![]() It's not clear that Hyperloop can do a better job of moving a large number of people than other mass transit options. In other countries where land is cheaper or where routes can travel through less populated areas, it may be easier to get services up and running faster.Ĭapacity is another issue. Trying to build a new line overland across England, for example, can prove an expensive and complicated business which can take many years (as the ongoing HS2 controversy has shown). The success of Hyperloop will vary depending on the destinations, local economics, and geography. If the technology is still in development, that's also very true of the business models to support it. Going from short test routes to hundreds of kilometres of track is a big jump that none of these firms has made yet. There are well-funded companies racing to be the first to deliver a working service but, despite their optimistic timescales, these projects are still very much in the pilot and experimental stages. This time around, it's possible that the technology may have just caught up with the concept. The concept has been around for a long time, but until now the technology has been lacking. That's the huge, multibillion dollar - and, as yet, unanswered - question around Hyperloop. Musk's LA to San Francisco version offered tickets at just $20 but Virgin Hyperloop One is more vague on its plans: "Difficult to say as it will depend greatly on the route, but the goal is to make it affordable for everyone," it said, while Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) said it expects "a profitable system with low ticket price projections". Image: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies What a Hyperloop Transportation Technologies capsule might look like from inside. It's also potentially two or three times faster than even high-speed rail (and ten times the speed of regular rail services). It is lower cost and more energy efficient because, among other things, the track doesn't need to provide power to the pods continuously and, because the pods can leave every 30 seconds, it's more like an on-demand service. Supporters argue that Hyperloop is significantly better than high-speed rail. How is Hyperloop different from high-speed trains? Under Musk's model, the Hyperloop would be powered by solar panels placed on the top of the tube which would allow the system to generate more energy than it needs to run. The pods will get their velocity from an external linear electric motor - effectively a round induction motor (like the one in the Tesla Model S) rolled flat. This means an operating pressure of 100 pascals, which reduces the drag force of the air by 1,000 times relative to sea level conditions, and would be equivalent to flying above 150,000 feet.Įlon Musk's Hyperloop: Here's the Dutch team with designs on supersonic train conceptĮngineers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are taking tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's Hyperloop travel idea very seriously. In Musk's model, the pressure of the air inside the Hyperloop tube is about one-sixth the pressure of the atmosphere on Mars (a notable comparison as Mars is another of Musk's interests). ![]() Airliners climb to high altitudes to travel through less dense air in order to create a similar effect at ground level, Hyperloop encloses the capsules in a reduced-pressure tube, effectively allowing the trains to travel at airplane speeds while still on the ground. Overcoming air resistance is one of the biggest uses of energy in high speed travel. To reduce friction, most - but not all - of the air is removed from the tubes by pumps. The basic idea of Hyperloop as envisioned by Musk is that the passenger pods or capsules travel through a tube, either above or below ground. Nobody has got very far with the teleportation idea, alas, but a number of companies have seized at the potential of Hyperloop. "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," Musk wrote.
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