you here. And uh, you know you you're you're kind

18
00:01:03,840 --> 00:01:08,160
Speaker 1: of sort of a transportation guru by now, I would say,

19
00:01:08,360 --> 00:01:11,680
Speaker 1: And I asked Ben what topic would he like to cover,

20
00:01:12,080 --> 00:01:14,839
Speaker 1: and he said, Hey, have you guys covered hyper loop?

21
00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:17,640
Speaker 1: And that's when I had to kind of kick the

22
00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 1: ground and look at the look at the ground, and

23
00:01:20,200 --> 00:01:23,959
Speaker 1: then say no, because we did an episode about Elon Musk,

24
00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:25,880
Speaker 1: who has a lot to do with hyper loop, but

25
00:01:25,959 --> 00:01:29,520
Speaker 1: we did that on March thirteen, and he didn't talk

26
00:01:29,520 --> 00:01:32,600
Speaker 1: about hyper loop until like June. Yeah, this is a

27
00:01:32,640 --> 00:01:35,880
Speaker 1: pretty This is a fairly recent development in the context

28
00:01:35,920 --> 00:01:39,360
Speaker 1: of his career. Now, Elon Musk. For anybody who hasn't

29
00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:42,880
Speaker 1: checked out the Tech Stuff episode on you, yeah, shame on.

30
00:01:42,920 --> 00:01:47,080
Speaker 1: You get the to a speaker of some sort, find

31
00:01:47,080 --> 00:01:50,160
Speaker 1: an RSS feed or iTunes or something and download that

32
00:01:50,160 --> 00:01:54,080
Speaker 1: and listen to it. We'll wait, Okay, welcome back, Welcome back.

33
00:01:54,120 --> 00:01:56,640
Speaker 1: And that was what you just listened to if you

34
00:01:56,640 --> 00:02:00,600
Speaker 1: hadn't heard it before. Was a great overview of this

35
00:02:00,640 --> 00:02:04,840
Speaker 1: inventor's life, including his origin story and the companies he's

36
00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:08,840
Speaker 1: been associated with. Jonathan if if I could defer to

37
00:02:08,880 --> 00:02:12,519
Speaker 1: you for a quick recap of l mu s okay

38
00:02:12,560 --> 00:02:14,760
Speaker 1: so um. He came up with a little idea that

39
00:02:14,800 --> 00:02:19,399
Speaker 1: would eventually be called PayPal. PayPal is, of course, a

40
00:02:19,480 --> 00:02:22,160
Speaker 1: payment system that you can use online. You can create

41
00:02:22,200 --> 00:02:25,880
Speaker 1: an account through PayPal, and it allows you to process

42
00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:30,160
Speaker 1: payments or to to make payments to vendors. That accept PayPal,

43
00:02:30,600 --> 00:02:34,160
Speaker 1: particularly things like eBay. But it was one of those

44
00:02:34,200 --> 00:02:37,800
Speaker 1: ideas to try and make online transactions secure and easy,

45
00:02:37,919 --> 00:02:40,920
Speaker 1: so that maybe you didn't want to um to hand

46
00:02:40,960 --> 00:02:43,359
Speaker 1: over your credit card information every time. Maybe you wanted

47
00:02:43,400 --> 00:02:46,440
Speaker 1: to create a special bank account and then make that

48
00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:49,320
Speaker 1: a PayPal account, and so you could do transfers in

49
00:02:49,320 --> 00:02:51,600
Speaker 1: a more secure format. You knew that you had a

50
00:02:51,639 --> 00:02:54,040
Speaker 1: certain amount of money in that account, nothing beyond that

51
00:02:54,120 --> 00:02:57,119
Speaker 1: was ever going to get tampered with. Yeah, it kind

52
00:02:57,120 --> 00:03:01,360
Speaker 1: of controlled your risks. Yeah, absolutely. And now, of course,

53
00:03:01,480 --> 00:03:04,840
Speaker 1: as we've talked about with inventors in the past, because

54
00:03:05,120 --> 00:03:08,239
Speaker 1: you've also done a show called Stuff of Genius, so

55
00:03:08,400 --> 00:03:13,119
Speaker 1: we know that often when somebody invents something that appears

56
00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:15,680
Speaker 1: to be new, they're standing on the shoulders of giants

57
00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:20,760
Speaker 1: earlier innovations. PayPal not necessarily the first time someone attempted

58
00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:24,200
Speaker 1: to do this, but by far the most successful instance. Yeah. Yeah,

59
00:03:24,200 --> 00:03:27,600
Speaker 1: And and even that was not Elon Musk's first foray

60
00:03:27,720 --> 00:03:31,640
Speaker 1: into business. He had tried a few times, but PayPal was,

61
00:03:32,080 --> 00:03:37,200
Speaker 1: I guess you could say ridiculously successful. It gave him

62
00:03:37,400 --> 00:03:40,320
Speaker 1: the freedom to pursue whatever else he wanted to do

63
00:03:40,360 --> 00:03:43,600
Speaker 1: because he made so much money so quickly that the

64
00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:47,520
Speaker 1: constraints were off, and so he began to pursue another

65
00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:51,040
Speaker 1: interest of his, which was, you know, cars that go

66
00:03:51,200 --> 00:03:56,960
Speaker 1: really fast. Yes, Tesla Motors, another little company by Musk

67
00:03:57,080 --> 00:03:58,880
Speaker 1: that some of you may have heard of, you know,

68
00:03:59,400 --> 00:04:03,120
Speaker 1: Scott Anagement and I cover this often on car stuff

69
00:04:03,240 --> 00:04:06,560
Speaker 1: and tech stuff. Has also looked into some of the

70
00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:11,120
Speaker 1: fascinating innovations and technology here. Uh. So we've got a

71
00:04:11,120 --> 00:04:13,920
Speaker 1: guy who's done PayPal, We've got a guy who's done

72
00:04:13,960 --> 00:04:20,239
Speaker 1: Tesla Motors. Uh. He also was interested in another transportation initiative. Yeah,

73
00:04:20,640 --> 00:04:23,000
Speaker 1: before we even get to hyperlop. He was interested in

74
00:04:23,320 --> 00:04:27,800
Speaker 1: a transportation that would send you up, like really really up,

75
00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:30,919
Speaker 1: and not not balloons on a house. No, no, not

76
00:04:30,920 --> 00:04:33,520
Speaker 1: not not that up. No. We're talking, of course about

77
00:04:33,560 --> 00:04:39,360
Speaker 1: space X, which is a privatized space initiative. Really it's

78
00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:43,520
Speaker 1: it's the business of getting things up into space. Because,

79
00:04:43,520 --> 00:04:47,880
Speaker 1: as we all know, NASA was getting further and further

80
00:04:48,080 --> 00:04:50,880
Speaker 1: budget cuts as time was going on, and it became

81
00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:53,560
Speaker 1: apparent that if we weren't going to have a public

82
00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:57,359
Speaker 1: space industry, something that was funded by the government, then

83
00:04:57,520 --> 00:05:00,200
Speaker 1: if we still wanted to pursue things in space, and

84
00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:03,120
Speaker 1: we do because there's a lot of important stuff out there,

85
00:05:03,120 --> 00:05:07,520
Speaker 1: communication satellites being one of the simplest to explain. It

86
00:05:07,600 --> 00:05:10,039
Speaker 1: meant that we had to have some private industry step in.

87
00:05:10,240 --> 00:05:12,839
Speaker 1: And so Musk said, you know, I think this is

88
00:05:12,880 --> 00:05:15,120
Speaker 1: something else that I'm really interested in. I've always been

89
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:18,279
Speaker 1: interested in space. And he began to devote quite a

90
00:05:18,279 --> 00:05:23,680
Speaker 1: bit of time and money and resources to creating a

91
00:05:23,800 --> 00:05:29,240
Speaker 1: viable private space enterprise, and in fact, but not the spaceship,

92
00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:32,479
Speaker 1: and that would have been probably a little beyond even

93
00:05:32,640 --> 00:05:39,320
Speaker 1: his amazing reach it. Yeah, so mostly what he's looking

94
00:05:39,360 --> 00:05:44,000
Speaker 1: at is our ways to try and create an economically

95
00:05:44,200 --> 00:05:50,280
Speaker 1: feasible private space enterprise. And he talked a lot about

96
00:05:50,320 --> 00:05:53,680
Speaker 1: how that's difficult to do because you have very limited

97
00:05:54,400 --> 00:05:58,120
Speaker 1: vendors from whom you can get the important components for

98
00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:01,360
Speaker 1: your rockets. So he remember specifically, he pointed out this

99
00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:03,919
Speaker 1: problem he had in Russia, where he would be quoted

100
00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:07,240
Speaker 1: a price, he would agree to purchase a certain number

101
00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:10,679
Speaker 1: of units of rockets at that price, and then upon

102
00:06:11,040 --> 00:06:15,000
Speaker 1: the actual manufacture of it, be told, oh we're sorry,

103
00:06:15,560 --> 00:06:17,520
Speaker 1: I know, we said that was gonna be twenty million

104
00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:19,760
Speaker 1: dollars for all of these but it's actually gonna be

105
00:06:19,839 --> 00:06:23,160
Speaker 1: twenty million per rocket. Yeah, something along those lines. It's

106
00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:25,000
Speaker 1: just yeah. And he talked about how, you know, you

107
00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:27,039
Speaker 1: have to deal with these things, and that it gave

108
00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:30,320
Speaker 1: him a lot of uh experience and knowledge about the

109
00:06:30,360 --> 00:06:33,839
Speaker 1: industry and how to try and and get around that

110
00:06:33,920 --> 00:06:36,440
Speaker 1: by making as much of the stuff yourself as possible.

111
00:06:36,520 --> 00:06:37,920
Speaker 1: In fact, that was one of the things he said,

112
00:06:37,960 --> 00:06:42,160
Speaker 1: like this explains why NASA budgets go out of control.

113
00:06:42,200 --> 00:06:45,200
Speaker 1: It's not that they're poorly managed. It's that you have

114
00:06:45,360 --> 00:06:48,120
Speaker 1: such limited resources to go to to get what you

115
00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:52,000
Speaker 1: need that you're kind of held hostage by them. So,

116
00:06:52,240 --> 00:06:55,919
Speaker 1: but that all of these interests are stuff that we

117
00:06:55,960 --> 00:06:58,720
Speaker 1: had already talked about on tech stuff, right. Yes, that

118
00:06:58,880 --> 00:07:02,040
Speaker 1: was the quick, dirty recap of the episode you should

119
00:07:02,040 --> 00:07:05,120
Speaker 1: listen to in full. We say all of this to

120
00:07:05,240 --> 00:07:09,720
Speaker 1: say that Musk has some street cred. He's not just

121
00:07:09,880 --> 00:07:13,680
Speaker 1: some guy, you know making a YouTube video. Uh. He

122
00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:21,400
Speaker 1: is proposing another transit innovation, another potential transit innovation, and

123
00:07:21,640 --> 00:07:25,760
Speaker 1: that would be the hyper loop. But my first question, you, Jonathan,

124
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:29,480
Speaker 1: we're talking hyper loop, what what is it? Well, if

125
00:07:29,560 --> 00:07:32,720
Speaker 1: we were to take elon Musk's own words, and this

126
00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:36,600
Speaker 1: is somewhat paraphrased from an interview he gave at the

127
00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:39,560
Speaker 1: D eleven event. He said, it's a cross between a

128
00:07:39,640 --> 00:07:42,680
Speaker 1: concorde and a rail gun and an air hockey table.

129
00:07:42,960 --> 00:07:45,840
Speaker 1: He added the air hockey table last, like he said

130
00:07:45,840 --> 00:07:48,400
Speaker 1: concorde and a railgun first, and I got a great responses.

131
00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:50,760
Speaker 1: You know, technically, if I really want to blow your minds,

132
00:07:50,800 --> 00:07:52,680
Speaker 1: I need to add in the fact that there's an

133
00:07:52,760 --> 00:07:56,000
Speaker 1: air hockey table element in there too, and uh. Then

134
00:07:56,040 --> 00:07:58,840
Speaker 1: he made uh an inappropriate joke, But essentially he said

135
00:07:58,840 --> 00:08:00,920
Speaker 1: that if these three things got together and had nice

136
00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:03,880
Speaker 1: romantic times, hyper loop would be the bibbet that would

137
00:08:03,880 --> 00:08:07,520
Speaker 1: be produced as a result. So now that that alone

138
00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:10,160
Speaker 1: doesn't really tell you what hyper loop is. And I

139
00:08:10,160 --> 00:08:13,760
Speaker 1: think that was actually Musk's point. He knew he didn't

140
00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:16,520
Speaker 1: want to spoil the surprise at that event, so he

141
00:08:16,560 --> 00:08:19,040
Speaker 1: wanted to give just enough information for people to get

142
00:08:19,120 --> 00:08:21,920
Speaker 1: curious about it, but not enough to actually explain what

143
00:08:21,960 --> 00:08:25,120
Speaker 1: it was. Right, and one of the things one of

144
00:08:25,160 --> 00:08:28,640
Speaker 1: the best ways for us to approach this over the

145
00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:31,200
Speaker 1: course of this episode, I think we're going to go

146
00:08:31,360 --> 00:08:35,640
Speaker 1: into what the science behind a hyper loop. Uh, you know,

147
00:08:35,720 --> 00:08:39,200
Speaker 1: maybe some pros, some cons some similar systems. Uh, the

148
00:08:39,280 --> 00:08:43,160
Speaker 1: elevator pitch. We we can't really beat that great quote

149
00:08:43,679 --> 00:08:46,240
Speaker 1: about but if you want to, if you want something

150
00:08:46,280 --> 00:08:49,400
Speaker 1: that's a little easier to actually visualize beyond the fact

151
00:08:49,440 --> 00:08:51,920
Speaker 1: that what you're gonna shoot people through some form of

152
00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:56,640
Speaker 1: high energy mechanism and they're just gonna fly across you

153
00:08:56,760 --> 00:08:59,840
Speaker 1: and you get points if they hit the gold was this, Yeah,

154
00:08:59,880 --> 00:09:02,199
Speaker 1: but no, it's it's more like, all right, so it's

155
00:09:02,280 --> 00:09:06,080
Speaker 1: it's an elevated system in more ways than one. For one,

156
00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:07,880
Speaker 1: it's going to if it were to be built, it

157
00:09:07,880 --> 00:09:10,640
Speaker 1: would be built on pylons that would go and hold

158
00:09:10,679 --> 00:09:15,200
Speaker 1: the the whole system above ground. Um. It's was proposed

159
00:09:15,440 --> 00:09:18,800
Speaker 1: to be between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yes, with

160
00:09:18,960 --> 00:09:22,960
Speaker 1: an incredibly short transit time. Yeah, we'll get into that.

161
00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:26,000
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it, but but it's it's

162
00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:29,079
Speaker 1: the ideas that the capsules that you would travel in

163
00:09:29,120 --> 00:09:30,839
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a train. It would be a sort

164
00:09:30,880 --> 00:09:34,000
Speaker 1: of a capsule that could hold a certain number of people. Um.

165
00:09:34,040 --> 00:09:38,320
Speaker 1: That these these capsules would float above the floor of

166
00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:40,800
Speaker 1: the system. The whole thing would be inside a tunnel

167
00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:43,800
Speaker 1: that's on top of these pylons, so it's all enclosed,

168
00:09:44,200 --> 00:09:46,920
Speaker 1: but the capsule would float above the ground, so that

169
00:09:46,960 --> 00:09:50,640
Speaker 1: means you've eliminated friction from the wheel. There's no wheels

170
00:09:50,640 --> 00:09:56,840
Speaker 1: to which and then it would be propelled down this tube,

171
00:09:57,360 --> 00:10:00,040
Speaker 1: which also would have very low air pressure, so you

172
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:02,880
Speaker 1: would have low air resistance. It's a partial vacuum. Yeah,

173
00:10:02,920 --> 00:10:04,960
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about that too in

174
00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:08,360
Speaker 1: a second. So essentially you're talking about some sort of

175
00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:10,959
Speaker 1: imagine a straw, but the straw has closed off at

176
00:10:10,960 --> 00:10:14,040
Speaker 1: both ends more or less, there's there's a little bit

177
00:10:14,080 --> 00:10:16,160
Speaker 1: of a gap in there to allow some air passage.

178
00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:19,439
Speaker 1: And then imagine a p that's inside, like a dry

179
00:10:19,800 --> 00:10:22,960
Speaker 1: p that's inside that that straw, And then imagine that

180
00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:27,720
Speaker 1: you have somehow maybe bombarded that p with electrons so

181
00:10:27,760 --> 00:10:30,840
Speaker 1: that now has built up a negative electrostatic charge, and

182
00:10:30,840 --> 00:10:34,600
Speaker 1: then you put another negative magnet end next to it,

183
00:10:34,679 --> 00:10:37,160
Speaker 1: and it would zip across to the other end of

184
00:10:37,200 --> 00:10:42,760
Speaker 1: the tube. In a very very oversimplified way, that's what

185
00:10:42,840 --> 00:10:47,560
Speaker 1: the hyper loop is. And yes, you are inside, so

186
00:10:47,640 --> 00:10:51,480
Speaker 1: you yeah, obviously there's some questions that we have to answer,

187
00:10:52,440 --> 00:10:55,600
Speaker 1: but that's the general idea. So you know, this is

188
00:10:55,679 --> 00:10:58,760
Speaker 1: this is actually it's we'll talk about this too. This

189
00:10:58,800 --> 00:11:01,120
Speaker 1: is not the first time this kind of system has

190
00:11:01,160 --> 00:11:04,400
Speaker 1: been proposed, And in fact, there's a really interesting story

191
00:11:04,400 --> 00:11:07,360
Speaker 1: we'll get to about another person who has proposed a

192
00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:10,280
Speaker 1: very similar system that they've they've been talking about for

193
00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:13,560
Speaker 1: a couple of years before Musk ever said anything, and

194
00:11:13,960 --> 00:11:18,240
Speaker 1: they received a slightly different reaction, I would say, than

195
00:11:18,400 --> 00:11:21,640
Speaker 1: what Musk has received. Um, and we'll we'll have to

196
00:11:21,640 --> 00:11:24,640
Speaker 1: talk about spoilers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just just teasing you.

197
00:11:24,760 --> 00:11:28,319
Speaker 1: So hyper Loop essentially, what we're getting at is it's

198
00:11:28,360 --> 00:11:33,080
Speaker 1: a high speed transportation system that allows multiple passengers to

199
00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:35,920
Speaker 1: go between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco,

200
00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:40,000
Speaker 1: at least initially, should never be built. Yeah, and uh, also,

201
00:11:40,200 --> 00:11:42,800
Speaker 1: of course the questions that we need to address that

202
00:11:42,880 --> 00:11:45,400
Speaker 1: are going to be popping up in everybody's head. Um.

203
00:11:45,720 --> 00:11:47,400
Speaker 1: I I just want to put this on the radar

204
00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:51,360
Speaker 1: for the very end of the show, Jonathan. The question

205
00:11:51,400 --> 00:11:53,400
Speaker 1: I want to us both to attempt to answer the

206
00:11:53,480 --> 00:11:56,600
Speaker 1: very end of the show is this vaporware. That's an

207
00:11:56,640 --> 00:11:59,040
Speaker 1: excellent question. And yes, I think that we will have

208
00:11:59,160 --> 00:12:01,720
Speaker 1: to kind of give our own opinions on that at

209
00:12:01,760 --> 00:12:04,600
Speaker 1: the very end. So we've got a lot to talk about.

210
00:12:04,760 --> 00:12:07,800
Speaker 1: But before we get into the nitty gritty about exactly

211
00:12:07,800 --> 00:12:10,120
Speaker 1: how this thing is supposed to work, should it ever

212
00:12:10,160 --> 00:12:13,440
Speaker 1: be built, let's take a quick break and thank our sponsor.

213
00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:16,839
Speaker 1: You've probably tried Hulu dot com now. With Hulu Plus,

214
00:12:16,880 --> 00:12:20,120
Speaker 1: you can watch your favorite shows anytime, anywhere. Hulu Plus

215
00:12:20,200 --> 00:12:22,240
Speaker 1: lets you watch thousands of hit TV shows in a

216
00:12:22,280 --> 00:12:24,880
Speaker 1: selection of acclaimed movies on your television or on the

217
00:12:24,920 --> 00:12:27,520
Speaker 1: go with your smartphone or tablet, and it all streams

218
00:12:27,520 --> 00:12:30,520
Speaker 1: an HD for the best viewing experience. With Hulu Plus,

219
00:12:30,559 --> 00:12:32,880
Speaker 1: you can watch your favorite current TV shows like Agents

220
00:12:32,880 --> 00:12:36,240
Speaker 1: of Shield, Community and Sleepy Hollow. You can also check

221
00:12:36,240 --> 00:12:39,640
Speaker 1: out exclusive content, including Hulu originals like The Awesome starring

222
00:12:39,760 --> 00:12:42,520
Speaker 1: s Nell, seth Myers, and moon Boy starring Chris Odeld.

223
00:12:42,600 --> 00:12:46,840
Speaker 1: From four to Hulu Plus also offers a great selection

224
00:12:46,880 --> 00:12:49,760
Speaker 1: of acclaimed films for only seven dollars and nine cents

225
00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:51,840
Speaker 1: a month. You can stream as many TV shows and

226
00:12:51,880 --> 00:12:54,640
Speaker 1: movies as you want, wherever you want. Right now, you

227
00:12:54,679 --> 00:12:57,240
Speaker 1: can try Hulu Plus free for two weeks. When you

228
00:12:57,280 --> 00:13:00,280
Speaker 1: go to Hulu plus dot Com Forward slash Tech. That's

229
00:13:00,280 --> 00:13:02,880
Speaker 1: a special offer for our listeners. Make sure you use

230
00:13:02,960 --> 00:13:05,520
Speaker 1: Hulu Plus dot Com Forward slash Tech so you get

231
00:13:05,520 --> 00:13:08,040
Speaker 1: the extended free trial and they know that we sent you.

232
00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:10,960
Speaker 1: Go to Hulu Plus dot Com Forward slash Tech now.

233
00:13:11,520 --> 00:13:14,200
Speaker 1: And as for shows I like to watch on Hulu Plus,

234
00:13:14,679 --> 00:13:19,040
Speaker 1: Agents of Shield is a big one, actually, because occasionally

235
00:13:19,080 --> 00:13:21,160
Speaker 1: I'm traveling and I miss stuff and when I come back,

236
00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:23,040
Speaker 1: I want to catch up and see what's going on.

237
00:13:23,360 --> 00:13:25,480
Speaker 1: I feel that shows really just now starting to hit

238
00:13:25,520 --> 00:13:27,360
Speaker 1: it stride. I think it might have struggled a little

239
00:13:27,360 --> 00:13:30,080
Speaker 1: early in the Marvel universe. It's so huge, and then

240
00:13:30,080 --> 00:13:32,840
Speaker 1: you're dealing with these you know, human people and how

241
00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:35,240
Speaker 1: they are interacting in this world, and I think they're

242
00:13:35,280 --> 00:13:38,440
Speaker 1: really getting into some interesting territory. So that's a recommendation

243
00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:41,000
Speaker 1: for me. You should go check it out. Alright, so

244
00:13:41,080 --> 00:13:46,480
Speaker 1: we're back, Let's talk about how the hyperloop would actually work. Now,

245
00:13:46,760 --> 00:13:48,880
Speaker 1: you remember I was mentioning that whole idea of a

246
00:13:48,920 --> 00:13:52,280
Speaker 1: closed off straw with a p in it. Yeah, so

247
00:13:52,440 --> 00:13:55,680
Speaker 1: if you know that's that's that's okay, except for the

248
00:13:55,679 --> 00:13:57,880
Speaker 1: fact that if you have air in that tube and

249
00:13:57,920 --> 00:14:00,160
Speaker 1: the air doesn't have anywhere to go. That p is

250
00:14:00,200 --> 00:14:02,280
Speaker 1: going to be pushing against the air in that tube,

251
00:14:02,320 --> 00:14:04,760
Speaker 1: and even if there's space around the PA, it's not

252
00:14:04,800 --> 00:14:07,079
Speaker 1: going to go as fast as it could if there

253
00:14:07,080 --> 00:14:10,040
Speaker 1: were no air at all, right, Right, The air resistance

254
00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:14,080
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest speed killers. Yeah, so there

255
00:14:14,160 --> 00:14:16,840
Speaker 1: you might have heard of some maglev trains, you know,

256
00:14:16,960 --> 00:14:22,560
Speaker 1: trains that actually float above the track through magnetic levitation.

257
00:14:22,720 --> 00:14:25,320
Speaker 1: And by magnetic levitation, we're esimibly talking about magnets that

258
00:14:25,400 --> 00:14:30,560
Speaker 1: repel one another and maintain the trains distance above a tract.

259
00:14:30,720 --> 00:14:33,880
Speaker 1: Usually it's it's like just a tiny distance above it, right,

260
00:14:33,920 --> 00:14:36,680
Speaker 1: and that's you know, and this this helps reduce friction

261
00:14:36,720 --> 00:14:39,480
Speaker 1: for those those sorts of systems. I think what we're

262
00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:42,640
Speaker 1: seeing here is that these can be thought of as

263
00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:47,000
Speaker 1: similar in some ways, but they have they have very

264
00:14:47,040 --> 00:14:51,720
Speaker 1: different mechanisms. And also, you know, if you have a

265
00:14:51,760 --> 00:14:54,960
Speaker 1: maglev train that's in an uncovered track, then it still

266
00:14:55,000 --> 00:14:57,320
Speaker 1: has to deal with that air resistance. You know, it's

267
00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:00,120
Speaker 1: top speed is going to be mitigated by the but

268
00:15:00,200 --> 00:15:03,640
Speaker 1: it has to put push against air. So one of

269
00:15:03,720 --> 00:15:07,400
Speaker 1: the elements of this hyper loop system is it would

270
00:15:07,440 --> 00:15:10,360
Speaker 1: be at a very low pressure, you would have have

271
00:15:10,440 --> 00:15:13,720
Speaker 1: a near vacuum, but not a total vacuum. Total vacuum

272
00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:16,920
Speaker 1: is very difficult to maintain if you are talking about

273
00:15:17,200 --> 00:15:21,480
Speaker 1: a significantly long tube, right, Yeah. Total vacuum is in

274
00:15:21,560 --> 00:15:26,240
Speaker 1: fact so difficult to maintain that even if one could

275
00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:29,960
Speaker 1: just throw billions of dollars at the problem making really

276
00:15:30,000 --> 00:15:33,840
Speaker 1: long when uh, it might be impossible to do it effectively.

277
00:15:33,920 --> 00:15:36,400
Speaker 1: You would have to have some form of of you know,

278
00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:39,960
Speaker 1: vacuum stations all along the tube just to constantly deal

279
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:44,360
Speaker 1: with any differentiation and pressure. So instead, Musk says, why

280
00:15:44,360 --> 00:15:46,720
Speaker 1: don't we just have something that will lower the air

281
00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:50,040
Speaker 1: pressure quite a bit, uh, And that will allow for

282
00:15:50,320 --> 00:15:53,200
Speaker 1: reduced air resistance because you don't have as much air

283
00:15:53,240 --> 00:15:55,760
Speaker 1: to push against, and then all that means the capsule

284
00:15:55,800 --> 00:15:59,320
Speaker 1: can move faster within that tube. So that's that's one

285
00:15:59,400 --> 00:16:02,840
Speaker 1: element to another element is, well, how do you get

286
00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:06,320
Speaker 1: the tube to float above the base of the track,

287
00:16:06,680 --> 00:16:10,120
Speaker 1: the base of the tunnel, And it's not through magnetic levitation? Yeah, yeah,

288
00:16:10,200 --> 00:16:13,560
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's weirdly enough. It goes back to our

289
00:16:13,600 --> 00:16:18,520
Speaker 1: air hockey comparison, right exactly, the air cushioning, right. Yeah,

290
00:16:18,520 --> 00:16:21,440
Speaker 1: So you've got You've got these little air skis on

291
00:16:21,520 --> 00:16:25,800
Speaker 1: the base of the metal capsule. So imagine these flat surfaces,

292
00:16:25,880 --> 00:16:28,680
Speaker 1: lots of surface area on the base of this capsule,

293
00:16:29,080 --> 00:16:32,520
Speaker 1: and then the track could blow air up and the

294
00:16:32,560 --> 00:16:35,800
Speaker 1: capsule is on a cushion of air. So that there's

295
00:16:35,800 --> 00:16:38,280
Speaker 1: another reason why you can't have a total vacuum, because

296
00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:41,960
Speaker 1: if you're using air to keep the capsule up, Uh,

297
00:16:42,480 --> 00:16:44,960
Speaker 1: you obviously can't have a total vacuum. Right. Yeah in

298
00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:47,200
Speaker 1: this in this case, in a very crew comparison, it

299
00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:50,600
Speaker 1: would be trying to drive a car without wheels. Yeah yeah,

300
00:16:50,720 --> 00:16:53,960
Speaker 1: and um for anyone who has tried that, I'm sorry.

301
00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:56,560
Speaker 1: I wish we had talked earlier. I know a lot

302
00:16:56,640 --> 00:16:59,320
Speaker 1: of people who have cars without wheels on their front yard.

303
00:16:59,520 --> 00:17:01,240
Speaker 1: But that's because we live in the South, right, that

304
00:17:01,400 --> 00:17:03,400
Speaker 1: is because we live in the South. But so if

305
00:17:03,440 --> 00:17:06,040
Speaker 1: we just take if we just take these two ideas, right,

306
00:17:06,359 --> 00:17:11,400
Speaker 1: partial vacuum, eliminating the air resistance, having these air skis. Um.

307
00:17:11,480 --> 00:17:13,440
Speaker 1: One of the first things that I thought about when

308
00:17:13,440 --> 00:17:16,760
Speaker 1: I was reading about the hyper loop system was it

309
00:17:16,760 --> 00:17:20,000
Speaker 1: always reminded me in principle of the pneumatic bank tubes.

310
00:17:20,560 --> 00:17:23,240
Speaker 1: Remember those yes, exactly what you're talking about. And there's

311
00:17:23,320 --> 00:17:27,240
Speaker 1: even a there's even this such a tangent. But there's

312
00:17:27,280 --> 00:17:30,840
Speaker 1: even a system that someone tried to build, I believe

313
00:17:30,880 --> 00:17:32,800
Speaker 1: in New York that was supposed to be a pneumatic

314
00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:37,080
Speaker 1: train system spoil alert didn't work out, and so how

315
00:17:37,119 --> 00:17:40,560
Speaker 1: how would we like We're gonna keep explaining the science,

316
00:17:40,560 --> 00:17:44,520
Speaker 1: but but it's it's important that we underline, we emphasize

317
00:17:44,880 --> 00:17:50,679
Speaker 1: that this is at best wildly ambitious. So we've got um,

318
00:17:50,720 --> 00:17:54,360
Speaker 1: we've got back to uh to the idea with the science.

319
00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:56,919
Speaker 1: Now at this point, we're we're talking about principles, we're

320
00:17:56,960 --> 00:18:00,280
Speaker 1: talking about blue sky stuff. I love that you up

321
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:03,040
Speaker 1: the p example. This is a great example P A

322
00:18:03,119 --> 00:18:06,959
Speaker 1: P E A for our family show. I'm sorry, so

323
00:18:07,240 --> 00:18:13,439
Speaker 1: this uh, this p this sealed capsule um could carry

324
00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:17,200
Speaker 1: twenty eight passengers, right, so it's larger than your average.

325
00:18:17,480 --> 00:18:21,160
Speaker 1: He even suggested that if you wanted to expand the hyperloop,

326
00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:24,960
Speaker 1: you could have larger capsules that could carry not just passengers,

327
00:18:24,960 --> 00:18:27,440
Speaker 1: but cars as well. One of the reasons for that

328
00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:30,960
Speaker 1: is that the proposed stations that would be in Los

329
00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:33,760
Speaker 1: Angeles and San Francisco would actually be in outlying areas,

330
00:18:34,119 --> 00:18:36,560
Speaker 1: meaning that once you've got there, you would not be

331
00:18:36,680 --> 00:18:38,280
Speaker 1: right there in the city center. You would have to

332
00:18:38,320 --> 00:18:40,679
Speaker 1: find some other means of transportation to getting you to

333
00:18:40,760 --> 00:18:43,040
Speaker 1: your final location, assuming that it's not a hotel that's

334
00:18:43,119 --> 00:18:46,400
Speaker 1: adjacent to the to the station, right, which would be

335
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:51,040
Speaker 1: probably wildly expensive. Yeah, well, you know, yes, And I

336
00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:54,320
Speaker 1: remember I read one report that said, because you would

337
00:18:54,320 --> 00:18:56,600
Speaker 1: have to transfer to a different form of transportation, that

338
00:18:56,600 --> 00:18:59,560
Speaker 1: would significantly increase the travel time. And I'm thinking, have

339
00:18:59,680 --> 00:19:03,040
Speaker 1: you ever driven between San Francisco and Los Angeles, because

340
00:19:03,320 --> 00:19:04,800
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, if you know what the

341
00:19:04,800 --> 00:19:08,920
Speaker 1: word significant means, because I have gone between San Francisco

342
00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:12,520
Speaker 1: and Los Angeles by car and it is not leisurely

343
00:19:12,600 --> 00:19:14,720
Speaker 1: is a good word for it? How long did it take?

344
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:18,040
Speaker 1: We actually decided to make it a road trip, so

345
00:19:18,119 --> 00:19:21,280
Speaker 1: we stopped overnight between the two and we we took

346
00:19:21,320 --> 00:19:23,480
Speaker 1: a more scenic route anyway, we didn't take a direct

347
00:19:23,560 --> 00:19:25,359
Speaker 1: route between San Francisco and l A. We went down

348
00:19:25,400 --> 00:19:28,320
Speaker 1: the coastal Highway, so we were already going out of

349
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:31,080
Speaker 1: our way. But we stopped just south of Big Sir,

350
00:19:31,440 --> 00:19:33,240
Speaker 1: which is gorgeous. By the way, if you've ever been

351
00:19:33,280 --> 00:19:35,280
Speaker 1: to California and you've been there, you know what I'm

352
00:19:35,280 --> 00:19:37,440
Speaker 1: talking about, and if you haven't, you should check it out.

353
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:41,080
Speaker 1: It's absolutely beautiful landscape. But it's a long drive, and

354
00:19:41,320 --> 00:19:44,440
Speaker 1: we decided we would make that an experience as opposed

355
00:19:44,520 --> 00:19:47,560
Speaker 1: to a frustration. Right, we planned for it to be

356
00:19:47,600 --> 00:19:49,160
Speaker 1: a long drive and that we would take a break

357
00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:51,480
Speaker 1: halfway down. Now, if you were to go just down

358
00:19:51,520 --> 00:19:54,240
Speaker 1: the highway, it'd be a few hours, right, It wouldn't

359
00:19:54,320 --> 00:19:57,040
Speaker 1: be It wouldn't be like a you know, a twelve

360
00:19:57,040 --> 00:19:59,720
Speaker 1: hour drive or anything, depending upon how bad the traffic is,

361
00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:03,000
Speaker 1: because it can get rough. But it's it's it's definitely

362
00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:07,320
Speaker 1: not a quick trip and uh, at least not yet,

363
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:10,440
Speaker 1: but the hyper loop could possibly make it a quick trip. Now.

364
00:20:10,600 --> 00:20:14,119
Speaker 1: We haven't talked even about the propulsion system. Yeah, we

365
00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:17,000
Speaker 1: talked about that. It's floating above the track, well not

366
00:20:17,040 --> 00:20:19,720
Speaker 1: even a track, it's floating above the ground of this tunnel,

367
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:23,439
Speaker 1: which again is elevated. It's on these pylons, and we

368
00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:26,520
Speaker 1: talked about how uh you know, it's uh, we got

369
00:20:26,560 --> 00:20:28,440
Speaker 1: the lower air pressure inside the tunnel, but how does

370
00:20:28,440 --> 00:20:32,119
Speaker 1: it actually move. It uses a series of linear electric

371
00:20:32,240 --> 00:20:36,239
Speaker 1: motors which actually create a magnetic field, and so in

372
00:20:36,280 --> 00:20:39,280
Speaker 1: this case, it's like the maglev trains that also use

373
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:41,840
Speaker 1: magnetic fields for two purposes. They use it one to

374
00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:44,399
Speaker 1: levitate the train and the second one is to propel

375
00:20:44,480 --> 00:20:48,440
Speaker 1: the train down the track. So while you're not using

376
00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:52,080
Speaker 1: magnetism to levitate the capsule inside the hyper loop, you

377
00:20:52,119 --> 00:20:54,879
Speaker 1: are using it to push it forward. And here's the

378
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:57,360
Speaker 1: neat thing. It's because you've got that low air pressure

379
00:20:57,400 --> 00:21:00,480
Speaker 1: system within this tunnel and you don't have to worry

380
00:21:00,520 --> 00:21:04,080
Speaker 1: so much about friction. You've really reduced friction. You only

381
00:21:04,119 --> 00:21:07,840
Speaker 1: have to accelerate the capsule for a relatively short amount

382
00:21:07,880 --> 00:21:09,600
Speaker 1: of time and then it can glide the rest of

383
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:12,159
Speaker 1: the way because you don't have to continuously pour an

384
00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:15,520
Speaker 1: energy to maintain that speed. I mean you will slow

385
00:21:15,560 --> 00:21:19,840
Speaker 1: down on your own because, uh, you still have intropy

386
00:21:19,920 --> 00:21:22,840
Speaker 1: to deal with. It's not a purely frictionless system. It's

387
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:25,840
Speaker 1: not a pure vacuum. So clearly eventually it's going to stop.

388
00:21:26,200 --> 00:21:29,960
Speaker 1: But the term there is eventually. So that's the neat

389
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:31,840
Speaker 1: thing is that you accelerate to a top speed and

390
00:21:31,840 --> 00:21:34,639
Speaker 1: then you stop, and then you just allow the capsule

391
00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:37,639
Speaker 1: to travel the rest of the way. So now that

392
00:21:37,640 --> 00:21:40,399
Speaker 1: we know how it goes, how fast can this thing go?

393
00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:43,920
Speaker 1: The route is three hundred fifty four or miles or

394
00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:49,399
Speaker 1: about seventy kilometers h Yeah, and and since we know, uh,

395
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:52,560
Speaker 1: since now we can get into our spoiler territory and

396
00:21:52,600 --> 00:21:56,840
Speaker 1: say that the proposed transportation time is thirty five minutes.

397
00:21:56,920 --> 00:22:00,880
Speaker 1: That's incredible. That's so such a short amount of time

398
00:22:00,880 --> 00:22:04,280
Speaker 1: to go between l A and San Francisco. That's that's crazy.

399
00:22:04,359 --> 00:22:09,560
Speaker 1: We are automatically gonna be old codgers who people will

400
00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:13,160
Speaker 1: dismiss when we say, you know, day, it took here.

401
00:22:13,240 --> 00:22:15,720
Speaker 1: It took care at least five hours to get it.

402
00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:18,560
Speaker 1: It takes more than thirty five minutes to drive across

403
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:22,120
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. I mean that's l A is enormous. So yeah,

404
00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:25,520
Speaker 1: and this, um, so this this speed, let's see, how

405
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:29,359
Speaker 1: would you I've I've heard some differing numbers, so um,

406
00:22:29,680 --> 00:22:32,960
Speaker 1: I usually say, I usually say it's right around like

407
00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:36,399
Speaker 1: just below six hundred miles per hour as the average speed.

408
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:39,840
Speaker 1: Somewhere somewhere between five and six hundred miles per hour

409
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 1: would be the average speed. So that's roughly around nine

410
00:22:43,480 --> 00:22:47,160
Speaker 1: kilometers per hour, give or take, you know, kilometers per

411
00:22:47,160 --> 00:22:51,359
Speaker 1: hour because because again, like you said, the discussions vary

412
00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,239
Speaker 1: on this because it all depends upon uh, you know,

413
00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:57,120
Speaker 1: how you're defining everything. And thirty five minutes, I think

414
00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,520
Speaker 1: when they say thirty five minutes, to me, that just

415
00:22:59,560 --> 00:23:02,639
Speaker 1: sounds like a number like it, Like, I don't know

416
00:23:02,680 --> 00:23:06,119
Speaker 1: that they have specifically worked it out where scientifically speaking,

417
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:08,199
Speaker 1: it's thirty five minutes travel time and almost to me

418
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:11,240
Speaker 1: sounds like, well, here's here's a short enough amount of

419
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:16,760
Speaker 1: time for you to consider this incredible accomplishment. But that

420
00:23:16,760 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: would mean that you would have a top speed, Like

421
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:20,280
Speaker 1: I said, you'd hit that top speed and then allow

422
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:22,760
Speaker 1: it to slow down. That would be probably around between

423
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:25,320
Speaker 1: seven and fifty and seven and seventy five miles per

424
00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:28,800
Speaker 1: hour or around twelve hundred kilometers per hour for your

425
00:23:28,840 --> 00:23:32,720
Speaker 1: top speed. That's faster than what how most uh commercial

426
00:23:32,800 --> 00:23:36,640
Speaker 1: jets travel, right, And that also gives us That also

427
00:23:36,800 --> 00:23:38,959
Speaker 1: gives us a good place to note that if you

428
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,720
Speaker 1: are ever writing in this and you have some sort

429
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:44,800
Speaker 1: of phobia about this kind of stuff, um, you know,

430
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:49,080
Speaker 1: do your best, you might you might need to um

431
00:23:49,280 --> 00:23:53,159
Speaker 1: have someone sing you a sweet song thirty five minutes

432
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:55,760
Speaker 1: because if you think about you were in an enclosed capsule.

433
00:23:55,800 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that there wouldn't be any real windows, because

434
00:23:59,320 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 1: what would be the point. There's are really a way

435
00:24:01,280 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: to do it that would be worth the effort. Yeah,

436
00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you could. You could put something

437
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:08,720
Speaker 1: along the tubes so that when you travel it's almost

438
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:12,439
Speaker 1: like animation. I've actually seen train tunnels that have this

439
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: kind of stuff where because as long as the train

440
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:18,440
Speaker 1: is moving at the average speed, you get this illusion

441
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 1: of animation because of the way that things are lit

442
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:23,359
Speaker 1: and the way you're moving through this tunnel. So I

443
00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: guess you could do that. But otherwise you are in

444
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: an enclosed steel tunnel. It's not like you've got a

445
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:31,639
Speaker 1: lot to look at. So if you are claustrophobic, I

446
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:34,119
Speaker 1: would imagine that would be scary. Plus you're going to

447
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:38,160
Speaker 1: experience some some you know, some acceleration. I I I'm

448
00:24:38,200 --> 00:24:40,920
Speaker 1: sure that the acceleration would be gradual, so it wouldn't

449
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 1: be so incredible that you'd be all, you know, crushed

450
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:48,560
Speaker 1: back in your seats experiencing like ten g's of force.

451
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:51,880
Speaker 1: That would be way too much, um, but there, Yeah,

452
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:55,920
Speaker 1: but there will definitely be noticeable effects. It's pretty much

453
00:24:56,000 --> 00:24:59,320
Speaker 1: unavoidable at that at that level of speed. Yeah, and

454
00:24:59,320 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 1: then you have to also worry about deceleration when you

455
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,199
Speaker 1: get to the end of your trip. So again they

456
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 1: would be using magnets to help slow down the capsule's

457
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: travel so that you would come to a smooth stop.

458
00:25:11,680 --> 00:25:14,120
Speaker 1: But that would be something that you have to take

459
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,640
Speaker 1: special care of. And obviously, like you, you definitely need

460
00:25:17,680 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: to put this into very narrow ranges of acceptance because otherwise,

461
00:25:22,359 --> 00:25:26,199
Speaker 1: how can you guarantee that the average person would would

462
00:25:26,240 --> 00:25:30,080
Speaker 1: experience no ill effects inside this capsule? Keeping in mind

463
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 1: that the average person that you know, there's what we

464
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 1: say average, we're talking about a huge variety of variables,

465
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: everything from uh, you know, health issues, part conditioning, pregnancy

466
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:45,080
Speaker 1: right right exactly, or you know, just someone who is older,

467
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: would they be safe? Would they are they likely to

468
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:53,200
Speaker 1: suffer ill effects from this acceleration and deceleration. Someone who

469
00:25:53,240 --> 00:25:56,439
Speaker 1: really had to use the bathroom but they forgot to

470
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 1: do it before they got in the train. Yeah, I

471
00:25:58,080 --> 00:26:00,880
Speaker 1: don't know if there would be a bathroom in here.

472
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,199
Speaker 1: You would think there would need to be, just because

473
00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:06,000
Speaker 1: you know, if you've got a group of people together, Yeah,

474
00:26:06,040 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 1: and asking someone to hold it for thirty five minutes

475
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:10,320
Speaker 1: might be a bit much, depending upon that person, but

476
00:26:10,400 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 1: they they're probably Okay, I'm gonna go out of lim

477
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 1: and say there probably isn't at least yet. We do

478
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:19,120
Speaker 1: know that there are emergency exits built along the tubes,

479
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:22,199
Speaker 1: um or at least there would be. We haven't. We

480
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 1: haven't built anything yet. Yeah, let's underline that again. And

481
00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:27,280
Speaker 1: you did a great job emphasizing that in the beginning,

482
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:29,800
Speaker 1: but we can't say it enough. This has not been

483
00:26:29,840 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 1: built yet and of this podcasting this podcast and um

484
00:26:35,280 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 1: there also there's an additional uh, there's a supplemental power

485
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 1: source here, the solar panels. Yeah. In fact, that's a

486
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:44,960
Speaker 1: great point there. I totally forgot to mention that too.

487
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:48,480
Speaker 1: Where does the hyperloop get its power because you're talking

488
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: about electric motors providing that force to propel them. Uh,

489
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:55,680
Speaker 1: presumably you'd be using some form of electric motors to

490
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: to create the air cushion. So where are you getting

491
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:02,919
Speaker 1: that power? And Musk had said, well, let's put solar

492
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:07,240
Speaker 1: panels along the top of this this raised tunnel, and

493
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 1: you just harvest solar energy and you store that and

494
00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,679
Speaker 1: use that as the power source, saying that if you

495
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: did this properly, you would not have to tap into

496
00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:18,520
Speaker 1: the power grid at all. It would be completely self

497
00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:22,359
Speaker 1: contained in that respect, which you know obviously that would

498
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: be a huge benefit. You could say, well, while the

499
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: operating costs have only like we can't even estimate what

500
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:32,399
Speaker 1: the operating costs of this system would be, but if

501
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,479
Speaker 1: you can remove power from that, then you can at

502
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:39,359
Speaker 1: least compare that part to any other alternative plan. That's true.

503
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:42,520
Speaker 1: And also, you know, the other the other power source

504
00:27:42,640 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 1: they're inside the pods would be the batteries that Tesla

505
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:50,360
Speaker 1: that again come from uh, Tesla bottlelesque electric cars. Well

506
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:54,199
Speaker 1: they don't, they're related to it, yeah, and Tesla, the

507
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: Tesla motors. The one of the things that they've they've

508
00:27:56,800 --> 00:28:00,199
Speaker 1: really innovated in is battery technology and charging technology. They

509
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: have something called a supercharger which allows them to charge

510
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:08,440
Speaker 1: batteries to essentially full capacity at relatively short intervals. So

511
00:28:08,520 --> 00:28:13,359
Speaker 1: that would allow them to continuously operate and recharge these

512
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: these capsules so that you didn't have to worry about

513
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,640
Speaker 1: taking them offline for a great deal of time. Now, clearly, uh,

514
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:23,479
Speaker 1: you know, one of the criticisms I've heard is that

515
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:27,359
Speaker 1: this system might work in California, where you get a

516
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:30,160
Speaker 1: lot of sunshine. But if you were to try and

517
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:32,920
Speaker 1: expand this so that you could, you know, maybe people

518
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:37,040
Speaker 1: who I don't know don't live in California. As crazy

519
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 1: as that sounds to the two people who in this

520
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: room three, really because we got no here too, none

521
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 1: of us live in California. We would not be able

522
00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:47,120
Speaker 1: to take advantage of this unless we were to head

523
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: out and see our buddies at Revision three and then say, hey,

524
00:28:49,840 --> 00:28:52,440
Speaker 1: let's go to Disneyland. Uh. And you know it's just

525
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 1: a thirty five minute tripped on hyperloop. Um, but yeah,

526
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: it's It wouldn't necessarily work everywhere using solar energy in

527
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: the k Yeah, yeah, the UK might not get enough

528
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: son to keep that going so they Now, you could

529
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: argue that sure, you could offset whatever the power needs

530
00:29:08,840 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 1: were with solar panels, and then the rest you would

531
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: supply with whatever the power grid would supply. So it's

532
00:29:13,760 --> 00:29:16,000
Speaker 1: not like it's an all or nothing game. It's not

533
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:17,840
Speaker 1: a zero sum game. I don't mean to say that,

534
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 1: but it's one of those things you've got to take

535
00:29:19,880 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: into consideration. So all right, so this sounds pretty incredible. Ben, this, this,

536
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: this whole system sounds amazing to me. Um. You know what,

537
00:29:29,160 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: everything that's amazing comes to the price tag. And I'm

538
00:29:31,880 --> 00:29:36,160
Speaker 1: curious how much Musk thinks this system would cost. Oh man,

539
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:39,840
Speaker 1: you know, I think the bargain number that I've heard

540
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 1: thrown around is as low as six billion. That's what

541
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 1: I saw. That's the the alpha design has been called

542
00:29:49,320 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: six billion dollars because this is again, no one has

543
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:55,240
Speaker 1: seriously looked into building this, at least to the point

544
00:29:55,280 --> 00:30:00,360
Speaker 1: where talks go beyond just a kind of hypothetical situation. Right. Yeah,

545
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Right now. A lot of the

546
00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: numbers that you and I are pulling come directly from

547
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:11,160
Speaker 1: a fifty seven page uh. I think it's fair to

548
00:30:11,200 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: call the manifesto written by Musk about the hyper loop

549
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:19,640
Speaker 1: and this, uh, this number comes from his estimate. This

550
00:30:19,800 --> 00:30:23,360
Speaker 1: Alpha system. Think of it like, uh, think of it

551
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:26,200
Speaker 1: like when the first PlayStation came out, you know, it

552
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,200
Speaker 1: was it was it was chunky, it was first gin.

553
00:30:29,320 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: It didn't have all the amenities, all the bells and whistles.

554
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:35,520
Speaker 1: For instance. The Alpha system doesn't take into account the

555
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 1: idea of um which you mentioned earlier. The idea of

556
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: putting passenger vehicles on pods. Right. So, in fact, I

557
00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 1: think they said that if you wanted to make it

558
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:47,000
Speaker 1: for passenger vehicles UH to be stored on those kind

559
00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:48,680
Speaker 1: of pods as well, it would be more like seven

560
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 1: point five billion, and at one point five billion increase

561
00:30:52,560 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: for something that significant seems really really optimistic to me. Yeah,

562
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: optimistics the diplomat because you imagine that any capsule that

563
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 1: could hold at least a vehicle and presumably more than one,

564
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: if you're talking about this being a mass transportation system,

565
00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 1: then you know you're going to have to have larger capsules,

566
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: which means in turn you have to have larger tunnels

567
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:21,520
Speaker 1: to to accommodate those larger capsules, stronger pylons or the weight. Yeah,

568
00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: it's I mean, everything ends up having to be larger

569
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: and more more resilient, and it just then means that

570
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: it's going to cost more. So one point five billion

571
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:34,120
Speaker 1: more is kind of I mean, I'm curious to see

572
00:31:34,120 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: how they arrived at their numbers. Um, I've read other estimations.

573
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 1: One person had suggested that it would be more like

574
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 1: one hundred billion dollars to make such a system because

575
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: you have to factor in everything from the design prototypes,

576
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: developing it, testing it, making sure that it's safer people

577
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: to use, and then finally building out the real system,

578
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 1: and then uh, and then operating it, maintaining it. You

579
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 1: know that there are a lot of costs in there,

580
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: so uh, it's interesting too. Did you see how much

581
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:10,680
Speaker 1: they had proposed a ticket would be on the hyperloop? Yeah,

582
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. One way, it's more it would be more

583
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: expensive for you to take a cab to the station

584
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 1: than it would to take a trip from San Francisco

585
00:32:20,760 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 1: to Los Angeles. Yeah, and twenty dollars. That to me,

586
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:26,840
Speaker 1: out of all the numbers I've got thrown around, twenty

587
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:30,160
Speaker 1: dollars is the one that is most likely to make

588
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: me smirk, because that's that's blue sky. Know. If it works,

589
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 1: is it fantastic? Sure? If it's fifty dollars for a ticket,

590
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:42,840
Speaker 1: is it worth it still? Yes? Yes, there's so much

591
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: worth it. Yeah. That's the thing is that I wonder there.

592
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:49,360
Speaker 1: I've seen some economists say that I can't understand how

593
00:32:49,360 --> 00:32:51,600
Speaker 1: they would come up with this idea that if you

594
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: had a twenty dollar ticket, it would recapture the cost

595
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 1: of building this thing within the time frame that Musk

596
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: was suggesting. Uh, you know, I just I also think now, granted,

597
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: Musk is a a pretty smart businessman. He's he's he's

598
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: achieved way more on the business side of things than

599
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 1: I have or that I ever expect to achieve. Hey,

600
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 1: come on, you know, you never know what tomorrow brings.

601
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I maybe I end up coming up

602
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:19,320
Speaker 1: with Hey, I came up with an idea that could

603
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: win me a Nobel Prize when I was talking about

604
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,160
Speaker 1: possibly the existence of white holes and why we haven't

605
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 1: identified any. I'm still waiting on that check. I got

606
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 1: a certificate though, I'll show it to you. Listeners sent

607
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: me a certificate. Um. But yeah, it's just to me

608
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 1: that just that twenty dollars per ticket, it really makes

609
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,880
Speaker 1: me wonder how many people per day this system would

610
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 1: allow to travel so that you would recapture those costs

611
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 1: within a reasonable amount of time. Well, I've got musk

612
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:52,440
Speaker 1: take on it, and it is an excellent question because

613
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 1: that price has to we have to assume that there

614
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: are there there's at least concre estimation behind that. Um,

615
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:03,040
Speaker 1: here is what he's thinking. He said the capacity of

616
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 1: would be on average eight forty passengers per hour. Wow,

617
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: So he argues that's more than sufficient enough to transport

618
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 1: all of the six million passengers traveling between l A

619
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: and San Francisco per year. Uh, and that accounts for

620
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 1: sevent of those travelers to use hyper loop during rush hour.

621
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of there's a lot of wind

622
00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: at your back scenario stuff going on, and forty per hour,

623
00:34:29,239 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's pretty amazing if and how many

624
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:35,880
Speaker 1: people did they say the capsule could hold, like twenty something,

625
00:34:37,280 --> 00:34:39,400
Speaker 1: so that there are a lot of capsules traveling on

626
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:42,400
Speaker 1: that system in order to get and obviously this is

627
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 1: a two way loop. I mean there's a loop, so

628
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:48,400
Speaker 1: you would divide that by two to figure out how

629
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:51,600
Speaker 1: many are traveling north versus south essentially and leaving every

630
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:55,479
Speaker 1: two minutes. That's the interval of the trains. Again, that's

631
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:59,919
Speaker 1: the proposed interval of the trains. And um you know, yeah,

632
00:35:00,000 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: it might sound weird to some of the listeners that

633
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:05,960
Speaker 1: you and I are taking a few moments every few

634
00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:09,279
Speaker 1: minutes to say, well, that would be this is conditional.

635
00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:13,080
Speaker 1: But it's very, very very important to note this because

636
00:35:13,200 --> 00:35:17,360
Speaker 1: any time that we're talking about um an infrastructure process

637
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: uh an infrastructure of this size, or in any any

638
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: kind of new transportation. We have to understand that it's

639
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:29,919
Speaker 1: very safe to assume that the cost will balloon, will

640
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:32,759
Speaker 1: skyros sure, yeah, because you're always going to run into

641
00:35:32,800 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: other costs, just like Musk ran into other costs with SpaceX,

642
00:35:36,360 --> 00:35:38,760
Speaker 1: things that he did not anticipate because he was told

643
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: one thing and it turned out to be another thing.

644
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:44,240
Speaker 1: I would imagine the same situation would happen here where

645
00:35:44,560 --> 00:35:46,920
Speaker 1: things that you know, you're basing it off of a

646
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:50,080
Speaker 1: certain set of expectations, but you haven't factored into all

647
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: the other variables that could affect any of those numbers,

648
00:35:55,160 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 1: including things like well, in order for me to get

649
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 1: the political uh angle covered, I need to make sure

650
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:05,839
Speaker 1: that all these other things are covered first, or I'm

651
00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: not going to get the support I need to get

652
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:09,719
Speaker 1: this done, which kind of you know, this is kind

653
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: of brings us into those pros and cons. Obviously, the

654
00:36:12,040 --> 00:36:15,440
Speaker 1: pro here is that you would have a high speed

655
00:36:15,440 --> 00:36:19,320
Speaker 1: transportation system that could get you between two distant cities

656
00:36:19,600 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 1: in thirty five minutes, which is phenomenal for a low

657
00:36:22,719 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: price twenty bucks a ticket. That's yeah, I can imagine

658
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:28,239
Speaker 1: so many people in l A or San Francisco taking

659
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 1: weekend trips. You know, because you've got twenty bucks a person,

660
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:33,840
Speaker 1: it's not nothing. You can go visit the other city

661
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,479
Speaker 1: and your you can spend most of your time doing

662
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: whatever it is you want to do instead of in

663
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:41,920
Speaker 1: the car. Great idea. I like the idea that's getting

664
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,920
Speaker 1: most it's electricity from solar power, so it's not causing

665
00:36:45,960 --> 00:36:49,759
Speaker 1: too much of a carbon footprint. Depending upon how you know,

666
00:36:49,760 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: you would have to factor in how much carbon footprint

667
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:55,600
Speaker 1: was generated just through the construction, but the operation you

668
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: would imagine would be you know, pretty low since you're

669
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,920
Speaker 1: using solar power as your source of energy. I love that.

670
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:04,520
Speaker 1: I love innovation obviously. I love the idea that if

671
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: this were actually to be as cost efficient as Musk claims,

672
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 1: it would be remarkably less expensive than the proposed train

673
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:15,640
Speaker 1: high speed train system that they want to build between

674
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:18,479
Speaker 1: l A and San Francisco. Ah. Yes, I'm so glad

675
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 1: you mentioned that, because that's one of our that's one

676
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,040
Speaker 1: of our other factors. We should take just a just

677
00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:27,960
Speaker 1: a sidebar here and talk about that. Uh. Hyper loop is.

678
00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:30,799
Speaker 1: While hyper loop might be the Internet favorite right now.

679
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 1: It is not is not the only contender in the

680
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 1: game for high speed transit in this realm uh. There's

681
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: also California's UH state sanctioned transit system, which um which,

682
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:46,680
Speaker 1: let's see, what's the nicest way to say it, It

683
00:37:46,840 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: throws that six billion dollar price tag into a very

684
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 1: favorable contrast, right. Yeah. Musk was making this point when

685
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:57,399
Speaker 1: he was talking about hyperloop for the first couple of times.

686
00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,719
Speaker 1: He said he was looking at the figure for this

687
00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:04,200
Speaker 1: proposed bullet train between l A and San Francisco, and

688
00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:07,640
Speaker 1: he said, there are two factors here, two superlatives that

689
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:11,600
Speaker 1: you never want. One, it's the most expensive bullet train

690
00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: per mile than any other one in the world. And

691
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:17,839
Speaker 1: to it's the slowest one. So it's very slow and

692
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:21,239
Speaker 1: very expensive. He's compared to other bullet train systems. Right,

693
00:38:21,320 --> 00:38:23,960
Speaker 1: And we know that we know that in the case

694
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: of bullet train technology, this is not in the same

695
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 1: situation as a hyper loop. Bullet train technology has been tested,

696
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 1: has been proven to work successfully in Japan, it works

697
00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: successfully in China, there's some in Europe as well as

698
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 1: some in Europe as well. And it's not as though,

699
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 1: it's not as though this is slow and inordinately expensive

700
00:38:45,360 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: because of a lot of research. It might just be,

701
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:56,480
Speaker 1: as Must proposes, a frustrating example of poor implementation, which

702
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,240
Speaker 1: he was so frustrated with it that it led to

703
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: this hyper loop idea. Yeah, I said that that was

704
00:39:02,160 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 1: essentially the impetus that got into thinking there had to

705
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:10,160
Speaker 1: be a better way to get people quickly between uh

706
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 1: these two cities and at a lower price. Yeah. And

707
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:17,720
Speaker 1: I'll put on some pros to dovetail with the pros

708
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 1: that you you earlier mentioned withdraw all great good points. Um.

709
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 1: One of the other pros that I see, and this

710
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:28,359
Speaker 1: is all blue sky. If this works, how amazing would

711
00:39:28,360 --> 00:39:33,200
Speaker 1: it be to be able to build a network of

712
00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: hyper loops kind of picture just almost like a chain

713
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:44,240
Speaker 1: of loops around a around a coastline or traversing through

714
00:39:44,640 --> 00:39:48,160
Speaker 1: the United States. I mean, that's wildly ambitious. That's that's

715
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: something that's not to bring mortality into it, Jonathan, but

716
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: that's something that might be beyond our lifetimes even if

717
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:57,400
Speaker 1: it did work. Right we have this, Uh, well, I

718
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: could also imagine that if you're talking about a more

719
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 1: of a nationwide rollout of this, you would face other,

720
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,680
Speaker 1: uh interesting opponents to it. I could imagine the airline

721
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:10,880
Speaker 1: industry being very much interested in the fact that you

722
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:14,480
Speaker 1: would suddenly have a high speed method getting between two

723
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:18,360
Speaker 1: locations at perhaps lower travel times than you would in

724
00:40:18,400 --> 00:40:22,240
Speaker 1: the air and you know that would be Yeah, there'll

725
00:40:22,239 --> 00:40:25,399
Speaker 1: be a lot more politics going into it, absolutely, And

726
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: it's funny because on car stuff, we did an episode

727
00:40:28,200 --> 00:40:33,360
Speaker 1: once on the proposal for a global inter interstate system

728
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, and by far even countering

729
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 1: in the infrastructure, even countering in the cost of maintenance,

730
00:40:42,480 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 1: which is astronomical. Uh. The by far one of the

731
00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:50,399
Speaker 1: most difficult things would be political opposition, which I think

732
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:55,279
Speaker 1: leads us naturally into the cons of of this system. Right.

733
00:40:55,320 --> 00:40:57,680
Speaker 1: So one would be we can't really be sure what

734
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 1: the cost is, so we don't while we know what

735
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 1: Musk claims he thinks it'll it'll cost that maybe wildly optimistic, um,

736
00:41:07,400 --> 00:41:10,959
Speaker 1: Whereas we can look at what other systems cost based

737
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:16,840
Speaker 1: upon previous builds. Although I think the uh, the proposed

738
00:41:17,600 --> 00:41:21,960
Speaker 1: bullet train is already something at like sixty eight billion dollars,

739
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:24,359
Speaker 1: so it's already ten times more expensive than what Musk

740
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: is proposing, and it was sixty billion dollars and it

741
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:31,439
Speaker 1: jumped up eight billions, right. And it also it would

742
00:41:31,440 --> 00:41:33,839
Speaker 1: take you about two hours forty minutes to get from

743
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 1: l A to San Francisco on that train as opposed

744
00:41:36,400 --> 00:41:40,440
Speaker 1: to as opposed to the Musk's Train or Musk's hyperloop.

745
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 1: It's not trained but anyway, UM, so that's a con.

746
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: Another cons it's a totally unproven technology. So with no precedent,

747
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 1: it's really hard to say whether or not it will work.

748
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:52,960
Speaker 1: Like you could build some prototypes and test it out,

749
00:41:53,080 --> 00:41:55,840
Speaker 1: but we honestly don't know. And it could be one

750
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:57,879
Speaker 1: of those things where you tested out and it doesn't work,

751
00:41:57,920 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: and then you've you've, in some people's minds anyway, wasted time, energy,

752
00:42:02,920 --> 00:42:05,480
Speaker 1: and effort in order to prove that you could not

753
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:08,359
Speaker 1: do what you had hoped to do. So there's that's one.

754
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 1: Another one is just you know, trying to figure out

755
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:14,239
Speaker 1: how do you you know, how do you navigate those

756
00:42:14,280 --> 00:42:17,320
Speaker 1: tricky political waters where you want to erect all these

757
00:42:17,760 --> 00:42:22,839
Speaker 1: pylons alongside highways in California, you know, and and then

758
00:42:22,880 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 1: just the construction alone, like how how long would that

759
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:30,560
Speaker 1: take to build an enormous loop built on pylons? Uh?

760
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:34,520
Speaker 1: You know, and and so there's there's that con as well. Yeah,

761
00:42:34,600 --> 00:42:37,000
Speaker 1: and that's a that's an interesting one because that is

762
00:42:37,040 --> 00:42:40,800
Speaker 1: a con that is going to become more expensive over

763
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:45,319
Speaker 1: time given the growth of that area of California. If

764
00:42:45,800 --> 00:42:49,759
Speaker 1: you know, let's say, let's just be wildly optimistic. Man,

765
00:42:49,880 --> 00:42:53,400
Speaker 1: let's say eight years from now, right, they break ground

766
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:56,719
Speaker 1: and they've got they probably have a lot of agreements

767
00:42:56,760 --> 00:43:00,720
Speaker 1: secured for the land or whatever. But then it's obviously

768
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 1: it's going to take more than a year to build

769
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: something this gargantelan. So the next year comes around and wait, oh,

770
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:11,239
Speaker 1: the prices have changed. So instead of twenty million dollars

771
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:14,040
Speaker 1: for this stretch of land, it's twenty million per acre now,

772
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:17,799
Speaker 1: just like the rockets. But again, just back to your

773
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 1: earlier point, there's no, it's very difficult because there are

774
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,279
Speaker 1: so many variables that are in the dark. I've got

775
00:43:23,280 --> 00:43:27,920
Speaker 1: some additional cons that I haven't seen totally address um

776
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 1: one of at least, and a lot of stuff we've

777
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 1: been reading. Now. One con that I love that you

778
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 1: brought up was the idea that of the price of

779
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,560
Speaker 1: course will balloon. And people have rightly said that there

780
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: are some factors that are not taken in consideration here.

781
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 1: I think that is up there with political political maneuver,

782
00:43:46,080 --> 00:43:47,400
Speaker 1: and I think that is the thing that will be

783
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:51,719
Speaker 1: most likely to kill it. Another thing is um now

784
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:54,560
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm kind of like a softie in

785
00:43:54,600 --> 00:43:57,799
Speaker 1: my heart on my sleeve or whatever. Uh. This could

786
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: be damaging to some community easier industries that rely upon

787
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:08,359
Speaker 1: that traffic UH to sustain their part of the problem. Exactly,

788
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: nail on the head. Now, of course this could be

789
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:13,640
Speaker 1: a little bit dark for some people. But in the

790
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 1: spirit of objectivity, we must mention this what happens when

791
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:21,000
Speaker 1: there's an accident. What happens if we already have a

792
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 1: sunk cost of billions of dollars and then there's a disaster. Yeah,

793
00:44:25,160 --> 00:44:29,680
Speaker 1: because if the capsule has a failure inside, you're talking

794
00:44:29,680 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: about a low pressure system, it's much higher pressure inside

795
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:37,040
Speaker 1: the capsule. You just like an experience of being in

796
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:40,120
Speaker 1: a plane at at a high enough altitude, You've got

797
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:43,200
Speaker 1: very low pressure outside, higher pressure inside. If there's a breach,

798
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 1: then everything gets blown out and there's a there is

799
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:49,959
Speaker 1: a line of well, if you think about an entire

800
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: loop of other capsules two minutes behind. So if there

801
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:57,640
Speaker 1: is any sort of failure of the propulsion system, then

802
00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:00,120
Speaker 1: you could end up having a collision. If they're is

803
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:03,080
Speaker 1: a failure of the propulsion system in the sense of deceleration,

804
00:45:03,160 --> 00:45:06,520
Speaker 1: then you could have injuries as the capsule gets to

805
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:09,800
Speaker 1: its stopping point. There are a lot of safety questions.

806
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:11,959
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking especially if talking about capsule's leaving

807
00:45:11,960 --> 00:45:15,239
Speaker 1: every two minutes. That thing literally has to run like

808
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,239
Speaker 1: clockwork like. It would have to be so efficient. You

809
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:21,040
Speaker 1: would have to have a very secure system to slow

810
00:45:21,120 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: down capsules and maybe have them in a little waiting

811
00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: area along one section of the loop before uh, the

812
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 1: previous capsule is completely unloaded, because again, depending upon who

813
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:34,760
Speaker 1: is in that capsule, it may take longer than average,

814
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 1: or you know, it may not take that long at all.

815
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 1: And that whole thing has to be set up so that,

816
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:42,840
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have any safety concerns. That's huge.

817
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 1: The software would have to be as innovative as the

818
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 1: two idea itself, because you have to be continual security.

819
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing it's impossible, man, It's just hard. It's

820
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 1: just hard, that's the thing. And then you know, humans

821
00:45:55,280 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: have done some stuff that's really freaking hard. Yeah, and

822
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:03,239
Speaker 1: and Muscus sent people into space. So it's not that

823
00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: it's not that we're saying that it's impossible to do,

824
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:08,440
Speaker 1: but you know it, we definitely have to keep the

825
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:11,800
Speaker 1: challenges in mind in order for us to meet those challenges,

826
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 1: Like even from the optimistic side, you've got to acknowledge

827
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 1: it so that way you're prepared to overcome them. If

828
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,080
Speaker 1: you don't acknowledge them, then you're just it's just a

829
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,360
Speaker 1: ticking time bomb. Really, We've got some other things to

830
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:27,080
Speaker 1: say about high speed rail, but before we get into that,

831
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:30,560
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,

832
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: so we've talked about Musk and his influence. We've talked

833
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 1: about his idea of the hyperloop and how it would

834
00:46:38,200 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 1: work assuming everything went as planned. We talked about the

835
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:43,360
Speaker 1: pros and cons. Let's talk about some of the other

836
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:47,840
Speaker 1: systems out there. We've mentioned a little bit about maglev trains,

837
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,239
Speaker 1: and I've done an episode about maglev trains, so I

838
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 1: don't want to go over it too much, but it is,

839
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 1: like we said, a similar idea, this idea of having

840
00:46:56,600 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: a train that doesn't actually sit down down on wheels,

841
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 1: at least not the entire way on. Whenever it's at

842
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:08,200
Speaker 1: a station, it would be down on the track, wheels

843
00:47:08,280 --> 00:47:11,320
Speaker 1: to the track, and then once it leaves the station,

844
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:16,080
Speaker 1: magnets would end up creating a repulsive force against one another.

845
00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: And they're different approaches to this. There's the electromagnetic suspension,

846
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:25,280
Speaker 1: there's electro dynamic suspension. UH. There's the induct tracks system,

847
00:47:25,400 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: which is the permanent magnet passive suspension. There's all these

848
00:47:28,239 --> 00:47:31,400
Speaker 1: different ways of doing it, but essentially the same idea arises.

849
00:47:31,440 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 1: You're just using these magnets to push the train up

850
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 1: over the rails and then to propel them down the

851
00:47:40,280 --> 00:47:43,279
Speaker 1: tracks length uh, and then also to slow them down

852
00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:44,879
Speaker 1: when they get to where they need to be, where

853
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:47,319
Speaker 1: they can then come back down onto their wheels and

854
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 1: come to a rolling stop. And these are these are

855
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 1: also high speed. But how high speed are we talking

856
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:56,360
Speaker 1: in comparison to the hyperloop proposal. They're not as fast,

857
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 1: mostly because most of them are not encapsulated in a tunnel,

858
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 1: low air pressure. They tend to be out among the outside,

859
00:48:04,960 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: so they still travel at an incredible speed because again

860
00:48:07,480 --> 00:48:09,240
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about that friction. See, friction

861
00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:11,919
Speaker 1: is not just something that slows you down, it means

862
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 1: that you're losing energy. Because you're losing energy in the

863
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: form of heat. Right, you're having to pour more energy

864
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:20,880
Speaker 1: into your vehicle to make it go the speed. You

865
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:23,440
Speaker 1: want to compensate for the fact that you're losing energy

866
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,759
Speaker 1: and heat. By making it frictionless, not only can it

867
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,040
Speaker 1: go faster, but you don't have to pour as much

868
00:48:29,200 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: energy into it because you're not losing so much in

869
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:35,360
Speaker 1: this this heat problem. There are other issues. For example,

870
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:40,360
Speaker 1: most maglev trains have to use superconductors because you know,

871
00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:43,399
Speaker 1: actually they all use superconductors in order to generate these

872
00:48:43,400 --> 00:48:47,800
Speaker 1: magnetic fields, and superconductors are not cheap and uh, most

873
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:50,760
Speaker 1: of them, although this has changed over the last couple

874
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:54,920
Speaker 1: of decades, most of them require being cooled to very,

875
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:57,759
Speaker 1: very very low temperatures. We're talking just a couple of

876
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:01,319
Speaker 1: degrees above absolute zero, so, right, and that's not just

877
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:04,880
Speaker 1: to be clear, that's not something that happens every every

878
00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:08,319
Speaker 1: so often or on a cycle that has to be continuous.

879
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:11,759
Speaker 1: So you're talking about using something like liquid nitrogen to

880
00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:13,640
Speaker 1: get it down to a certain temperature and then switching

881
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,719
Speaker 1: to liquid helium because liquid nitrogen is not cold enough

882
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 1: that being said, there are some super colliders that have

883
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:24,319
Speaker 1: been developed since then, since they started building maglev trains

884
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:27,359
Speaker 1: that operate at higher temperatures. And by higher, I still

885
00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:31,680
Speaker 1: mean really really cold, just not just not as cold, right,

886
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 1: So it's not like the deepest reaches of space cold,

887
00:49:35,200 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: but it's way chillier than it gets in Minnesota and

888
00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:41,319
Speaker 1: the winter cold. So, um, you know, it's not it's

889
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:43,880
Speaker 1: not something that makes it. It makes it more expensive

890
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 1: to operate. And so because of the expense of having

891
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:51,760
Speaker 1: to operate these not just operate them, but also build them.

892
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:55,440
Speaker 1: There there aren't as many maglev trains as you might

893
00:49:55,480 --> 00:49:59,439
Speaker 1: imagine based upon their their initial appeal from the fact

894
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 1: that they and have as much friction. There are maglev trains,

895
00:50:02,480 --> 00:50:04,120
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of them. Some of them are

896
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:07,919
Speaker 1: just prototypes. Yes, some of them are just prototypes. And

897
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:12,120
Speaker 1: and for a while, to be honest, maglev trains seemed

898
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:14,440
Speaker 1: like they could be a candidate for this. There's this

899
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 1: joke that you and I have made before off air,

900
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:19,480
Speaker 1: and that Scott and I have made before off air,

901
00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:23,080
Speaker 1: that there's all this fantastic technology. Man, it's just ten

902
00:50:23,160 --> 00:50:26,080
Speaker 1: years away. Yeah, it's always ten years ago. Whatever you

903
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:28,480
Speaker 1: always are, you're always just ten years away. Yeah. We

904
00:50:28,520 --> 00:50:31,799
Speaker 1: make that same joke on forward thinking as well. Plug um.

905
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: But yeah, so so the magleft trains their top speeds

906
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:39,640
Speaker 1: maybe somewhere between three and four, right, and so that's

907
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:44,440
Speaker 1: still significantly slower than what the hyper loop would attain

908
00:50:44,480 --> 00:50:46,960
Speaker 1: assuming it worked the way we think it's supposed to. Yeah,

909
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:49,839
Speaker 1: big difference being that maglev trains are wait for it,

910
00:50:50,040 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 1: real um. So that I think alone gives them some

911
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:58,839
Speaker 1: bonus points in my book. But also if we if

912
00:50:59,160 --> 00:51:03,560
Speaker 1: we think about the um the the advantages that maglev

913
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:07,840
Speaker 1: trains have are um in comparison to the hyper loop.

914
00:51:08,800 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: You have to ask yourself, does do those advantages make

915
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:16,440
Speaker 1: the maglev trains a more feasible option? You know? Is

916
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:21,040
Speaker 1: the advantage of extra speed? Uh? Preferable? I think the

917
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:25,520
Speaker 1: biggest advantage maglev trains have is not, uh, you know,

918
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:27,720
Speaker 1: in their operation, but the fact that we have proof

919
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: of that it works, right, Like, we know that maglev

920
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: trains work. So therefore that is a huge advantage over

921
00:51:34,600 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 1: the hyper loop because that's something that from what we

922
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:39,880
Speaker 1: understand it should work assuming you built it the right way,

923
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:42,279
Speaker 1: but we don't have proof of it alright, so Ben,

924
00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 1: let's talk about this other guy. Have you heard about

925
00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:50,120
Speaker 1: Darryl Auster. Darryl Austere might be familiar. Why he proposed

926
00:51:50,120 --> 00:51:52,319
Speaker 1: a system that would be a transportation system. It's a

927
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 1: steel tube on some elevated structure, like on pylons that

928
00:51:57,600 --> 00:52:01,480
Speaker 1: would use linear electric motors to push capsules at high

929
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:06,279
Speaker 1: speed across vast distances. Um, might sound a little familiar. Yeah, Hey,

930
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:08,680
Speaker 1: I didn't want I didn't want to interrupt, but um,

931
00:52:08,800 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 1: this this does sound a little bit familiar. Not to

932
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:14,560
Speaker 1: be a guy living in the past. But isn't this

933
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:17,720
Speaker 1: just what we've been talking about? Yeah? Yeah, like, um,

934
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:20,719
Speaker 1: like five minutes ago. Yes, this is exactly it's it's

935
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 1: called the Evacuated Tube Transport System or e T three. Right,

936
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,719
Speaker 1: And didn't the e T three hit the news and

937
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 1: hit the public sphere, uh before this hyperloot proposal. Yeah,

938
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:37,640
Speaker 1: well before it. And also Auster, interestingly enough, paid a

939
00:52:37,640 --> 00:52:42,120
Speaker 1: little visit earlier this year two SpaceX, which is Um,

940
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:43,879
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this because we talked

941
00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 1: about at the top of the show one of the

942
00:52:45,719 --> 00:52:48,799
Speaker 1: things must does. Yeah, it's the it's the ancient paths

943
00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:51,480
Speaker 1: to me. Now the top of the show. But the yes,

944
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:54,800
Speaker 1: this is a very interesting point because this has fueled

945
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: some uh, some speculation. Yes, yes, yeah, I would agree

946
00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:01,759
Speaker 1: that's a good word for it. So the speculation is

947
00:53:01,840 --> 00:53:06,719
Speaker 1: essentially that perhaps either Musk knew about Auster's idea and

948
00:53:06,800 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 1: essentially lifted it because other people had suggested that Auster was,

949
00:53:11,360 --> 00:53:15,000
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, whackadoodle um, or rather

950
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:19,200
Speaker 1: that his ideas were probably unrealistic and difficult to put

951
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:23,759
Speaker 1: into practice, he did not get the same consideration or

952
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,799
Speaker 1: street cred that that he encountered much more skepticisms. Right,

953
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:31,960
Speaker 1: And it's it's possible that Musk is exactly the right

954
00:53:32,000 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 1: guy to go to about this sort of thing, because

955
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:38,080
Speaker 1: Musk has this already has this past of making these

956
00:53:38,160 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: incredible accomplishments, things that some people might have called impossible

957
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:46,440
Speaker 1: before he achieved them. So uh, there's some speculation that

958
00:53:46,520 --> 00:53:51,120
Speaker 1: in fact Musk has licensed the technology or the design

959
00:53:51,600 --> 00:53:54,040
Speaker 1: from Auster. And in fact, Auster has said that there

960
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 1: are people or organizations that are licensing his ideas, but

961
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:01,719
Speaker 1: he does not go so far as to identify who

962
00:54:01,760 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: they are. He says that that's up to them, that

963
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:07,239
Speaker 1: it's their choice to come out and say, yes, I've

964
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,319
Speaker 1: licensed this technology from so and so. Yeah, and that's

965
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:13,000
Speaker 1: you see. I think we're being very fair about this

966
00:54:13,080 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 1: because the only three things there are three things we

967
00:54:15,600 --> 00:54:18,560
Speaker 1: know for sure. First, the design of hyperloop and et

968
00:54:18,719 --> 00:54:25,239
Speaker 1: three very similar. Second, uh, the Darryl did visit space X. Yes.

969
00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:30,200
Speaker 1: Third uh, Darryl did mention that there was licensing involved.

970
00:54:30,239 --> 00:54:32,960
Speaker 1: But none of that even all of that together does

971
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:37,480
Speaker 1: not conclusively prove anything. No, it's circumstantial. Circumstantial, so we

972
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:41,080
Speaker 1: call it. We call it speculation. And I'm gonna go

973
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:44,560
Speaker 1: ahead and call it interesting. Yes, I I will go

974
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 1: so far as to say very interesting. I raise your

975
00:54:48,520 --> 00:54:51,960
Speaker 1: interesting with a very um yeah. I think it would

976
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:54,839
Speaker 1: not surprise me to find out that Musk had heard

977
00:54:54,840 --> 00:54:57,120
Speaker 1: of this and then thought it was a great idea,

978
00:54:57,560 --> 00:55:01,359
Speaker 1: and that maybe together they realized that because the resistance

979
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:03,880
Speaker 1: that Auster had faced when he was proposing his idea

980
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:07,320
Speaker 1: to other you know, like essentially outlets were like that's crazy.

981
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:10,759
Speaker 1: Then Must goes forward and he says essentially the same thing,

982
00:55:11,640 --> 00:55:17,240
Speaker 1: it's crazy awesome. Yeah. So so it's it's possible that

983
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: this is in fact an evolution of Auster's idea. It

984
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:22,560
Speaker 1: could very well be that it's two people who thought

985
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:26,880
Speaker 1: the same thing independently. That has happened many, many, many times.

986
00:55:26,880 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: It happened, Yeah, it happened with It happened with calculus,

987
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: that happened with lots of things, you know. So we're

988
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:41,239
Speaker 1: not going to jump to that conclusion, but it is interesting, uh.

989
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:42,719
Speaker 1: And so you know, there are a couple of other

990
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:45,520
Speaker 1: things we can mention, like there's some other high speed

991
00:55:45,800 --> 00:55:49,040
Speaker 1: uh technologies that could possibly come into play. But I

992
00:55:49,080 --> 00:55:53,040
Speaker 1: think that that really it's down to the brass tacks, Ben.

993
00:55:53,120 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 1: I think we have to sit down and actually predict

994
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:01,000
Speaker 1: will hyper loop come to pass or is it? As

995
00:56:01,040 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: you mentioned before, vaporware, get out of my head. You're

996
00:56:04,600 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: reading my mind, man, because you're right, the time has come. Uh.

997
00:56:08,480 --> 00:56:10,760
Speaker 1: I don't know if we have any dramatic music playing

998
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:12,359
Speaker 1: in the background, but it's in my head right now.

999
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:16,839
Speaker 1: Who shall do the honors, sir? You know what I'm

1000
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: gonna go first. I'm going to say that we will

1001
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: not see this become a transportation between Los Angeles and

1002
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:32,400
Speaker 1: San Francisco because the challenges of making sure that it

1003
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:36,759
Speaker 1: will work properly and navigating those tricky political waters that

1004
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:41,400
Speaker 1: are already so invested in a bullet train uh plan

1005
00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:44,799
Speaker 1: for those cities. I just think that's too great a

1006
00:56:44,880 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 1: challenge to overcome. I think that even if you were

1007
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:51,160
Speaker 1: to prove the technology works, getting past that political barrier

1008
00:56:51,400 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 1: is a huge, huge task, right, Okay, So to dovetail

1009
00:56:56,040 --> 00:56:58,880
Speaker 1: onto that, I am going to also have a bit

1010
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,719
Speaker 1: of a qualified prediction, and I I predict, I want

1011
00:57:02,719 --> 00:57:05,360
Speaker 1: to be optimistic about this, that we're going to see

1012
00:57:05,440 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: something like the hyper loop in the future. However, I

1013
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:12,960
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be quite up to the

1014
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:17,320
Speaker 1: specs that we've heard proposed, and I am also skeptical

1015
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:20,000
Speaker 1: that it could be built in California at this juncture.

1016
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:22,240
Speaker 1: You know, there's a reason that Google Fiber went to

1017
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:27,280
Speaker 1: Kansas City, right, right, right, that's my prediction something like it.

1018
00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:30,920
Speaker 1: And I will say that the hyper loop proposal is

1019
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:36,400
Speaker 1: in many ways much more reserved than Auster's originally, uh

1020
00:57:36,680 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: than his proposal, because Auster had said that he wanted

1021
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:42,600
Speaker 1: this ET three system to be deployed throughout the United States,

1022
00:57:42,640 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 1: which means that you have interstate politics to deal within,

1023
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:48,720
Speaker 1: not just within one state. Right, You've got all these

1024
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: different states that you have to factor into that consideration

1025
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 1: and that makes it way more complex. So, um, I

1026
00:57:56,800 --> 00:57:59,680
Speaker 1: think it was a more modest proposal, if you might

1027
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:02,880
Speaker 1: call it that, than the the E T three, but

1028
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,120
Speaker 1: I still think it's not you know, there's been some

1029
00:58:06,160 --> 00:58:09,920
Speaker 1: discussion that maybe they could look at building one in Texas. First.

1030
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:13,720
Speaker 1: Texas is also a huge state with lots of nothing

1031
00:58:13,840 --> 00:58:17,360
Speaker 1: between some of the major cities, so that could possibly

1032
00:58:17,400 --> 00:58:19,800
Speaker 1: be something we see. And you know, I hope we

1033
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:24,800
Speaker 1: do see a hyperloop type system in place. I just

1034
00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be between l A and

1035
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:31,200
Speaker 1: San Francisco in the near future. Yeah, agreed. Well, that

1036
00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: wraps up our discussion about hyper loop. Guys, if you

1037
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:37,360
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, let

1038
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:40,520
Speaker 1: me know. Send an email the addresses tech Stuff at

1039
00:58:40,680 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. You can also drop us a line

1040
00:58:43,000 --> 00:58:45,680
Speaker 1: on our social networks. You can find us on Tumbler, Twitter,

1041
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 1: and Facebook with the handle tech stuff hs w n ben.

1042
00:58:48,360 --> 00:58:52,240
Speaker 1: Where can they find your stuff? Oh? Well, thanks for asking, Jonathan. First,

1043
00:58:52,240 --> 00:58:54,520
Speaker 1: I want to thank you and Laurence so much for

1044
00:58:54,560 --> 00:58:57,840
Speaker 1: having me over on your show. Uh the places where

1045
00:58:57,880 --> 00:59:00,680
Speaker 1: you can find me, well, let's see, you can find

1046
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:03,320
Speaker 1: me on a show called Stuff They Don't Want You

1047
00:59:03,360 --> 00:59:08,560
Speaker 1: To Know, which is YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Twitter. Also, Scott

1048
00:59:08,560 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: and I host a show called car Stuff, which dovetails

1049
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:15,880
Speaker 1: nicely for fans of tech um and full disclosure guys, Uh,

1050
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:18,920
Speaker 1: Jonathan and I hang out and stuff outside the office,

1051
00:59:18,920 --> 00:59:21,200
Speaker 1: and we do we do talk about this stuff, so

1052
00:59:21,320 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 1: you might see our ideas popping up in different shows.

1053
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:26,919
Speaker 1: And speaking of that, one of the things I'm most

1054
00:59:26,960 --> 00:59:30,040
Speaker 1: excited to talk about. Uh, one of the coolest places

1055
00:59:30,120 --> 00:59:32,680
Speaker 1: to find us is you can see the dynamic duo

1056
00:59:32,760 --> 00:59:35,720
Speaker 1: you're listening to right now on brain Stuff, right Johnathan.

1057
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: That's a video series and there that's actually a rotating

1058
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,760
Speaker 1: set of hosts. We don't actually rotate on camera. We

1059
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:44,240
Speaker 1: could do that. We should try it. Yeah, might get

1060
00:59:44,280 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: dizzy after about two or three takes. But the idea

1061
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:49,479
Speaker 1: is that you can actually see different hosts from all

1062
00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:52,040
Speaker 1: the different house stuff work shows pop up on that series.

1063
00:59:52,320 --> 00:59:55,000
Speaker 1: And Ben and I often will will take a topic

1064
00:59:55,040 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 1: together and will will be to host performance for brain Stuff,

1065
01:00:00,680 --> 01:00:02,960
Speaker 1: which has been that's been a blast. It's been a

1066
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 1: lot of fun. So yeah, you can check us out

1067
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: there as well. So there you go. Guys, and we

1068
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon for more on

1069
01:00:13,240 --> 01:00:16,000
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it, how staff works?

1070
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 1: Dot com