Future imaginings
Welcome
to the future.
A full-scale version of the Hyperloop concept is to be built in central California next year, using magnets and fans to push passenger pods through five miles of depressurised tubes at speeds of up to 200 mph.
This model will be slower and shorter than the full-sized system described by Mr Musk but will be used to test the concept and its safety.
Elon Musk set down
the idea a while back that he then put out to the public and private to work on.
In Musk’s design, Hyperloop pods would be mounted on top of thin skis, and air would be the key to the whole system. Air would be pumped into the skis in order to make a kind of “air cushion.” This would allow the system to travel without any friction. An electric turbo compressor would be responsible for taking air from the front and routing it to the skis. There would also be “reboosting motors” along the route, which would keep the pod moving at just below the speed of sound (which is 761 mph/1,225 kmh).
You can think of it as similar to how a puck works on an air hockey table.
Entrepreneurs took up the challenge from Musk and:
The result is Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a company set up by Mr Ahlborn and his crowd-funded online incubator JumpStartFund.
They have established a network of almost 200 scientists and engineers across the US working to refine and develop the idea.
The test track will be built in Quay Valley, central California. Ever heard of Quay Valley?
Gizmodo put together a very interesting piece on this testing town:
Oddly enough, the first test of Elon Musk's open source design may be built in a planned village that looks more like a vision of 1950s suburbia. It's called Quay Valley, and it's a "21st century model town" planned on a 7,500-acre piece of empty land between LA and San Francisco. It's the place where Hyperloop Transportation Technologies—the group of engineers who set out to build a Hyperloop last year—has chosen to build a $100 million mockup of the project, eventually to run between the two cities.
"The air is cleaner, the water is purer, the people are healthier, life is more abundant and residents are enriched by the culture," says Quay Valley's sale material [PDF]. There will be tree-lined streets, organic farms, even a village green. There will be three themed resort hotels (the project is advised by two former Disney execs) and several million square feet of boutique retail and commercial space. It will sit directly alongside Interstate 5, the freeway that runs between San Francisco and LA, and be populated by long-distance commuters from each city. It will be a solar town where no homeowner ever pays an electricity bill.
It's an interesting piece about the development of this testing town. You can also read about Quay Valley's businessman creator, Quay Hays,
here.
Development of the Hyperloop testing track is slated for 2016. It can't come soon enough!