A team of 100 engineers have come together to make Elon Musk's dream of the Hyperloop, a super-fast transportation system that can ferry passengers across long distances faster than an airplane can, a reality.
Twenty-two months ago, Musk released a white paper describing what he deemed to be the transportation of the future, not electric cars but a Hyperloop, a system that can shuttle passengers in capsules speeding through above-ground tubes at 800 miles per hour. At that time, Musk said he was too busy running Tesla and SpaceX to build the revolutionary transport system he was dreaming of.
However, that didn't stop a group of engineers from all over the world from coming together to carry Musk's idea into fruition. Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of JumpStartFund, leads a team of more than 100 engineers and students to bring to fruition Musk's idea of the Hyperloop. Ahlborn proposed the project to SpaceX and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. was born with the hopes of building the first commercially viable Hyperloop system in 10 years.
The team is composed of more than 100 engineers and experts, most of whom have full-time jobs at companies such as NASA, SpaceX, Boeing and Airbus, who had to formally apply to lend their insights and ideas to the project. Part of the team is a group of 25 students from UCLA's SupraStudio design and architecture program who are responsible for the design of the Hyperloop transit system.
Each member of the team is assigned to various working groups depending on his interests and skills. Some are shuffled off to route planning, others to capsule design, and the rest to cost analysis. Work is conducted over email, and there is very little hierarchy. Still informal leaders have naturally emerged, and Ahlborn himself will be making crucial decisions if he will be required to do so.
Ahlborn says the team has made huge progress in three main areas: the route, the station and the capsules. Of course, plenty of work needs to be done and other issues such as government regulation, political struggles and funding need to be addressed later.
"I have almost no doubt that once we are finished, once we know how we are going to build and it makes economical sense, that we will get the funds," Ahlborn says.
So far, Musk's initial estimates of $6 to $10 billion for a stretch of Hyperloop between San Francisco and Los Angeles is on track, the team says. That is a small fraction of the $68 billion California needs to build a high-speed train system. The projects are not comparable, though, since California's new transit system will cover more than a dozen cities, but the technology for the train system is no match for the state-of-the-art Hyperloop technology. And the trains won't be able to shuttle people to their destinations faster than a Boeing 737.
The team has yet to decide a final route, but they are looking at areas where many people fly over short distances or drive several hundred miles to their destination. When Musk released his proposal in 2013, he was criticized for proposing a San Francisco-Los Angeles route, with critics pointing out a lot of barriers including but not limited to the San Francisco Bay, earthquakes and politics. Ahlborn says the team has decided that the best route is one that goes in as straight a line as possible in order to prevent the high-speed twists and turns from turning the Hyperloop into what one critic called a "barf ride."
The team is also thinking of mini Hyperloops that can offer shorter rides to people within cities and metropolitan areas, but that would be tackled in the later stages. For now, the focus is on making the first Hyperloop a reality.
"We would love to see LA to San Francisco, but our primary goal is to build the Hyperloop," Ahlborn says.
The futuristic passenger capsules Musk proposed received some changes. Previously, Musk wanted the doors to open upwards, but the engineers say for the capsules to withstand the pressure of whizzing through a tube at high speeds they will have to be made from heavy material. Instead of Musk's doors, the team suggested a "bubble strategy," one in which passengers step into the capsules, which then enter a shell that is loaded into the tube.
The Hyperloop then travels through one of two stacked tubes; Musk initially suggested that they be placed side by side. Once it reaches the station, the bubble slides out to the side onto the platform and the passenger gets off the capsule. Meanwhile, passengers waiting for their ride will have to go through metal detectors in what Musk envisions as futuristic airports, only passengers will be boarding the Hyperloop and not a plane.
Ahlborn says a lot more has to be done to get the technical part stuff right, but he thinks the technology needed to solve existing problems is available. For instance, the team is still considering how to reduce friction between the tube and the Hyperloop once the tube starts zooming through. Musk proposed air pockets on the rails, but the team says that could lead to a lot of turbulence. It is considering instead magnetic levitation technologies as a replacement.
"People always compare us to building a spaceship," Ahlborn says, noting that the project has many critics skeptical of what the team could come up with. "For me, it's not building a spaceship. We know it's possible."
Ahlborn says he hopes to have the team building the first in what could be a series of many Hyperloop prototypes in 2015.
