Forget High-Speed Rail: Elon Musk Wants to Build Something Far More Awesome

[jimmy olsen]

 800mph? How?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/15/elon_musk_hyperloop_plans_here_s_what_it_might_look_like.html

Forget High-Speed Rail: Elon Musk Wants to Build Something Far More Awesome

By Will Oremus
Posted Monday, July 15, 2013, at 5:54 PM

High-speed rail is so 20th-century. Well, perhaps not in the United States, where we still haven't gotten around to building any true bullet trains. After 30 years of dithering, California is finally working on one that would get people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in a little under two-and-a-half hours, but it could cost on the order of $100 billion and won't be ready until at least 2028.

Enter Tesla and SpaceX visionary Elon Musk with one of the craziest-sounding ideas in transportation history. For a while now Musk has been hinting at an idea he calls the Hyperloop—a ground-based transportation technology that would get people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in under half an hour, for less than one-tenth the cost of building the high-speed rail line. Oh, and this 800-mph system would be self-powered, immune to weather, and would never crash.

What is the Hyperloop? So far Musk hasn't gotten very specific, though he once called it "a cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table." But we'll soon find out more. On Monday, Musk tweeted that he will publish an "alpha design" for the Hyperloop by Aug. 12. Responding to questions on Twitter, he indicated that the plans would be open-source, and that he would consider a partnership with someone who shared his vision. Perhaps the best clue came when he responded to an engineer named John Gardi, who published a diagram of his best guess as to how the Hyperloop might work:



Musk's reply:
         Tinker @John_Gardi

        @elonmusk: Can you give me some basic clues? What diameter of tube so I can start designing stations & throughways? http://twitpic.com/cw4pqb

    Elon Musk        ✔ @elonmusk

    @John_Gardi your guess is the closest I've seen anyone guess so far. Pod diameter probably around 2m
    1:51 AM - 16 Jul 2013

It sounds fanciful, and maybe it is. But Musk is not the only one working on ultra-fast land-based transportation systems. And if anyone can turn an idea like this into reality, it might just be the man who has spent the past decade revolutionizing electric cars and space transport. Don't be surprised if the biggest obstacles to the Hyperloop turn out to be bureaucratic rather than technological. After all, we've known how to build bullet trains for half a century, and look how far that has gotten us. Still, a nation can dream—and as long as we're dreaming, why not dream about something way cooler than what Japan and China are already working on?

[Tonitrus]

I call BS.

Anything that made by humans, that moves, can crash.

[citizen k]

I call BS.

Anything that's made by humans can crash.

FYP

[Viking]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube

this is a really old idea. my personal version is a vaccum tube controlled by radial maglev which provides accelleration. I was just thinking trans oceanic transport so that the full effect of the fantastically high max speed of the system.

[Tonitrus]

I call BS.

Anything that's made by humans can crash.

FYP

I was originally going to keep it that simple, but I didn't want any Timmah loopholes.

[Caliga]

Elon Musk... isn't this guy basically the Peter Molyneux of the transportation world?

[Ideologue]

How the fuck can a train cost $100 billion?

This is why America is doomed.  Market corruption makes public works impossible.

[jimmy olsen]

Elon Musk... isn't this guy basically the Peter Molyneux of the transportation world?

No.

Musk has actually been wildly successful. Space X is the most advanced aerospace company in the world and raking in billions of dollars worth of orders.

[Siege]

This sound awesome.

We'll have fast ground transportation and slow air freight:


The Aeroscraft is the name of a series of cargo-carrying rigid airships planned by the Worldwide Aeros Corporation. The company is seeking funding for its ML868 model 66-ton ship and for its 250-ton ML868. A 500-ton ML86X is also on the drawing board.[1]

A scaled-down prototype called the "Pelican" was completed in January 2013 with funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.[

[Jacob]

Elon Musk... isn't this guy basically the Peter Molyneux of the transportation world?

The Tesla is a pretty sweet ride.

[Eddie Teach]

Elon Musk... isn't this guy basically the Peter Molyneux of the transportation world?

No.

Musk has actually been wildly successful. Space X is the most advanced aerospace company in the world and raking in billions of dollars worth of orders.

What are they selling?

[CountDeMoney]

Musk, an ugly scent 
the wet nature of fucking
that animals do

[Syt]

[jimmy olsen]

Elon Musk... isn't this guy basically the Peter Molyneux of the transportation world?

No.

Musk has actually been wildly successful. Space X is the most advanced aerospace company in the world and raking in billions of dollars worth of orders.

What are they selling?

Rockets. Launch Services. You know, the usual stuff.

Thing is that their rockets cost less and put more orbit than the competition. They have lots of orders from the military, as well as private companies, and even NASA.

[Razgovory]

Musk, an ugly scent 
the wet nature of fucking
that animals do

What are you doing Haikus now?