Elon Musk Says He's Building a Hyperloop Test Track

[SvenSvensonov]

Elon Musk just tweeted that he'll be building a 5-mile Hyperloop test track probably in Texas. Say whaaaaat?!

Looks like the designers and engineers he entrusted his 57-page white sheet to are taking too damn long. The Texas possibility is also pretty certain since Musk made the announcement while visiting The Lone Star state.

The Hyperloop concept is one of the most ambitious transportation ideas of the 21st century, a powerful pneumatic train that could take you from point A to point B way faster than any modern bullet train. What is so exciting about that idea is it could actually work. Only one problem, who is going to build it?

Some startups have taken heart to Musk's "so crazy it just might work" plan, and even Musk said after revealing the plan in 2013 that he would be tempted to build a small demo himself. It looks like he's giving into that temptation.

From Elon Musk Says He's Building a Hyperloop Test Track

@Peter C @AMDR @Nihonjin1051 @C130 @F-22Raptor - Gentleman, welcome to the future!!!

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Hmm my second Jetsons pic of the day...

Sure I'm all for it.

 

[AMDR]

 

[fallstuff]

Elon Musk should stick to making Tesla for people with money.

 

[Aepsilons]

Lol, Jetsons!

 

[TheTruth]

Musk is South African, not American.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Musk is South African, not American.

He's a U.S. citizen.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/20/1...rack-construction-plans-quay-valley-elon-musk

Hyperloop Transportation is about to break ground on its first test track

The race to be the first to test the supersonic transportation system is heating up

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the two Los Angeles-based startups working to make the supersonic transportation system a reality, announced today that it had filed permits in Kings County, California to build a 5-mile test track.

The track will be built around Quay Valley, a proposed 75,000-resident solar-powered community halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Hyperloop Transportation says it will start surveying the land in a couple weeks, with principal construction set to begin in the middle of 2016.

After over two and a half years of research and development our team has reached another important milestone. This will be the world's first passenger-ready Hyperloop system," said Dirk Ahlborn, the company's CEO, in a statement. "Everyone traveling on California's I-5 in 2016 will be able to see our activities from the freeway".

The news comes amid a flurry of Hyperloop activity. Next week, SpaceX will kick off its two-day pod design competition at Texas A&M University, where hundreds of high school and college students will submit their designs in the hopes of winning the $50,000 prize — and a chance to work with SpaceX and Hyperloop Technologies, the other LA-based startup, on making their designs a reality. Ahlborn's Hyperloop Transportation is not sponsoring the competition, but is supporting some of the design teams.

Both Hyperloop companies, as well as SpaceX, are racing to build the world's first working prototype. According to the design popularized by Elon Musk in 2013, a Hyperloop pod containing either passengers or cargo could travel up to 760 mph through an elevated, airless, and frictionless tube between cities. Theoretically, travel between San Francisco and LA could take 30 minutes.

Hyperloop Transportation argues its fundamentally different from Hyperloop Technologies and SpaceX because it operates on a volunteer and crowdsourcing platform. The company says it has talent from NASA, Boeing, Tesla, and SpaceX working among its 480-plus volunteers.

In building its test track, Hyperloop Transportation will test the soil around Quay Valley to determine the best locations for the pylons to support the tube. Once that's finished, the company will map the terrain with drones to mark the corridor, pylon positions, and station location. The mapping is needed to calculate both the horizontal and vertical alignments required as part of the building permit.

Last month, Hyperloop Technologies announced it had acquired 50 acres of land in North Las Vegas on which to construct its own test track.

 

[RoadRunner401]

Elon Musk should stick to making Tesla for people with money.

“True cool is an attitude that is projected from a person who is extremely comfortable in their own skin. Cool people have the ability to forge their own paths, stand apart from the herd, and not give a damn about fitting in. A person who is truly cool is a work of art. And remember, original works of art cost exponentially higher than imitations. Just take a look at the the coolest people in history. They will always be a part of history for being extremely original individuals, not imitations.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/30/10877442/elon-musk-spacex-hyperloop-competition-awards

In the end, Elon Musk couldn't resist showing up to the competition he helped inspire. The billionaire SpaceX CEO made a surprise appearance at the end of the Hyperloop pod design competition at Texas A&M University Saturday, eliciting a rapturous reaction from the thousand-plus audience of high school and college engineers who were there to compete for a chance to test their designs on Musk's personal Hyperloop track later this year.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology's team was awarded the top prize, and will now go on to build an actual pod to race on the under-construction track near SpaceX's Hawthorne, Calif. headquarters. The Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands were the next runners-up. Auburn University won in the category of best overall subsystem. Twenty-two teams in all will go on to test their pods in Hawthorne, although up to 10 other teams could also qualify after further judging in the coming weeks, according to SpaceX.

"The public wants something new"

Dozens of other winners in propulsion, design, levitation, and braking were also announced at the end of the two-day competition, which also featured technology demonstrations like Arx Pax's hover engine, and a speech by US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

The event was meant to generate excitement among engineers and the public for the tube-based, transonic, vacuum transport system popularized by the billionaire Musk in 2013. But it was also meant to serve as a rebuttal to skeptics who dismissed the Hyperloop as too fanciful, impractical, and expensive to exist in the real world.

"The public wants something new," Musk told the attendees. "And you're going to give it to them."


Musk first unveiled plans for "a fifth mode of transportation" in August 2013 in a white paper published on the SpaceX website. Under the plans, the Hyperloop would transport passengers in aluminum pods traveling as fast as 760 mph, mostly following the route of California's I-5. The estimated cost would be $6 billion for the passenger-only model, or $7.5 billion for a larger model capable of transporting freight.

"A fifth mode of transportation"

For almost 30 minutes, Musk took questions from the audience on everything from what inspired him to create the Hyperloop idea (being stuck in LA traffic), what advice he had for the winning teams (lots of dry runs), and what "crazy idea" he is working on next (electric jets — Musk says he thinks he's close to something, but said precious little about how they'd work).

It was an exciting conclusion to the competition, but according to Musk, it won't be the last. The SpaceX executive promised that to host more competitions for the Hyperloop in the future. He said he was impressed by the enthusiasm generated from this weekend's event, and was committed to seeing the Hyperloop become a reality. (Although that doesn't mean backing any of the Hyperloop companies currently in operation, he said. Not yet.)

"I really like the idea that you could live in one city, work in another city, and move fast enough that you could actually do that," he said. "It would free people up."

 

[Oldman1]

Thats pretty awesome to see that kind of transportation. Sadly it be many many years before it is implemented as standard public transportation.