this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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Futurology

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The US should be having a rail-measuring contest with China, not a hype®loop-measuring one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Yeah China is doing real well in that department.

I mean if we lived in a post-scarcity utopia and build these hyperloops under ground it might be a worthwhile investment. If we had more advanced tech for tunnel digging robots and maybe 3D printing the walls out of the material we take out etc. But if you include the energy for just maintaining the vacuum against small leaks it's probably not better than airplanes. Maybe with some kind of genetically engineered bio-crete that automatically seals small cracks. But even when we'd advanced to that level of tech and automation to make it viable, it would still have to compete with a fleet of ultra cheap vertical take of electric aircraft.