Travelling in the future at 1,287 km/hour made possible through Hyperloop

The billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has plans for next generation transportation systems. The CEO of Space X has envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system which goes by the name of Hyperloop. A preliminary design document was made back in August 2013 and included the cost estimates of US $6 billion for a single passenger version. Most of the people, when asked to imagine the future of travelling, would talk about fully flying cars or really fast cars. If the Hyperloop project gets operational, humans would be travelling at the speeds of 1,287 Km. After unveiling the plans for the high-speed Hyperloop transportation system in 2013, Elon Musk is now all set to build a test track in Southern California and a competition for prototype pods. Dirk Ahlborn, who is responsible for the project jointly with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies said, “Well, imagine a capsule filled with people that are hovering inside the tube.

Image Source: images.says.com

Inside the tube you create a low pressure environment very similar to an airplane that’s at high altitudes. So now the capsule travelling inside the tubes doesn’t encounter as much resistance, and so therefore can travel really fast with very little energy. It’s 100% solar-powered, that’s basically the invention here.” The plan is to make the capsules move through a cushion of air blasted from the underlying skis which would be propelled by a magnetic linear accelerator.

The concept of Hyperloop is quite ambitious and risky. It will be quite interesting to see how the safety of the people is ensured at such speeds. The effects of travelling at 1200km/hour could affect human bodies in many different ways. When the plans for Hyperloop were made public initially, many people were excited and described it as the product of a combination of Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table. On June 15, Space X said that it would be developing a mile long test track in California. However, while presenting the project to the European audience for the first time, Dirk Ahlborn said that HTT was on the cusp of building their own 8-km long track in California’s Quay Valley. The team of round 360 people at HTT has been able to complete their targets in time because of the way they have approached the project. The concept of crowd sourcing talent and labor, rather than crowd funding the project with money has really bore fruits for them.

He said that the operation in Quay valley was going to be on full scale and Hyperloop will be transporting 10 million people a year after opening in 2018. However, the project might get extended should there be any complications, but as of now the track construction seems to be on track.