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It was a dream too impossible for this world. (hexbear.net)

submitted 10 months ago by Yuritopiaposadism@hexbear.net to c/urbanism@hexbear.net

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[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 52 points 10 months ago

Yep, it was a dream too impossible for the world in the late 1800s / early 1900s too.

Turns out making a train or maglev inside of a vaccuum tube is more expensive and has insourmountable technical challenges when compared to making...

You know a train or maglev outside of a vaccuum tube.

For christs sake, Elons original napkin sketch was a train with a giant air intake on the front that would push air downward to make the train float and also propel it forward.

You know.

In a vaccuum tube. Where there is no air.

[-] BlueMagaChud@hexbear.net 34 points 10 months ago

huh, it's almost like it was only barely designed enough so that it could wreck and steal funding from serious public transport proposals for parties interested in never seeing those happen

[-] iridaniotter@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago

I don't even think this grift stole much funding from public transit. Its funders were overwhelmingly private sector idiots.

[-] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 27 points 10 months ago

let's take a jet plane, make it even dumber, and then put in an environment where aerodynamics no longer apply my-hero

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 18 points 10 months ago

That image is incredible.

Its the horrifically pretentious headshot drawing style the WSJ uses, but has like the face of one of those horrendously ludicrous confederate statues.

Amazing.

[-] NephewAlphaBravo@hexbear.net 17 points 10 months ago

I bet he didn't even consider how to deal with all the rat viscera

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It also doesnt account for basic American boredom:

Nearly every time a Boeing fuselage is shipped via train halfway across the country, they have to fix all of the bullet holes in it from bored riflemen in flyover states shooting it as it rolls down the tracks.

Basically the reverse of all of the shooting of Buffalo from trains during the westward expansion.

Eventually, someone with a high powered sniper rifle or even anti materiel rifle would take a pot shot at a vaccuum tube, which would then basically rip itself apart if it penetrated.

[-] Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net 13 points 10 months ago

Nearly every time a Boeing fuselage is shipped via train halfway across the country, they have to fix all of the bullet holes in it from bored riflemen in flyover states shooting it as it rolls down the tracks.

Please gods let this be true

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As requested by apparently a mod...?

===CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL ASSAULT===

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=276419

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/paxszc/i_id_never_seen_fuselage_being_transported_like/

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1q1ew6/boeing_737_fuselages_on_train_ride/

While my dad may be an insane QAnon adherent who believes that Tom Hank's son rapes children to death for their adrenochrome, he was at least useful in that he has worked at Boeing his whole life and would tell me something like this every once in a while.

[-] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 6 points 10 months ago

Sorry for your QAnon dad.

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Thanks, he is dead to me now. Probably I am going to need some therapy to uh... process all that.

But no, really, thank you for the empathy. =)

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[-] Sphere@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago

Please remove the ableist language and add a CW for the SA reference (or just remove it). Otherwise this is a great comment.

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 5 points 10 months ago

Uh, ok, hold on

[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 2 points 10 months ago

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[-] Tomboys_are_Cute@hexbear.net 5 points 10 months ago

Recommended Viewing/listening wtyp A more fundamental problem is actually making a vacuum tube

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 2 points 10 months ago

This is very true, I think one company spent like 8 years figuring out how to actually design an actually useful, actually reliable train tunnel sized vacuum seal, and then basically disappeared after...

...well its really expensive to just make one. And it would take even more money to be able to ramp up production facilities to be able to make the many needed for a theoretical system of them. And it would take forever to build them, in terms of 'oh no our loans are due and our investors are angry'.

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[-] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 11 points 10 months ago

This has me thinking about a ramjet train

[-] vexikron@lemmy.zip 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You technically could do that... at least on a relatively short, flat, straight track... but it doesnt make any practical sense.

First, its a ram jet so something has to get it up to speed before the ram jet starts working. Though if we just make it a scramjet, there we go.

Next problem is ... it might actually need downforce winglets on it the way drag cars do. On every car. Hope there is no sudden cross wind on your nearly perfectly straight track in a large flat area. Now you need a computer system to automatically move the winglets to counter cross winds... or you need some kind of... train... pilot...???

Biggest problem is: The speeds capable by a theoretically working scramjet train would mean it could not turn on anything other than VERY wide arcs, and it wouldnt be able to get to the speeds capable of a scramjet... ostensibly the whole point... without skipping tons of stops a slower train could make...

...unless you are going to slow the thing down at each stop with a series of parachutes coming out the back, or some how be able to reverse thrust the scramjet?

As far as I know there are no reverse thrust scramjets, fairly sure thats impossible due to the nature of scramjets.

???

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

The project pluto express. Beijing to Brooklyn in, like, 5-6 minutes.

[-] Dessa@hexbear.net 7 points 10 months ago

I want to ride on the brain blaster

[-] D61@hexbear.net 4 points 10 months ago

Fuck... a bank can figure out how to use air to push an object through a tube and an air hockey table to float a puck, I don't know why these dum-dums couldn't have figured out how to do the same.

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[-] CthulhusIntern@hexbear.net 48 points 10 months ago

It's easy to see in hindsight that this was a dumb idea meant to steal money and resources from public transit, but it was also easy to see in the middle of it, and at the beginning, and beforehand...

[-] sooper_dooper_roofer@hexbear.net 36 points 10 months ago

the virgin hyperloop, can't make this shit up

[-] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 33 points 10 months ago

Virgin hyperloop vs chad railway.

[-] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 8 points 10 months ago

more like chad dirt trail because it actually goes somewhere

[-] axont@hexbear.net 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Alas, we humans are not yet capable of achieving lofty pursuits such as a train

[-] Poison_Ivy@hexbear.net 6 points 10 months ago

And a train going thru as such treacherous terrain as the flat farmland and gentle hills of the Central Valley of California

[-] flan@hexbear.net 30 points 10 months ago

if only there were alternatives to cars that could exist in the real world

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 29 points 10 months ago

Even the worst, least well-planned, befuddlingly ignorant ideas can't be carried out in this country

pain

[-] davel@hexbear.net 25 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I wouldn’t cal it ignorant. Its sole purpose was to divert public funds from any practicable public transit projects.

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 13 points 10 months ago

True, but it also proved how many people weren't aware of how difficult digging is

[-] Ho_Chi_Chungus@hexbear.net 15 points 10 months ago

give me and the boys some pickaxes and a case of beer and we could have done it faster

[-] Findom_DeLuise@hexbear.net 15 points 10 months ago

pika-pickaxe 🍺🍻🍺

ROCK AND STONE

[-] Frank@hexbear.net 5 points 10 months ago

ROCK. AND. STONE.

[-] barrbaric@hexbear.net 3 points 10 months ago

TO THE BONE

[-] TheDialectic@hexbear.net 8 points 10 months ago

minecraft

The children yearn for the mines

[-] davel@hexbear.net 25 points 10 months ago

I always wondered about the engineers who worked there. They had to be either dense enough to not see it as a folly on its face, or else see it and sign up for the paycheck anyway.

[-] KarlBarqs@hexbear.net 23 points 10 months ago

or else see it and sign up for the paycheck anyway.

I mean it's probably this

Just make some fake reports every month, build whatever model or render you feel like that week. You know it'll never work, but hey, good money

[-] shitposterformerlyknownasgarbage@hexbear.net 17 points 10 months ago

but that was my fifth mode of transport.

[-] barrbaric@hexbear.net 14 points 10 months ago

More like hyperpoop, gottem

[-] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 14 points 10 months ago

What's the next anti-railway grift gonna be?

Magnetically accelerated pods in a tube, like a railgun with people inside?

Futurama pneumatic tubes?

Autogyros launched via a comically large crossbow? Is Elon going to discover that single passenger gyroplanes exist, reinvent the ballista, combine them and scam taxpayers to fund this fever dream?