Ever thought of travelling inside a vacuum tube? In this world of increasing population, who does not want to save time? The very well known entrepreneur and billionaire, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has introduced this concept in real life.
Musk has never failed to come up with unique ideas and thereby successfully implementing them. Let’s take a brief summary of it.
Theory and operations :
According to Musk, Hyperloop will be the fifth mode of transportation after cars, planes, boats and technically, rockets. It will be a capsule inside which passengers will be transported to places through pneumatic pipes. It’s propulsion system (the way of driving) could either have the magnetic levitation or air pressure but magnetic levitation is the one which has been finalized.
900 KMPH will be the average travelling speed, gaining a top speed up to 1220 KMPH.
Pro’s and Con’s :
Musk came up with the idea Hyperloop when he was late for a meeting by an hour, which also leads to give us one of the reasons why a new mode of transportation is needed. All present modes of transportation have an adverse effect on nature resulting in global warming. Their existence also relies on fossil fuels which will exhaust eventually. On the contrary, Hyperloop is planned to be energy efficient which will work on solar energy. The mind blowing part of this is that it will consume less amount of energy compared to the amount of energy created by it; almost like investing millions and in return being profited by billions.
The only con discovered until now by its model and based on MATLAB test is the design. Since it is windowless and moves at a very high speed, passengers with motion sickness and claustrophobia might find it inconvenient. The speed of this is approximately twice of that of an airplane. If the journey from L.A. to San Francisco takes 90 minutes by an airplane, it would take about 30 minutes for the journey by a Hyperlooop!
Hyperloop companies :
Virgin hyperloop one :
Formed back in 2014, its recent activities has proved a promising implementation of hyperloop. In May 2016, they conducted the very first trial where it was observed that electric motor could propel from 0 to 110 miles an hour in just one second. They have successfully maintained relations with governments of countries like Finland and Netherlands and approved to setup Hyperloop in major cities. In May 2017, they became the first company to perform their first full scale Hyperloop test which included vacuum, propulsion, levitation, etc.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies :
Also known as HTT was formed by crowd collaboration and by 2015 they had grown up to 200 people. In 2013, they partnered with Ansys, an engineering software developer, who helped them develop simulation models based on fluid mechanics. They have also teamed up with UCLA’s Suprastudio which gives a demo of a developed hyperloop system including human factor from platforms to ticket fare. Recently in September 2017, they announced an agreement with Andhra Pradesh to build a hyperloop connecting from Amravathi to Vijaywada.
These were some top hyperloop companies, apart from these there is a hyperloop pod competition.
Hyperloop pod competition:
A large number of student and non-student teams have been participating in this competition and atleast 22 teams are selected to build hardware and further compete. In 2015, SpaceX sponsored developing a 1 mile track for hardware testing of all students. On January 29, 2017, Delft Hyperloop won the final stage of the SpaceX Hyperloop competition, ahead of the Technical University of Munich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The most ironical part is that Elon Musk is not the first one to come up with this idea and implement. George Medhurst, had proposed this idea for transportation of goods using air propulsion in 1812. One of the earliest projects using this technology was the Dalkey Atmospheric Railway which operated near Dublin between 1844 and 1854.The Crystal Palace pneumatic railway operated in London around 1864 and used large fans, some 22 ft (6.7 m) in diameter, that were powered by a steam engine. The tunnels are now lost but the line operated successfully for over a year.
For now we can only hope that the creation of Hyperloop solves the problems which gave a reason for its birth.
