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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
And what, again, is the idea again? What is the radical new technology that will be demonstrated?
Small tunnels to save money? Done back in the 1890s. All sorts of compromises to save money, has never been done since.
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What tech does Uber or Lyft demonstrate? They are just cab companies. Those apps save only a few seconds from hailing a cab or a few minutes from calling for a cab. Clearly they are so very low tech, there is no way they can be worth billions of dollars and completely uproot the industry they are in.
Right?
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
Private construction and operation? Done in New York City and elsewhere between the 1890s and 1940. One-by-one, all for-profit transit companies in the United States were taken over by subsidized public companies. Private ownership and for-profit operation ripe territory for scams.
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Space travel was also once the domain only of government, whether that is NASA, RosCosmos, ESA, etc. SpaceX and Blue Origin are clearly breaking that mold. Re-using rockets to save billions of dollars and thousands of man hours? Wow, amazing. Except private enterprise is the devil and we hates it! /Gollum
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
High speed airport shuttles? Shanghai Maglev goes 300mph. Nobody cares. Proof-of-concept proved why maglevs are bad ideas and have virtually zero practical applications. Like monorails. Musk's sewer pipe don't offer a particularly impressive max speed. 125mph? Doesn't BART hit 80mph in the transbay?
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So simply because Musk's proposal isn't going to break any speed records, its an entirely worthless proposal? People should simply be content to be stuck in traffic on the Kennedy Expressway when going to/from ORD and the Loop, because its either that, or an overcrowded and slow conventional rail line. We cannot think outside the box, ever.
Except, that's what America does best. We didn't put a man on the moon by simply doing whats always been done before. You can't simply stop innovating because you run across a few bad ideas.
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Originally Posted by jmecklenborg
The main technological innovation we're seeing here is...battery operated 1-car trains? Wow. Strike up the band.
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Yeah, so?
Battery powered homes and vehicles are showing a hell of a lot of promise for the near future, with a more localized power grid from solar panels/home batteries powering homes with renewable energy and electric vehicles lessening America's dependence on foreign oil and making a huge dent in atmospheric pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
But hey, batteries have been around for like, a long time. Or something. Cant possibly be ground breaking. Excuse me while I tank up my Model T with some good ole kerosene distillate.
There are two outcomes here, either it works or it doesn't. No loss to the city of Chicago if it doesn't. But if it does, it could revolutionize tunneling and transit construction across the US, and that would be a fantastic thing. Not sure why you are so aggressively against Musk even just *attempting* to pull this off. Did he insult your girlfriend or send you a threatening email? Seriously, whats the deal?