Companies and students are looking for ways to move people between cities by launching them through giant pipes. Sounds weird? Maybe. But it's not that bad. Because one of the most famous and talented entrepreneurs of our time proposed this idea, Elon Musk, the one who first landed the rocket (returned from space) on solid ground safe and sound; creator of SpaceX and Tesla. The future of ultra-fast tube travel is being decided in this room on the third floor of MIT's Edgerton Center, where a group of graduate students sit at their computers.
They are doing calculations and simulations to design a levitation capsule that will transport people at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour. Chris Merian, Chief Engineer, holds in his hand a model of their concept, which won first place in the initial round of a groundbreaking global competition.
Now MIT students need to build it. They plan to start next month. This summer they will test their magnetic, bobsled-like prototype in the Hyperloop Pod Competition finals hosted by SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company that encourages teams to make a pod.
Good news: humans will not take part in trials.
What at first seemed like an idea of Musk - the very visionary who dreams of colonizing Mars - was sucked out of his thumb - has found ground in two and a half years since he proposed this "fifth mode of transportation." Then he had a dream: to make it possible to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in half an hour.
“I’m beginning to suspect this is really going to happen … Obviously, people and the world want something new,” Musk said at the end of January at a competition weekend held at Texas A&M University. He told the students, "The work you guys are doing is going to blow people's minds."
“We're actually building it,” says Rob Lloyd, CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, one of at least two companies planning to build their own versions of tubular travel. By the end of the year, he plans to set up a full-scale, 3-kilometer-long demonstration site near Las Vegas.
Promotional video:
“It's a viable system,” says John Mayo, project manager for the Massachusetts team at Hyperloop, although admits he was skeptical from the start. He expects some sort of "hyperloop" - for cargo or passengers - to appear one day. And he thinks engineers can figure out how to make it work. The real issue, however, is cost: can the pipe be built cheaply enough to get government approval?
Why is Hyperloop needed?
“I am stuck in Los Angeles traffic. I was an hour late and thought, man, there must be a way to deal with this,”Musk said at a surprise appearance at Hyperloop Design Week. Students, who first tweeted the hashtag #whereisElon, hailed the 44-year-old entrepreneur as a rock star.
Musk, not a boy, but a billionaire husband in a black leather jacket, told them that he accidentally mentioned the idea in a conversation, but then felt a responsibility to provide it with details. Therefore, in August 2013, his 58-page white paper was published on the SpaceX website. He says he didn't expect the idea to go viral.
But she flew apart. He proposed something unheard of: a solar-powered system that delivers capsules ("pods") with passengers on a kind of air cushion through pipes at the speed of sound. He described Hyperloop as “a cross between Concorde, railgun and air hockey table,” and said the system could become the “fifth mode” of transportation - after airplanes, trains, ships and cars.
Musk said the proposed California high-speed train, designed to go up to 220 mph and travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours, was too slow. Its alternative can make the 640-kilometer journey in half an hour. Musk estimates that the cost of the alternative varies between $ 6 billion and $ 10 billion - a trifle compared to a $ 60 billion high-speed train.
"You could live in one city and work in another … that gives people more freedom," Musk told students. The rest agreed with him, and after a year at least two companies decided to make Musk's vision a reality.
“The definition of a city is changing,” says Lloyd, a former Cisco executive who now heads Hyperloop Technologies, and traveling through a pipe at the speed of sound could shorten the time it takes to get to work. The California startup has attracted notable talent including Brogan Bambrogan, a former SpaceX engineer; Jim Messina, head of Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign; David Sachs, who previously worked with Musk at PayPal, and Sherwin Pishevar, the Uber investor who gave Musk the idea to bring the Hyperloop idea to the public.
“We've definitely gone further than the rest,” says Lloyd of the commercialized racetrack for tube racing. At Apex Industrial Park in Nevada, his company has begun construction of an open air engine and will begin construction of the walkway and testing the system this spring.
“When people visit us here, they say, oh, epte, it's begun,” Lloyd says. By the end of the year, after a full-scale demonstration, his company plans to select the top three projects and begin construction in 2017 or 2018. "There is interest all over the world." Lloyd especially notes the interest of Europe and Russia. In ports, for example, there is huge potential for short-term implementation of the movement of large containers.
Another entrepreneur, Dirk Ahlborn, said last year that Hyperloop Transportation Technologies will begin building a five-mile test site this year in California along Interstate-5. HTT is a network of experts who work at universities and companies like Boeing and SpaceX, and in their spare time work on a project in exchange for future profits.
Its version uses magnets and propellers to push aerodynamic aluminum capsules through pressurized tubes. The steel tubes are covered with solar panels and are equipped with batteries to store energy and use it later at night or in cloudy weather.
Ahlborn says the Hyperloop is cheaper than a train because its pylons line up parallel to existing highways, eliminating the need for rail tracks and the purchase of additional land. Also, this system can work regardless of weather conditions or natural disasters.
Of course, there are many skeptics who question the merits of Hyperloop: Will the pylons be able to withstand earthquakes? Will solar panels be able to generate enough energy? Will passengers be able to cope with the nausea when the capsules start to move, brake, turn or fly up?
SpaceX challenge
Musk says he is not yet encouraging a separate company or building his own Hyperloop system, but wants to push the idea forward. So last summer, SpaceX joined the crowd and promised to build a mile-long test site near its headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Students from all over the world are participating in this epic event. More than 1000 students attended the design weekend. They represented over 120 teams from 20 countries including India, USA, China, South Africa and Germany.
“One of the advantages of such a competition is that everyone wins in something, because everyone involved creates the future,” said one of the meeting participants.
Groups of students demonstrated various ways to make their capsules float. Some used air bearings to allow the washers to slide over the air hockey table, others used magnets. Musk chose the latter option.
“It's like a fridge magnet. It hangs endlessly, Mayo says, noting that the magnets at the bottom of his team's capsule are pointing towards the aluminum track. "The higher the speed, the better it works." The capsule levitates with less resistance at higher speeds. To break away, he says, the capsule must travel at a minimum of 40 km / h and accelerate to 400 km / h on SpaceX's one-kilometer test track. Given the short track, the capsule has a “fail safe” hydraulic braking system.
Mayo says he was a little surprised that the MIT team won, as he focused almost exclusively on engineering - not looks. Its virtual design did not even include footprints, although they certainly will in the final version.
Other teams that were highly rated by SpaceX, in descending order, were Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the University of Wisconsin, Virginia Tech and the University of California, Irvine. Another 25 teams will compete this summer at the final test site, although SpaceX has not set a date yet.
“The knowledge gained here will be open to everyone,” SpaceX says on its website. Musk told the students that he expects more Hyperloop competitions in the future.
MIT students, like other teams, attract investors and collect donations, which they can use to build their capsule and test site. They plan to raise about $ 100,000 to meet their needs.
“None of us expected to be working on this,” says Mayo, who plans to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after graduating from graduate school in the spring. "This is a great opportunity to learn and possibly change the future of transportation."