Musk's hyperloop still captivates despite decade of setbacks

A model of a passenger hyperloop capsule at Dubai's 2020 Expo.

The vaporwave aesthetics of the Hyperloop are nice to look at but it has been a decade of vaporware.

It's all about being in the news. There is clearly no money in it for Musk or Branson, otherwise they'd have built it by now. The UK can't even get its act together over a normal high speed rail link let alone something that's even more expensive. These things are probably built as an international construction project similar to the eurotunnel where the governments put up the money.

It's all about being in the news. There is clearly no money in it for Musk or Branson, otherwise they'd have built it by now.

Do you understand how insane of an engineering project Hyperloop would be? Probably the most complicated and expensive civil engineering project ever. That's why it hasn't been made yet. If it ever gets built it would replace the aviation industry... enough profits?

"The transportation network has not had a new mode for over 100 years,"

and yet again he proposed a modernized version of an idea from 1799. which obviously never took off.

Also, Virgin Hyperloop, the only venture that did something worth of mentioning basically shelved the project so it just confirms it is vaporware.

One wonders if "Hyperloop" is not just a clevel allusion to Mr. Musk's attention span.....

That's Facebook's company Mega's emblem inside the capsule. Looks like trouble.

Those brain sick psychos…How about first simply trying to deliver something to eat to starving people, at low speed and by trucks , mopeds, donkeys or barefoot. Test areas like Yemen, Somalia and such are surely plenty available for first trials of that much more useful ‘technology’.

The transportation network has not had a new mode for over 100 years," said Rick Geddes, a transport infrastructure expert at Cornell University in the United States, who compared the excitement to the early days of aviation.

Really?

I guess 100 years ago we had maglev trains, if my memory serves me correctly no wheels and no wings makes it a new mode.

But hey what are facts good for when we have Musk God to make the news with some crazy thing.

Twitter anyone?

Those brain sick psychos…How about first simply trying to deliver something to eat to starving people.

I would say how about improving the accuracy of Car navigation GPS. Most of the time my intuition has been better than the car navigator that makes me drive around in circles or leads me to the highway when the destination is just a few hundred meters away.

Hardly a new idea, I was playing with the concept as a child in the late 60’s, with ideas and solutions you would expect from a child and the times. What is offered doesn’t seem that much better today, hopefully bright young people like De Bos can change that.

The concept works better at a smaller scale for delivery transport, Google “Magway” a company concentrating on replacing all the delivery vans clogging the roads of every city and their environmental impact of stop start with a quicker, cleaner more direct delivery option, with more realistic ambitions and growth timescales!

NEVOMO in Poland have a unique incremental approach to reaching the equivalent to Hyper Loop using existing infrastructure to begin with that may turn out to be both more practicable and affordable!