It's a race befitting the goal of moving passengers and cargo at the speed of sound: Three Southern California companies are building separate test tracks to see how well the "hyperloop" transportation concept works in the real world.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk breathed life into the hyperloop in 2013, when he proposed a network of elevated tubes to transport specially designed capsules over long distances. Top speed: about 750 mph.
Though momentum to build a hyperloop has been growing since, the concept dates back decades.
Capsules would float on a thin cushion of air and use magnetic attraction[sic] and solar power to zoom through nearly airless tubes. With little wind resistance, they could make the 400-mile trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about a half-hour. Musk has said that while he does not plan to develop the hyperloop commercially, he wants to accelerate its development.
On Tuesday, his SpaceX rocket launching firm said global infrastructure firm AECOM would build a one-mile track at SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles International Airport.
If all goes well, by summer's end, the track will host prototype capsules that emerge from a design competition this weekend at Texas A&M University. The prototype pods would be half the size of the system that Musk envisioned and would not carry people.
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A Massachusetts Institute of Technology team has placed first in the design phase of SpaceX's Hyperloop competition. 115 teams submitted designs, and 22 teams will be able to test their designs on a 1.5 km test track during the summer:
Designs for passenger pods that could travel through airless tubes have been revealed by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Hyperloop is a conceptual transport system in which passenger pods could be fired through vacuum tubes at more than 600mph (1,000km/h). The MIT team came first in a SpaceX competition to design pods that could be tested in a prototype tube. The team will now have the opportunity to build and test its design in the US.
Elon Musk - the entrepreneur behind companies such as Paypal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors - announced his vision for a Hyperloop transport system in August 2013. Although SpaceX is not developing its own commercial Hyperloop, the company says it wants to "accelerate development" of the idea and is building a mile-long test track in California. The winning entries in the company's design competition will now have the opportunity to test them in full-scale tubes over the summer.
Previously:
SpaceX will hold a Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2016
Three Tracks Planned to Test 'Hyperloop' Transportation Idea
Hyperloop, the transportation technology associated with Elon Musk, could be coming to Europe instead of California:
The Hyperloop could easily become the next big thing after bullet trains. It's a tube-based transportation system, in which pressurized passenger pods are accelerated through reduced-pressure tubes, which enables them to develop speeds as high as 760 miles per hour.
[...] While resolving technical issues was just a matter of time, crossing the red-tape sea in the U.S. forced one of the companies competing to make the Hyperloop a reality — Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT — to consider building their futuristic transportation pod in Slovakia, at the center of Europe. Just a few weeks ago, HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn announced that his company has reached an agreement with the Slovakian government. Their plan is to establish the Hyperloop transportation route from Vienna to Bratislava, Slovakia, and from Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. It normally takes about eight hours to travel from Košice, Slovakia, to Vienna to Budapest. But it's only 43 minutes with the Hyperloop.
[...] In an interview with Vice, HTT Chief Operating Officer Bibop G. Gresta said the initial feasibility study showed that the Hyperloop pod could transport up to 10 million people a year [in California]. The biggest challenges, he said, are politics and regulation.
Previously: The Race to Create Elon Musk's Hyperloop Heats Up
Three Tracks Planned to Test 'Hyperloop' Transportation Idea
MIT Design Wins SpaceX Hyperloop Design Competition
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2016, @12:25AM
I know a guy that help Musk lobby CA for the Hyperloop. Cool stuff.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday January 29 2016, @12:38AM
http://iveybusinessreview.ca/blogs/mzawalskyhba2014/2014/01/15/hyperloop-a-100-billion-boondoggle/ [iveybusinessreview.ca]
http://iveybusinessreview.ca/blogs/mzawalskyhba2014/2014/07/16/a-20-dollar-hyperloop-ticket/ [iveybusinessreview.ca]
I doubt hyperloop will be able to conquer California, but it would be neat to see it happen.
I'm glad that Musk is investing a little money to make a working prototype rather than dumping the idea into the public domain and backing off as it first appeared.
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(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday January 29 2016, @02:05AM
I'm glad that Musk is investing a little money to make a working prototype rather than dumping the idea into the public domain and backing off as it first appeared.
i'm not because it seems like a money pit and a waste of time! the other projects have pitfalls but this project has nothing but pitfalls!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday January 29 2016, @02:29AM
Elon Musk is all about pitfalls.
If hyperloop can beat high speed rail, test tracks are a good start towards finding that out and dealing with the pitfalls. And California's money won't be blown on this test track.
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(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday January 29 2016, @02:49AM
the pitfalls i'm talking about are environmental study requirements for installing things anywhere. however, it might be a good idea for places like... Mars.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Friday January 29 2016, @03:13AM
http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/2013/09/03/is-the-hyperloop-the-greenest-track-for-rapid-transit [thomasnet.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2016, @04:06AM
Solar? Batteries? Fuck that expensive shit, use the grid to power the system and Gasoline engines to power the capsules.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gman003 on Friday January 29 2016, @04:58AM
Something tells me that burning hydrocarbons inside a sealed tube full of people is a Bad Idea.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Friday January 29 2016, @10:05AM
We won't know until we try!
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday January 29 2016, @10:47AM
Depends. Are they lawyers?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday January 29 2016, @10:36AM
a relatively small environmental footprint...... The steel tubes ... are set on 20-foot concrete pylons placed every 100 feet. This elevated configuration avoids the environmental disruption involved with underground construction.
Depends on what you mean by "envirionmental disruption". If you only ever walk around looking at your feet (as introspective geeks are reputed to do), you will only notice the hyperloop if you bump into a pylon. However, if you look up sometimes, these things will be eysores of the first order.
avoids the environmental disruption involved with underground construction
Eh ?? Must have taken a lot of nerve to spin that somersault. In the UK here, underground tunnelling is used as a way of minimising disruption, not just constructional, but environmental and all other forms of it as well. The only disruption is around constructional access points which can be miles apart, and such tunnelling is now routine. OTOH, constructing an overground hyperloop, with a pylon every 100 ft, is going to be a lot of disruption during construction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2016, @03:12AM
I'm glad that Musk is investing a little money to make a working prototype rather than dumping the idea into the public domain and backing off as it first appeared.
i'm not because it seems like a money pit and a waste of time! the other projects have pitfalls but this project has nothing but pitfalls!
Exactly. Because public transit is for poor people, not those who can afford mighty ICE vehicles. Those are the future! And with gas being so cheap now, you should go out and buy one with the biggest engine you can find and remove the catalytic converter -- it just makes things worse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday January 29 2016, @01:09AM
see title. s/jetpacks/hyperloop_tubes
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 29 2016, @02:32AM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2016, @07:19AM
Yes, but strapping a jet-powered flying wing to your back and leaping from a perfectly good airplane is safer than any other method of transportation.
There have been zero fatalities thus far.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday January 29 2016, @11:07AM
This thing isn't actually that fast anyway. The Japanese maglev is expected to hit these speeds eventually, and to be honest that's fast enough for most purposes. As fast as a passenger jet, but much more comfortable, quiet, easy to use, cheaper and greener.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2016, @10:34PM
Please justify your use of sic THIS time. "attraction" is spelled correctly. I cannot figure out what word that I might confuse it with because it might be a transcription typo. In fact, I would be highly impressed if you managed to change the word outright with a copy-paste. In fact, when it is an obvious copy and paste, there is absolutely NO reason to insert your own sics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2016, @08:20PM
Ah, there's always a sick/sic guy somewhere.
At least some of the maglev concepts use magnetic repulsion, or perhaps some combination of attraction and repulsion -- is that what you are nit picking about?