Tag: Elon Musk

The Hyperloop Competitions at SpaceX: Let’s make this happen!

Although the political left does not like Donald Trump as president including Elon Musk, (who I think is a wonderful person) I would have never entertained an idea like the Hyperloop before the Trump inauguration.  Now after the first week of Donald Trump’s presidency the Dow closed at over 20,000 for the first time and many big ideas started moving forward, then the wonderful company of SpaceX hosted the Hyperloop competition in Los Angeles at their facility inviting colleges and engineering organizations from around the world to compete with designs of their own fresh perspectives in a very capitalists manner.  The Hyperloop is a radical transportation innovation that is wonderfully revolutionary.  When I was a kid I had something I played with like this design called Rocket Tubes for the Micronaut toy line.  Now under the sponsorship of Elon Musk the reality of Rocket Tubes is coming to life and taking its next evolutionary step.  Prototype designs have been gathered at SpaceX during the weekend of January 28th and 29th to see which works best in head to head competition.  Before Donald Trump’s presidency I couldn’t see any path forward for these liberal leaning dreamers—but under Trump’s presidency and perhaps his daughter Ivanka taking over in the years to come to keep continuity in the White House—Hyperloop as a transportation device may happen on a large continental scale.

http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop

Hyperloop is essentially a large rocket tube that allows passengers to travel at around 1000 miles per hour inside.  That means travel to Disney World in Orlando from Cincinnati would be one hour from a Hyperloop station in theoretical Monroe in the northern suburbs to the Kissimmee station at the gates to the famous theme park.  There are already plans for a Hyperloop line from Columbus, Ohio to Chicago, which would only take 30 minutes of travel time.  There is another proposal for a line from Columbus to Pittsburg in less than 15 minutes.  So for Ohio residents wanting to attend a Steelers game, just get on the Hyperloop and you’ll easily be in Pittsburg within 15 minutes. It takes longer to walk across a parking lot once you’ve parked at a stadium.  But first there are thousands upon thousands of engineering feats that have to be invented and that is the purpose of the Hyperloop competitions mentioned at SpaceX. As you are reading this just click the link above and you can see what’s left of them since most of my readers are on the east coast and will still have time to view the last entries of the day at that link.

In my old toy Rocket Tubes there was a large compressor that injected air into the tubes to move a little Micronaut man in a capsule through the tubes on a bed of air.  The compressor filled the tubes with airflow that actually overtook the weight of the capsule holding the man.  I played with that thing for hour and hours year after year.  I think I got the toy around 10 or 11 and it still worked when I got my first car at 16.  I loved it because it appeared to be a vision into a world of tomorrow.  Now the Hyperloop is that next generation of thinking and instead of just using compressed air to create a bed of air to ride on, the vehicles are expounding on the levitation magnets used in other high-speed rail around the world.  But, the Hyperloop technology further utilizes the removal of that air to create a close simulation to the vacuum of space to take away that wall of resistance that would otherwise build up at the front of the vehicle.  That is how the speeds can be so extremely fast.  Inside the car even at such high speeds you could sit as you would a train with a little drink on a table in front of you and watch the world literally go by outside at a 1000 miles an hour—and your drink wouldn’t spill.  Pretty cool.

As I’ve said about the sky car projects that are now becoming a quick reality which will take traffic to the air as opposed to ground congestion through major cities—having a Hyperloop line would be a tremendous asset—particularly for the shipping industry.  It would really benefit DHL, FedX, and Amazon by getting products from the west coast to the east in the same day as opposed to the expense of flying it against the weight restrictions of air travel.  And many of the Hyperloop lines could exist along existing highway routes—that big grassy area that sits between north and southbound lanes, or east and west, could easily hold a Hyperloop line without disturbing property owners with new acquisitions of property to get a nice network across the country within a short period of time—a decade or so.

Around the world I can think of fine examples of how the Eurostar has greatly helped transportation in Europe, which I plan to visit very soon to see for myself.  And then there is the bullet trains in Japan which I have some personal history with.  For instance I was meeting people for dinner recently in Kobe, Japan who were from as far south as Himeji.  I was staying at the Oriental Hotel and was meeting at the Ikuta Road steakhouse for dinner. By highway Himeji was about an hour to the south so I was emailing my guests as they were about to board the bullet train thinking that I’d get to the dinner location way ahead of them–after all I had a driver picking me up as I was heading to the elevator and from there the drive was only about 5 minutes. By the time I made it down to my car, spoke to a few people, drove down all the one way roads to arrive at the steakhouse, my guests were there, very relaxed and unhurried.  Those same people could easily get up to Tokyo for a night out by the same means, the train works very well in Japan—and its fast. I’m not big on big mass transit projects and traditional rail is just too slow and cumbersome.  But when it comes to the examples listed there are times when it’s just the right thing.  The Hyperloop would be the next generation of these transportation systems and could let us take advantage of great distances for further economic expansion.

Before Donald Trump the cost of the Hyperloop would have been prohibitive.  With 20 trillion in national debt and a world spinning out of control economically with China controlling all the chess pieces, there wasn’t much chance of the Hyperloop getting funded in America.  Too much regulation and bureaucratic red tape would have stood in the way.  Its one thing to dream of these things at SpaceX but quite another to get politicians to see the reason to fund it—the political will just hasn’t been there.  For instance, the Eurostar was privately funded, but it is still upside down and shows no sign of recovering the cost because there just isn’t any way to have enough people travel on it per day to justify the enormous cost of digging under the English Channel and building all the infrastructure to make it happen.  It’s a technical marvel—but was entirely too expensive for two economies that have been stagnant for years—the socialist country of France and the heavily restricted economy of England.  But in the United States with a projected economic expansion rate of over 5% with Trump’s policies, there may be a huge chance to pay down our debt, and actually come out ahead for the Hyperloop network in the 2020s—about the time that the engineers from this Hyperloop competition work out all the bugs with technical innovation.  It won’t take long.

My advice to Elon Musk is to drop all the discussion about carbon taxes and environmental thinking when talking to Donald Trump at the White House because that’s not going to happen.  It would also be good to stop complaining about his immigration policies.  The borderless world concept is done in America so if you want people to embrace Tesla, and to give Hyperloop a chance, you have a friendly president to those technologies so long as you don’t use more regulation to move people from oil based vehicles to electric ones.  My next car may be a Tesla and I’m not a green economy advocate. I would just want a Tesla because it most intelligently applies power to the wheels that hit the road as opposed to what’s out there.  I think the Tesla is a wonderful rethinking of the personal car.  I fully support Trump opening up the coal mines and drilling for oil in the United States so that we can have an economic renaissance like the UAE is experiencing with excess cash from their oil industry alone funding exciting new projects.  But I am open to new methods coming along to replace what we’ve had.  I am ready to see a leap in technology from a combustion engine to a Tesla, or from a commuter train to a Hyperloop—so long as what comes next advances our civilization.  The carbon tax issue and other environmental concerns from the political left will work themselves out if we truly move into space as a human race—where there are full cities on Mars within a hundred or so years and the moon becomes a base of operations for deeper space travel.  We can’t restrict ourselves on earth economically, technically, and politically by fighting the wrong battles.  The human race has to leave the earth and these kinds of technologies take us to that point.  So keep the politics out of the Hyperloop and we could very well have them all over the United States over the next thirty years because they make sense.

With that said the Hyperloop races were very inspiring and provided a glimpse into the kind of nation and world we can become.  I know I’m ready for such a world.  I would love to leave for Orlando at 8 AM in the morning after grabbing a quick breakfast at McDonald’s and arriving an hour before Disney World opens so I could take advantage of the early open to pass holders.  After a day of fun I could be back with my family for dinner and never feel like I had just traveled all day needing to recover after sitting for so long.  The Hyperloop would make such a trip as common as driving to the grocery store for milk, and that would greatly expand our internal economic output, and GDP.  For instance it would greatly benefit me professionally to be able to same day ship from California to West Chester, Ohio because often lead times on things I need mostly involve transit times and ridiculous shipping costs by air.  Hyperloop could dramatically reduce those costs—so it’s very exciting.  But first, we have to get through this infancy period with a president who gets it and can sell it to the politicians.  And that’s what Donald Trump can do that others had no chance at before.  So make friends, keep dreaming, and let’s make this happen!

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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The Blaze Coverage of Tesla: Zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds and a smiling Preston Tucker

I was listening to Pat and Stu on The Blaze Radio Network when Glenn Beck rushed into the studio to interrupt their show declaring with great excitement that he had just driven one of the new Model S Tesla dual motor cars that accelerated from zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. Beck offered anybody who wanted to test drive one of the new cars by Elon Musk a free ride which immediately sent the radio crew into tapes so they could take Beck up on his offer. Musk has been proving himself to be leaps beyond the current automobile offerings. I have been complexly turned off to electric cars viewing them as environmental wacko projects—because electricity is still largely generated by fossil fuels. However, the magic of the Model S and the rest of the Tesla product line is the dual engine concept which removes all the mechanical linkages which inefficiently drop power dispersal in conventional cars. The Tesla delivers power exactly where it’s needed achieving supercar acceleration in a car that is priced like a regular luxury car.   Watch Stu’s test drive in the following video.

http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/03/19/i-thought-i-was-going-to-pass-out-glenn-test-drives-a-tesla/

One of my favorite and deeply personal movies is the George Lucas production Tucker: A Man and his Dreams. In that classic film Preston Tucker invented a car that was far superior to the products being put out by the Big Three–Ford , GM, and Chrysler in 1948. Tucker is certainly one of the people I most admire and he was about the age I am now when he was trying to get his Tucker car off the ground. Otto Kerner was a US attorney who on behalf of the Big Three attacked Tucker for making his revolutionary car “too good.” Kerner was later jailed for three years and fined $50,000 for 17 counts of bribery, conspiracy, perjury and other charges for stock fraud. The result was that Tucker’s cars featuring a 5.4 liter Franklin 0-335 aircraft engine with hydraulic vales, fuel injection, torque converters on each of the rear wheel—disk brakes, a padded dashboard, self-sealing tubeless tires, and an independent springless suspension—was stopped before it even got started. At the time it was an incredible car about thirty years ahead of its time. The Big Three rather than compete with Tucker looked to bury him, literally suppressing automotive development for nearly a half century thereafter. Only now are they finally starting to climb out of the stalemate technologically that they have been under for so long. Tucker never went to jail, but he never got his car to production either.

Elon Musk unlike Tucker was much wealthier going into the project and was able to achieve market domination in the electric car market while the Big Three were reeling from years of mismanagement and stagnate technological development. At the same time foreign offerings were starting to finally bore Americans. Musk using American ingenuity and the benefits of capitalism launched a new car company that has put on the road a car far in excess of the current offerings. It is technically well ahead of its time and is setting a new standard.

Even as I write this roller coaster season is coming to Southern Ohio where I live. I love the technology of roller coasters and have watched them evolve from wooden roller coasters to the sleek new metal coasters. The electric current launches common now in the best of them make it seem like the logical next step for personal transportation. But it took Elon Musk to actually use the technology in a way that should have been applied decades ago. Tesla’s technology is only state-of-the art because the technology involved was purposely underdeveloped to protect the industry of old. Yet the direction of General Motors didn’t save them from going bankrupt before 2010. The direction of the old cars just doesn’t meet the future, and they failed as a company. In amusement parks new technology comes out all the time to unleash new sensations to thrill parks. The same enthusiasm should have been carried over into personal transportation—but it wasn’t—leaving the door wide open for someone like Musk.

And Musk isn’t alone, just a few days ago I wrote an article about the new self driving Mercedes, and of course Richard Branson is emerging into the market. Both Branson and Musk are also building companies that are punching the reaches of space—so it is natural that their automotive companies are going to push the limits of previous mediocrity. The race for the best between Musk, Branson and the rest coming into the field of play will change the way we all transport ourselves around and I’m excited to see how it transpires.

With the electric car power is not so easily lost to where the tires hit the road. I can easily see a day where the very power that makes them run could be cheaply produced through Thorium energy leaving cars that never ran out of power—no matter where on earth they are. Power creation is another field of endeavor that has been deliberately suppressed by the previous generation. For the same reason that traditional coal power was kept over the emerging technology of Thorium Tucker was destroyed so to protect the Big Three—but to what result? The big companies failed anyway, just as the current energy creation companies will—its only a matter of time before someone breaks through the deliberate suppression of better methods using competition to drive human beings toward advancement.

It was exciting listening to Pat and Stu during the Tesla portion of their show. It was unscripted and their enthusiasm was noticeable, and contagious. In just a few weeks, I have been largely won over by The Blaze and their coverage of this emerging technology. If I could have a car that goes from zero to 60 so quickly without the noise and violent expulsion of energy—I’d take it. If it’s truly better, it should replace the old, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is something we should all embrace and thank because it is yet another example of the wonderful attributes of capitalism and the excitement that comes from minds un-tethered from the rules of engagement established by criminals like Otto Kerner. When people like Elon Musk have success, like he is with his Tesla Company—I smile a bit to myself at a victory Tucker predicted would happen. Musk is doing what Tucker couldn’t—and that makes me very happy to see someone—ANYONE—doing it.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Cliffhanger’s Morality on Capitalism” Elon Musk and Han Solo–the unseen value

A few years ago I spent a good part of a summer vacation on the balcony of a condominium reading the Ayn Rand books that my son-in-law had recently bought for me—particularly her collection of essays on capitalism. For as long as I had been alive capitalism was always portrayed as evil, which I never bought into. Yet nobody ever offered any competing theory. Even my favorite character from Star Wars, Han Solo was an unfettered capitalist without any apologies provided. George Lucas by the end of the original trilogy wanted to make Han into a more compassionate person who saw the errors of his ways—and thought about others more than himself—but I never personally bought into that theory. I’ve always seen capitalism as the way to making better things from nothing and had a far superior moral platform to project goodness than the altruistic sacrificial victim of yesteryear. After all if people are asked who they like more in Star Wars, Han Solo or Luke Skywalker who do you think they’ll pick? The results are well documented—just Google it.

I spent much of that summer thinking about those books as they provided a support that was found no place else in favor of capitalism. People like Milton Freeman were before my time, Walt Disney died when I was a little kid, and John Wayne was only fondly remembered in old movies. Reagan pretended to embrace capitalism as a continuation of his spokesman job he had at GE—but there really wasn’t anybody openly defending the morality of capitalism—and there needed to be. After all, from the world that I know people like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and many others like them are doing far more for people than the person who sacrifices their time and energy at a soup kitchen helping the poor. While donating time is a nice thing to do for people down and out—the cause of why people are down and out in the first place is the real issue that needs to be explored—not the result. Capitalism has in it a morality which deserves a hero so that people can understand the value.

Even stories I really like, such as Robin Hood, and Zorro have in their underlying value a kind of socialism—the villains are the rich, the protagonists are the poor. Batman who is a direct evolutionary character of Zorro was like Don Diego a wealthy man who took his gained assets acquired through his family’s success and did good to fight crime.   But what always bothered me about Zorro and Batman is that they inherited their wealth; they didn’t do as Elon Musk did and make it from nothing into becoming one of the most influential people on planet earth. Without Elon Musk and Richard Branson where would the world really be? The wealth they create for the overall economy makes it even possible for people to donate their time to a soup kitchen for the poor. The inventions of the wealthy create spare time and resources so that something can be given back. Without that infusion of wealth, Harrison Ford wouldn’t be able to donate his time to left leaning causes.

Harrison Ford is my favorite actor—maybe just a bit ahead of Clint Eastwood. Ford made a lot of money as an actor because American capitalist culture had expendable income to go see his movies in a darkened theater. He has turned around and done a lot of great things with that money. Individually he became a private pilot most notably crash landing his crippled vintage craft into a golf course saving the craft, people and even himself in a way that defies the actions of most Hollywood actors. But Ford is also a very giving person to the poor, to environmental causes, and to virtually everyone in his life. He is a person who is easy to respect. But what would he be without George Lucas creating the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films? He would have been just another actor jumping from job to job. Lucas used capitalism to create wealth not just in monetary value, but in philosophy. Without the creation of capitalism all the good things that Ford does in his private life would go nowhere. If he didn’t have excess as a result of his success, he’d have nothing to give away to others by his own volition.

That is why capitalism needs a real hero—and unapologetic champion. I had started formulating that champion years ago in my own character of Cliffhanger. In my novel The Symposium of Justice it is eluded that the protagonist made all his wealth by winning a lottery ticket. However, this is a falsehood created by his political enemies who are protecting their old money political connections from the reality of what Cliffhanger represents—creation and justice. Most people who win the lottery are broke within a few years because they lack the internal value as people to support the sudden infusion of wealth. Unlike people like Elon Musk, most people lack the ability to create wealth, so they assume that it’s a finite resource open for equal distribution discussion. But they are dreadfully wrong. As the Cliffhanger series The Curse of Fort Seven Mile continues to evolve over the coming installments it becomes quite clear who and what Cliffhanger is and why people who can perform such creation are so important to society.

When I was in high school I was the only kid who actually wore a t-shirt featuring Howard Hughes on it. I’ve always liked Hughes and Harrison Ford’s recent plane crash reminded me a lot of a similar incident that Hughes had, in the same area years ago. Hughes was extremely rich, and did a lot of really good things with his money—particularly advancements in aviation that simply would not have happened without his actions. He was an eccentric whose mind ended up collapsing on itself, but the world is much better off because of his life than without it. Yet thousands, even millions of people flash upon the earth in a lifetime and disappear just the same and nobody notices. Is that fair? Aren’t they equal to Howard Hughes? The answer is no. The ability to create something from nothing is more important than equal distribution of fairness.

This brings us back to that summer in Florida with the Ayn Rand books. She was on to something and to my mind she broke through the first layer of an important revelation. In philosophy this is called the creation of Objectivism. I agree with most of the tenants of Objectivism. However Ayn Rand was a lot more socially liberal than I am. She was much more permissive on drugs and sex which hurts her position on capitalism. It allowed liberals to attack her as a product of excess greed and selfishness, which is an inaccurate assessment. The books of hers that I read were very valuable because what she was doing was on the cutting edge of a new way of thinking, so context is needed. Capitalism needed champions, and she officered them particularly in her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Other than those characters there really aren’t any other champions of capitalism in novels or movies—with the rare exception of Harrison Ford’s film characters particularly Han Solo. In almost every other circumstance, most notably the man everyone loved to hate in the 80s television show Dallas—in JR, or Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard, rich people are evil and need to have something taken from them and given to people supposedly repressed and in need of equality.

The truth of the matter is that people who don’t have things are in that condition by choice most of the time. The big difference between people like Elon Musk and the typical volunteer at a local soup kitchen is that one creates wealth that enriches our entire culture and the other just does good deeds. Both are important, both may be good men, but only one makes something from nothing which leads to good options for everyone. The creation of Space X is more important than a local charity asking people to throw money into a hat for the needy. Space X creates expendable income to toss into the hat. Without it, there is nothing to donate to the needy.

The efforts of my new Cliffhanger installments are to further this exploration into the morality of capitalism in a way that has been utterly ignored. Ayn Rand started the process and did a lot of great work along that line of thought, but there is much, much more to do. This Cliffhanger project will likely go on for many years but already the stories feel like a continuation of the type of material I wanted to read more of after that summer vacation in Florida. After I ran out of those Ayn Rand books I wanted more, but since she died in the early 80s, there was nothing more to read. But there needed to be. So it is up to us in this new generation to expand on those arguments and further peel back the mysterious goodness of capitalism and to properly define why collectivism is a vile evil—even when its been told to us for centuries that it’s the only path to redemption. These are difficult subjects, but they need to be explored—and through Cliffhanger—they will be.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.