Monday 9 May 2016
In August, Silicon Valley darling Elon Musk—CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors—unveiled his concept for the Hyperloop, a high-speed system of 28-person pods that would shoot through low-pressure tubes on air bearings. Musk’s published proposal calls for the Hyperloop to link San Francisco and Los Angeles; pods would blast down the I-5 corridor at 760 mph, reducing the journey from five and a half hours by car to just 35 minutes.
Hypothetical North American Hyperloop network
How It Works
HyperLoop Diagram
Pods speed through low-pressure—but not vacuum—tubes perched on pylons. Typically, as a pod moves through a snugly sized tube, it must push the column of air in front of it. That air would build up until it becomes unmanageably heavy—a constraint known as the Kantrowitz limit. But the Hyperloop design includes a fan at the front of the pod that pulls that air in and redirects it to the bearings, thus overcoming the Kantrowitz limit and simultaneously providing a low-friction suspension system. “He’s probably found something of a systemic sweet spot, which makes it kind of creative and interesting. It’s a physical option that really wasn’t on the table before,” says Jim Moore, a transportation engineer at the University of Southern California. But Moore also thinks Musk has underestimated the cost. “It’s not a compelling enough option to penetrate the market.
Source: http://www.popsci.com/
