Some MORE of the World's Most Useless Megaprojects

Somebody who works on a particle accelerator here to also dunk on Hyperloop; do you know how difficult it actually is to pump down a small section of tubing to high vacuum and the kind of equipment needed and the energy requirements? Yeah, that on a human scale is stupidly inefficient compared to just using a regular train

Things like 'Hyperloop' are what we, in the transport industry, would call a 'Gadgetbahn'. A new and complex mode of transit that seems futuristic, and tends to generate alot of excitement because of its futuristic, complex 'high-tech' look and feel . . . But is actually less workable, less effecient and less capable at what it's designed to do than older, simpler and existing technologies.

I flew on an Aeroflot passenger jet in 1983 from Moscow to Leningrad. There were people on board with live chickens in baskets. The plane creaked very audibly throughout the flight. I felt lucky to survive the flight.

The pneumatic subway drawing/schematic you show on Broadway was the one created by Alfred Beach in the late 1800s. He couldn't get a permit from the city of New York (as his competition was thinking of running for mayor and bribed council to not approve Beach's plan) so Alfred dug the tunnel and two stations by hand, at night, in the dark over the course of a year. He then stuck a train in it and showed that pneumatics would work...but he and his invention were buried in political controversy. Beach's memory was immortalized in Canadian band Klaatu's song "Sub Rosa Subway' in 1973.

As someone who lives on the West Coast, the Hyperloop was always ridiculous to me because...earthquakes

7:55 “There has not been a single fatality due to accident of a US airline passenger in 14 years” Wrong, Southwest Flight 1380 had 1 fatality in 2018. An engine exploded, sending shrapnel into the cabin and causing a rapid decompression. One passenger was partially sucked out of the plane and died due to injuries

I'm not an engineer. But I once had one tell me that one of the universal truths of engineering is that EVERYTHING leaks, even without the massive pressure differential required for the Hyperloop.

Nothing quite like trusting public transport project to car manufacturers.

The Hyperloop always felt like Mel Brook's "The Producers": Something designed to fail because the people behind it found a way to make money off that failure.

"Hyperloop" is the NFT of mass transit.

As an HVAC tech who regularly puts lengths of piping under a vacuum I can definitely attest to how impossible this idea is

0:40 - Chapter 1 - Hyperloop (still stupid after all these years) 7:35 - Chapter 2 - Tu 104 (The soviet disaster airliner) 10:50 - Chapter 3 - Just dubai

In Finland Tupolev is known as “Putolev” or (roughly translated) “drop-down-olev” 😅

Thunderfoot endlessly made fun of the hyperloop.

Over the last few months Simon has shifted tone quite markedly, and while I can speculate whether it is part of a pub bet, a long planned strategy, a recent epiphany or something far cleverer that for me to comprehend, I don’t mind - I’m here for it 😂

What you are saying is that Musk sold Hypertubes to Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook!😉

But the Futurama opening sequence! People clearly going through pneumatic tubes! Well that is 1000 years from now, so ...

The TU-104 was also back heavy and had the tendency to pitch up violently and stall. The plane was developed from a piston engine bomber from Tupolev and was changed minimally for the first jet from Russia.

Love the cynicism in this one Simon - very entertaining! And I genuinely mean that

been getting your videos recommended to me for a while and this is the one that made me subscribe. any channel that will ask "why would anyone want that?" before launching into a detailed explanation of "how did engineers turn this rich moron's fever dream into a shabby reality?" is probably worth hearing from regularly