Bankrupt - Hyperloop One

In 2013, Elon Musk unveiled his concept for a "5th mode of transportation" called Hyperloop. Spawning from this idea was a lot of public excitement as well as companies racing to build one. Virgin Hyperloop One was one such company, seemingly making the most progress of any company with technological breakthroughs including the first human test. But after a decade to work and over $400 million invested, in late 2023, the company declared the equivalent of bankruptcy and shut down. Join me today to find out why.

Travel Channel - @BrightSunTravels

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Bright Sun Films 2024

Presented in 4K

[smugshrug]

Hyperloop is, quite literally, a pipe dream. The engineering behind it is nearly impossible to scale to the level we'd need. It makes more sense to build high speed rail. Look at Japan.

[marquisdan]

"What if trains but way more expensive and worse" - every billionaire right now

[ThreeB_Do]

Such projects are always popular by the governments who failed public transport completely. In France TGV is over 40 years old and you can go across the country comfortably with 320 km/h. These projects (also air taxis etc.) always focus on carrying few people, in much discomfort whereas in a high speed train you have toilets, restaurants, child play areas and even WINDOWS for over 500 people!
So everytime i see such a crazy project, i just want to shake people and yell them "JUST BUILD TRAINS". But, i guess it is easier to sell public something which looks like future, and will never be realised.

[ImmaKlonoa]

Imagine if people stopped trying to reinvent the train and just invested in railway infrastructure that would actually support high speed rail.




EDIT:
There are people in the replies that think trains are communist, that's wild.

[Airbender]

The rendering of the hyperloop next to the Golden Gate Bridge sent me into orbit 💀
The whole point of the bridge's height is to provide safe clearance for ships passing under it. Even if the rendering is a proof of concept why in the world would anyone look at the hyperloop bridge and say "yeah, half clearance ought to be enough."

[johnkraus]

All those millions weren't totally wasted. At least we have the CGI cartoons.

[Milliardo__Peacecraft]

13:13 you know a project is doomed when the concept designers can't even factor in simple things like boats.

[leiagelwasser]

It's almost as if the Hyperloop was mere hypothetical, designed to take money away from California HSR, and was never intended to actually be *built*.

[FrankyPi]

There's a perfect slogan for this. "Hyperloop - All hype, no loop". I also like thunderfoot's LOL loop meme lmao

[Kentaiga]

It took them several years to make a train that couldn't go 1/4 the speed of maglev bullet trains.

[vandarkholme]

Why do pesky things like physics always stand in the way of brilliant start-up ideas

[mzmegazone]

One thing, throughout the video you say 'pressurized'. What you meant is DEpressurized. The idea is to pull a partial vacuum to reduce air resistance in the tubes, allowing for high speeds with reduced atmospheric drag. With magnetic levitation removing physical drag, and near vacuum removing skin drag, you can theoretically reach very high speeds without excessive energy use.

But this means the pods need to be akin to high altitude aircraft, if not spacecraft. Able to handle massive pressure differentials between a sea level cabin and, ideally, near vacuum outside. For the touted 600-700mph the pressure difference would be far higher than that experienced by commercial airliners. You need a near vacuum to avoid skin heating from friction.

Pulling a vacuum on such long tubes is a huge challenge too. Any stops become airlocks. And breech in the tube would allow air to rush in, perhaps explosively, which would be bad for anyone traveling at high speed in the tube. Slamming into the air would be like hitting a wall at those speeds.

And if there is any breakdown, how do you get to the people in the pods? They're in a sealed tube, surrounded by vacuum. Or air least low enough pressure that it makes no difference for survivability. Which also means any leak in the pod becomes deadly, quickly.

Lots of challenges.

[ricks]

It seems like they invested a lot of money into colored LED lights for the insides of their demonstration tubes ...

[warmachineuk]

Problems known from the start:-
Thermal expansion of pipes: solvable with expansion joints but very expensive.
Vacuum pipes leak: pumping out air is a large running cost.
Pipe breaches: unsolvable and incoming air at almost 1 atmosphere difference turns passengers into red paste.
Breakdown recovery: no known, viable procedure.
Fast passenger ingress/egress from a vacuum: no known solution.
Land acquisition: expensive and made worse as hyperloop requires straighter tracks than rail.

Only the fourth and fifth problems might be solved with research but these received little attention. Further, individual pods is stupid as it means low passenger numbers and income. Even dumber, freight that's been travelling at sea for three weeks doesn't benefit from moving inland at 500mph.

The entire thing was a collective scam and political tool to dissuade high speed rail. Transport problems? Build a ****ing train!

[TheOchita]

Shoutout to @thunderfoot for calling out the hyperloop since day one.

[DrThalnos]

In the san Francisco chronicle they report thT : Musk reportedly told his biographer, Ashlee Vance, that the Hyperloop proposal was motivated by “his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system, ” which he felt would be too slow, outdated and expensive. “With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled, ” Vance wrote.

[jeremy____]

All of this "innovation": Hyperloop, self-driving cars, Uber/Lyft: All of it just a huge, HUGE workaround to avoid building passenger rail and subways.

[realDonaIdTruck]

"Too close to fly, too long to drive" you mean the definition of high speed rail. Already exists in the rest of the developed world, no bankruptcy required

[jakezoet-jdwk]

Tbh, looking at the Hyperloop pods, it really doesn’t make sense to travel in a pod that can carry few people, rather than a high speed train like Brightline or Acela, which carry way more passengers

[brettabraham]

Over the years, I would occasionally be reminded of Hyperloop and get really excited about it. Then I'd realize that I was just actually excited about trains.