A few years ago, everything was just a vision of Elon Musk. Many thought that the Hyperloop dream was too far-fetched, but this Los Angeles based company has proved otherwise.
The race for the Hyperloop One has begun. Among the 35 finalist teams that have been chosen for this global challenge, the team from Los Angeles made the biggest leap. Just recently, the team tested its pod for the first time. The 28 feet long aluminum and carbon fiber pod had successfully hit 192 mph in about 5 seconds. Using an an electric propulsion system, it can produce more than 3,000 horsepower. All of this was made possible using magnetic levitation, the same system used by high-speed trains in Japan.
Mag-Lev technology reduces friction and the energy needed for the trains to achieve near-supersonic speeds. The team also pumped out all the air possible out of the tube to reduce air pressure, something you’d experience at an altitude of 200,000 feet.
“This is the dawn of the age of commercialization for the hyperloop,” says Shervin Pishevar, Hyperloop One’s executive chairman and cofounder.
However, there are still momentous developments to be added before the train system can be used for transportation. The biggest challenge is to make it practical. The team is yet to unearth the ways to reduce the Hyperloop costs. The system must be cheap enough that customers would choose it over air-travel or high speed rails.
Changing the world in 5 years
One of the significant goals of Hyperloop is to bring three routes into production within five years. By this time, the team must learn how to transport people or cargo without affecting the near-vacuum state. The team must as well be able to connect with public agencies and players who will help them build the stations.
If ever Hyperloop One successfully targets its goals over 5 years, it could spark the wick towards Mark Ovenden’s World Metro Map. The map, designed in 2003, is a theory of what a global underground system could look like. The concept proposes that cities in different parts of the world would have an operational metro system, which connects one nation to another. The global underground system must have supersonic trains with speeds of at least 750 mph. This concept says that Europe-Asia trips will be possible in a matter of hours.
Concepts of World Metro Map and Hyperloop One were once presumed as silly. Many people thought it’s impossible. However, people who believed that everything is possible, made the impossible happen. In just a couple of years, such insane dreams were proven logical and achievable. Perhaps, it’s true that people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, really are just geniuses who worked on their dreams.