The pine box you will be buried in.
Hyperloop
Evacuated Tube Transport. A mag-lev in vacuum tube.
You can go zinging along like the characters in the opening credits of Futurama.*
The article waxes lyrical about running these vacuum tubes under the ocean. Considering that we cannot build a pipeline that does not occasionally leak...or explode, I don't think I'd want to be under hundreds of feet of water pressure in a vacuum tube. A pinpoint leak that produces a water stream that will cut through steel due to extreme water pressure it just not enough. We need a better disaster.
I know, we'll put it under vacuum to suck the water in!
I can see the headlines now; " O-ring manufacturer sued over failure, Federal government considers criminal charges"
Wait, the back half of that is implausible. it's green technology dontchaknow, cuz the 'letricity to power the magnetic levitation system and ginormous vacuum pumps would be provided by solar panel arrays, or wind farms, or tidal current generators, or, or...unicorn farts!**
Oh screw it. I can't go on. Not enough snark left in the tank.
I know science fiction has predicted many scientific accomplishments by imagining the seemingly impossible, but this is just plain stupid.
* bad analogy, they are stuck in foot to head tube traffic.
** oh, wait, that probably has CO2 in it and that causes global worming. my bad.
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Does he have any idea just how hard it is to create a good vacuum? Of course not - he's a software guy: you just screw around with it until it works.
ReplyDeleteUnlike hardware, where you screw around with it until it breaks ...