Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean. 
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.
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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 HYPERLOOP: HOW IT
WORKS
Inside the tubes,
hyperloop pods are mounted on thin skis made out of inconel,an alloy already
used by Musk's SpaceX firm that can withstand high pressure and heat.
Air is pumped into
the skis via small holes to make an air cushion, and each pod has air inlets at
the front.
An electric turbo
compressor compresses air from the nose and routes it to the skis and to the
cabin.
Magnets on the skis,
plus an electromagnetic pulse give the pod its initial thrust; reboosting
motors along the route would keep the pod moving at just below the speed of
sound so the system does not produce sonic booms.
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.
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.
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The Hyperloop
Transportation Technologies design for Elon Musk's Hyperloop. It hopes to
produce a technical feasibility study finished in mid-2015.
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Hyperloop
Transportation Technologies has secured land for the first full-scale Hyperloop
with a 2016 launch in the California town of Quay Valley
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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.
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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.
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So far, the
team has made progress in three main areas: the capsules, the stations, and the
route
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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.
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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
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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
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