Hyperloop Could Revolutionize Transportation

Part rocket scientist part entrepreneur Elon Musk sold PayPal for over a billion dollars and then used the money to start up companies such as Tesla Motors and SpaceX.  He’s also apparently an inspiration for Tony Stark’s character in Iron Man, but now Musk has a new project – the Hyperloop. Hyperloop is a high-speed transportation system that, as he describes, is a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and air-hockey table.  It is a pneumatic tube, which means it’s a tube that propels objects, in which commercial or cargo tubes can be zipped to a destination in a highly reduced amount of time.  For example, you can theoretically get from New York to LA in 45 minutes, and from LA to China in 2 hours.  I’d definitely say that’s a solid amount of time saved. The capsules that hold both people and their luggage will be loaded, sort of like a bullet in a gun, into vacuum tubes for their journey.  Something that is causing interest, however, is the cost.  Supposedly the price for building the Hyperloop will be one-tenth of a high-speed rail or one-fourth the cost of a freeway. This sounds like it is an innovative idea and everyone can only hope that Musk has had some sort of breakthrough to allow this endeavor to become reality.  Musk has had so much success in his recent companies Tesla Motors and SpaceX, so when he says he has a new idea people are going to not only listen, but expect to be wowed, and that’s exactly what he has done by announcing these plans. Musk has recently sent out a tweet that states, “I really hate patents unless critical to company survival.  Will publish Hyperloop as open source.”  He also stated, “Will publish Hyperloop alpha design by Aug 12.  Critical feedback for improvements would be much appreciated.”  These tweets make me like Elon Musk.  It seems like his concern isn’t to just make a bunch of money, but to truly revolutionize transportation for the betterment of society. A company in Colorado called ET3 has also expressed interest in this area.  I think this will be good for Musk and will serve as a sort of motivation and competition for him.  He has been asked if he would be willing to work with partners on this idea, and he replied that he is “happy to work with the right partners,” as long as they “share the philosophical goal of breakthrough tech done fast & w/o wasting money on BS.” I think that people need to support Musk because he’s the type of person who has a vision and knows that it will work and doesn’t really see anything else but what the goal is and how to get there.  He’s not going to be distracted by media or anything bringing his ideas down, he just wants to make the designs and get started ASAP.  I guess come August 12^th we will find out just how conceivable this idea really is.   You can read the full article here: http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/16/tech/innovation/elon-musk-tube-transport/index.html?hpt=hp_c3