Imagine traveling 800 miles an hour and not feeling a thing, this is the idea that the Hyperloop offers. The Hyperloop is basically a train that travels in a low pressure tube at super high speeds. This idea was brought forward by one of tesla’s founders Elon Musk. In 2013 Elon Musk opened the Hyperloop up to the public asking anyone from any age to help with any idea they
have. Elon Musk had the idea of the first Hyperloop going from LA to San Francisco. Califo
rnia is currently investing 60 billion in bullet trains from Los Angeles to San Francisco that travel at about 200 miles an hour according to (How Science Works) This is substantially slower than the proposed Hyperloop that can make the trip from LA to San Francisco in about 30 minutes
Simply put the Hyperloop works by having a shuttle in an enclosed tube that will have low pressure to reduce air resistance and allow for higher speeds. To picture it, picture the tubes they use at banks and mailrooms to move paper really fast. The pods will fit about 28 people and have the ability to leave every 30 seconds according to Meghan Kelly. There are currently two designs one where air is pumped in and one where the pods float due to magnets. Both of these designs have the pods floating in the tube(How Science works). By doing this it causes less friction and therefore greater speeds. Elon says that the passengers will only feel an initial push like on a plane and after that feel nothing. There will be Linear induction motors along the tube to keep the pods traveling at high speeds. The Pods will be powered by batteries that are used in tesla cars and by the solar panels on top of the tracks. The most amazing thing besides traveling over 700 miles an hour is that this will only cost 6 billion dollars. This may seem like a lot of money but compared to the 60 billion that is going to be spent on bullet trains it is a lot cheaper. Getting a mode of transportation that goes almost 400% faster at a tenth of the cost shows why the Hyperloop is a better option. Now this cost is only the cost of construction of the final project and doesn’t take into account research, development, and testing (How Science Works).
There are currently two companies competing with each other to design the Hyperloop first. The two companies are called Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT). Both companies plan to have a full scale test track built by 2020. A test was done in May by Hyperloop one to test the propulsion system of their Hyperloop. The link to the test can be seen here. Both companies believe that the first Hyperloop won’t be built in America but rather in the UK or Singapore. According to Hyperloop One’s CEO they believe that it can start to move cargo by 2019. This seems like a stretch, according to Michael Grothaus he believes that this technology may still be decades away. I hope that this technology is widely used in my life time I think that this technology would be very cool and solve a traffic and travel problem in this country.
Picture Sources
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/06/150602-Musk-sonic-hyperloop-gets-California-stretch/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/05/09/la-sf-30-min-hyperloop-wars/84137224/
A project this large and significant is always interesting to see when proposed like this. Last year I remember seeing a proposal for a “trans-Siberian highway” that will connect almost the entire Northern Hemisphere. I think it’d take a really long time to drive the whole length of the highway; if you want to check it out then here’s the article about it. http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/24/travel/trans-siberian-road/
It’s always cool to see the realization of projects like these, since not long ago, a train that could travel at 800 mph would be science fiction. Public transportation, though becoming increasingly common, is yet to be widespread in the United States. If transportation like this could overwhelm the reliance we have on cars today, it would be both environmentally and financially beneficial. It would be incredible for rush hour to become a thing of the past around big cities, and technology like this seems to provide the solution.
What drew me to this article was the demonstration of how advanced technology is. If one of the two companies are able to make a hyperloop that goes from Los Angeles to San Francisco in thirty minutes, that would be a game changer to say the very least. Not even an airplane can travel between the two destinations that fast; it takes around 1 hour and 15 minutes to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I am curious to see if this idea will become a reality though. There is a large possibility this could happen considering Elon Musk’s hyperloop earlier this year travelled from 0 to 116 mph in a matter of two seconds. More information about this remarkable test can be found here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3585662/It-works-Elon-Musk-s-super-fast-Hyperloop-successfully-demonstrated-Las-Vegas.html
Reading this blog made me think about how advanced our technology can soon become. While reading this my biggest thought is how this can replace trains with out many people suffering who use trains to commute. To build a wide radius of tracks will take a lot of time, and people rely on these routes to travel to and from work everyday. So I’m curious to see the process of implementing this technology and how they will overcome the challenges they potentially face.
This is a really cool idea and I think we will definitely see faster and faster transportation taking over our lives. However, when reading this post, I couldn’t help but think about how expensive the tickets will be. With consistent traffic traveling up and down the California coast, I would imagine that tickets for these trains would be in very high demand. Not to mention, in order to make profit on this very expensive construction, ticket will have to be rather expensive. Apparently Elon Musk, the brain behind the idea, claimed that tickets could cost as low as $20, but if you read this, that might not be the case…http://iveybusinessreview.ca/blogs/mzawalskyhba2014/2014/07/16/a-20-dollar-hyperloop-ticket/
Wow, personally I found this subject very interesting. If people were able to travel from San Francisco to LA in 30 minutes it would be revolutionary and could also transform eastern coast cities, allowing people to travel much further distances to work.
When I personally first heard about this idea I was so astonished at the technology that would be a part of this! Elon Musk is truly a creative genius and one of the most recognized CEO’s in the world right now for all of the work he has been doing. Although this doesn’t relate to the hyperloop Elon Musk has recently been in the news a lot lately for his endeavors in SpaceX. Recently one of their space shuttles set to launch into space with a Facebook Satellite blew up before launching. A video can bee seen of it here. Hopefully there are no problems with the development and testing of the hyperloop like the issues SpaceX has been having.