Elon Musk is constantly traveling between San Francisco and Los
Angeles to attend to his business at Tesla and Space X. So he said
to himself, "there has to be a better way."
Turns out there is.
Load yourself into an enormous shotgun shell and shoot yourself
400 miles (640 km) across the state at 800 mph (1300 kph). It
sounds crazy, but Musk swears it will work. And if he doesn't build
it, someone else will.
Musk's proposal to revolutionise mass transit is called the
Hyperloop. It would transport passengers in individual aluminum
pods powered by turbines and solar energy in above-ground tubes,
cost $6-10 billion (£3.9-6.5 billion) to build, and make the trip
from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes. Oh, and a ticket
will run you around $20 (£13).
But it only exists in a 57-page alpha
white paper. And if someone grabbed the idea and ran with it
today, Musk says it would still be seven to 10 years away.
It began with an idea similar to the vacuum tubes used to
shuttle the check from your car to the bank. But maintaining that
level of vacuum for hundreds of miles, according to Musk, was
untenable. "The basic calculations for energy was enormous," Musk
said during a conference call. And it's also incredibly dangerous.
So Musk enlisted a dozen engineers from Tesla and Space X to start
playing with the idea. They wanted to use existing technology,
require as little land as possible, and get pressure down inside
the tube, determining that about half-bar was the sweet spot. And
now Musk and Friends have released it to the world.
Two tubes -- one for each direction -- would be mounted on
pylons spaced between 50 and 100 metres apart, and Musk envisions
the Hyperloop running alongside Interstate 5 in California. Because
it's elevated, there's less environmental impact (farmers can still
use their land), it can be built to withstand earthquakes (using
the same technology as buildings in the Golden State), and would
have solar panels mounted on the roof.
"There is way more surface area on the top of the tube than you
need [to power the Hyperloop]," Musk says. "You would have more
power than you could possibly consume."
Inside the tubes, each pod would be mounted on a pair of skis
made out of inconel -- the same metal that SpaceX uses to handle
high heat and pressure -- with air being pumped through small holes
in the skis to create an air cushion. Combine that with magnets and
an electromagnetic field, and you've got levitation with very
At the front of each pod are two air intakes driving an electric
turbo compressor. That shuttles air from the front to the back and
propels the pod, gaining and sustaining momentum. "It turns the air
skis into an electro magnet," Musk says. "It sends a pulse down the
motor and the tube ends up essentially chasing the pulse."
The initial acceleration, according to Musk, would be similar to
what you experience in a plane: a big thrust. "Then once you're
there," Musk says, "there's no sense of speed." G forces would be
quite low as well, with a maximum of a half-G, likely negating the
need for the sick bags on airplanes.
Each pod could hold over a dozen people, and Musk also believes
it could hold cars as well. And because the pods use a linear
induction electric motor, it's existing technology.
"[It's] the same kind of AC induction motor on the Model S,"
Musk says. "We could just use some version of the Model S motors,
or a few of them in series, and a Model S battery pack."
As the pod gets close to the end of the line, the same process
used to accelerate it would be reversed, slowing the pod, regaining
the kinetic energy and plumbing it back into the Hyperloop
Musk believes that this type of system would be best served for
distances that are 900 miles (1450 km) apart, because acceleration
times are still long and there's some speculation in the document
-- for whatever reason -- that supersonic planes would be better
for longer distances.
In Tesla recent earnings call, Musk said that he had no plans to
build the Hyperloop himself. But he's rethinking that. "I'm tempted
to make a demonstration prototype," Musk said during the call.
"I've come around a little bit on my thinking that maybe I could do
the beginning of it and create a sub-scale version and then hand it
over to someone else."
But he reiterated that he's got too much on his plate with both
Tesla and Space X. "If it was my top priority it could be done in a
few years," Musk said. "If someone else did it, maybe three to four
Naturally, being an Alpha concept, there's much more work to be
tweeted before the call that, "this is not the very latest
version. Will post an updated version with several late arriving
corrections in a few hours."
Hopefully that'll include some mention of an on-board bathroom,
because for now, you'll have to hold it. In the meantime, you can
join us as we attempt to absorb the white
paper for the next few hours.
This story originally appeared on Wired.com