Tom Ault
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
"A state panel formed with the help of Missouri House Speaker Elijah Haahr released its findings Monday regarding Hyperloop technology. The panel recommends the state piece together a plan to build a 15-mile test track at a cost of approximately $300 million to $500 million."
Attempting to do some math regarding the Hyperloop project, I found the following statistics interesting:
- Travel Time St.Louis to Kansas city to be 34.34 minutes, traveling at 996 miles per hour covering 249 miles
- Haahr said, "It's cutting edge technology that essentially every state in the country and a lot of nations in the Middle East and India and Dubai are trying to get to first. That's how important it is." (So was getting to the moon.)
- How about London's "Tube" that allows traveling of 700 miles per hour?
2. Cost of the test project $300 million to $500 million
- Why would anyone consider anything with an estimated cost differential of $200 million involved?
- Why only 15 miles which allows a test lasting 41.499 seconds?
- Why not build it 16.6 miles long so it would last at least 1 minute?
- This test according to these figures will cost a minimum of $20 million per mile and since it is only a test, it might not fulfill the desired outcome.
3. Why not spend that kind of money on the much needed infrastructure of our state, or perhaps help out those that have been displaced by flooding, tornadoes, and other disasters, for why not feed the starving we read so much about in the news?
I understand we need to look forward as the future is going to be a concept that very few can imagine, but in simpler terms, if a man has a home and lets it enter a state of ruin because he did not maintain it, should he then just dump it aside without repair and build a new one? Maybe that is the problem with those homes in the downtown area.
Before we start spending bundles of cash on dreams, how about handling today's problems first!