13 Aug 2013

Hyperloop promises supersonic rail travel

Billed as a cross between a Concorde and an air hockey table, the Hyperloop could one day transport passengers across countries at speeds of 800mph.

Los Angeles to San Francisco – a journey of nearly 400 miles – is an hour’s plane journey and takes six hours by car. Now, though, thanks to the ambitious vision of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, the journey could be reduced to just 30 minutes.

Hyperloop is an ultra-high-speed capsule proposed as an alternative that, according to its inventor, could be cheaper than plane travel (indeed just $20 a journey) with the regularity of a rollercoaster.

Coming from anyone else, all of this could easily be written off this as hare-brained bluster that would never exist beyond the blueprint. But Elon Musk’s track-record in delivery should not be taken lightly.

He is the co-founder of global e-commerce site PayPal, and masterminded Space X, which in 2010 became the first private company to launch a spacecraft that orbited the earth twice and landed safely within just three hours.

New vision

Mr Musk, who has published his latest plans in a blog post and 58-page PDF, said it could be delivered to consumers far more cheaply than plane travel, and with the regularity of trains.

In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mr Musk said the tubes would be mounted above ground on columns. “The safe distance between the pods would be about five miles. So you could have about 70 pods between Los Angeles and San Francisco that leave every 30 seconds.”

“It’s like getting a ride on Space Mountain at Disneyland,” he says.

The “supersmooth” ride means passengers would experience a G-force no greater than that of a sports car. The San Francisco to Los Angeles route would be elevated alongside a current California motorway, which would enable it to be constructed with minimal disputes over land rights, Mr Musk said. The tube and supporting columns would be designed to withstand earthquakes.

At the moment, the American engineer-turned-entrepreneur, who made his fortune after co-founding the global online payment system PayPal, said he was not looking to build the machine itself – although he was “tempted” to build a demonstration model.

Those who have seen PayPal and Space X fulfil all that was promised of them, can only hope he follows through on this latest project.