By the time you quickly ask yourself such question the proposed Hyperloop would already be a good kilometre away. Cases of neck strain are expected to triple alongside the eventual arrival of the next-generation in high-speed ground transport.
The project is the brainchild of Elon Musk: the co-founder of PayPal who has spent his fortune developing both an electric car company called Tesla Motors and space technology group SpaceX. As the last two endeavours illustrate, Musk is fascinated and continuously active in the development of new methods of transportation. Hyperloop is his most potentially revolutionary project yet.
The idea is straight out of Futurama. Passengers would be transported at speeds of over 1,100 km per hour (between three and four times the maximum operating speed of a Japanese bullet train) inside elevated ‘tubes’ or pods. Musk has suggested that, with some extra financial investment, the scope could be increased to develop larger pods that could transport cars and heavier goods as well as the passengers.
The initial proposal is to link up LA and San Francisco - a 550 km journey that would take around half an hour, a fraction of a typical 5-6 hour driving time on the Interstate. Musk has described the technology "as cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table".
Of course, most people are likely to have an involuntary reluctance of being transported in a metal tube travelling at almost the speed of sound. However, safety is one of Musk’s primary concerns, alongside criteria like speed, sustainability, Earthquake resistance and weather immunity. Musk told Forbes that he believes the experience would be quite a pleasant & comfortable one for passengers, the Hyperloop designed to minimise physical stress. This was mentioned after a reference to the Space Mountain rollercoaster, it should be noted: take from that what you will.
Still at a theoretical and early design stage, the cost is one of the Hyperloop’s most noteworthy features. At an estimated budget of $6 billion (€4.5 billion) for the first ‘loop’, it’s no small investment. However, that’s a mere tenth of the estimate for a proposed high-speed rail system between LA and San Francisco.
As it stands, Hyperloop is some time away from being fully realised. There are certainly going to be many concerns raised: the recent Spain train crash illustrates the horrifying scope of what can happen in high-speed accidents. Short of some Star Trek-esque teleportation technology being developed, however, Hyperloop might well be the fastest and most efficient ground transport system of the near future.
(Image: Tesla Motors)
