Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech, and it's time
Speaker 1: for another classic episode of tech Stuff. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published November two thousand thirteen. It is titled the Hype
Speaker 1: About hyper Loop, and it's interesting to point out that
Speaker 1: in the seven years since we recorded this episode, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen an enormous amount of progress on hyper loop.
Speaker 1: There have been some tests, there have been some sort
Speaker 1: of uh experiments with hyper loop technology, most of which
Speaker 1: are not true implementations of the original vision of hyper loop,
Speaker 1: but we really haven't seen a whole lot of no
Speaker 1: pun intended movement on this. Let's listen back to this
Speaker 1: classic episode. Long time tech Stuff fans will remember that
Speaker 1: one of my co host, uh, the legendary Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: made a guest appearance on tech Stuff right many many
Speaker 1: moons ago. So anyway, we are grateful to have you here,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know you you're you're kind of sort
Speaker 1: of a transportation guru by now, I would say, And
Speaker 1: I asked Ben what topic would he like to cover,
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, have you guys covered hyper loop?
Speaker 1: And that's when I had to kind of kick the
Speaker 1: ground and look at the look at the ground, and
Speaker 1: then say no, because we did an episode about Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: who has a lot to do with hyper loop, but
Speaker 1: we did that on March thirteen, and he didn't talk
Speaker 1: about hyper loop until like June. Yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: pretty This is a fairly recent development in the context
Speaker 1: of his career. Now, Ellen Musk, for anybody who hasn't
Speaker 1: checked out the Tech Stuff episode on you, yeah, shame on.
Speaker 1: You get the to a speaker of some sort, find
Speaker 1: an RSS feed or iTunes or something and download that
Speaker 1: and listen to it. We'll wait, Okay, welcome back, Yeah,
Speaker 1: welcome back. And that was what you just listened to
Speaker 1: if you hadn't heard it before. Was a great overview
Speaker 1: of this inventor's life, including his origin story and the
Speaker 1: companies he's been associated with. Jonathan if if I could
Speaker 1: defer to you for a quick recap of l mu
Speaker 1: s okay so um. He came up with a little
Speaker 1: idea that would eventually be called PayPal. PayPal is, of course,
Speaker 1: a payment system that you can use online. You can
Speaker 1: create an account through PayPal, and it allows you to
Speaker 1: process payments or to to make payments to vendors that
Speaker 1: accept PayPal, particularly things like eBay. But it was one
Speaker 1: of those ideas to try and make online transactions secure
Speaker 1: and easy, so that maybe you didn't want to um
Speaker 1: to hand over your credit card information every time. Maybe
Speaker 1: you want to create a special bank account and then
Speaker 1: make that a PayPal account, and so you could do
Speaker 1: transfers in a more secure format. You knew that you
Speaker 1: had a certain amount of money in that account, nothing
Speaker 1: beyond that was ever going to get tampered with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of controlled your risks. Yeah, absolutely. And now,
Speaker 1: of course, as we've talked about with inventors in the past,
Speaker 1: because you've also done a show called Stuff of Genius,
Speaker 1: so we know that often when somebody invents something that
Speaker 1: appears to be new, they're standing on the shoulders of
Speaker 1: giants earlier innovations. PayPal not necessarily the first time someone
Speaker 1: attempted to do this, but by far the most successful instance. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even that was not Elon Musk's first foray into business.
Speaker 1: He had tried a few times, but PayPal was I
Speaker 1: guess you could say, ridiculously successful. Yea. It gave him
Speaker 1: the freedom to pursue whatever else he wanted to do
Speaker 1: because he made so much money so quickly that the
Speaker 1: constraints were off, and so he began to pursue another
Speaker 1: interest of his, which was, you know, cars that go
Speaker 1: really fast. Yes, Tesla Motors, another little company by must
Speaker 1: that some of you may have heard of. You Scott
Speaker 1: Benjamin and I cover this often on car stuff and
Speaker 1: tech stuff. Has also looked into some of the fascinating
Speaker 1: innovations and technology here. Uh. So we've got a guy
Speaker 1: who's done PayPal, We've got a guy who's done Tesla Motors. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also was interested in another transportation initiative. Yeah, before
Speaker 1: we even get to hyperloop. He was interested in a
Speaker 1: transportation that would send you up, like really really up.
Speaker 1: And not not balloons on a house. No, no, not
Speaker 1: not not that up. No. We're talking, of course about
Speaker 1: space X, which is a privatized space initiative. Really it's
Speaker 1: it's the business of getting things up into space. But
Speaker 1: because as we all know, NASA was getting further and
Speaker 1: further budget cuts as time was going on, and it
Speaker 1: became apparent that if we weren't going to have a
Speaker 1: public space industry, something that was funded by the government.
Speaker 1: Then if we still wanted to pursue things in space,
Speaker 1: and we do, because there was a lot of important
Speaker 1: stuff out there, communication satellites being one of the simplest
Speaker 1: to explain, it meant that we had to have some
Speaker 1: private industry step in. And so Musk said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is something else that I'm really interested in.
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in space. And he began to
Speaker 1: devote quite a bit of time and money and resources
Speaker 1: to creating a viable private space enterprise, and in fact,
Speaker 1: but not the spaceship, and that would have been probably
Speaker 1: a little beyond even his amazing reach. It's yeah, so
Speaker 1: mostly what he's looking at is our ways to try
Speaker 1: and create an aconomically feasible private space enterprise. And he
Speaker 1: talked a lot about how that's difficult to do because
Speaker 1: you have very limited vendors from whom you can get
Speaker 1: the important components or your rockets. So he remember specifically,
Speaker 1: he pointed out this problem he had in Russia, where
Speaker 1: he would be quoted a price, he would agree to
Speaker 1: purchase a certain number of units of rockets at that price,
Speaker 1: and then upon the actual manufacture of it be told. Oh,
Speaker 1: we're sorry. I know. We said there was gonna be
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars for all of these, but it's actually
Speaker 1: gonna be twenty million per rocket. Yeah, something along those lines.
Speaker 1: It's just he talked about how, you know, you have
Speaker 1: to deal with these things, and that it gave him
Speaker 1: a lot of uh experience and knowledge about the industry
Speaker 1: and how to try and and get around that by
Speaker 1: making as much of the stuff yourself as possible. In fact,
Speaker 1: that was one of the things he said, like this
Speaker 1: explains why NASA budgets go out of control. It's not
Speaker 1: that they're poorly managed. Is that you have such limited
Speaker 1: resources to go to to get what you need that
Speaker 1: you're kind of held hostage by them. So, but that
Speaker 1: all of these interests are stuff that we had already
Speaker 1: talked about on Tech Stuff, right. Yes, that was the
Speaker 1: quick and dirty recap of the episode you should listen
Speaker 1: to in full. We say all of this to say
Speaker 1: that Musk has some street cred. He's not just some guy,
Speaker 1: you know making a YouTube video. Uh. He is proposing
Speaker 1: another transit innovation, another potential transit innovation, and that would
Speaker 1: be the hyper loop. But my first question, you, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: we're talking hyper loop, What what is it? Well, if
Speaker 1: we were to take elon Musk's own words, and this
Speaker 1: is somewhat paraphrased from an interview he gave at the
Speaker 1: D eleven event, he said, it's a cross between a
Speaker 1: concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table. He
Speaker 1: I of the air hockey table last, like he said
Speaker 1: concorde and a railgun first, and I got a great responses.
Speaker 1: You know, technically, if I really want to blow your minds,
Speaker 1: I need to add in the fact that there's an
Speaker 1: air hockey table element in there too. And then he
Speaker 1: made uh an inappropriate joke, But essentially he said that
Speaker 1: if these three things got together and had nice romantic times,
Speaker 1: hyper loop would be the bibbet that would be produced
Speaker 1: as a result. You now that that alone doesn't really
Speaker 1: tell you what hyper loop is, and I think that
Speaker 1: was actually Musk's point. He knew he didn't want to
Speaker 1: spoil the surprise at that event, so he wanted to
Speaker 1: give just enough information for people to get curious about it,
Speaker 1: but not enough to actually explain what it was. Right,
Speaker 1: and one of the things one of the best ways
Speaker 1: for us to approach this. Over the course of this episode,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to go into what the science
Speaker 1: behind a hyper loop. Uh, you know, maybe some pros,
Speaker 1: some cons some similar systems. Uh, the elevator pitch. We
Speaker 1: we can't really beat that great quote, right, but if
Speaker 1: you want to, if you want something that's a little
Speaker 1: easier to actually visualize beyond the fact that what you're
Speaker 1: gonna shoot people through some form of high energy mechanism
Speaker 1: and they're just gonna fly across you and you get
Speaker 1: points if they hit the goal, And I'm like, what
Speaker 1: is this? Yeah, but no, it's it's more like, all right,
Speaker 1: so it's it's an elevated system in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: For one, it's going to if it were to be built,
Speaker 1: would be built on pylons that would go and hold
Speaker 1: the the whole system above ground. Um, it's was proposed,
Speaker 1: but to be between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yes,
Speaker 1: with an incredibly short transit time. Yeah, we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil it, but but it's it's
Speaker 1: the ideas that the capsules that you would travel and
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a train, it would be a sort
Speaker 1: of a capsule that could hold a certain number of people.
Speaker 1: Um that these these capsules would float above the floor
Speaker 1: of the system. The whole thing would be inside a
Speaker 1: tunnel that's on top of these pylons, so it's all
Speaker 1: in loosed, but the capsule would float above the ground.
Speaker 1: So that means you've eliminated friction from the wheel. There's
Speaker 1: no wheels towards huge and then it would be propelled
Speaker 1: down this tube, which also would have very low air pressure,
Speaker 1: so you would have low air resistance. It's of partial vacuum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk a little bit more about that too in
Speaker 1: a second. So essentially you're talking about some sort of
Speaker 1: imagine a straw, but the straw has closed off at
Speaker 1: both ends more or less, there's there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a gap in there to allow some air passage.
Speaker 1: And then imagine a P that's inside, like a dried
Speaker 1: p that's inside that that straw. And then imagine that
Speaker 1: you have somehow maybe bombarded that p with electrons so
Speaker 1: that it now has built up a negative electrostatic charge,
Speaker 1: and then you put another negative magnet end next to it,
Speaker 1: and it would zip across to the other end of
Speaker 1: the tube in a very very oversimplified way. That's what
Speaker 1: the hyper biz. And you are inside the p Yes,
Speaker 1: you are inside, so you yeah, obviously there's some questions
Speaker 1: that we have to answer, but that's the general idea.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is this is actually it's we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this too. This is not the first time
Speaker 1: this kind of system has been proposed. And in fact,
Speaker 1: there's a really interesting story we'll get to about another
Speaker 1: person who has proposed a very similar system that they've
Speaker 1: they've been talking about for a couple of years before
Speaker 1: Musk ever said anything, and they received a slightly different reaction,
Speaker 1: I would say, than what Musk has received. Um, and
Speaker 1: we'll we'll have to talk about spoilers. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just just teasing you. So Hyperloop essentially, what we're
Speaker 1: getting at is it's a high speed transportation system that
Speaker 1: allows multiple passengers to go between the cities of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and San Francisco, at least initially. Shouldn't never be built. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, also, of course the questions that we need
Speaker 1: to address, they are going to be popping up in
Speaker 1: everybody's head. Um, I just want to put this in
Speaker 1: the radar for the very end of the show. Jonathan
Speaker 1: the question I want to us both to attempt to
Speaker 1: answer the very end of the show, is this vaporware.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent question, and yes, I think that we
Speaker 1: will have to kind of give our own opinions on
Speaker 1: that at the very end. So we've got a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. But before we get into the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty about exactly how this thing is supposed to work,
Speaker 1: should it ever be built, let's take a quick break
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Speaker 1: Tech now. And as for shows I like to watch
Speaker 1: on Hulu Plus, Agents of Shield is a big one, actually,
Speaker 1: because occasionally I'm traveling and I miss stuff, and when
Speaker 1: I come back, I want to catch up and see
Speaker 1: what's going on. I feel that shows really just now
Speaker 1: starting to hit its stride. I think it might have
Speaker 1: struggled a little early in the Marvel universe. It's so huge,
Speaker 1: and then you're dealing with these, you know, human people
Speaker 1: and how they are interacting in this world. And I
Speaker 1: think they're really getting into some interesting territory. So that's
Speaker 1: a recommendation for me. You should go check it out. Alright,
Speaker 1: so we're back, let's talk about all the hyper loop
Speaker 1: would actually work. Now. You remember I was mentioning that
Speaker 1: whole idea of a closed off straw with a P
Speaker 1: in it. Yeah, so if you know that's that's that's okay,
Speaker 1: except for the fact that if you have air in
Speaker 1: that tube and the air doesn't have anywhere to go,
Speaker 1: that P is going to be pushing against the air
Speaker 1: in that tube, and even if there's space around the P,
Speaker 1: it's not going to go as fast as it could
Speaker 1: if there were no air at all. Right, The air
Speaker 1: resistance is one of the biggest speed killers. Yeah, so there.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of some maglev trains, you know,
Speaker 1: trains that actually float above the track through magnetic levitation.
Speaker 1: And by magnetic levitation, we're essentially talking about magnets that
Speaker 1: repel one another and maintain the trains distance above a tract.
Speaker 1: Usually it's it's like just a tiny distance above it, right,
Speaker 1: and that's you know, and this this helps reduce friction
Speaker 1: for those those sorts of systems. I think what we're
Speaker 1: seeing here is that these can be thought of as
Speaker 1: similar in some ways, but they have they have very
Speaker 1: different mechanisms. And also, you know, if you have a
Speaker 1: mag lev train that's in an uncovered track, then it
Speaker 1: still has to deal with that air resistance. It's top
Speaker 1: speed is going to be mitigated by the fact that
Speaker 1: it has to push against air. So one of the
Speaker 1: elements of this hyper loop system is it would be
Speaker 1: at a very low pressure. You would have have a
Speaker 1: near vacuum, but not a total vacuum. Total vacuum is
Speaker 1: very difficult to maintain if you are talking about a
Speaker 1: significantly long tube, right, Yeah. Total vacuum is in fact
Speaker 1: so difficult to maintain that even if one could just
Speaker 1: throw billions of dollars at the problem making really long
Speaker 1: when uh, it might be impossible to do it effectively.
Speaker 1: You would have to have some form of of you know,
Speaker 1: vacuum stations all along the tube just to constantly deal
Speaker 1: with any differentiation and pressure. So in stead, Musk says,
Speaker 1: why don't we just have something that will lower the
Speaker 1: air pressure quite a bit, uh, and that will allow
Speaker 1: for reduced air resistance because you don't have as much
Speaker 1: air to push against, and then all that means the
Speaker 1: capsule can move faster within that tube. So that's that's
Speaker 1: one element to Another element is, well, how do you
Speaker 1: get the tube to float above the base of the track,
Speaker 1: the base of the tunnel, and it's not through magnetic limitation? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's weirdly enough. It goes back to our
Speaker 1: air hockey comparison exactly, the air cushioning. Right, Yes, so
Speaker 1: you've got you've got these little air skis on the
Speaker 1: base of the metal capsule. So imagine these flat surfaces,
Speaker 1: lots of surface area on the base of this capsule,
Speaker 1: and then the track could blow air up and the
Speaker 1: capsule is on a cushion of air. So that there's
Speaker 1: another reason why you can't have a total vacuum, because
Speaker 1: if you're using air to keep the the capsule up, Uh,
Speaker 1: you obviously can't have a toll vacuum, right. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: this in this case, in a very crew comparison, it
Speaker 1: would be trying to drive a car without wheels. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And um, for anyone who has tried that, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I wish we had talked earlier. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people who have cars without wheels on their front yard.
Speaker 1: But that's because we live in the South, right, that
Speaker 1: is because we live in the South. But so if
Speaker 1: we just take if we just take these two ideas, right,
Speaker 1: partial vacuum, eliminating the air resistance, having these air skis.
Speaker 1: Um one of the first things that I thought about
Speaker 1: when I was reading about the hyper loop system was
Speaker 1: it always reminded me in principle of the pneumatic bank tubes,
Speaker 1: remember those. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: And there's even a there's even this such a tangent,
Speaker 1: but there's even a system that someone tried to build,
Speaker 1: I believe in New York that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a pneumatic train system. Spoiler alert didn't work out? And
Speaker 1: so how how would we like We're gonna keep explaining
Speaker 1: the science, but but it's it's important that we under line,
Speaker 1: we emphasize that this is at best wildly ambitious. So
Speaker 1: we've got um, we've got back to uh to the
Speaker 1: idea with the science. Now at this point we're talking
Speaker 1: about principles, we're talking about blue sky stuff. I love
Speaker 1: that you brought up the p example. This is a
Speaker 1: great example P A P E A for our family show.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, so this uh, this p this sealed capsule
Speaker 1: um could carry twenty eight passengers, right, so it's larger
Speaker 1: than your average pe. He even suggested that if you
Speaker 1: wanted to expand the hyperloop, you could have larger capsules
Speaker 1: that could carry not just passengers, but cars as well.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons for that is that the proposed
Speaker 1: stations that would be in Los Angeles and San Francisco
Speaker 1: would actually be in outlying areas, meaning that once you've
Speaker 1: got there, you would not be right there in the
Speaker 1: city center. You would have to find some other means
Speaker 1: of transportation to getting you to your final location, assuming
Speaker 1: that it's not a hotel that's a jacent to the
Speaker 1: to the station, right, which would be probably wildly expensive. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, And I remember I read one report
Speaker 1: that said because you would have to transfer to a
Speaker 1: different form of transportation, that would significantly increase the travel time.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, have you ever driven between San Francisco
Speaker 1: and Los Angeles? Because I don't know, you know, if
Speaker 1: you know what the word significant means, because I have
Speaker 1: gone between San Francisco and Los Angeles by car and
Speaker 1: it is not leisurely is a good word for it?
Speaker 1: How long did it take? We actually decided to make
Speaker 1: it a road trip, so we stopped overnight between the
Speaker 1: two and we we took a more scenic route anyway.
Speaker 1: We didn't take a direct route between San Francisco in
Speaker 1: l A. We went down the Coastal Highway, so we
Speaker 1: were already going out of our way, but we stopped
Speaker 1: just south of Big Sir, which is gorgeous by the way.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been to California, and you've been there,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't,
Speaker 1: you should check it out. It's absolutely beautiful landscape. But
Speaker 1: it's a long drive, and we decided we would make
Speaker 1: that an ex sperience as opposed to a frustration. Right,
Speaker 1: We planned for it to be a long drive and
Speaker 1: that we would take a break halfway down. Now, if
Speaker 1: you were to go just down the highway, it'd be
Speaker 1: a few hours, right, it wouldn't be It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: like a you know, a twelve hour drive or anything,
Speaker 1: depending upon how bad the traffic is, because it can
Speaker 1: get rough. But it's it's it's definitely not a quick
Speaker 1: trip and uh, at least not yet, but the hyper
Speaker 1: loop could possibly make it a quick trip. Now. We
Speaker 1: haven't talked even about the propulsion system, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about that. It's floating above the track, well,
Speaker 1: not even a track. It's floating above the ground of
Speaker 1: this tunnel, which again is elevated. It's on these pylons,
Speaker 1: and we talked about how uh you know, it's we
Speaker 1: got the lower air pressure inside the tunnel, but how
Speaker 1: does it actually move. It uses a series of linear
Speaker 1: electric motors which actually create a magnetic field, and so
Speaker 1: in this case, it's like the maglev trains that also
Speaker 1: use magnetic fields for two purposes. They use it one
Speaker 1: to levitate the train and the second one is to
Speaker 1: propel the train down the track. So while you're not
Speaker 1: using magnetism to levitate the capsule inside the hyperloop, you
Speaker 1: are using it to push it forward. And here's the
Speaker 1: neat thing it is because you've got that low air
Speaker 1: pressure system within this tunnel and you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry so much about friction. You've really reduced friction. You
Speaker 1: only have to accelerate the capsule for a relatively short
Speaker 1: amount of time and then it can glide the rest
Speaker 1: of the way. Because you don't have to continuously pour
Speaker 1: an energy to maintain that speed. You will slow down
Speaker 1: on your own because uh, you still have entropy to
Speaker 1: deal with. It's not a purely frictionless system. It's not
Speaker 1: a pure vacuum. So clearly eventually it's going to stop.
Speaker 1: But the term there is eventually. So that's the neat
Speaker 1: thing is that you accelerate to a top speed and
Speaker 1: then you stop, and then you just allow the capsule
Speaker 1: to travel the rest of the way. So, now that
Speaker 1: we know how it goes, how fast can this thing go?
Speaker 1: The route is three hundred fifty four miles or about
Speaker 1: five seventy kilos. Uh. Yeah, And and since we know,
Speaker 1: since now we can get into our spoiler territory and
Speaker 1: say that the proposed transportation time is thirty five minutes.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. That's so such a short amount of time
Speaker 1: to go between l A and San Francisco. That's that's crazy.
Speaker 1: We are automatically gonna be old codgers who people will
Speaker 1: dismiss when we say, you know, day, it took here.
Speaker 1: It took care at least five hours to get it
Speaker 1: to me. It takes more than thirty five minutes to
Speaker 1: drive across Los Angeles. I mean that's l A is enormous.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and this, um, so this this speed, let's see,
Speaker 1: how would you I've I've heard some differing numbers, so um,
Speaker 1: I usually say I usually say it's right around like
Speaker 1: just below six hundred miles per hour as the average
Speaker 1: speed somewhere somewhere between five and six hundred miles per
Speaker 1: hour would be the average speed. So that's roughly around
Speaker 1: nine kilometers per hour give or take, you know, kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour. Because because again, like you said, the discussions
Speaker 1: vary on this, because it all depends upon uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how you're defining everything. And thirty five minutes, I think
Speaker 1: when they say thirty five minutes, to me, that just
Speaker 1: sounds like a number, like like, I don't know that
Speaker 1: they have specifically worked it out where scientifically speaking, it's
Speaker 1: thirty five minutes travel time and almost to me sounds like, well,
Speaker 1: here's here's a short enough amount of time for you
Speaker 1: to consider this incredible accomplishment. But that would mean that
Speaker 1: you would have a top speed, Like I said, you'd
Speaker 1: hit that top speed and then allow it to slow down.
Speaker 1: That would be probably around between seven and fifty and
Speaker 1: seven and seventy five miles per hour, or around twelve
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers per hour for your top speed. That's faster
Speaker 1: than what how most uh commercial jets travel, right, And
Speaker 1: that also gives us that also gives us a good
Speaker 1: place to note that if you are ever writing in
Speaker 1: this and you have some sort of phobia about this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um, you know, do your best. You
Speaker 1: might you might need to um have someone sing you
Speaker 1: a sweet song thirty five minutes because if you think
Speaker 1: about you are in an enclosed capsule. I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: there wouldn't be any real windows, because what would be
Speaker 1: the point. There's a really a way to do it
Speaker 1: that would be worth the effort. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could. You could put something along the tubes
Speaker 1: so that when you travel it's almost like animation that
Speaker 1: I've actually seen train tunnels that have this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff where because as long as the train is moving
Speaker 1: at the average speed, you get this illusion of animation
Speaker 1: because of the way that things are lit and the
Speaker 1: way you're moving through this tunnel. So I guess you
Speaker 1: could do that. But otherwise you are in an enclosed
Speaker 1: steel tunnel. It's not like you've got a lot to
Speaker 1: look at. So if you are clustrophobic, I would imagine
Speaker 1: that would be scary. Plus you're going to experience some
Speaker 1: some you know, some acceleration. I I I'm sure that
Speaker 1: the acceleration would be gradual, so it wouldn't be so
Speaker 1: incredible that you'd be you know, crushed back in your seats,
Speaker 1: experiencing like tend gees of force. That would be way
Speaker 1: too much, um, but there, Yeah, but there will definitely
Speaker 1: be noticeable effects. It's pretty much unavoidable at that at
Speaker 1: that level of speed. Yeah, and then you have to
Speaker 1: also worry about deceleration when you get to the end
Speaker 1: of your trip. So again they would be using magnets
Speaker 1: to help slow down the capsule's travel so that you
Speaker 1: would come to a smooth stop. But that would be
Speaker 1: something that you have to take special care of. And obviously,
Speaker 1: like you, you definitely need to put this into very
Speaker 1: narrow ranges of acceptance because otherwise, how can you guarantee
Speaker 1: that the average person would would experience no ill effects
Speaker 1: inside this capsule? Keeping in mind that the average person,
Speaker 1: you know, there's what we say average, We're talking about
Speaker 1: a huge variety of variables, everything from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: health issues, part conditioning right right exactly, or you know,
Speaker 1: just someone who is older, would they be safe? Would
Speaker 1: they are they likely to suffer ill effects from this
Speaker 1: acceleration and deceleration. Well, someone who really had to use
Speaker 1: the bathroom but they forgot to do it before they
Speaker 1: got on the train. Yeah, I don't know if there
Speaker 1: would be a bathroom in here. You would think there
Speaker 1: would need to be, just because you know, if you've
Speaker 1: got a group of people together. Yeah, and asking someone
Speaker 1: to hold it for thirty five minutes might be a
Speaker 1: bit much depending upon that person, but they they're probably okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out and live and say there probably
Speaker 1: isn't at least yet. We do know that there are
Speaker 1: emergency exits built along the tubes um or at least
Speaker 1: there there would be. We haven't. We haven't built anything yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's underline that again. And you did a great job
Speaker 1: emphasizing that in the beginning, but we can't say it enough.
Speaker 1: This has not been built yet. And the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcasting of this podcast, Hey guys, it's Jonathan from
Speaker 1: here to break in just so that we could take
Speaker 1: a quick break, will be right back. Where does the
Speaker 1: hyperloop get its power? Because you're talking about electric motors
Speaker 1: providing that force to propel them. Uh, presumably you'd be
Speaker 1: using some form of electric motors to to create the
Speaker 1: air cushion. So where are you getting that power? And
Speaker 1: Musk had said, well, let's put solar panels along the
Speaker 1: top of this this raised tunnel and you just harvest
Speaker 1: solar energy and you store that and use that as
Speaker 1: the power source, saying that if you did this properly,
Speaker 1: you would not have to tap into the power grid
Speaker 1: at all. It would be completely self contained in that respect,
Speaker 1: which you know obviously that would be a huge benefit.
Speaker 1: You can say, well, while the operating costs have only like,
Speaker 1: we can't even estimate what the operating costs of this
Speaker 1: system would be, but if you can remove power from that,
Speaker 1: then you can at least compare that part to any
Speaker 1: other alternative plan. That's true. And also you know the
Speaker 1: other the other power source they're inside the pods would
Speaker 1: be the batteries that Tesla that again come from uh
Speaker 1: Tesla bottlesque electric cars. Well they don't, they're related to it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Tesla, the Tesla motors. The one of the things
Speaker 1: that they've they've really innovated in is battery technology and
Speaker 1: charging technology. They have something called a supercharger which allows
Speaker 1: them to charge batteries to essentially full capacity at relatively
Speaker 1: short intervals. So that would allow them to continuously operate
Speaker 1: and recharge these these capsules so that you didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about taking them offline for a great deal
Speaker 1: of time. Now clearly. Uh. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: criticisms I've heard is that the system might work in California,
Speaker 1: where you get a lot of sunshine. But if you
Speaker 1: were to try and expand this so that you could,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe people who I don't know don't live
Speaker 1: in California. As crazy as that sounds to the people
Speaker 1: who in this room three, really because we got no
Speaker 1: here too, none of us live in California. We would
Speaker 1: not be able to take advantage of this unless we
Speaker 1: were to head out and see our buddies at Revision
Speaker 1: three and then say, hey, let's go to Disneyland. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know it's just a thirty five minute tripped
Speaker 1: on hyperloop. Um. But yeah, it's it wouldn't necessarily work
Speaker 1: everywhere using solar energy. It's like in the UK. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the UK might not get enough son to keep that going.
Speaker 1: So they Now, you could argue that sure, you could
Speaker 1: offset whatever the power needs were with solar panels, and
Speaker 1: then the rest you would supply with whatever the power
Speaker 1: grid would supply. So it's not like it's an all
Speaker 1: or nothing game. It's not a zero sum game. I
Speaker 1: don't mean to say that, but it's one of those
Speaker 1: things you've got to take into consideration. So all right,
Speaker 1: so this sounds pretty incredible. Ben, This, this, this whole
Speaker 1: system sounds amazing to me. Um, you know what, everything
Speaker 1: that's amazing comes to the price tag. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: how much Musk thinks this system would cost. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the bargain number that I've heard
Speaker 1: thrown around is as low as uh six billion? Is
Speaker 1: that what? That's what I saw? That's the the alpha
Speaker 1: design has been called six billion dollars because this is again,
Speaker 1: no one has seriously looked into building this, at least
Speaker 1: to the point where talks go beyond just a kind
Speaker 1: of hypothetical situation. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Right now.
Speaker 1: A lot of the numbers that you and I are
Speaker 1: pulling come directly from a fifty seven page uh. I
Speaker 1: think it's fair to call the manifesto written by Musk
Speaker 1: about the hyperloop and this, uh, this number comes from
Speaker 1: his estimate this alpha system. Think of it like, uh,
Speaker 1: think of it like when the first PlayStation came out,
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was it was chunky, it
Speaker 1: was first gin. It didn't have all the amenities, all
Speaker 1: the bells and whistles. For instance, the Alpha system doesn't
Speaker 1: take into account the idea of UM which you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: the idea of putting passenger vehicle right right. So in fact,
Speaker 1: I think they said that if you wanted to make
Speaker 1: it for passenger vehicles UH to be stored on those
Speaker 1: kind of pods as well, it would be more like
Speaker 1: seven point five billion, and at one point five billion
Speaker 1: increase for something that significance seems really really optimistic to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: optimistics the diplomatic word, because you imagine that any capsule
Speaker 1: that could hold at least a vehicle and presumably more
Speaker 1: than one, if you're talking about this being a mass
Speaker 1: transportation system, then you know you're going to have to
Speaker 1: have larger capsules, which means in turn, you have to
Speaker 1: have larger tunnels to to accommodate those larger capsules, stronger
Speaker 1: pylons or the weight. Yeah, it's I mean, everything ends
Speaker 1: up having to be larger and more more resilient, and
Speaker 1: it just then means it's going to cost more. So
Speaker 1: one point five billion more is kind of I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see how they arrived at their numbers. UM.
Speaker 1: I've read other estimations one person and had suggested that
Speaker 1: it would be more like one hundred billion dollars to
Speaker 1: make such a system because you have to factor in
Speaker 1: everything from the design prototypes, development, testing it, making sure
Speaker 1: that it's safe for people to use, and then finally
Speaker 1: building out the real system, and then uh and then
Speaker 1: operating it, maintaining it. You know that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of costs in there, so uh, it's interesting too.
Speaker 1: Did you see how much they had proposed a ticket
Speaker 1: would be on the hyperlop, Yeah, twenty dollars. One way,
Speaker 1: it's more it would be more expensive for you to
Speaker 1: take a cab to the station than it would to
Speaker 1: take a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and twenty dollars. That to me, out of all the
Speaker 1: numbers we've got thrown around, twenty dollars is the one
Speaker 1: that is most likely to make me smirk. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: that's that's blue sky. Know. If it works, is it fantastic? Sure?
Speaker 1: If it's fifty dollars for a ticket, is it worth
Speaker 1: it still? Yes? Yes, there's so much worth it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is that I wonder there. I've seen
Speaker 1: some economists say that I can't understand how they would
Speaker 1: come up with this idea that if you had a
Speaker 1: twenty dollar ticket, it would recapture the cost of building
Speaker 1: this thing within the time frame that Musk was suggesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I just I also think now, granted, Musk
Speaker 1: is a a pretty smart businessman. He's he's he's achieved
Speaker 1: way more on the business side of things than I
Speaker 1: have or that I ever expect to achieve. You know,
Speaker 1: you never know what tomorrow brings. You know, maybe I
Speaker 1: maybe I end up coming up. Hey, I came up
Speaker 1: with an idea that could win me a Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: when I was talking about possibly the existence of white
Speaker 1: holes and why we haven't identified any. I'm still waiting
Speaker 1: on that check. I got a certificate though, I'll show
Speaker 1: it to you. Episode listeners sent me a certificate. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just to me that just that twenty dollars per ticket,
Speaker 1: it really makes me wonder how many people per day
Speaker 1: the system would allow to travel so that you would
Speaker 1: recapture those costs within a reasonable amount of time. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got musk take on it, and it is an
Speaker 1: excellent question because that price has to we have to
Speaker 1: assume that there are there, there's at least concrete estimation
Speaker 1: behind that. Um, here is what he's thinking. He said
Speaker 1: the capacity of would be on average eight forty passengers
Speaker 1: per hour. Wow. So he argues that's more than sufficient
Speaker 1: enough to transport all of the six million passengers traveling
Speaker 1: between l A and San Francisco per year. Uh, and
Speaker 1: that accounts for sevent those travelers to use hyper loop
Speaker 1: during rush hour. So there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of wind at your back scenario stuff going on
Speaker 1: dred and forty per hour that's you know, that's pretty
Speaker 1: amazing if and how many people did they say the
Speaker 1: capsule could hold, like twenty something, So there are there
Speaker 1: are a lot of capsules traveling on that system in
Speaker 1: order to get and obviously this is a two way loop.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a loop, So you would divide that
Speaker 1: by two to figure out how many are traveling north
Speaker 1: versus south essentially and leaving every two minutes. That's the
Speaker 1: interval of the trains. Again, that's the proposed interval of
Speaker 1: the trains. And um, you know, yeah, it might sound
Speaker 1: weird to some of the listeners that you and I
Speaker 1: are taking a few moments every few minutes to say, well,
Speaker 1: that would be this is conditional. But it's very, very
Speaker 1: very important to note this because any time that we're
Speaker 1: talking about um an infrastructure process uh an infrastructure of
Speaker 1: this size, or in any any kind of new transportation,
Speaker 1: we have to understand that it's very safe to assume
Speaker 1: that the cost will balloon, will skyrock. Sure, yeah, because
Speaker 1: you're always going to run into other costs, just like
Speaker 1: Musk ran into other costs with SpaceX, things that he
Speaker 1: did not anticipate because he was told one thing and
Speaker 1: it turned out to be another thing. I would imagine
Speaker 1: the same situation would happen here where things that you know,
Speaker 1: you're basing it off of a certain set of expectations,
Speaker 1: but you haven't factored into all the other variables that
Speaker 1: could affect any of those numbers, including things like well,
Speaker 1: in order for me to get the political uh angle covered,
Speaker 1: I need to make sure that all these other things
Speaker 1: are covered first, or I'm not going to get the
Speaker 1: support I need to get this done, which kind of
Speaker 1: this is kind of brings us into those pros and cons. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the pro here is that you would have a high
Speaker 1: speed transportation system that could get you between two distant
Speaker 1: cities in thirty five minutes, which is phenomenal for a
Speaker 1: low price twenty bucks a ticket. That's yeah. I can
Speaker 1: imagine so many people in l A or San Francisco
Speaker 1: taking weekend trips. You know, because you've got twenty bucks
Speaker 1: a person, it's not nothing. You can go visit the
Speaker 1: other city and your you can spend most of your
Speaker 1: time doing whatever it is you want to do instead
Speaker 1: of in the car. Great. Yeah, I like the idea
Speaker 1: that's getting most it's electricity from solar power, so it's
Speaker 1: not causing too much of a carbon footprint. Depending upon
Speaker 1: how you know, you would have to factor in how
Speaker 1: much carbon footprint was generated just through the construction, but
Speaker 1: the operation you would imagine would be you know, pretty
Speaker 1: low since you're using solar power as your source of energy.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love innovation obviously. I love the
Speaker 1: idea that if this were actually to be as cost
Speaker 1: efficient as Musk claims, it would be remarkably less expensive
Speaker 1: than the proposed train high speed train system that they
Speaker 1: want to build between l A and San Francisco. Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am so glad you mentioned that because that's one
Speaker 1: of our that's one of our other factors. We should
Speaker 1: take just a just a sidebar here and talk about that,
Speaker 1: uh hyper loop is. While hyper loop might be the
Speaker 1: Internet favorite right now, it is not is not the
Speaker 1: only contender in the game for high speed transit in
Speaker 1: this realm Uh there's also califour ands UH state sanctioned
Speaker 1: transit system, which which, let's see, what's the nicest way
Speaker 1: to say it. It throws that six billion dollar price
Speaker 1: tag into a very favorable contrast, right. Yeah. Musk was
Speaker 1: making this point when he was talking about hyper loop
Speaker 1: for the first couple of times. He said he was
Speaker 1: looking at the figures for this proposed bullet train between
Speaker 1: l A and San Francisco, and he said, there are
Speaker 1: two factors here, two superlatives that you never want. One,
Speaker 1: it's the most expensive bullet train per mile than any
Speaker 1: other one in the world. And to it's the slowest one.
Speaker 1: So it's very slow and very expensive. He's compared to
Speaker 1: other bullet train systems. Right, and we know that we
Speaker 1: know that in the case of bullet train technology, this
Speaker 1: is not in the same situation as the hyper loop.
Speaker 1: Bullet train technology has been tested, has been proven to
Speaker 1: work successfully in Japan, and works successfully in China. There's
Speaker 1: some in Europe as well as some in Europe as well.
Speaker 1: And it's not as though it's not as though this
Speaker 1: is slow and inordinately expensive because of a lot of research.
Speaker 1: It might just be, as Must proposes, a frustrating example
Speaker 1: of poor implementation, which he was so frustrated with it
Speaker 1: that it led to this hyperloop idea. Yeah. I said
Speaker 1: that that was essentially the impetus that got into thinking
Speaker 1: there had to be a better way to get people
Speaker 1: quickly between uh, these two cities and at a lower price. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'll put on some pros to dovetail with the
Speaker 1: pros that you you earlier mentioned, which we are all
Speaker 1: great good points. Um. One of the other pros that
Speaker 1: I see, and this is all blue sky. If this works,
Speaker 1: how amazing would it be to be able to build
Speaker 1: a network of hyper loops kind of picture just almost
Speaker 1: like a chain of loops around a around a coastline
Speaker 1: or traversing through the United States. I mean, that's wildly ambitious.
Speaker 1: That's that's something that's not to bring mortality into it, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: but that's something that might be beyond our lifetimes even
Speaker 1: if it did work. Right, we have this, uh, well,
Speaker 1: I can also imagine that if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: more of a nationwide rollout of this, you would face other,
Speaker 1: uh interesting opponents to it. I could imagine the airline
Speaker 1: industry being very much interested in the fact that you
Speaker 1: would suddenly have a high speed method getting between two
Speaker 1: locations at perhaps lower travel times than you would in
Speaker 1: the air and you know that would be there'll be
Speaker 1: a lot more politics going into it, absolutely, And it's
Speaker 1: funny because on car stuff, we did an episode once
Speaker 1: on the proposal for a global inter interstate system lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, and by far even countering the infrastructure,
Speaker 1: even countering in the cost of maintenance, which is astronomical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the by far one of the most difficult things would
Speaker 1: be political opposition, which I think leads us naturally into
Speaker 1: the cons of of this system. Right. So one would
Speaker 1: be we can't really be sure what the cost is,
Speaker 1: so we don't while we know what Musk claims he
Speaker 1: thinks it'll it'll cost that maybe wildly optimistic um, Whereas
Speaker 1: we can look at what other systems cost based upon
Speaker 1: previous builds. Although I think the the proposed bullet train
Speaker 1: is already something at like sixty eight billion dollars. So
Speaker 1: it's already ten times more expensive than what Musk is proposing.
Speaker 1: And it was sixty billion dollars and it jumped up
Speaker 1: eight billion by right. And it also it would take
Speaker 1: you about two hours forty minutes to get from l
Speaker 1: A to San Francisco on that train as opposed to
Speaker 1: as opposed to the Musk's train or Musk's hyperloop. It's
Speaker 1: not trained but anyway, um, so that's a con. Another
Speaker 1: con is it's a totally unproven technology. So with no precedent,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to say whether or not it will work.
Speaker 1: Like you could build some prototypes and test it out,
Speaker 1: but we honestly don't know. And it could be one
Speaker 1: of those things where you test out and it doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and then you've you've, in some people's minds anyway, wasted time,
Speaker 1: energy and effort in order to prove that you could
Speaker 1: not do what you had hoped to do. So there's
Speaker 1: that's one. Another one is just you know, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how do you you know, how do you
Speaker 1: navigate those tricky political waters where you want to erect
Speaker 1: all these pylons alongside highways in California? You know, and
Speaker 1: and then just the construction alone, like how how long
Speaker 1: would that take to build an enormous loop built on pylons? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, And and so there's there's that con as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's a that's an interesting one because that is
Speaker 1: a con that is going to become more expensive over
Speaker 1: time given the growth of that area of California. If
Speaker 1: you know, let's say, let's just be wildly optimistic. Man,
Speaker 1: let's say eight years from now, right the great ground,
Speaker 1: and they've got they probably have a lot of agreements
Speaker 1: secured right for the land or whatever. But then it's
Speaker 1: obviously it's going to take more than a year to
Speaker 1: build something this gargantelin. So the next year comes around
Speaker 1: and wait, oh the prices have changed. So instead of
Speaker 1: twenty million dollars for this stretch of land, it's twenty
Speaker 1: million per acre now, just like the rockets. But again,
Speaker 1: just back to your earlier point, there's no, it's very
Speaker 1: difficult because there's so many variables that are in the dark.
Speaker 1: I've got some additional cons that I haven't seen totally addressed,
Speaker 1: um one of at least, and a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: we've been reading. Now. One con that I love that
Speaker 1: you brought up was the idea that of the price,
Speaker 1: of course will balloon. And people have rightly said that
Speaker 1: there are some factors that are not taken in consideration here.
Speaker 1: I think that is up there with political political maneuver,
Speaker 1: and I think that is the thing that will be
Speaker 1: most likely to kill it. Another thing is um Now
Speaker 1: you know, I'm kind of like a softie. I'm a
Speaker 1: heart on my sleeve or whatever. Uh, this could be
Speaker 1: damaging to some communities or industries that rely upon that
Speaker 1: traffic to sustain their part of the problem. Exactly nail
Speaker 1: on the head. Now. Of course this could be a
Speaker 1: little bit dark for some people, but in the spirit
Speaker 1: of objectivity, we must mention this what happens when there's
Speaker 1: an accident. What happens if we already have a sunk
Speaker 1: cost of billions of dollars and then there's a disaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if the capsule has a failure inside it, you're
Speaker 1: talking about a low pressure system, it's much higher pressure
Speaker 1: inside the capsule. You just like an experience of being
Speaker 1: in a plane at a high enough altitude, You've got
Speaker 1: very low pressure outside, higher pressure inside. If there's a breach,
Speaker 1: then everything gets blown out and there's a there is
Speaker 1: a line of well, if you think about an entire
Speaker 1: loop of other capsules two minutes behind, So if there
Speaker 1: is any sort of failure of the propulsion system, then
Speaker 1: you could end up having a collision. If there's a
Speaker 1: failure of the propulsion system in the sense of deceleration,
Speaker 1: then you could have injuries as the capsule gets to
Speaker 1: its stopping point. There are a lot of safety questions.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking especially if some talk about capsule's
Speaker 1: leaving every two minutes. That thing literally has to run
Speaker 1: like clockwork like. It would have to be so efficient.
Speaker 1: You would have to have a very secure system to
Speaker 1: slow down capsules and maybe have them in a little
Speaker 1: waiting area along one section of the loop before uh,
Speaker 1: the previous capsule is completely unloaded, because again, depending upon
Speaker 1: who is in that capsule, it may take longer than average,
Speaker 1: or you know, it may not take that long at all.
Speaker 1: And that whole thing has to be set up so
Speaker 1: that you know, you don't have any safety concerns. That's huge.
Speaker 1: The software would have to be as innovative as the
Speaker 1: two idea itself, because you have to be continual security.
Speaker 1: I'm not seeing it's impossible man, it's just hard. It's
Speaker 1: just hard, that's the thing is. And then you know,
Speaker 1: humans have done some stuff that's really freaking hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Musk has sent people into space. So it's
Speaker 1: not that it's not that we're saying that it's impossible
Speaker 1: to do, but you know it, we definitely have to
Speaker 1: keep the challenges in mind in order for us to
Speaker 1: meet those challenges, Like, even from the optimistic side, you've
Speaker 1: got to acknowledge it so that way you're prepared to
Speaker 1: overcome them. If you don't acknowledge them, then you're just
Speaker 1: it's just a ticking time bomb. Really. Hey, it's twenty Jonathan. Again,
Speaker 1: we're gonna loop on into this episode so that we
Speaker 1: can take another quick break. Okay, So we've talked about
Speaker 1: Musk and his influence. We've talked about his idea of
Speaker 1: the hyperloop and how it would work assuming everything went
Speaker 1: as planned. We talked about the pros and cons. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the other systems out there. We've
Speaker 1: mentioned a little bit about Maglev trains, and I've done
Speaker 1: an episode about Maglev trains, so I don't want to
Speaker 1: go over it too much, but it is, like we said,
Speaker 1: a similar idea, this idea of having a train that
Speaker 1: doesn't actually sit down on wheels, at least not the
Speaker 1: entire way on. Whenever it's at a station, it would
Speaker 1: be down on the track, wheels to the track, and
Speaker 1: then once it leaves the station, magnets would end up
Speaker 1: creating a repulsive force against one another. And they're different
Speaker 1: approaches to this. There's the electromagnetic suspension, there's electro dynamic suspension. UH.
Speaker 1: There's the induct tracks system, which is the permanent magnet
Speaker 1: passive suspension. There's all these different ways of doing it,
Speaker 1: but essentially the same idea arises. You're just using these
Speaker 1: magnets to push the train up over the rails and
Speaker 1: then to propel them down the track's length uh, and
Speaker 1: then also to slow them down when they get to
Speaker 1: where they need to be, where they can then come
Speaker 1: back down onto their wheels and come to a rolling stop.
Speaker 1: And these are these are also high speed. But how
Speaker 1: high speed are we talking in comparison to the hyperlop proposal.
Speaker 1: They're not as fast, mostly because most of them are
Speaker 1: not encapsulated in a tunnel with low air pressure. They
Speaker 1: tend to be out among the outside, so they still
Speaker 1: travel at an incredible speed because again, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that friction. See, friction is not just
Speaker 1: something that slows you down. It means that you're losing energy.
Speaker 1: Because you're losing energy in the form of heat. Right,
Speaker 1: you're having to pour more energy into your vehicle to
Speaker 1: make it go the speed you want to compensate for
Speaker 1: the fact that you're losing energy and heat. By making
Speaker 1: it frictionless, not only can they go faster, but you
Speaker 1: don't have to pour as much energy into it because
Speaker 1: you're not losing so much in this this heat problem.
Speaker 1: There are other issues. For example, most maglev trains have
Speaker 1: to use superconductors because you know, actually they all use
Speaker 1: superconductors in order to generate these magnetic fields, and superconductors
Speaker 1: are not cheap and uh, most of them, although this
Speaker 1: has changed over the last couple of decades, most of
Speaker 1: them require being cooled to very, very very low temperatures.
Speaker 1: We're talking just a couple of degrees above absolute zero,
Speaker 1: so right, and that's not just to be clear, that's
Speaker 1: not something that happens every every so often or on
Speaker 1: a cycle that has to be continuous. Yeah, So you're
Speaker 1: talking about using something like liquid nitrogen to get it
Speaker 1: down to a certain temperature and then switching to liquid
Speaker 1: helium because liquid nitrogen is not cold enough. That being said,
Speaker 1: there are some supercolliders that have been developed since then,
Speaker 1: since they started building maglev trains that operate at higher temperatures,
Speaker 1: and by higher I still mean really really cold, just
Speaker 1: not just not as cold, right. So it's not like
Speaker 1: the deepest reaches of space cold, right, but it's way
Speaker 1: chillier than it gets in Minnesota and the winter cold.
Speaker 1: So um, you know, it's not it's not something that
Speaker 1: makes it. It makes it more expensive to operate. And
Speaker 1: so because of the expense of having to operate these
Speaker 1: not just operate them, but also build them. There there
Speaker 1: aren't as many maglev trains as you might imagine based
Speaker 1: upon their their initial appeal from the fact that they
Speaker 1: don't have as much fiction. There are maglev trains, there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of them. Some of them are just prototypes. Yes,
Speaker 1: some of them are just prototypes. And and for a while,
Speaker 1: to be honest, maglev trains seemed like they could be
Speaker 1: a candidate for this. There's this joke that you and
Speaker 1: I have made before off air, and that's gott I
Speaker 1: have made before off air that there's all this fantastic technology. Man,
Speaker 1: it's just ten years away. Yeah, it's always ten years
Speaker 1: ago whatever, right, you always are You're always just ten
Speaker 1: years away. Yeah, we make that same joke on forward
Speaker 1: thinking as well. Plug um. But yeah, so so the
Speaker 1: love trains their top speeds maybe somewhere between three and
Speaker 1: so that's still significantly slower than what the hyperloop would
Speaker 1: attain assuming it worked the way we think it's supposed to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big difference being that maglev trains are wait for it
Speaker 1: real um. So that I think alone gives them some
Speaker 1: bonus points in my book. But also if we if
Speaker 1: we think about this, um, the the advantages that maglev
Speaker 1: trains have are um in comparison to the hyper loop.
Speaker 1: You have to ask yourself, does do those advantages make
Speaker 1: the maglev trains a more feasible option? You know? Is
Speaker 1: the advantage of extra speed uh preferable? I think the
Speaker 1: biggest advantage maglev trains have is not, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in their operation, but the fact that we have proof
Speaker 1: of that it works, right, Like, we know that maglev
Speaker 1: trains work. So therefore that is a huge advantage over
Speaker 1: the hyper loop because that's something that from what we understand,
Speaker 1: it should work, assuming you built it the right way,
Speaker 1: but we don't have proof of it. Alright, So Ben,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this other guy. Have you heard about
Speaker 1: Darryl Auster. Darryl Auster, Yeah, he might be familiar. Why
Speaker 1: he proposed a system that would be a transportation system.
Speaker 1: It's a steel tube on some elevated structure, like on pylons,
Speaker 1: that would use linear electric motors to push capsules at
Speaker 1: high speed across vast distances. Um, might sound a little familiar. Yeah, Hey,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't want to interrupt, but um, this
Speaker 1: this does sound a little bit familiar. Not to be
Speaker 1: a guy living in the past. But isn't this just
Speaker 1: what we've been talking about? Yeah? Yeah, like, um, like
Speaker 1: five minutes ago. Yes, this is exactly it's It's called
Speaker 1: the Evacuated Tube Transport System or e T three. Right,
Speaker 1: And didn't the ET three hit the news and hit
Speaker 1: the public sphere, uh before this hyper loop proposal? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well before it. And also Auster, interestingly enough, paid a
Speaker 1: little visit earlier this year to SpaceX, which is Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, because we talked
Speaker 1: about at the top of the show, one of the
Speaker 1: things Musk does. It's the it's the ancient paths to
Speaker 1: Me now the top of the show. But the Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a very interesting point because this has fueled
Speaker 1: some uh, some speculation. Yes, yes, yeah, I would agree,
Speaker 1: that's a good word for it. So the speculation is
Speaker 1: essentially that perhaps either Musk knew about Auster's idea and
Speaker 1: essentially lifted it because other people had suggested that Auster was,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, whackadoodle um, or rather
Speaker 1: that his ideas were probably unrealistic and difficult to put
Speaker 1: into practice, he did not get the same consideration or
Speaker 1: street cred that that he encountered much more. Skepticism is
Speaker 1: right best way, and it's it's possible that Musk is
Speaker 1: exactly the right guy to go to about this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, because Musk has this already has this past
Speaker 1: of making these incredible accomplishments, things that some people might
Speaker 1: have called impossible before he achieved them. So, uh, there's
Speaker 1: some speculation that in fact Musk has licensed the technology
Speaker 1: or the design from Auster, and in fact Auster has
Speaker 1: said that there are people or organizations that are licensing
Speaker 1: his ideas but he does not go so far as
Speaker 1: to identify who they are. He says that that's up
Speaker 1: to them. It's their choice to come out and say, yes,
Speaker 1: I've licensed this technology from so and so. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's you see. I think we're being very fair about
Speaker 1: this because the only three things there are three things
Speaker 1: we know for sure. First, the design of hyperloop and
Speaker 1: et three very similar. Second, uh, the Darryl did visit SpaceX. Yes. Third, uh,
Speaker 1: Darryl did mention that there was licensing involved, But none
Speaker 1: of that even all of that together does not can
Speaker 1: eclusively prove anything. No, it's circumstantial. Circumstantial, So we call it.
Speaker 1: We call it speculation. And I'm gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: call it interesting. Yes, I I will go so far
Speaker 1: as to say very interesting. I raise your interesting with
Speaker 1: a very um yeah. I think it would not surprise
Speaker 1: me to find out that Musk had heard of this
Speaker 1: and then thought it was a great idea, and that
Speaker 1: maybe together they realized that because of the resistance that
Speaker 1: Auster had faced when he was proposing his idea to
Speaker 1: other you know, like essentially outlets were like that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Then must goes forward and he says essentially the same
Speaker 1: thing and it's crazy awesome. Yeah. So so it's it's
Speaker 1: possible that this is in fact an evolution of Auster's idea.
Speaker 1: It could very well be that it's two people who
Speaker 1: thought the same thing independently. That has happened many, many,
Speaker 1: many times. It happened Tewriter, Yeah, it happened with it
Speaker 1: happened with calculus, that happened with lots of things, you know.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to jump to that conclusion, but
Speaker 1: it is interesting. Uh. And so you know, there are
Speaker 1: a couple of other things we can mention, like there's
Speaker 1: some other high speed technologies that could possibly come into play.
Speaker 1: But I think that that really it's down to the
Speaker 1: brass tacks, Ben. I think we have to sit down
Speaker 1: and actually predict will hyperloop come to pass or is
Speaker 1: it as you mentioned before, vapor ware, Get out of
Speaker 1: my head. You're reading my mind, man, because you're right,
Speaker 1: the time has come. Uh. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: have any dramatic music playing in the background, but it's
Speaker 1: in my head right now. Who should do the honors? Sir?
Speaker 1: You know what I'm gonna go first. I'm going to
Speaker 1: say that we will not see this become a transportation
Speaker 1: between Los Angeles and San Francisco, because the challenges of
Speaker 1: making sure that it will work properly and navigating those
Speaker 1: tricky political waters that are already so invested in a
Speaker 1: bullet train uh plan for those cities. I just think
Speaker 1: that's too great a challenge to overcome. I think that
Speaker 1: even if you were to prove the technology works, getting
Speaker 1: past that political barrier is a huge, huge task, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So to dovetail onto that, I am going to also
Speaker 1: have a bit of a qualified prediction. I I predict,
Speaker 1: I want to be optimistic about this, that we're going
Speaker 1: to see something like the hyper loop in the future. However,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be quite up to
Speaker 1: the specs that we've heard proposed, and I am also
Speaker 1: skeptical that it could be built in California at this juncture.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a reason that Google Fiber went to
Speaker 1: Kansas City, right, yeah, right, right, that's my prediction. I
Speaker 1: think that's fair something like it. And I will say
Speaker 1: that the hyper loop proposal is in many ways much
Speaker 1: more deserved than Auster's originally uh than his proposal, because
Speaker 1: Auster had said that he wanted this e T three
Speaker 1: system to be deployed throughout the United States, which means
Speaker 1: that you have interstate politics to deal within, not just
Speaker 1: within one state, right, You've got all these different states
Speaker 1: that you have to factor into that consideration, and that
Speaker 1: makes it way more complex. And that wraps up this
Speaker 1: classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future topics for current
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle is tech stuff h s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
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