Last year, serial entrepreneur and billionaire playboy Elon Musk made headlines again with a 57-page alpha white paper announcing his plans for a high-speed train called Hyperloop that could potentially reach speeds of 1,280 kph.
Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has his plate full with a few other projects, so he opened the project up to corwdsourcing. JumpStartFund, a California-based start up took Musk's challenge to develop and build the Hyperloop train.
To put the speed that the Hyperloop train is trying to reach into perspective, Japan is currently constructing what will be the fastest train in the world from Tokyo to Nagoya and Osaka. It will reach speeds of 500 kph. Currently, the world's fastest train is the Shanghai Maglev in China. It occasionally reaches speeds of 480 kph, but usually cruises at 251 kph.
So this Hyperloop train is over twice as fast as what will be the fastest train known to man, and nearly three times the fastest train in the world. It is also faster than the speed of sound .
How exactly would this high speed train work? Similar to the old pneumatic tubes that were used to move messages using air pressure in banks, newspaper offices and financial firms, the train would combine low air pressure with magnetic acceleration to reach super fast speeds.
Hyperloop, although ambitious, is interesting in structure as it consists of about 100 engineers who, in exchange for stock options, spend their free time coming up with ideas and solving problems. Although it is an atypical company arrangement, they seem to be well-organized, and are split into working groups that each tackle a different aspect of this gargantuan project.
A few of the concerns that the group is trying to tackle now include the route, as Musk originally proposed a path from San Francisco to Los Angeles. This has received a lot of critique as there are earthquake fault lines to contend with, as well as local politics over high-speed rails. Since JumpStartFund's primary goal is building the Hyperloop, location isn't as important to them. One possible place that has been floated is Dubai. It could connect Dubai to Riyadh, a 981 km journey, in 45 minutes.
The goal of the Hyperloop is to keep ticket prices in the $20 - $30 range. How this target will be reached, which remains to be seen, as high cost has been one of the hindrances to other high-speed trains using MagLev technology. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies currently estimates that the train will cost around $20 million to $45 million a mile.
However, don't get your hopes up too fast, Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of JumpStartFund, doesn't expect the technical feasibility report to be completed until late 2015. They predict they are at least ten years away from a commercially viable Hyperloop.
Check out this video below explaining the science behind Hyperloop: