Tag: Hyperloop

Vivek Ramaswamy Will Be Ohio’s Next Governor: The MAGA center of the universe, Middletown

The important lesson here is that when I tell you something, listen.  Don’t play around with debating things with me.  Just take the information I give you, do something good with it, and don’t waste time.  I told everyone weeks ago, like two weeks before Christmas in 2024 that Vivek Ramaswamy was going to be the next governor in Ohio.  DeWine would appoint Jon Husted as the senator appointee for J.D. Vance because Vance was going to the White House as Vice President.  It was more than a little irritating to watch during Trump’s inauguration that people still didn’t know why Vivek Ramaswamy was stepping away from the creation of D.O.G.E., a shared task with Elon Musk to bring efficiency and cost cutting to the government in general.   Things had changed since election day and I was letting people know about it so they could make plans.  But instead, people acted surprised by the news that Vivek was stepping away for some mysterious reason.  It’s not a mystery.  Vivek Ramaswamy is going to put his efforts behind running for governor, which takes work, and this is something that Trump wants.  In case people didn’t figure it out, J.D. Vance was being positioned to get some wins early in the Trump administration because he was the picked candidate to be the next president.  That’s why he’s so young, and when Trump was doing all the ceremonial stuff for the inauguration, it was clearly to put J.D. Vance in people’s minds to be the continuation of all the work Trump is about to do.  Vice Presidents are usually just background noise, but this was not the case when the Middletown High School band came to Washington, D.C., to perform at the parade, which was quite good to see.  Everything was happening for a new generation to pick up the baton and run with it, and this move with Vivek Ramaswamy is part of that plan. 

Ohio is positioned and nurtured to be the most technologically proficient state in America, an example of what MAGA politics can do for the rest of the country.  A boom looming in the background will require a person like Vivek Ramaswamy to make happen from the executive branch, not as President, but as the Governor of the State of Ohio.  Additionally, to facilitate all this, we now have two extremely pro-business senators, Bernie Moreno, and Jon Husted, to help make it all happen.  The signs for Middletown, Ohio, are already ready to place at the entrance to the city, indicating that it is the hometown of J.D. Vance, whom Trump will put on the fast track to some critical negotiations.  It’s all going to matter in a few short months, and by the time Governor DeWine steps away, and Vivek Ramaswamy steps in, we’re all going to be living in a different world.  It’s going to move, bewilderingly fast, and everyone will have to just hang on and make the most of it.  There’s a reason I even said anything at all.  I want to see people profit off the information because Ohio’s invention pace will matter much more than traditional media coverage.  Who knew what when so that the human race could advance?  Usually, in society, for something good to happen, there has to be a political will, and the point of all this Vivek Ramaswamy news is that there is a plan that comes straight out of the White House now that features Ohio as the place to be in the world for tech innovations, that only someone like Vivek Ramaswamy could bring about.

That’s also why I have been featuring the industries that will thrive under the Trump administration.  For all this time, most of the media coverage has been about whether or not Trump could ever become president again, and as Inauguration Day progressed and I had a chance to talk to thousands of people about it, it was pretty clear that I was the only one saying from day one of the Biden administration, that Trump would return to the White House and everything that happened on that great day on January 20th, 2025 would happen just as I said it would.  So when I tell everyone these things, listen.  Don’t argue with me when I talk about the hyperloop program in Ohio and sky taxi services that will replace Uber, and regenerative medicine, don’t debate me.  Take the information I give you and do something with it.  And I apologize in advance, not that I apologize for anything. We have to move fast here.  At my speed, not current culture speed.  I can’t possibly answer all the emails and call everyone who wants to talk to me.  Not because I want to be rude, but because there isn’t time in the day.  I had over 10,000 emails just yesterday, and there is no way I could read them all and still do everything I need to do.  Usually, I scan through for what looks like essential headings or people I know, and I give those more attention than the others.  But if I don’t call you back, it’s not personal.  My task is to let people know about each other and provoke them to take the following steps.  Because some of these ideas will take thousands of hours of planning and millions of dollars to facilitate, they will need champions to drive them. 

Vivek Ramaswamy is going to be the next governor of Ohio.  I have shown support for Attorney General Yost, but I’m sure there are accommodations for him to clear the way for Vivek because that’s the kind of person it will take to do all the things I mentioned and to make Middletown great again in the way that Trump wants to make America Great Again.  And it all comes down to J.D. Vance being in the White House for the next 12 years to carry on all the good work that is about to be done with Trump.  I first met Vivek at an event in Middletown, so this isn’t a new kind of thing.  Everything next-generation MAGA centers around Middletown, Ohio, and a restoration of an economy there that had been husked out by globalism.  But all that is coming to a fast end, and the things I have mentioned that are part of tomorrow’s economy only need the right people to make them happen.  And that is happening as we speak.  You might have noticed how Trump, after his speech in the Rotunda, specifically spoke with Vivek Ramaswamy and Kristi Noem before leaving.  Vivek is a rising star, not a descending one, just because he won’t be a part of D.O.G.E.  That is Elon Musk’s project.  Vivek has a different path, and it all points to a new tomorrow where Ohio, a Rust Belt state, will lead the world in a way that no country on Earth has yet.  More than Taiwan.  More than Dubai.  And much, much more than China.  But it all requires people to see the big picture, which I have handed to everyone so they can take the next steps and advance our culture in ways that have never been seen before.  Stop thinking small!

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

A Hyperloop Terminal in Monroe, Ohio: The only thing holding back such an emerging technology is political will

I have been thinking a lot more of it since President Trump won the election.  But once the news started leaking out of Mar-a-Lago from people who would know, my thinking about it grew into genuine excitement.  My ideas about Monroe, Ohio, becoming the focal point of a new hyperloop terminal, grew some serious legs.  Most of the people involved probably don’t know what a hyperloop is, so I put together a pitch video to explain it to them and get some conceptual faculty behind the thought.  After all, why would little ol’ Monroe, Ohio, be such a hot spot for one of the great emerging technologies on Earth?  Once I learned that Jon Husted would be appointed as the Senate seat replacement for J.D. Vance, all the elements started clicking into place.  I like Jon because of a mutual friend we have, and I know he is very pro business.  However, it only got better once I learned that Trump was very concerned about the next governor of Ohio and wanted to clear the decks for a pick he wanted after DeWine was done in a few years.  After a few years of D.O.G.E., Vivek Ramaswamy was planning to be governor, which is pretty much a slam dunk on the election process.  And I know a lot of mutual friends regarding Vivek.  And, of course, his relationship with Elon Musk then became very important.  After all, J.D. Vance will be in the White House, and economic stimulation will be very important to the Trump/Vance White House.  It was likely that Vance would be in the White House for the next 12 years, 4 with Trump, then 8 with his own administration because people won’t want Trump to go away.  And things started to get hot on my idea.

A few days before all this information emerged out of Mar-a-Lago, Musk proposed a 20 billion dollar Hyperloop connection between New York and London.  Hyperloop is something I have supported for a very long time.  I even hired a few engineers from the University of Cincinnati open source program who worked at SpaceX to develop the emerging technology so I could learn all I could about the pitfalls of the technology.  And I realized what I needed to know.  Hyperloop is a very advanced high-speed transportation system that blasts passengers in a train-like pod at 700-1000 mph conceptually through a cushion of air through a tunnel with all the air removed, almost duplicating the vacuum levels of space to remove wind resistance.  Using magnets to pull the craft along, passengers can travel much faster than a commercial airline.  This trip from New York to London would happen in just a few hours instead of much of the day and would travel under the ocean through tunneling technology from one of Elon Musk’s companies, The Boring Company.  To many people, this all sounded like crazy science fiction from Musk.  But he’s serious.  They are already building a hyperloop in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates.  They have also built a preliminary tunneling system in Las Vegas as a kind of test bed.  China is also hard at work as it has stolen the idea from Musk.  So far, nobody has had success, but it’s not because the science is wrong.  It’s because doing such a thing takes enormous political will.  Musk has all the money in the world.  What he doesn’t have is what was forming in Ohio in the Monroe area, the political will to pull it off, from President Trump himself, who wants to do something big during his presidency with a new highway system effort that would rival what we did in America during the 1950s under Eisenhower.  Hyperloop had the opportunity to be bigger than America’s national highway system, and once that was started as a massive infrastructure project, it happened very fast and became normal. 

Monroe makes sense for the first national terminal because if there is a line for 20 billion dollars from New York to London, another 500-mile hyperloop from Monroe to New York could feed the country’s interior to the east coast with a trip that would take about 45 minutes.  And Monroe is only an hour’s drive from Columbus, Indianapolis, Lexington, Louisville and is between Cincinnati and Dayton.  Many people can drive a short distance to Monroe, where they could pick up a few hyperloop lines that would take them to places like Las Angeles, Vegas, and Orlando within a few hours.   And with such a hyperloop hub comes massive economic activity, which would feed the economically deprived hometown of J.D. Vance.  An economic goal that the Trump administration has for many such cities in America, especially along the Rust Belt.  With Governor Ramaswamy in Ohio, many good things can happen with a revitalized Trump economy that could pay down the debt and still generate several hundred billion dollars for something on this scale.  Elon Musk is working with them all to do such a thing, and the technology of The Boring Company makes it all possible.  While there are technical issues to solve, the rate of innovation isn’t the problem.  Political support is, and under the conditions described, Monroe, Ohio, suddenly looks to be the best place in the world for such an effort.  It would revitalize Middletown, Ohio, nearby Hamilton, and, of course, Dayton.  All areas that had been husked out to globalism.  Suddenly, a lot was possible for a relatively small investment. 

Musk knows how to solve this problem, which he needs to do before humans colonize the Moon and Mars.  Living on other planets will require tunnels to protect people from large doses of radiation on planets struggling with their own atmospheres until they are terraformed into habitable planets through science.  Developing a hyperloop on Earth would give The Boreing Company the experience to perform the same on other planets.  So, such an effort has value beyond the convenience of high-speed travel between long-distance destinations on Earth.  As I was talking to my good friend Senator Lang about all this, we shared an intense desire to bring more technology and aerospace imprint along that particular section of the I-75 corridor to make Ohio one of the most business-friendly places in the world.  A hyperloop terminal would go a long way to making that instantly happen.  And suppose there was a President Vance in the White House, a Governor Ramaswamy in the Ohio governor’s mansion, and the wealthiest person in the world who would do anything to get to Mars. In that case, there are a lot of dots that are getting connected if the right people help steer the ship.  So this isn’t a typical article for my usual audience, but for the powerful people I know who read in the background and can help unify everyone behind this effort.  The first thing I thought of as soon as Trump gave his acceptance speech the night of the election was, “Now we have the kind of president who can make the hyperloop possible.”  For many years now, I have considered Monroe, Ohio, the premier place to build such a terminal in the large amounts of land behind the outlet mall.  It would look techy and destination-driven, like Space Mountain from Disney World, only much larger, and impressive.  And suddenly, America would do something that would improve the lives of everyone on earth for centuries.  If only we could align the politics, which is entirely possible based on how things are shaping up. 

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Hyperloop is Coming to India: How to prepare for it in your neighborhood soon

It’s been going on for a good part of the summer and is increasing in urgency now that India is going to be the first Hyperloop line built by Virgin Hyperloop One, but the roadshow for that same company has been soft selling the high speed next generation transportation system to Ohio, Pittsburg and of course Chicago heavily as the next logical step. Virgin Hyperloop One has taken their test vehicle which has successfully completed their testing just outside of Las Vegas and they are showing it off to various sites along the proposed path so that people can start to get their minds around the concept, because they are ready to dig dirt and built the thing. As I have been saying for a few years now, this is a game changing transportation system that will be well in place by 2030, but will start coming online in the 2020s with the first destination in India. The United States will need to embrace this concept so we can take the lead because this is the future, Pittsburg to Chicago roughly a half hour.

My job in these kinds of things is perspective, the future is certainly here and the desire for technology expansion is at the doorstep of the human race. How we manage it will largely dictate how successful it is, but the technology is there, billionaires with an imagination like Elon Musk who first came up with this Hyperloop concept not very long ago are coming up with the means leaving it up to us to figure out how to embrace the options. I personally think we have an opportunity to unleash hundreds if not thousands of Elon Musk types in the coming century and that a great many things could change for us all for the better. This is why I am against medicating children with hyperactive disorders, it’s a mistake because evolutionarily speaking, the speed for which young people are thinking, especially with the use of video games, is an evolutionary attribute that will help them live in that new world where such travel times offered by Hyperloop will really shrink the world in a good way.

I have also been suggesting that since Ohio is being considered as one of the hottest spots in North America for one of the first Hyperloops, that a Hyperloop station find a home along the I-75 corridor that is so explosive currently in the West Chester area—(hint, Monroe by the Outlet Mall). The ability to get around the world fast is the prime recipe for economic expansion and with a term 2 of the Trump administration understanding how the game is played and not having Democrats standing in the way of everything, this would be just the ticket. Speed is the key to growth, all growth in business sector measurements. The speed that we can extract information and do something with it, and the speed for which we can communicate with other people in collaborative efforts. And when dealing with supply chains, the speed that we can resolve issues up and down the line. A plane ticket is still an all-day affair, to visit a supplier in New England or the upper portions of the United States you can get there in a day, but the journey still takes most of a day with time zone adjustments taking entirely too long. Hyperloop will speed all that up dramatically.

We are becoming a faster world and the ability to think fast is the key. I would say that subconsciously we all understand this, which is why video games have been moving into our culture so persistently. I have been watching NFL football games lately differently with the understanding that the game is changing so rapidly due to most of the fans becoming so involved in Madden which is much more satisfying than just passively watching a football game on a Sunday afternoon. People don’t have time to waste on a 3-hour experience when they could do it in one and share that endeavor with friends all over the world through the internet. Consumers of the NFL product have so many other things to do these days, like watch a new series on a streaming service, or listen to a book through Amazon’s Audible, we just don’t have time to waste an entire Sunday watching two or three games like we used to, and those cracks are starting to show in the NFL business model.

People look at our 3% unemployment rate under the Trump administration and they wonder who will occupy all the new jobs that will be created by something like a Hyperloop. I would contend that air travel will still be important, especially internationally, and regionally. Hyperloop is a solution, but its still a fancy railroad, although if you have rode the monorail system in Disney World, Hyperloop would be more like that across a region of a country than just a train station that takes forever to get started and even longer in getting there. The speed of the Hyperloop makes up for the stagnant line that they present. Air travel will still remain important, and the competition should go a long way to bringing down prices with options, which is always a good thing. But who will do all these future jobs? Well, that answer is A.I. which is also coming along quickly. With birthrates being so low in the United States and places where birthrates are high, like India and China, matching economic growth to high population centers will require speeding up the travel and reach of people to ride the economic growth. But there are limits that artificial intelligence and robotics will have to fill.

Old timers will say, “well why would I want to get from Pittsburgh to Chicago in a half an hour with a few stops in between? Part of the fun of a journey is in getting there.” Well, those types of people can still drive a car or fly in a plane. But if you need to get somewhere, and this is certainly true for me, I don’t want to waste the time in getting there. I want to go do what I want to, then return back to my life as soon as possible. Such a transportation system would allow someone to live in Pittsburg or out in the country anywhere along Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana, but to work in the city without having to pay the extraordinarily high cost of living of such a job. This would really help in the city of New York, San Francisco and even down in Mexico City. A Hyperloop traveler could live a thousand miles away from their job and make the commute daily without having to move to a dangerous city, or an expensive one choking on limited resources. It would then force cities to compete with the suburbs for safety, cleanliness, and other general quality of living measures.

How we embrace this technology will largely determine the kind of world we could have, but first we have to solve some basic problems regarding the temptation to retreat back to anarchy and to run away from growth because its too scary, or too fast. A fast world is harder to control from the vantage point of politics. As I said, a second term of President Trump would totally understand how to make Hyperloop travel in the United States a common practice within five years of this writing, almost as common as a highway system. But we still live in a world that thinks there something wrong with having the G7 Summit. Would we want world leaders to see how nice we can build something like a Doral or stay in some gutter? Our political left doesn’t want the expectation of something so nice, so they protest against it. They want victimization for their political ambitions and that is one of our greatest challenges of the modern age. The challenge is in getting people to think in that proper, “big” fashion, which to me, is a problem with a solution that is clearly in front of us that can be solved with just a few good elections.

Rich Hoffman

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Thinking Big, and Practically: A Hyperloop between New York and Washington D.C.

It wasn’t that surprising to me, because I’ve been talking about it for a while.  Do you remember dear reader all the stuff I’ve been saying about the Hyperloop?  Well, it’s happening too and only because Elon Musk is continuing to be one of America’s greatest outside the box thinkers who has the financial resources to act on those thoughts.  But the fact that we can even talk about the Hyperloop as a reality has only one person to thank, Donald J. Trump.  Without Trump in the White House a lot of bureaucrats would be looking for a way for Musk to grease the skids.  Now, with the swamp draining as we speak we are on a cultural trajectory to have Hyperloops all over the United States starting with the link between New York City and Washington D.C.  Can you imagine traveling that distance in under 30 minutes?  A lot of people suddenly became very excited to hear that news, and most of them were not Trump supporters.  This is what you get when you have people like Musk in your country with a supportive White House.  Just read Donald Trump’s books, How to Think Like s Billionaire along with Think Big and Kick Ass, and it will be very easy to understand what, why, and how Elon Musk put up this Tweet much to the surprise of the mayors of several of the included cities.

The swamp creatures of bureaucracy want their take, but Trump and Musk are moving well beyond the speed of those people and as we speak Trump is beating them in the public relations battle.  By the time the Boring Company presents its proposals for digging underneath cities like New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and of course Washington D.C. Trump’s team will have destroyed and replaced many of the figures who would otherwise stand against this project—so you can mark it on your calendar, this will get done.

People need to understand that all this controversy in the media about Trump/Russia, and polling numbers and legislative stalls are not a problem for Trump.  It sounds noisy now, but he has the situation under control.  The bureaucrats are not going to win against a Trump White House.  They may stall.  They may try to delay the inevitable, but Trump just has too many resources and works too hard to apply them for him to fail.  Having Trump in the White House puts him in a position to speak to people like Musk and to be essentially the most powerful lobbyist in Washington D.C. which is what Musk needed from the beginning.  Before, Musk would have had to lobby congress and the White House to get some pin head to even understand how the Hyperloop is different from a typical train.  But Trump gets it and knows what to do with good information when it comes his way.

For way too long we have allowed unproductive know-nothings to stand between us and the future and things have just stalled out technologically.  The following link is interesting in how it shows over time how deregulation of the phone industry and the introduction of the Internet allowed for smart phones to evolve to where they are today.  A lot of people forget that it was only ten years ago that the iPhone first came on the scene—but all that occurred because technology happened faster than politicians could crush innovation with their top heavy lumbering bureaucracy.  Regulators can be a good thing to make an industry safer, but often the kind of people who perform those jobs are cowardly people by nature and they love to have control over dreamers like Elon Musk.  So digging massive holes under all these cities and building a new transportation system that goes over 700 MPH is something they’d love to stop because it gives them power over  genius.  Those are the type of people who presently hate the Trump presidency and are doing anything they can to stop the changes that are happening literally right now.

https://www.bounceenergy.com/articles/texas-electricity/history-of-deregulation-telecommunication

Anthony Scaramucci is now taking over in Trump’s White House as the top communications official.  Trump met with Scaramucci recently and liked him so much that he put him immediately into the job.  Sean Spicer resigned to give Scaramucci a clean plate and just like that our new White House will be moving into phase 2 right at the 6 month mark.  The first phase of course was typical of any business dealing.  Trump enters the White House and softens up everyone with aggression.  Then when everyone is reeling he offers them an olive branch—which is what Scaramucci is—that is the “art of the deal.”

They are then happy and responsive to what the White House provides to the public.  So as Trump and Musk talked about the Hyperloop they were talking about things that would happen in step 4 as if those things already happened.  It’s just that the rest of the world isn’t there yet.  They will be and before they know it there will be a Hyperloop between New York and D.C.  It’s a good deal; Musk needs to get the Hyperloop rolling in America so he can convince California to put one between San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Trump needs to enhance America’s infrastructure with something that is more “Trumpian.’ It was in these kinds of things that provoked Trump to run for office in the first place—so he’s not going to let this die on the vine.

As much as the media hates Trump by watching these videos did you notice how quickly they suddenly became excited?  That’s how Trump will eventually leave office.  All these silly things talked about today will long be forgotten when people are getting daily news reports from places like the Moon and traveling across the country on Hyperloops at speeds over 700 MPH.  If left to the pin-heads in our bureaucratic culture something like the Hyperloop would take 50 years and cost trillions of dollars.  But if left to the private sector it will only take 5 years and only cost billions, which will be recovered by the technology of a new transportation industry and in the end that’s all people will really remember.

What’s different now than really at any point prior is that these characters are not ideologically political.  Musk obviously has many leftist leanings, but he is a capitalist by the nature of all his companies which are quite good and operate well.  Trump is a pretty hard lined conservative compared to Musk, but he’s good enough in business to be able to have relationships with people who are not like him ideologically.  Just as Scaramucci has more liberal leanings than a Midwest Republican he is an effective communicator and can sell a lot of the things that Trump wants to do so we are truly entering a new phase of American thinking and it’s very exciting.  Honestly I’m very happy about it.  I don’t care that people think the way I do about things as long as they are being productive and moving the ball of the human race forward—not with political philosophy, but in human achievement.  The political philosophy comes as an off-shoot of an emerging society.  We should not build an emerging society off a political philosophy then use regulation to preserve that philosophy.  Instead, what Musk and Trump are doing will shape our civilization with an optimism that can only come from a couple of dreamers who have the financial resources to think big and the political clout to make it happen.  And finally we have both in the White House and things will begin to happen rapidly—for a change!

Rich Hoffman

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The Next Generation of Mass Transit: America’s version of Europe’s train system

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I’ve never had much of a passionate thought about train travel because in the United States—we just don’t do it. We have cars and massive highways, and we love our independence. My main experience with trains is in the novel Atlas Shrugged, the monorail at Disney World, and the train ride at Kings Island, the amusement park near my home in Cincinnati, Ohio.  So during a recent trip to Europe and being without a car, I had to learn quickly how to use trains, because honestly, they are the most efficient way to get around.  European cities are just so densely packed as they frustrate suburban development forcing most of their residents into their metropolises.  So having a car in London, or Paris, just as it is in New York in the U.S. just doesn’t make much sense—because parking is nearly impossible and traveling down the roads is ridiculously slow.  With that in mind, getting around London, Paris or between them into the countryside requires trains which I’ve used heavily lately and to a great effect.  The trains in England are quite nice and I have enjoyed using them covering ground from as far south as Brighton, to Canterbury and using the Eurostar from London to Paris under the English Channel.  It was the combination of those experiences which launched my mind on the new train technology being developed in the United States called the Hyperloop—which is an Elon Musk initiation that is being extensively tested this summer outside of Las Vegas.  In fact it looks like the UAB will be among the first cities of the world to buy into the concept which will make the Eurostar look like an archaic dinosaur regarding train travel.  The Hyperloop will take passengers at near the speed of sound and faster which will significantly change the world.

I love that America is built around individualized transportation, but I personally have a need to get around the country quickly—so these high-speed trains are appealing to me. I would love to take a train to Orlando, Florida from Cincinnati to justify a season pass to Disney World so I could take my grandkids there many times throughout the year.  Flying is just a bit too expensive leaving an alternative form in need to fill the market demand.  Since America doesn’t yet have a complex train system like they do in Europe this leaves the United States prime to develop one of their own using the new hyperloop technology as the centerpiece.

This whole train thing really came to life for me at the St. Pancras station in London which shares space across the street from Kings Cross. My wife and I were eating some sushi from the dining area and I was watching all the people coming and going as we awaited our train into the countryside to visit Canterbury.  It was like a mini airport that was carrying a tremendous amount of people to and from.  I was able to visit many more thereafter at Ashford International and as far south as Gare Du Nord in Paris and I have to say it was an impressive system that allowed me to get around an enormous part of Northern Europe quickly and without insulting my time.  While on the trains I was able to read and rest which I appreciated and I found myself hundreds of miles away within an hour and that was something that would greatly benefit the American economy because of the vast spaces we enjoy in North America.

Trains are best in relieving traffic. I experienced this of course in London and Paris, but over the last year have seen it most effectively used in Kobe, Japan where dinner guests came up from the south quicker than they ever could have by car, simply because dense cities don’t have anywhere to park leaving the roads stagnant messes.  To solve the problem of America’s dying cities, wealth needs to be imported back into them by a means that allows people to utilize what they offer.  For instance, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Detroit should be part of a shared market—people should be able to conduct business between those places easily and within the same day—such as a lunch meeting in Atlanta for an hour or two then jumping back up to Detroit by the end of the business day.

When Ayn Rand wrote, Atlas Shrugged she believed that America would have a series of train systems like the Eurostar all over the country, and that they would be privately owned—which would be optimal.  One of the weaknesses of the publicly owned ones in Europe that has solicited private investment and is doing a better job in turning a profit, but the ghosts of their government owned days is evident–they are not always on time.  And at this point, I would love to have a Eurostar type of system in America.  Since we don’t I would think that the Hyperloop would be the technology that would demand the investment priorities.  In the video included from Twitter I was thinking about how fast we were really going while my wife was buying us some snacks in the dining car.  It was easy to walk around and the drinks didn’t slide around on our tables never threatening to tip over.  The ride was very smooth and comfortable which has been the promise of the Hyperloop.  At the time I took the video the Eurostar was going about 150 MPH, and sometimes it was going faster.  The distance between Paris and London which was the length we were traveling is 459 miles and we did it in just under 2 hours.  It would have taken three times longer by car.  This allowed my family to go to Paris for the day and still be back in London in time for dinner.  Without the Eurostar we would have never been able to do such a thing.  Flying would have been too expense and too complicated and driving would have taken way too long.  And regarding security and passport verifications, everything was done for us before we even got on the train.  Once we were in Paris, we simply got out of the train and headed to our destinations with the immigration issues already don’t at the front of the line—quickly.  Having something similar in America would certainly lead to economic expansion for the cities and would even have an impact on the voting patterns—because currently only liberals live in cities making it impossible for Republicans to get elected.  The best way to change a city’s culture is to allow people of value from other places to come in and have an impact—but you don’t want to trap them otherwise they’ll keep their money and input into the suburbs.

I can see Hyperloop terminals all over the United States much like Europe has train stations. They could be vibrant places that move people across vast distances quickly, and cheaply expanding our economic output.  And it could be a uniquely American thing, just as Europe has established itself on trains.  Trains are too slow for me, but Hyperloop could be the best answer for a nation that hasn’t yet invested in mass transit.  I would love to have something like St. Pancras station in West Chester, Ohio—or Monroe.  There was something exciting about sitting at that station and knowing that I could buy an affordable ticket to Italy and be there in a few hours while eating sushi.  It was strange to send a text to my daughter who was in Canterbury from London and saying to her that we’d be there within an hour.   It’s only 61 miles, but with the tiny roads that they have in England, it would be more than a two-hour drive.  That allowed us to step onto a train and be at her doorstep before she could get ready for dinner and that was an efficient use of time.  Something that America could use and the Hyperloop is just the right technological advance.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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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

Sign up for Second Call Defense here:  http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707  Use my name to get added benefits.

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