Entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled alpha design plans Monday for his highly-anticipated Hyperloop high-speed transportation system.
Musk first told Bloomberg Businessweek Monday that the solar-powered Hyperloop system will transport people in aluminum pods and cars at speeds up to 800 mph. Businessweek reported the tubes would be mounted on columns 50 to 100 yards apart.
"The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart," Musk wrote in the blog post.
That distance wouldn't be enough to link the 3,000 miles between San Francisco with New York City, but could link Northern California with Los Angeles. For longer distances, Musk said "supersonic air travel" would be more efficient.
The Hyperloop design — estimated to cost about $6 billion — also addresses safety concerns.
“There’s an emergency brake,” Musk told Businessweek. “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.”
He also claimed the transport system would be resistant to earthquakes and immune to weather.
"It's not like it's going to fall out of the sky," Musk clarified in a call with the press Monday evening, adding that the pods can't really be derailed.
Hyperloop could be the fifth in the so-called major forms of transportation that includes planes, trains, automobiles and boats. But if the designs come to fruition, Hyperloop would be faster than these other modes.
According to Gocompare.com, commercial airliners travel average 575 mph, while Shanghai's Maglev train can speeds up to 311 mph. The now-defunct Concorde jet could reportedly reach 1,350 mph.
Shortly after making the announcement Monday, Musk cautioned that the alpha design would be updated:
Musk told reporters that Hyperloop is a "low priority" compared to SpaceX and Tesla, but he noted that he wants to create a Hyperloop prototype.
"I'm not trying to make a ton of money on this ... but I'd like to see it come to fruition," he said.
Musk previously suggested in July that Hyperloop won't be patented and the system would be published open-source.
Earlier on Monday, Musk tweeted that he and his team pulled an "all nighter" working on the Hyperloop plans. Rumors stated that Hyperloop would besolar-powered, boast two-meter-wide passenger pods and travel twice the speed of commercial crafts.
Possible Competitors
Musk isn't the only one dreaming up the next generation of high-speed transportation.
Longmont, Colo.-based ET3 is working on a mode of transportation that it calls "space travel on Earth." ET3's "Evacuated Tube Transport" system is made up of "car-sized passenger capsules" that could travel 370 mph for in-state trips and 4,000 mph for international travel. ET3's system would hypothetically transport people from New York to Beijing in just two hours. The company also claims it could build this system for "one-tenth the cost of High Speed Rail, or one-fourth the cost of a freeway."
There has also been a lot of buzz surrounding plans for a high-speed rail system in the United States. But even those high-speed trains would reportedly only travel at 220 mph.
Elon Musk, Seasoned Entrepreneur
Musk, 42, is no stranger in the field of disrupting the transportation status quo.
The South African-born entrepreneur grew to prominence as an original cofounder of e-commerce business PayPal, which went global and was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. Before that, he founded Internet software company Zip2 in 1995 and sold it to Compaq in 1999 for more than $300 million.
Musk founded SpaceX (short for Space Exploration Technologies) in 2002 inhopes to "to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets." Today, the company has more than 3,000 employees. In 2012, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft successfully attached to the International Space Station.
In 2003, Musk founded Tesla Motors, eventually spearheading a new class of luxury electric vehicles. The company now has more than 2,000 employees and two car models: the roadster Model S and the crossover Model X. Tesla and high-end competitors like Fisker are trying to capture the luxury electric vehicle market.
Musk, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in economics and physics, is also the chairman of SolarCity, a San Mateo-Calif.-based solar energy service provider for American homeowners, businesses and government organizations.
Last week in a Google+ hangout with Richard Branson, Musk hinted that beyond Hyperloop, he might want to start yet another company.
"If I were to start another company in the future, which I don't think would be anytime soon, it would be to try to create an aircraft that is supersonic, vertical takeoff and landing. [An] electric jet."
Source:http://mashable.com/2013/08/12/elon-musk-hyperloop-reveal/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link
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