You know why I didn’t like Elon Musk a few years ago? Because of PayPal. Because he seemed like a dilettante. Yet another Valley guy who was ignoring all the hard work and ingenuity that had gone into systems like infrastructure and space travel for the last fifty years; another nerd who thought every system was as mutable as a computer. I was wrong.
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We just got Elon Musk’s PDF describing the Hyperloop, and a quick initial read shows the key factor that makes the system more likely to work: overcoming the Kantrowitz Limit. Don’t feel bad if you have no idea what that is — I didn’t either, but once I found out, it makes so much sense.
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Elon Musk is into transportation, whether it’s an electric car or a spaceship. Today, he detailed a plan to revolutionize a portion of public transit. It’s called the Hyperloop, and it’s meant to get folks from SF to LA (or any two cities less than 900 miles apart) in 30 minutes seated in aluminum pods that are hurtled to and fro at 800 miles an hour in a pair of steel tubes. To keep things safe, pods will be spaced five miles apart so that they can stop without running into each other, which means a total of 70 pods could operate simultaneously.
Of course, the real question is how to get the pods moving at those speeds? One main issue with such transport is wind resistance (and associated friction) that increases as the speed of the pods inside the tube escalate. Naturally, one could operate the tubes in a complete vacuum to eliminate the problem, but keeping such a system free of air would be difficult over such long distances. Instead, the proposed Hyperloop system works as a low air pressure environment that is easily maintained with standard commercial compressors. Additionally, “an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel” is there to relieve what air does build up at the front. This compressor fan would also generate an air bearing around the pod to keep it suspended in the middle of the tube, much as an air hockey table suspends a plastic puck. As for power? Well, that comes from external linear electric motors positioned every 70 miles to keep the pods humming along at subsonic speeds.
Filed under: Transportation, Science
Source: SpaceX
Inventor-entrepreneur-mad-scientist Elon Musk just released an alpha design of his vision for the future of high-speed transit. This is our first look at Hyperloop. After teasing the concept for months, we’re finally going to be able to figure out if this is a fantasy—or the beginning of our new reality.
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In just a few minutes, Elon Musk will finally reveal his plans for the Hyperloop
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Pulled all nighter working on Hyperloop (as did others). Hopefully not too many mistakes. Will publish link at 1:30 PDT.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2013
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On Monday, Tesla Motors chief Elon Musk will finally reveal his concept for a high-speed transit system called Hyperloop. The Hyperloop, according to Musk, will be able to whisk you from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco in roughly the time it takes to watch an episode of Veep. He’s been intentionally vague about details—but that doesn’t mean we can’t make some educated guesses about how he’s going to pull this off.
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As we’ve all heard by now Elon Musk, un-contented with running an electric car company and a spaceship company, will be announcing plans for a 30-minute round trip LA to SF transit system. Luckily, someone has shared this lovely infographic with us showing everything we know so far.
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Elon Musk, enthusiastic entrepre-nerd that he is, might have gotten a little bit ahead of himself with all the Hyperloop talk recently. On an investor call, he indicated that he has a pretty good idea about the design for the high-speed travel concept, but no plans to move forward with it—at least not with the gusto he’s pursued lofty goals like electric vehicles and private space exploration.
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You might remember that a couple of weeks ago, Elon Musk made otherwise random guy John Gardi Twitter-famous
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