Hyperloop

A STEP FORWARD

What is a hyperloop?

The hyperloop is a conceptual high-speed transportation system.

Developments in high speed rail have historically been impeded by the difficulties in managing friction and air resistance, both of which become substantial when vehicles approach high speeds. The vactrain concept theoretically eliminates these obstacles by employing magnetically levitating trains in evacuated (airless) or partly evacuated tubes, allowing for speeds of thousands of miles per hour. 

History

In 1812, the British mechanical engineer and inventor George Medhurst wrote a book detailing his idea of transporting passengers and goods through air-tight tubes using air propulsion.

The Crystal Palace pneumatic railway operated in London around 1864 and used large fans, some 22 feet (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.

Opened in 1870, the Beach Pneumatic Transit was a one block-long prototype of an underground tube transport public transit system in New York City. The system worked at near-atmospheric pressure, and the passenger car moved by means of higher-pressure air applied to the back of the car while somewhat lower pressure was maintained on the front of the car.

In the 1910s, vacuum trains were first described by American rocket pioneer Robert Goddard. While the Hyperloop has significant innovations over early proposals for reduced pressure or vacuum-tube transportation apparatus, the work of Goddard "appears to have the greatest overlap with the Hyperloop".^[China was reported to be building a vacuum based 1,000 km/h (600 mph) maglev train in August 2010 according to a laboratory at Jiaotong University. It was expected to cost CN10–20 million (US$2.95 million at the August 2010 exchange rate) more per kilometre than regular high speed rail.^[74] As of April 2016, it has not been built.

Design

The Hyperloop concept operates by sending specially designed "capsules" or "pods" through a continuous steel tube maintained at a partial vacuum. Each capsule floats on a 0.5-to-1.3-millimetre (0.02 to 0.05 in) layer of air provided under pressure to air-caster "skis", similar to how pucks are suspended in an air hockey table, thus avoiding the use of maglev while still allowing for speeds that wheels cannot sustain. Linear induction motors located along the tube would accelerate and decelerate the capsule to the appropriate speed for each section of the tube route. With rolling resistance eliminated and air resistance greatly reduced, the capsules can glide for the bulk of the journey. In the Hyperloop concept, an electrically driven inlet fan and air compressor would be placed at the nose of the capsule to "actively transfer high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel," resolving the problem of air pressure building in front of the vehicle, slowing it down.^[2] A fraction of the air is shunted to the skis for additional pressure, augmenting that gain passively from lift due to their shape.

Routes

A number of routes have been proposed for Hyperloop systems that meet the approximate distance conditions for which a Hyperloop is hypothesized to provide improved transport times .

The notional route sized out in the 2013 alpha-level design document was from the Greater Los Angeles Area to the San Francisco Bay Area. That conceptual system would begin around Sylmar, just south of the Tejon Pass, follow Interstate 5 to the north, and arrive near Hayward on the east side of San Francisco Bay. Several proposed branches were also shown in the design document, including Sacramento, Anaheim, San Diego, and Las Vegas.

European routes have been put forward in January 2016. A Paris to Amsterdam notional route was proposed by Delft Hyperloop. A Warsaw University of Technology team is evaluating potential routes from Cracow to Gdansk across Poland proposed by Hyper Poland.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) is one group that has been exploring routes other than the Los Angeles to San Francisco route. Another company, Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies), has proposed a route from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Observers and analysts have begun to weigh in on some of these potential routes. For example, for the alpha-design notional route, observers have noted that while terminating the Hyperloop route on the fringes of the two major metropolitan areas (Los Angeles and San Francisco) would result in significant cost savings in construction, it would require that passengers traveling to and from Downtown Los Angeles and San Francisco, and any other community beyond Sylmar and Hayward, to transfer to another transportation mode in order to reach their final destination. This would significantly lengthen the total travel time to those destinations. A similar problem already affects present day air travel, where on short routes (like LAX-SFO) the flight time is only a rather small part of door to door travel time. Critics have argued that this would significantly reduce the proposed cost and/or time savings of Hyperloop as compared to the California High-Speed Rail project that will serve downtown stations in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. Passengers travelling financial centre to financial centre are estimated to save just about two hours by taking the hyperloop instead of driving the whole distance.

Others questioned the cost projections for the notional California route. Some transportation engineers argued in 2013 that they found the alpha-level design cost estimates unrealistically low given the scale of construction and reliance on unproven technology. The technological and economic feasibility of the idea is unproven and a subject of significant debate

Cost

Hyperloop will be a cheap source of transportation.It shall Travel From LA To San Francisco In 30 Minutes For Just $20.

Hyperloop One (Previously Hyperloop Technologies)

Hyperloop One announced in February 2015 their plan to develop a Hyperloop route between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. They have organized a board of directors and an engineering team, and have raised more than US$35 million in working capital.

Hyperloop One consists of over 100 engineers. Shervin Pishevar, a venture capitalist with strong connections to Elon Musk is one of the two co-founders. A lead engineer for Musk's Space X, Brogan BamBrogan, is the other co-founder. There are many other connections to Musk throughout Hyperloop One. David Sacks is on the board of directors and he worked under Musk at PayPal. Even though Elon Musk isn’t directly a part of this organization, he is constantly updated.

On May 11, 2016 Hyperloop One conducted the first live trial of Hyperloop technology.

        

Speed

Musk believes the Hyperloop, with giant vacuum-like tubes and an air-bearing suspension system, could ferry riders from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes.

That's a roughly 350-mile trip, meaning the futuristic capsules would be zipping along at almost 700 mph -- faster than most commercial airliners and slightly less than the speed of sound.