With airplanes ranking among the biggest gas guzzlers in the transportation industry, Elon Musk’s Hyperloop sounds like a potential replacement for such energy inefficient travel--at least between places 1,000 miles apart. Instead of boarding commercial airplanes, people could travel via aluminum pods, whizzing through elevated steel tubes toward cities typically congested on the ground below. If the Hyperloop could be produced as designed, it’d be completely solar-powered and reach past the average speed of an airplane at 800 miles per hour.
Even at this design stage of the Hyperloop there are many valid critiques to consider. For example, at such high speeds, the friction would make figuring out cooling methods that wouldn’t impede the pods themselves essential, and the g-forces, double that of typical roller coasters, could make for an uncomfortable ride. Musk states that disappointment with California’s new “high-speed” rail sparked this idea, but it doesn’t seem like it’ll move beyond the idea stage soon.
As HuffPo reports, since Tesla and SpaceX are so demanding, Musk claims he will likely not make the Hyperloop himself. Although there are advantages to the current lack of Hyperloop production: as it stands, anyone can offer suggestions to improve the system, as the last page of the plans lists two emails where readers can send feedback. Still, with so much remaining to be sussed out--from safety issues to the legal concerns surrounding construction--it seems we’re a long way away from seeing a prototype in action.
via: Huffington Post
image credit: Hyperloop Alpha - Elon Musk
via Green Living - Building, Home, Auto & Lifestyles copy http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EcoGeek/~3/4NvXP-Fpvxo/3889-the-solar-powered-hyperloop-
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