Elon Musk made his long awaited announcement about "Hyperloop" which he calls a "fifth mode of transportation". Following these illustrations is a summary of his interview with Bloomberg Businessweek a few days ago explaining his ideas. If you'd really like to dig into the details of Hyperloop,
CLICK HERE for a 54 page PDF written by Mr. Musk.
Almost a year after Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla
Motors (TSLA) and SpaceX, first floated the idea of a superfast mode of
transportation, he has finally revealed the details: a solar-powered,
city-to-city elevated transit system that could take passengers and cars from
Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. In typical Musk fashion, the
Hyperloop, as he calls it, immediately poses a challenge to the status quo—in
this case, California’s $70 billion high-speed train that has been knocked by
Musk and others as too expensive, too slow, and too impractical.
In Musk’s vision, the Hyperloop would transport people via
aluminum pods enclosed inside of steel tubes. He describes the design as
looking like a shotgun with the tubes running side by side for most of the
journey and closing the loop at either end. These tubes would be mounted on
columns 50 to 100 yards apart, and the pods inside would travel up to 800 miles
per hour. Some of this Musk has hinted at before; he now adds that pods could
ferry cars as well as people. “You just drive on, and the pod departs,” Musk
told Bloomberg Businessweek in his first interview about the Hyperloop.
Musk published a blog post detailing the Hyperloop on Monday.
He also held a press call to go over the details.
Musk has built his entrepreneurial career attacking
businesses he deems inefficient or uninspiring. He co-founded PayPal in a bid
to shake up the banking industry, then used the fortune he made selling the
startup to eBay (EBAY) to fund equally ambitious efforts in transportation.
Tesla Motors, for example, has created the highest-performing, highest-rated
all-electric car and a complementary network of charging stations scattered
around North America. Meanwhile, SpaceX competes against entire nations in the
market to send up satellites and resupply the International Space Station.
In the case of the Hyperloop, Musk started focusing on public
transportation after he grew disenchanted with the plans for California’s
high-speed rail system. Construction on the highly political, $70 billion
project is meant to begin in earnest this year, with plans to link cities from
San Diego to Sacramento by 2029. “You have to look at what they say it will
cost vs. the actual final costs, and I think it’s safe to say you’re talking
about a $100 billion-plus train,” Musk says, adding that the train is too slow
and a horrendous land rights mess.
Musk thinks the Hyperloop would avoid many of the land issues
because it’s elevated. The tubes would, for the most part, follow I-5, the
dreary but direct freeway between L.A. and San Francisco. Farmers would not
have swaths of their land blocked by train tracks but could instead access
their land between the columns. Musk figures the Hyperloop could be built for
$6 billion with people-only pods, or $10 billion for the larger pods capable of
holding people and cars. All together, his alternative would be four times as
fast as California’s proposed train, at one-10th the cost. Tickets, Musk says,
would be “much cheaper” than a plane ride.
As for safety? Musk has heard of it. “There’s an emergency
brake,” he says. “Generally, though, the safe distance between the pods would
be about 5 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.” Musk imagines that riding on the Hyperloop would be
quite pleasant. “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,” he says. “Unlike an airplane, it is not subject to
turbulence, so there are no sudden movements. It would feel supersmooth.”
The Hyperloop was designed to link cities less than 1,000
miles apart that have high amounts of traffic between them, Musk says. Under
1,000 miles, the Hyperloop could have a nice edge over planes, which need a lot
of time to take off and land. “It makes sense for things like L.A. to San
Francisco, New York to D.C., New York to Boston,” Musk says. “Over 1,000 miles,
the tube cost starts to become prohibitive, and you don’t want tubes every
which way. You don’t want to live in Tube Land.” Right?
In the months since Musk first mentioned the Hyperloop, there
has been plenty of speculation. Critics, dealing with limited information, have
contended that the specifications laid out by Musk would be nearly impossible
to achieve. Such a long, pressurized tube would require an immense amount of
energy while also producing tons of air friction and heat.
Now Musk argues that the Hyperloop represents a type of
middle ground that other people have yet to consider. Instead of being a
complete vacuum or running at normal conditions, the Hyperloop tubes would be
under low pressure. “I think a lot of people tended to gravitate to one idea or
the other as opposed to thinking about lower pressure,” Musk says. “I have never
seen that idea anywhere.”
Inside the tubes, the pods would be mounted on thin skis made
out of inconel, a trusted alloy of SpaceX that can withstand high pressure and
heat. Air gets pumped through little holes in the skis to make an air cushion,
Musk says. The front of the pod would have a pair of air jet inlets—sort of
like the Concorde. An electric turbo compressor would compress the air from the
nose and route it to the skis and to the cabin. Magnets on the skis, plus an
electromagnetic pulse, would give the pod its initial thrust; reboosting motors
along the route would keep the pod moving. And: no sonic boom. With warm air
inside the tubes and high tailwinds, the pods could travel at high speeds
without crossing the sound barrier. “The pod can go just below the speed of
sound relative to the air,” Musk says.
So, science, or science fiction? About a dozen people at
Tesla and SpaceX have helped Musk with the design and checked the physics
behind the Hyperloop. I briefed Martin Simon, a professor of physics at UCLA,
on some of the Hyperloop details, and he declared it feasible from a
technological standpoint: “It does sound like it’s all done with known
technology. It’s not like he’s counting on something brand new to be invented.”
Simon points out that the acceleration methods proposed by
Musk are used at amusement parks to get a roller coaster going. Other companies
have looked at these techniques for passenger and freight vehicles. What sets
the Hyperloop apart, though, is the use of the air cushion to levitate the
pods. “He has separated the air cushion and the linear induction drive, and
that seems new,” Simon says, adding, “It would be cool if they had transparent
tubes.”
The critics of California’s high-speed rail may be dismayed
to learn that Musk does not plan to commercialize the Hyperloop technology for
the time being. He’s posting the plans and asking for feedback and
contemplating building a prototype. “I’m just putting this out there as an open
source design,” he says. “There are sure to be suggestions out there for making
this better, correcting any mistakes, and refining the design.” Musk maintains
that he has too much on his plate to deal with bringing the Hyperloop to
fruition. “I wish I had not mentioned it,” he says. “I still have to run SpaceX
and Tesla, and it’s hard.”
Musk says he would support another person or organization
that wanted to make the Hyperloop a reality.
“It is a question of finding the right person and team to get
behind it,” Musk says. “Creating a prototype is not that expensive.” But if no
one advances or acts on Musk’s ideas, he may come back to the Hyperloop in a
few years’ time and pursue it as part of Tesla. “Down the road, I might fund or
advise on a Hyperloop project, but right now I can’t take my eye off the ball
at either SpaceX or Tesla.”
