As promised, the billionaire Elon Musk has announced some details, although by his own admission they’re in alpha stage, of the project Hyperloop, a new transport system able to carry passengers at speeds that can reach more than 1,100 km/h (more than 700 mph) at costs much lower than those of high-speed trains and a very low ticket cost.
The concepts behind the project Hyperloop are in many ways variants of the vactrain, the maglev train in a vacuum tunnel. They’re not exactly new as they were proposed for the first time about a century ago by the famous rocket scientist Robert Goddard. Transport systems of that type have appeared in various science fiction stories over time and in recent decades some companies have tried to design one that could function such as the ET3 (Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies), but at least for the moment no one has succeeded. So why so much interest in Elon Musk’s announcement?
Born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, Elon Musk has become rich by selling the PayPal service, of which he was co-founder, to eBay. Instead of spending the rest of his life lounging, he founded the aerospace company SpaceX and was co-founder of electric car maker Tesla Motors. His Dragon spacecraft is the first belonging to a private company to have reached the International Space Station. The car market is in great crisis yet Tesla Motors is having success and now some old giants of that sector want to develop electric cars together with Elon Musk’s company.
For this reason, Elon Musk has been compared to Tony Stark, the comics character who builds a super-armor to become Iron Man. Jon Favreau, who directed the Iron Man movies, said that Elon Musk was the inspiration for the movie version of Tony Stark. Given his success, it’s inevitable that announcements such as the one about the Hyperloop project are taken seriously.
When Elon Musk read about the project of a high-speed railroad in California he was disappointed because for a cost of around $70 billion passengers could travel at about 200 km/h (about 125 mph). A transport system such as Hyperloop could cost $6 billion allowing to travel to more than 1,100 km/h (more than 700 mph).
Hyperloop is based on a kind of train that floats above air and travels in a low-pressure tube, so as to minimize friction and allow such high speeds. Passengers should travel in pods that would be “shot” inside of this tube.
Because of the speed, passengers should travel in a reclined position and couldn’t get up. It may be acceptable for a trip of limited duration and this is the Elon Musk’s idea. Inspired by the design of a high-speed railway, Musk believes that a trip through Hyperloop between San Francisco and Los Angeles would take about 30 minutes.
In recent days, Elon Musk stated that he’s too busy to realize the project Hyperloop and for this reason has regretted of having spoken. Now he released the project freely so that anyone can develop it. It’s clear that this is an alpha version and there are already people who are very skeptical.
Obviously, the creation of a real Hyperloop system will be complicated and who knows if some company will want to try it. Despite the skeptics, if in a few years Elon Musk changes his mind and decide to try it, it would be hard to bet against him.
[ad name=”AmazonElectronics468″]
