The Hyperloop is coming: Elon Musk’s radical plan to let people travel in 760 mph tubes will be tested in California next year
- Plan is to shoot capsules of people along a tube at the speed of sound
- Hyperloop Transportation Technologies secured land in Quad Valley
- Here, it hopes to build a five mile (8km) test track for the technology
- 100 engineers created the crowdsourced firm to work on the idea
- It is hoped the system could be rolled out in cities around the world
Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop' was dismissed as a pipe dream that would never get off the ground.
But
now the billionaire's plans to shoot capsules of passengers along a
tube at around the speed of sound may launch as soon as next year.
Hyperloop
Transportation Technologies has secured land for the first full-scale
Hyperloop with a 2016 launch in the California town of Quay Valley.
Elon Musk's 'Hyperloop' was dismissed
as a pipe dream that would never get off the ground. But now the
billionaire's plans to shoot capsules of passengers along a tube at
around the speed of sound may launch as soon as next year. Pictured is
the proposed test track
The
test track will only run for five miles (8km) around central
California, and it won't be fast as the 760mph that Musk had originally
envisioned.
However,
the company hopes that it will provide a testing ground for the radical
concept which could someday be rolled out to cities around the world.
The Hyperloop will be built scratch on 7,500 acres of land around Interstate 5, between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies hopes to raise $100 million to pay for its construction.
Once
the technology has matured, Musk believes it would take just 30 minutes
to travel the 381 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco – half the
time it takes in a plane – and likened the passenger experience to
Disneyland's rocket ride Space Mountain.
Hyperloop
Transportation Technologies, a crowdsourced firm, has around 100
engineers on the projects, and nearly all of them have day jobs at
companies like Boeing, Nasa, Yahoo!, Airbus, SpaceX, and Salesforce.
Share this article
1.2k shares
Dirk
Ahlborn, the CEO of the company, says it seemed the perfect way to
develop the plans, with a site called JumpStartFund that aimed to
crowdsource ideas.
He got in touch with SpaceX, Musk's firm, and the work began.
The Hyperloop Transportation
Technologies design for Elon Musk's Hyperloop. It hopes to produce a
technical feasibility study finished in mid-2015.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
has secured land for the first full-scale Hyperloop with a 2016 launch
in the California town of Quay Valley
The test track will run for five miles
(8km) around central California, and it won't be fast as the 760mph
that Musk had originally envisioned
The
team includes about 25 UCLA graduate architecture students at a
facility in Playa Vista, although most members work remotely.
So far, the team has made progress in three main areas: the capsules, the stations, and the route.
'They look at this like a blank sheet of paper on which they can realise their fantasies,' UCLA professor Craig Hodgetts said.
Musk's idea is based on the pneumatic tubes that fire capsules of paperwork between floors in offices.
In this case, the capsules would carry people – even cars – in low-pressure tubes to minimise turbulence and maximise speed.
The team believes the system could link the majority of America's major cities together
Musk believes it would take just 30
minutes to travel the 381 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco – half
the time it takes in a plane – and likened the passenger experience to
Disneyland's rocket ride Space Mountain
On top of pylons is a hovering capsule inside a low-pressurised tube, which can reach speeds of up to 760 mph.
'The
only resistance would be the air in front of the capsule, which we
moved to the back by using a compressor,' Hyperloop CEO Dirk Ahlborn
said.
At
its launch, Musk described the Hyperloop design as looking like a
shotgun, with the tubes running side-by-side for most of the journey,
then closing at either end to form a loop.
Each capsule would float on a cushion of air it creates as it speeds along – similar to an air hockey table.
So far, the team has made progress in three main areas: the capsules, the stations, and the route
The proposed route of the first
hyperloop follows Interstate 5, which runs through the agriculture-rich
Central Valley in California
Capsules carrying six to eight people would depart every 30 seconds, with tickets costing around ($20) £13 each way.
In his proposal released
online, Musk wrote: 'Short of figuring out real teleportation, which
would of course be awesome (someone please do this), the only option for
super-fast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that
contains a special environment.'
The proposed route of the first full-scale Hyperloop follows Interstate 5, which runs through the agriculture-rich
Central Valley in California. It would take seven to ten years to build.
Musk put the price tag at around $6.2 billion (£4 billion_ but pointed out that that is around one-tenth of the projected
cost of a high-speed rail system that California has been planning to
build.
Musk put the price tag at around $6.2
billion (£4 billion_ but pointed out that that is around one-tenth of
the projectedcost of a high-speed rail system that California has been
planning to build. Pictured is a computer model of the radical design
The team has built models in their bid
to find out if Hyperloop could actually work. However, transport
experts receivedthe proposal with scepticism, citing barriers, such as
the threat ofearthquakes in the region
However, transport experts received
the proposal with scepticism, citing barriers, such as the threat of
earthquakes in the region.
Musk has said he is too focused on other
projects, for example his rocket building company SpaceX, to consider
building the Hyperloop, and instead is publishing a design that anyone
can use or modify.
Musk said
he started thinking about the idea when plans for a 130mph (210km/h)
high-speed train connection between LA and San Francisco were revealed,
but now he has detailed his own version on Tesla's site.
'Flight' of the future: The hyperloop will travel the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco in only 30 minutes
Smooth ride: 'It would have less lateral
acceleration which is what tends to make people feel motion sick than a
subway ride, as the pod banks against the tube like an airplane,'
creator Elon Musk said
'I
originally started thinking about [Hyperloop] when I read about
California's high-speed rail project which was somewhat disappointing,'
he told a Google Hangout with Richard Branson last week.
'It's actually worse than taking the plane. I get a little sad when things are not getting better in the future.
'Another
example would be like the Concorde being retired and the fact there is
no supersonic passenger transport. I think that is sad. You want the
future to be better than the past, or at least I do.'
The
entrepreneur made his fortune with the internet payment system PayPal
before switching his skills into developing the new Falcon rocket system
for Nasa and the Tesla electric car.
Mr
Musk claims Hyperloop would be a practical solution for city pairs
separated by 1,000 miles (1,600km) or less. Beyond this distance, it
would be better to take a plane, he explained.
Unique: Travellers would enter aluminium pods which are mounted above the ground on columns 50 to 100 yards apart
Modern: This image shows how people would travel in the pods seated in a reclined position
But
for the shorter distance, his new concept would beat the plane, he
argues, because it would not waste time ascending and descending.
'You
want a transport system that is roughly twice as fast as the next best
alternative, that costs less, that is safer, that is not subject to
weather and is more convenient,' Mr Musk said.
'If
there were such a thing, I think most people would take it. In fact, it
would increase the travel between the city pairs because of the
increased convenience.'
Experts say Musk's track record could help the plan become a reality.
'Hyperloop
is quite an old science fiction idea but Elon Musk is the sort of man
who could make it work,' said physicist Martin Archer from Imperial
College London.
Space-like: This conceptual design of the machine shows that it will have a futuristic look
Built to last: The inventor boasted that
the tracks would be immune to weather and earthquakes, though it is not
immediately clear how so
Creature comforts: The legroom is said to give would-be passengers a disruption-free ride
'He's
the guy who made electric cars go fast with Tesla, which many people
didn't think would be possible; and he's the head of SpaceX which is the
only commercial rocket builder that has managed to hook up with the
International Space Station.'
Musk says he will leave it to others to build the system initially.
'I
have to focus on core Tesla business and SpaceX business, and that's
more than enough,' he told investors of Tesla, his electric car firm.
'If
nothing happens for a few years, with that I mean maybe it could make
sense to make the halfway path with Tesla involvement,' Musk said.
He admits the scheme came from a disdain for current systems.
'When the California 'high speed' rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too.
'How
could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible
things like indexing all the world's knowledge and putting rovers on
Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive
per mile and one of the slowest in the world?'
Musk claims the scheme can power itself through solar energy.
'By placing solar panels on top of the tube, the Hyperloop can generate far in excess of the energy needed to operate.
'This
takes into account storing enough energy in battery packs to operate at
night and for periods of extended cloudy weather', he claims.
Appealing to environmentalists: This graph
shows the energy cost per passenger on different modes of
transportation for the specific San Francisco-Los Angeles journey
There and back: The 'loop' portion highlights the fact that there would only be two stops
No comments:
Post a Comment