Thrown For A Loop

I find constantly fluctuating gas prices to be one of the more frustrating things humans are willing to put up with. Not only do they go up (and rarely down) based on events which may or may not happen and which may or may not even impact where the gas being shipped to a specific region of the world (for example a hurricane might hit an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and prices jump), but all this happens based on some super-secret formula no one seems in any hurry to share with the rest of the class. It is a very helpless feeling. One thing I know for sure is that gas is no different from any other product in that prices can vary wildly based on where the station is and the closer to a main highway the more expensive the gas is going to be. Economically this makes sense because you put the highest prices where there most people are going to be driving passed and therefore have the highest chances of needing fuel so you make the most money. But I think the gas companies have begun to underestimate just how far off the beaten path people are going to drive to save a few extra cents. It used to be you had to hunt for a few miles to find the cheapest gas but not anymore. This weekend I drove passed a station which was just off the highway and gas was one price and at a station not 200 yards down the road it was a full dime cheaper. Americans may be lazy and in the grand scheme of filling a tank 2 cents savings may not be worth the gas you use to drive across town to buy it, but we're not so lazy we can't drive the length of a solid par 3 to save a dime per gallon.

Due to my annoyance at gas prices and oil companies in general you would think I would be a big fan of the proposed HyperLoop which was making the news rounds last week. For those of you who may have missed the press release, the idea proposed by PayPal founder and eccentric billionaire Elon Musk is quite simple. Basically he wants to build a series of tubes all over the country which would ferry passengers to their destinations at speeds of around 800 miles an hour by having them sit in small aluminum pods. Think of it like the system your local drive-thu bank uses for the outside lane (or how elderly Senators think the internet works). Not only would it obviously cut down on travel times (LA to San Francisco would take 30 minutes) but many of the other hassles of air travel such as delays for weather or mechanical issues would be reduced as well. Sure, you have to ignore the obvious fact that when something did go wrong it would go very wrong and leave people with literally no where to turn as well as the idea that being in a tube zooming along at 800 miles an hour would take the concept of motion sickness to an unprecedented level. But if this worked it would save fuel, time and the environment not to mention finally bring us in line with many of the promises made by sci-fi shows of the '50s. That is why it is obviously never going to happen.

The first reason this idea is going to have some problems at the beginning is that it just sounds so insane. Honestly, it sounds like an idea someone would have while stoned so if anyone other than the tech billionaire suggested this the news media would accuse them of watching too much "Futurama" and then go about the rest of their day. But because the man behind the idea has more money than he will ever be able to spend, people feel compelled to listen to him and bring experts on to debate the validity of the concept. (Money may not buy you happiness but apparently it can buy you credibility.) This is kind of ironic because the most obvious reason that this project will never get off the ground is money. Building this thing is going to cost a lot of money and Musk has already said he doesn't have the time or funds to put into this, just that he hopes someone takes his concept and runs with it. Musk doesn't seem like the kind of guy to leave a successful business idea on the table for anyone to have, which leads me to believe there are probably a lot of design kinks which need to be worked out. This concept was being used by high-rise mailrooms to send letters up and down since the 1920s so Musk can't be the first person to think of taking this to a larger scale and the fact no one else has put this idea out there means the theory may not really work. And given how much influence the oil, airplane and automobile industries (which would all be crippled if this invention worked) have in Washington there is not a politician on the planet who would approve funding to research what it would take to make this idea plausible.

Look, I love a hair-brained idea as much as the next guy. I firmly believe every great invention in history was nothing more than a crazy idea at some point and it is only through innovation that society advances. Therefore, we should be encouraging these people and their big ideas rather than telling them all the reasons they will most likely fail, which is why I love corporations which sponsor contests to see if there is anyone out there who can build their product better than they currently do. However, this particular idea just feels like we tried to skip a few too many steps on the road to progress. I mean, we still haven't perfected the electric car or even have a plane which provides people of average height with enough legroom and somehow we think we're ready to send real, live people through an interconnect series of tubes which spans the country? I think a better use of time and money would be having our best and brightest minds working on ways to improve the current modes of transportation (which are far from perfect) and once we have cars, trains and planes operating at peak efficiency then we can work on the futuristic concepts. But even then we should start slowly and work up to revolutionizing nation-wide travel. We're only a couple years away from the date in "Back to the Future II" so how about we try and get hoverboards and work from there? Hell, at this point I would settle for self-tying shoes.