this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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HEAR ME OUT BEFORE YOU DOWNVOTE.

Disclaimer: The hyperloop is an absolutely shit idea right now. I do not support building in any form right now.

Now to the shower thought: Theoretically, a hyperloop can get you from place A to place B on the planet in less than 40 min (back of the napkin calculations assuming constant acceleration and deceleration of around 1G). Being completely underground (more on that below), it would also be a really good piece of infrastructure safe from arial/orbital bombardment.

Now to the obvious problems: We need the tube to be very very straight to achieve high speeds without killing our passengers. We would want the hyperloop to enter city centers. Building such a straight thing in city centers would require a lot of demolition. Therefore, we would have to get it underground. Bringing it on the ground again outside cities doesn't make sense because we would be introducing steep upward curves, thus reducing its maximum speed. Therefore, it makes sense to build this thing completely underground. Building underground also gives us many more benefits like not having to do much land acquisition, safety from violent attacks and so on.

Our tube would have to be incredibly airtight. It absolutely cannot have any leaks anywhere. Also, we need to be able to achieve incredibly low chamber pressures and maintain them.

If we are building this underground, we would need a shit load of energy to dig and transport the material outside the tunnel. We would also need a shit load of steel and other resources for these incredibly long tunnels.

Where do we get this energy? Where do we mine these resources without destroying the planet? Now this is where the "future" part comes in. We would need energy to be incredibly cheap. The only viable long term method (by "long term", I mean it from the civilization time scale) would be via nuclear fusion. When is nuclear fusion happening? Well, it's only 30 years away! /s Jokes aside, the energy source might be when nuclear fusion not only becomes possible, but also incredibly cheap (the nuclear reactor shouldn't cost billions lol).

About the resources? Well, we probably need to mine them on the moon, no? The moon has A LOT of them right on the surface. If we can mine them and send them back home, we solve our resources problem!

Well, you might ask- doesn't it make more sense to just have spaceships with engines propelled by nuclear fusion that exit the atmosphere, go at hypersonic speeds and then drop in? Why build expensive underground continent spanning tunnels? Well, what if we are attacked by aliens? They could easily blockade our airspace. Hell, just dropping a few million stealthy pebbles in our lower orbits would be enough to stop all hypersonic travel (the risk of ships exploding on contact with these pebbles would be too high for air travel to continue). Hypersonic spaceships would also face the problem of traditional aircrafts- you would need to build spaceports far from city centers. These spaceports would require a lot of space and cause a tremendous amount of noise pollution (constant sonic booms for every launch and landing).

Therefore, I think I have made my mind. I think I would be voting for a hyperloop proposal that possibly would be tabled in our direct democratic government a 100-150 years from now!

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (3 children)

It's easy to get caught up in all that "cool factor", but if you really think about it, "cool" is just a stupid person trap.

If you're really serious about it, look at the fundamental problem it is trying to solve, and consider if there are any more efficient, less expensive ways of addressing that core issue.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)
  • Expensive
  • Noise pollution
  • Incredibly unsafe

Basically, the future's version of cars.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

It's okay you can be safe on a train and I'll be balling with my jetpack.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Lmao n what if u ram into a building by mistake while scrolling whatever brainrot social media platform we'll have by then? Don't u think we've had enough of such occurrences already?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

We'll all die sometime so fly fast and leave a flattened corpse behind as the saying goes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I've heard this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Dayum, I like your wisdom SatansMagottyCumFart! Here's a song to immortalize your saying!

https://suno.com/song/e5b4f8b8-2efc-434c-a9fd-b0692ba4d52f (Your saying is the chorus lmao)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's actually a banger.

If it charts and gets to be the song of summer I want a double big mac with extra pickles.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

First principal thinking there is probally no faster possible form of transport on earth, because you can move a shorter distance the.

If the cost were lower than the benifit of having those speeds then its worth it, but honestly I think the push towards robotics and digital twins/digitalization is covering more of peoples needs today then needing to move people to places physically super fast.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ahh so what the metaverse was supposed to be? I think I do see this being more probable than the underground continent spanning Hyperloop network lol.

Maybe full body suits that produce output sensed by all 5 senses? Hmmm, that's a lot more probable I suppose (and I think would look a lot more dystopian too lol)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Yes on all accounts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I can't see any more efficient ways of getting people from place A to B faster. Hypersonic speeds can't be achieved on the earth's surface due to its atmosphere. Therefore, I see only two ways to go about it:

  1. Spaceships that exit and reenter earth's atmosphere.
  2. Hypersonic trains in a vacuum chamber, I.e., a Hyperloop .

I did compare this above. Like... Wouldn't Hyperloops be safer and a lot more efficient than spaceships? Basically, the trains vs flights debate of the future.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

The core problem isn't people needing to get from A to B at hypersonic speeds. It's that they need to get there in a reasonable timeframe.

I would first off remove the need to commute long distances regularly by putting amenities closer to residential areas with appropriate zoning and encouraging work-from-home where practical.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If right of way and turn radius is the reasons you’re building underground, elevated rail is like 10x cheaper.

You’re wasting too much thought on some douchebag’s scheme to collect government subsidies.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

TL;DR:

"Once we have nuclear fusion energy will be so cheap we can waste it on even the dumbest projecets".

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[–] owsei 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

it's a cool idea, but probably not a good one

Too much money would be spent to simply get people from point A to point B faster

and why do it this fast? these reasons outweigh the price to build such a thing?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I mean... Why build HSR if u just have normal rail? It might get u from place A to B faster by an hour or so... What difference would that make?

Turns out it would make quite a lot of difference, right? Faster human transportation in history has always been a good thing.

As for the price, the assumption is that nuclear fusion and lunar mining are mature tech. That would certainly lower the price a lot, no?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Faster transport hasn’t always been a good thing though, look at Concorde. The fastest passenger vehicle to ever exist and it was retired without a replacement because the extra speed wasn’t worth the cost and it lost money even with government subsidies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Agreed. The Concorde wasn't sustainable.

In my premise, energy is abundant. Resources are abundant.

Also, my comment about speed being good was more from a civilisational perspective. Going from running to horses to rail to the plane (for long distances of course) had incredible advantages for humans. My point was that the Hyperloop would be a natural extension to this whenever the resources and necessary tech become available.

[–] owsei 3 points 6 months ago

Good point

maybe I underestimate how we will be in 100 years. maybe you overestimate it

But it's a cool ideia nonetheless

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (8 children)

The future doesn't really change any of this (other than sheer population or willpower). Energy isn't the problem, it doesn't require boatloads of energy. It's simply cost. It takes materials, but nowhere close enough to needing to mine the moon.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (22 children)

Only if in the future they somehow change the laws of physics.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

To long, down voting.

(Joking)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

We would want the hyperloop to enter city centers.

Not necessarily. There could be connecting transportation so the hyperloop doesn't go into the city centre. Or, we can build new cities around the hyperloop.

In a few decades, we will have an extremely advanced version of VR and AR, people will meet virtually without travelling physically.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I'm with you bro, although we don't need to mine the moon or asteroids, the tunnels can be airtight enough with reinforced concrete. They've already made multiple sustainable concrete formulas, and I think 150 years is plenty of time to assume these will be mass adopted. If fusion has becomea thing and we have an abundance of energy then the costs of such an enormous project will also become more feasible.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Nope. In a hundred years, bog-standard trains will still be a far superior idea.

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