The Hyperloop: BUSTED

[David Hess]

Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market.

The total cost of ownership of LED bulbs is much higher than incandescent bulbs where I am because either burn out in about 6 months due to our dirty power. At least the incandescent bulbs were cheap so replacing them was cheap.

I rather suspect you just buy very crappy bulbs. For decent bulbs quality of power won't matter too much.

And I know that I did not; expensive bulbs hardly last any longer and not even longer proportional to the increase in cost.  There is nothing to be done about the power short of installing active power conditioning.

Even California concluded that the operating life of LED bulbs was grossly overestimated making their economic savings questionable but of course that did not give them pause in mandating their use.  The whole exercise was for rent seeking as I expected.

[cdev]

"HYPELoop"

Whatever it's  purpose, it's NOT transportation~

It's likely a "shambolic" gesture as Simon puts it.

[rrinker]

Without the mandates many people would have been content to keep using incandescent bulbs, oblivious to or not even comprehending the fact that the total cost of ownership including electricity is far more expensive for the "cheap" incandescent bulbs and the LED tech may not have caught on at all in an entirely free market.

The total cost of ownership of LED bulbs is much higher than incandescent bulbs where I am because either burn out in about 6 months due to our dirty power.  At least the incandescent bulbs were cheap so replacing them was cheap.

 Glad I don't live where you do, I replaced all the bulbs in my house with LEDs shortly after I moved in, almost 4 years ago now. Haven't had a single one fail. And they aren't the real expensive ones, almost all of them are just the Utilitech ones from Lowes. I even have one in the fully enclosed fixture over my kitchen sink and it seems some members of the household just can't be bothered to turn it off so it runs 24/7.

[wraper]

And I know that I did not; expensive bulbs hardly last any longer and not even longer proportional to the increase in cost.

I hope you at least did not order them from China.

[jonovid]

A first simple check is to see if a project is done by multiple companies (in parallel) or just one and where the funding is coming from.

Another first simple step is to stop and think why no one has done this old idea before:

Has there been some radical breakthrough in maglev technology? No.
Has there been some radical breakthrough in ridiculously large scale vacuum tunnel technology suitable for human carriage over hundreds of km? No.
Has there been some other radical breakthrough in the transport market space? No.
Has there been some other breakthrough in cost reduction in anything to do with this? No.

You can turn this reasoning around quite easely: if there is no demand for a radical breakthrough then it won't happen. Chicken & egg until someone throws serious money at the problem and makes the breakthrough happen. Creating something new often requires solving technical issues nobody has solved before.

And sometimes, just sometimes, an idea will always just remain fundamentally impractical.

IIRC there is someone on this forum who is part of one of the top HL design teams who have published very details technical papers on it, and even they admit that the vacuum based HL idea is poorly thought through and basically may not happen.

And make no mistake, you can't separate the vacuum idea from Hyperloop, because without it it's no longer the Hyperloop idea.
A vacuum based passenger carrying intercity HL will never happen, I'll bet you a bitcoin on it.

all is not lost  there is always the toy market.
Japan's Maglev Train - Linear Levitation Toys Train For Kids


the idea of a hyperloop toy is a tube kit that makes sounds, as the idea kids imagine the train inside the tube. 

[IanMacdonald]

I do think that all these mega-speed transportation ideas are attacking the commuter problem from the wrong angle.

A bunch of electrons are struggling to get through a narrow wire from - to +. This is making the wire hot. You decide to alleviate the problem by fitting a heavier cable. The result? More electrons decide that this would be a great idea, so... 

In the UK we have Stamp Duty, which adds to the already high cost of moving house. It's effective a government fine for relocating. 

-Is it any wonder there is such a commuter problem?

If the government wanted to solve this, they would:

• Make it easier, not harder,  for people to move to where there is work.
• Discourage the building of 'dormitory towns' far away from any work or amenities.
• Stop charging city residents a fortune to park outside their house in daytime.
• Encourage remote working.
• Make it more expensive for firms to service huge areas from one central depot.

The problem at the moment is that the government makes huge amounts of revenue from vehicle and road fuel taxation, and parking charges. This could explain why the situation perpetuates itself.

[james_s]

And I know that I did not; expensive bulbs hardly last any longer and not even longer proportional to the increase in cost.  There is nothing to be done about the power short of installing active power conditioning.

Even California concluded that the operating life of LED bulbs was grossly overestimated making their economic savings questionable but of course that did not give them pause in mandating their use.  The whole exercise was for rent seeking as I expected.

I can't really say how long they last because so far I've never had one fail except for a cheap one I used in a fully enclosed fixture even though it said not to. The LED bulbs in my porch lights run an average of 12 hours a night on a timer and I labeled them when I installed them in Nov 2011, still going strong. My house was 100% LED (except for the oven and microwave bulbs) as of 2012 and even the early bulbs I was paying $40 each for have paid for themselves by now.

I haven't heard of the data regarding California you mention, but I do know the guys at the BSL in Los Angeles have had an LED streetlight running 24/7 for 5 or 6 years now and last I heard they had not recorded any measurable lumen depreciation.

[cdev]

When I was a kid, I remember going to NYC to places like the Empire State Building and seeing that offices there used a pneumatic vacuum tube system to send and receive their mail. It was pretty old at that point, but it was still being used.

They had similar systems in a lot of cities/large businesses.   I don't think any of them are still in use.

[james_s]

Banks all had pneumatic tube systems for the drivethrough stations, I don't know if they still do. The Costco near me has one, I'm not sure precisely what it's used for but I think it's for sending cash from the registers back to a central point. There's even one in the kitchen of the food court which is outside the main part of the store.

[mtdoc]

Many hospitals have pneumatic tube systems and still use them. The work geat. The local Walmart has one as well that they use for their pharmacy. These systems work well.

[Someone]

-Is it any wonder there is such a commuter problem?

If the government wanted to solve this, they would:

• Make it easier, not harder,  for people to move to where there is work.
• Discourage the building of 'dormitory towns' far away from any work or amenities.
• Stop charging city residents a fortune to park outside their house in daytime.
• Encourage remote working.
• Make it more expensive for firms to service huge areas from one central depot.

You can't use cars to solve the commuting "problem" as they don't scale with dense cities, America tried a car centric approach and to fit in all the required car parking spaces they could never achieve densities to support mass transit and locked those cities out of getting any larger.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/sep/27/cities-eliminating-car-parks-parking
https://www.shoupdogg.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2015/08/Putting-a-Cap-on-Parking-Requirements.pdf
Mass transit (public and/or private variety) is the way to build shorter commute times and increasing the cost of car ownership is exactly they way to reduce congestion and commute times. If you can rent land for a fraction of the price to park your car on, can I get the same price and park a caravan on it then rent out the residence for profit? There are better uses for land and the free market can balance that well so if you want to park at your house you are free to purchase the land required and have the parking space for whatever purpose you desire.

[cdev]

This is really good.. A "Must"  read!



In Car Nation part one: Cause
by Nick Sousanis


http://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation1.html


In Car Nation part two: Effect

http://www.thedetroiter.com/jan05/carnation2.html

Except the problem is, the car was built for a certain time, which is drawing to an end. People in the future are not going to have the incomes or the need for private automobiles, because many wont have jobs as they did in the past. Others will work over the Internet, often for employers hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

Also, some areas may become too dry or too hot or too polluted to support human habitation. Will people move back into the cities?

[David Hess]

I haven't heard of the data regarding California you mention, but I do know the guys at the BSL in Los Angeles have had an LED streetlight running 24/7 for 5 or 6 years now and last I heard they had not recorded any measurable lumen depreciation.

The lumen depreciation is part of the problem.  LEDs are specified that way but most failures are complete and have nothing to do with that.  Regulators confused operating life with reliability when they did the calculations for total cost of ownership.

[ebastler]

The lumen depreciation is part of the problem.  LEDs are specified that way but most failures are complete and have nothing to do with that.  Regulators confused operating life with reliability when they did the calculations for total cost of ownership.

I don't follow. An LED's lifetime is specified as the time until it's light output it drops below XX% of its initial output. Whether that's due to gradual depreciation or fatal failure should not matter. I.e. in a test batch of LEDs, every reliability fault will also drag down the average operating lifetime.

Edit: Typo

[nctnico]

I haven't heard of the data regarding California you mention, but I do know the guys at the BSL in Los Angeles have had an LED streetlight running 24/7 for 5 or 6 years now and last I heard they had not recorded any measurable lumen depreciation.

The lumen depreciation is part of the problem.  LEDs are specified that way but most failures are complete and have nothing to do with that.  Regulators confused operating life with reliability when they did the calculations for total cost of ownership.

But still the fact that LED lamps don't work for you due to poor power regulation (which makes me wonder how other electronic equipment survives and/or whether you bought good quality LED lamps) doesn't mean they don't work well for other people. So far Philips CFL lamps have worked well for me so I bought a whole bunch of LED lamps from Philips.

edit: typo

[james_s]

It's true that in some parts of the US electronics damage from power surges is a very real problem. Much of the midwest is wide open space with frequent lightning storms and most of the power distribution is overhead, it's not economical to bury it in sparsely populated regions. Lightning damage is rare where I live but even so I've seen a few appliances that had components vaporized off the PCB. I fixed a dishwasher that was a lightning strike victim, the fuse was missing entirely, only a black splotch on the PCB and a pair of splayed leads remained. The internal thermal fuse in the transformer primary had opened and part of a trace was blown off the PCB.

This sort of thing is very common in the midwest, I've seen pictures of all manner of consumer electronics with vaporized traces and cratered parts.

[Lightages]

WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?

[nctnico]

WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?

Well it was to show that if you pour money into a new 'unrealistic' product it can turn into a good product after all. 

[james_s]

WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?

It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone. The subsidies made a prohibitively expensive product affordable for long enough to drive the manufacturing cost down. It's a form of the classic chicken & egg problem, a new tech is too expensive for people to afford it, because it's too expensive to sell enough of it to bring up the volume and lower the cost.

People in general are notoriously short-sited and in the era of instant gratification and the extreme focus on quarterly gains it's only getting worse.

[mtdoc]

WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?

It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone.

Yes, but AFAIK there are currently no government subsidies involved in hyperloop development. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.

People in general are notoriously short-sited and in the era of instant gratification and the extreme focus on quarterly gains it's only getting worse.

Yeah, you got that right.  I can only imagine where technology would be now if that had been the case during the 1950’s and 1960’s.

[wraper]

WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?

It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone.

Yes, but AFAIK there are currently no government subsidies involved in hyperloop development. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.

Small companies, however at least one very serious company which has real train business invested into it https://www.engadget.com/2017/10/12/richard-branson-and-virgin-join-forces-with-hyperloop-one/

[nctnico]

WTF does all this LED conversation have to do with the hyperloop?

It's an example of government subsidies dumping money into a new and unproven technology that likely would have lagged for decades relying on the free market alone.

Yes, but AFAIK there are currently no government subsidies involved in hyperloop development. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.

AFAIK the Dutch government has indicated to be willing to invest if a company comes up with a good plan and at least facilitate building a test track.

[ogden]

I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.

I am afraid you are indeed wrong. Virgin Hyperloop One shall not be considered as small company. Nobody knows tells how much Branson invested, but it shall be huge pile of money.

https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one

Quite recently they got new "injection" to burn in form of 50$ mil:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html

[EEVblog]

I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I believe it’s just a handfull of small companies and some engineering student teams.

I am afraid you are indeed wrong. Virgin Hyperloop One shall not be considered as small company. Nobody knows tells how much Branson invested, but it shall be huge pile of money.

https://hyperloop-one.com/blog/introducing-virgin-hyperloop-one

Quite recently they got new "injection" to burn in form of 50$ mil:

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/virgin-hyperloop-one-raises-more-money-and-makes-richard-branson-chair.html

That money will never see any return on investment, it will just vanish.

[EEVblog]

People in general are notoriously short-sited and in the era of instant gratification and the extreme focus on quarterly gains it's only getting worse.

To completely mangle another famous quote from Carl Sagan - Don't be so long sighted that your eyeballs falls out.
You can argue that uBeam and Solar Roadways are all "long sighted" projects too, good luck with that.