All about Musk’s Hyperloop – The futuristic train

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We all agree to the advancement of technology in every field but still, transportation has not yet seen so much advancement. Trains, flights or take any other means of transportation, they are in the commercial field since centuries. We are just enhancing the already existing system and till now, no researched idea had come into the picture. Elon Musk, the mastermind of science, came up with the concept of the Fifth mode of transport and calling it the Hyperloop train. It obviously sounds too technical and much more hypothetical. Hypothetical in the sense, because of its complex details.

Before all this, you may be wondering about what’s Hyperloop?

OUTLINE

Hyperloop is a proposal of a high-speed transportation system till date by the CEO of SpaceX i.e. Elon Musk. Mr. Musk has been looking into this project since 2012. So here is an outline about this futuristic train:

  1. They call it as a cross between a Concorde, a railgun, and an air-hockey table.
  2. It depends on Very High-Speed Transit(VHST) which depict the speed as the blend of attractive levitation prepare and low weight travel tube.
  3. It would use tunnels or pods or capsules to move from place to place.
  4. Basically, for example like a vacuum tube system in which a document is moved from place to place.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HYPERLOOP

Since it’s a hypothetical project till now, we need to know from where and how this idea originated. It’s not only Mr. Musk who got this futuristic train in his head first instead this is the basis of the theory of Maglev in the 1900s. They stated the use of electromagnetics in the field of transportation. The following characteristics are supposed for this project to support in:

  1. Better  immunity to weather,
  2. It would be collision free
  3. Run at ‘twice the speed of a plane
  4. substantially low power consumption
  5. efficient energy storage for 24-hour operations.

hyperloop

The name Hyperloop itself signifies that it would travel in a loop. Musk is always concerned about inventions that won’t cost the nature much. This Hyperloop project is supposed to do no harm to the nearby environment. The vacuum tube and the design mechanism is eco-friendly, the only issue is with its power source. Elon wanted to use Solar panels along the Hyperloop but many researchers rejected this idea. The reason is very genuine that the solar panels can never bring so much of energy to Hyperloop to run well.

Read about its introductory part, now let’s go in detail of the working. New to the mankind, this project doesn’t offer a simple design procedure. There has been a lot of criticism for the design and functional characteristics. It would use a tunnel or pods to facilitate the traveling of passengers in a vacuum tube with no way out to the outside world in between the travel. You would have to sit in the chamber and the pod would take you straight to your destinations. No, it’s not like the bus which would run on roads, the pods are made to flow in an air-filled chamber. The pods would run in support with the air around. That’s where the scientists doubt its functionality. If the pod gets misaligned in any way, it would be a disaster. Even a small flick out of the straight line would damage the whole loop with no chances of rescue. Since it’s a vacuum chamber, it would not support any window or outlook to the outside world, which would be boring as a social view and can be a tempting target for the terrorist too. So it would be unhealthy for the security issues. The speed of hypersonic waves i.e. 500 km/hr may decrease the time and distance in numbers which we never thought of. It’s like traveling from LA to San Francisco in 30 mins!
hyperloop

SOME DECIDING FACTOR

Till now, we have discussed its origin and the way it would work but not the main point that is, how to make this fantastical analogy of Elon Musk, more real and possible. The cost of the tickets had yet a deciding factor. The traditional train would be more costly than the Hyperloop train. Its manufacturing cost is a way to less than traditional trains. But few researchers have found loopholes to in the manufacturing. If the chamber would use pylon, it would harm the environment nearby such industries. As already discussed, the use of solar panels had already been rejected for this project. If you think of traveling in such trains, you would feel less adventurous and more afraid of your life. It’s a closed chamber with no link to outside world, not even the clouds would be there to entertain you, this is for sure dangerous.

In the year 2015, Tesla proposed to build a 1-mile long runway for the pod to test the design till date. The space X had announced hyper loop an open source design. There has been an amazing competition between the top techs no matter what age they are in, to make this hypothetical system a reality. In 2016, MIT hyper loop club developed the first ever low-pressure pod for the Hyperloop. Since then, there have been much more enhancement in the project. From India itself, a team of students and professors hailing from Bits (Pilani) too participated in this new venture. So just wait for a future like this which would turn into reality sooner than the soonest.

Here’s a great book by Elon Musk that you might want to buy!

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