Hyperloop Hypocritical 2019

For years now we have heard the thrilling prospects of traveling in the Hyperloop. I, for one, can hardly wait. For years, we have heard this. Years.

The inimitable Elon Musk has led us to new payments, new rockets, new cars and more. Amazing. Truly.  Then his hyperactive imagination got . . . tubular. Hypothetically.

Just what is hyper about this thing has not been clear to me, I admit. The loopy part I get. Yet, for years, I have not seen the invention praised the way that I believe it should be.

This brief hyperbolic essay should do it. Excelsior!

Is LinkedIn the place to discuss invention and breathlessly promote wildly disruptive, even needlessly explosive innovation? I think so! 

Hypatia, brilliant mathematician and astronomer of ancient Alexandria and Greece, had nothing to do with the Hyperloop, so leave her out of it! She was hardly the first to show that women are naturally brilliant philosophers and capable of the most advanced theoretical accomplishments, but only 1600 years later a few women are awarded Nobels. Wonders! Back to the Hyperloop:

The Hyperloop would be a tube, it seems, between cities, and inside, in a near vacuum, other tubes would carry people, like a pneumatic delivery system. Pneumatic is out, though, dude — and there is almost no air! — so today we call this ‘hyperventilating.’ Exciting! 

The passenger tubes inside the long vacuum tube would be much like the fuselage of an airliner, pressurized and crammed with people. The tube outside would also be much like the fuselage of a much bigger airliner, only 500 miles long. Hyperextended, they call that.

So it would be like a 737 flying inside a looooong 787. You, the reader, can cogitate.

500 miles is less than 13,000 777s long. Boeing has delivered 1600 already, since 1995!

This outer hyper tube would be built between, say, San Francisco and Los Angeles, for speed. So long as you want to go from that station in that city, to that other station in that other city. Pasadena, you might as well start walking, same as now, but you knew that. San Berdoo, forget it.

Now, due diligence, what could go wrong? Perish the thought.

Do I hear someone saying ‘spam in a can?’ No? What is that noise, then? Hyperbole?

You see, this hyperion would be built instead of a very sluggish bullet train, because a large tube able to hold a vacuum and withstand explosive pressure pulses and the resulting violent vibration is cheaper than two rails —duh!— and would not face any of the regulatory procedures or cost obstacles or land acquisition opposition or construction delays of tracks. You may have missed that explanation. Just read it again, over and over, until you see it. Plus, it should be elevated. What? The tube, not the explanation. Tubes can be elevated, for almost free. Elevated tracks, insanely expensive. Don’t get it? Read it again! You’ll get it.

So back to the future, just imagine we are hyperkinetic in the Hyperloop! There could be a delay, you say? Power has been lost, temporarily? Does someone have a flashlight? Your mobile phone can’t make calls, use that. Do you know rock, paper, scissors? Does anyone have a copy of ‘The Donner Party?’ And utensils?

Need to smoke? Step outside! Heh, heh. Good one.

Hypercritical? I think not. Hyperrealistic, more like it, better than a Wyeth of Lompoc. 

So, suggestion, one could add a couple of wings and a tail, maybe an engine or two, to that hypothetical pressurized passenger tube, and get to LA faster, or San Jose, anywhere really, project management wise.

You see, of course, this is just to posit the absurd, to eliminate it, reductio.

One might even find that wings and tails and engines have already been added to many, many pressurized passenger tube fuselages, which already travel in an unbreathable deathly cold near vacuum, no outer tube needed, and one could buy a ticket.

Yes, there will be unreasonable waiting and probing for each passenger. But one can now wear augmented reality devices! Or a big black blindfold, cheaper, and either way said passenger can imagine that she or he, too, is traveling in a windowless dark breathless claustrophobic screaming hypersonic descent into oblivion, just like a Hyperloop!

But, someone may protest, it has been predicted, in many places, that the passengers of the Hyperloop will travel 700 miles an hour, instead of the measly 550 miles an hour of an airliner. We can do the math! This could save fifteen - 15! - minutes on the trip from San Fran to LA, for just one simple example, so anyone can immediately see it. Let’s get crackin’ people!

Someone else may protest that the Hyperloop will operate like a train, so it will avoid the security delays of the airport. That someone has been hyperventilating, he is already with the program, no further explanation needed.

Who — who?! — would think of wantonly damaging and terrorizing a vital institution that can be completely incapacitated by any interruption of its path, at any point, fixed and undefended for rural target practice mile after mile? Who would exercise their new gun show AR-15 in remote California to wrinkle and perforate such a wonder and vandalize the Future? Who? Vandals, maybe? No, I refuse to participate in such defeatist whining!

The Hyperloop should therefore also - bonus! - offer multiplying job prospects for TSA, employing an army of visibly armed crisply overdressed uniformed former busboys and barmaids, jostling for mind-numbing jobs with ailing failed retirees, hobbling along every quarter mile to ensure security for the traveling public. Just another blessing in disguise, which can only help relieve our rampant national hypertension. And, they will get to Pasadena first.

Oops, forgot - then, horrors, what unfortunate insect swarm or other wandering murder of arthropods might find its way into the hyper tube and die there, gasping, just before the hyper-duper passenger car comes barreling along, dark and gleaming, but tripped by those overfed wasting exoskeletons, then vibrating unstable and grinding to a horrific, screaming silence? Poor arthropods. A moment of silence, please, in advance.

As simple and fast as a Hyperlink!

In closing, it is my sincere hope that the undeniable looming advantages and obvious requirement for the immediate initiation, development and deployment of a California - no, worldwide - Hyperloop system have been established. — you’re welcome, b.rad