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Inside the Hyperloop: the pneumatic travel system faster than the speed of sound

by BTM
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Inside the Hyperloop: the pneumatic travel system faster than the speed of sound - Telegraph



The "cross between Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table" will deliver passengers between US cities faster than the speed of sound.

The history of transport is replete with dreamers who have concocted such schemes for getting people from A to B in previously unimagined haste. And many of them have remained just that, impractical ideas on a drawing board that will never see the light of day.

But the latest mysterious project, which has had the technology world buzzing for months, has one crucial difference. Its backer is a Silicon Valley wunderkind with a proven track record of turning science fiction into reality.

Billionaire Elon Musk's CV is impressive, to say the least. He made his initial fortune from PayPal, the online secure payment system, before going on to launch spaceships. Last year his SpaceX venture became the first private operation to dock a cargo capsule with the International Space Station.

Back on Earth, Mr Musk also founded Tesla, which has made electric sports cars viable and profitable.
The mercurial, fictional character of Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr in the Iron Man films, is reputedly based on him.

So when Mr Musk, 42, announced that he would be publishing plans for the Hyperloop on Monday, August 12 - tomorrow - scientists were sent into a tailspin.

They will have to wait for Mr Musk to post his "alpha design" on the internet then but he has dropped several hints about its features, including that the system will be powered by solar panels.

Mr Musk will not be patenting the design and it will be "open source", meaning anyone can modify it, or try to build it.

The fevered speculation about what it would actually look like has ranged from wild theories on Star Trek-style teleportation to more achievable ones involving cars being pushed through vacuum sealed tunnels using magnets.

Mr Musk has denied it will be a so-called "vactrain", a concept that is already being pursued by a company in Colorado. His idea "does involve a tube, but not a vacuum tube", he said, adding: "Not frictionless, but very low friction."
  • Profile picture of the author Claude Whitacre
    It's impossible to travel at the speed of sound. It's a scientific fact that traveling the speed of sound makes it impossible to talk, because your words will always be falling behind you.

    It also makes it impossible to exhale, unless you turn around and face backwards. And what about traveling backwards in time? That's a real danger that most won't bring up.

    Also, you can have an accident, and not even know it...because by the time you actually hit the cow, it's yells will be far behind you...and will never catch up. Scientific fact.

    It's also been proven (by this guy I know...or have heard of anyway) that if you hit a pebble on a track traveling at the speed of sound..you'll go into orbit around the Earth....Then Mars...Then around the Earth again.

    One big plus though, there couldn't be any train robberies. No horse is fast enough to take the bandits to the train cars.

    The cost per ticket is several hundred dollars for every train ride. $50 for the actual ticket, and the rest to help pay for all the speeding tickets the train will get.

    Of course, now you have the problem of building a police car that is fast enough to catch a speeding train. It's a vicious cycle.


    I got nothing.
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    One Call Closing book https://www.amazon.com/One-Call-Clos...=1527788418&sr

    What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
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  • Profile picture of the author GrowTutor
    I'm still waiting for the personal jetpacks and flying cars for the masses that we were promised at the 1964 World's Fair.
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