Before co-founding Tesla Motors, SpaceX, he was known for creating PayPal – the global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet.
Yesterday The South African inventor and entrepreneur and Chairman/CEO of Tesla Motors shared his idea of the future of transportation – “The Hyperloop” in a blog post. The Hyperloop is an elevated, solar-powered train-in-a-tube that could whisk riders at supersonic speeds up to 900 miles.
In his concept proposal — a 57-page paper full of aerodynamic engineering concepts and economic discussion points, Musk describes the Hyperloop as essentially a solar-powered version of the pneumatic tubes once common in offices and drive-through bank branches. By riding on pressurized air, with a compressor fan at the front of the capsules, the vehicles could accelerate up to 760 mph without the disruptive sonic booms supersonic aircraft produce. And despite the speeds, Musk says the accelerations would be limited to no more than what passengers face today: “It would feel like you were riding in an airplane, like you’re riding in a cushion of air.”
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| Elon Musk |
Elon Says “In this study, the initial route, preliminary design, and logistics of the Hyperloop transportation system have been derived. The system consists of capsules that travel between Los Angeles, California and San Francisco, California. The total trip time is approximately half an hour, with capsules departing as often as every 30 seconds from each terminal and carrying 28people each. This gives a total of 7.4 million people each way that can be transported each year on Hyperloop. The total cost of Hyperloop in this analysis is under $6 billion USD. Amortizing this capital cost over 20 years and adding daily operational costs gives a total of about $20 USD (in current year dollars) plus operating costs per one-way ticket on the passenger Hyperloop.”
But he reiterated that he’s got too much on his plate with both Tesla and Space X. “If it was my top priority it could be done in a few years,” Musk said. “If someone else did it, maybe 3 to 4 years.”
