Life in Hyperloop

It’s difficult to imagine travelling 400 miles in 30 minutes, but Elon Musk’s Hyperloop might make it possible.

WrittenBy:Satyen Rao
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Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.

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– Charles M Schulz

“Now there’s a man who knows a thing or two about switching to a higher gear”, I thought to myself as I looked up from an article on Elon Musk that I had been reading on my laptop. He had hinted at developing a revolutionary transportation system known as the Hyperloop.

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Could it really be possible to travel at over 600 mph? In India, where we struggle to average a humble 25 mph on our roads, it’s difficult for us to imagine and comprehend the possibility of the Hyperloop – which Elon Musk says will enable passengers to travel 400 miles in 30 minutes. I can almost hear the voice of everyday Indian commuter and part-time sceptic, Mukesh saying, “Oh, very nice! But it’s all in the future, nothing can happen now. Who is Elon Musk, what can he do? I just want to clear this traffic jam, go straight and take right”. Fair enough. Mukesh, the part-time sceptic has a fair point. Why should we take this Hyperloop thing so seriously? What has Mr Musk even done?

Musk’s journey began when he co-founded PayPal in 1998, one of the most popular e-commerce portals in the world. He then founded SpaceX in 2002, which became the world’s first private company to send a rocket on a cargo supply mission to the International Space Station and also managed to cut the costs of launching a rocket by 70%. In 2003, he co-founded Tesla Motors, a company that was set up with the aim of popularising electric vehicles and getting consumers to move away from the gas powered vehicles. These exceptional cars can be found in 37 countries today. As if that wasn’t enough, he also conceptualised the idea for SolarCity, a company that was founded in 2006 with the aim of providing unmatched solar energy to homes, businesses and government organisations. So, now that we’ve got the attention of Mukesh and his friends, I can finally come to the Hyperloop.

The Hyperloop is a transportation system that could enable a vehicle to travel at an average speed of more than 600 mph and get you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. To put things in perspective, the same journey takes an hour and twenty minutes by plane. It can be built at one tenth the cost of a high speed rail project such as the one proposed in California for $70 billion. The passengers sit inside pods (estimated to fit 4 to 6 people in a single pod) that measure around 2 metres in diameter, are then accelerated through a tube and enjoy a smooth, fast ride without any physical hindrance. Another unique feature would be that passengers can hop on to these pods anytime, since they operate cyclically. Just in case you’re imagining something straight out of Star Wars, watch this video published by a company called ET3 (Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies) and stay with me. This could serve as a model around which the Hyperloop is based on.

Musk has given away very little about what the Hyperloop is and how it will work but he did drop some hints. Speaking at the D11 conference held in May this year, Musk described the Hyperloop as “a cross between a concord, a rail gun and an air hockey table”. In a pandodaily interview, he described the characteristics of the Hyperloop – “it would never crash, immune to weather, average speed of twice what an aircraft would do, and if you put solar cells on it, you generate more power than you consume in the system”. These descriptions make Musk sound like a cross between an engineer, a gamer and a riddle book. There were people who enjoyed solving the riddle, though. One of them was John Gardi. His mock-up design turned out to be the closest guess as to how the Hyperloop would work. Musk himself said so.

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Gardi, inspired by this interaction on Twitter went on to write an elaborate piece on Motherboard, touching upon the economics, materials, logistics and construction of the Hyperloop. Here’s his guess at how the Hyperloop might be designed.

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The diagram shows how the pods will be propelled along the length of the tube by accelerated air. According to Powell on The Verge, a huge amount of energy would be required to maintain a steady flow of air travelling at over 600 mph to ensure there isn’t any air drag. Another major factor however is the G forces that passengers may experience travelling at such high speeds. Since G forces depend on acceleration, it’s imperative that there aren’t any turns or dips in altitude. Even the slightest shift in direction can make passengers feel sick. To limit the G forces, the system can have a minimum turning radius of 40 miles. This means the whole path needs to be extremely straight, and it poses further geographic, territorial and political problems as well.

Another theory put forward by Charles Alexander suggests that the pods in the Hyperloop could ride on a resonant acoustic sound wave with a very low frequency. So, next time you think a special song takes you to another place, it might actually do it. It’s hard to imagine being propelled by sound waves. Unless of course, you crank up The Newshour Debate in the tunnel, then we might see some movement. But, this experiment on levitating liquid droplets with acoustics serves as a great visual representation of how it could work.

In spite of all the speculation, there is also a sense of excitement, anticipation and hope. An otherwise ridiculous thought or an impossible idea is made believable thanks to one man and his track record of delivering unimaginable promises. So, let us believe in Elon and the Hyperloop because it’s hard to believe that we will be seeing the last of the ditches, potholes and humps anytime soon.

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