Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced via Twitter last Monday that on August 12, he would publish the alpha design of the Hyperloop, a proposed rapid transit model he is involved in that he hopes will be a more effective means of transportation than current high-speed transit models. His initial claim stated that the design, whatever it may be, would be able to get people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in half an hour, leading to massive speculation on what could be the solution.
Musk has described the Hyperloop as a “cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table”, leading many enthusiasts to attempt to create mockups and theories of how the system works. The most popular theory going around,one that Musk has hinted is the closest he’s seen so far to the actual design, is that the Hyperloop will be a long tube in which air-propelled pods rocket at nearly 1000 km/h. At the end of the loop would be a deceleration and acceleration zone where magnets would slow down and speed up the pod at the ends of the journey. To maintain these high speeds, the tube would need to be sealed with low interior air levels to reduce the severity of air drag on the pods. Vacuum-sealing the tubes would be one way of removing concerns about air drag in the tube, yet Musk has stated that his solution does not use vacuum-sealed tubes, further fueling speculation.
Musk decided to support an alternative high-speed rail project to California’s current project as California’s high-speed rail is expected to be one of the slowest and most expensive high-speed trains in the world per mile. The Hyperloop, he claims, would be much cheaper to build, be the fastest mode of transportation between cities, and run entirely on solar power. The major downside to implementing the system, assuming it would be approved, would be that it would have to use an extremely straight path between cities, as any small turn at that speed could produce enough force in the vehicle to make passengers feel queasy.
Currently, the fastest high-speed train in the world at 500 km/h is the L0 series train built by Mitsubishi and Nippon Sharyo in Japan for the Chūō Shinkansen, a high-speed magnetic levitation (maglev) line that will connect Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo. The Chūō Shinkansen is part of the greater Shinkansen line, known around the world as the Japan’s bullet train, that has been operational since 1964. Any train at the speeds offered by these vehicles eschew wheels for magnetic levitation, as wheels are a significant drain of energy through the friction between the wheels and the rail bed. Maglev trains are able to speed up and slow down much more easily than a wheeled train, since there is no physical object that needs to spun down like a train wheel.
If the Hyperloop is as feasible as Musk suggests, it could put the United States at the forefront of high-speed transit; an admirable move for a nation on a continent known for its enthusiasm for suburbs and gas consumption by personal cars. It’s encouraging that California is aiming to build a high-speed rail system, as the transit infrastructure in North America is sorely lacking. Being able to connect major cities as separated as those in North America would be good for making distant travel a more palatable prospect for people and fostering increased travel and community between locations.
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