Elon Musk's futuristic Hyperloop is getting closer to becoming reality. Another company just joined the party to make dreams of tube travel come true.
Unveiled back in 2013, Hyperloop is a futuristic method of transportation proposed by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. The proposed method of travel would be able to transport people, livestock, merchandise and more through pods inside of tubes, at a blazing-fast speed between distant locations. According to Musk, the Hyperloop could transport people from LA to San Francisco, a distance of 380 miles, in just half an hour. Considering that a plane takes an hour to bring passengers the same distance, the Hyperloop would be a revolutionary means of transport.
Several companies have expressed their interest in the Hyperloop proposal so far, and one company is now offering a glimpse of how it envisions the technology being actualized.
More precisely, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) wants to jump aboard this ambitious project and make Hyperloop a real thing — and it is now showing off some interesting concepts.
HTT is a research company that has no affiliation with Musk or SpaceX. The company started out shortly after Musk first published his Hyperloop proposal in 2013. Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of HTT, also founded the JumpStartFund platform a while back, aiming to help build crowd-sourced projects. Ahlborn used JumpStartFund to build HTT, which has now entered a deal to build a five-mile Hyperloop in California.
A comprehensive whitepaper now offers intriguing Hyperloop renderings from Suprastudio, which is part of the architecture school of UCLA. The whitepaper shows potential routes, designs for capsules and stations, as well as a strategy for deploying the technology.
"The Hyperloop, like the internet or the smartphone ten to fifteen years ago, will represent the coming together of technologies never before employed into mass transportation," notes the whitepaper.
"UCLA's Hyperloop SUPRASTUDIO with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. powered by JumpStartFund in conjunction with engineers and expert consultants are having a meaningful critical discussion to begin the process to impact the way we think about high-speed transit tube systems for the future."
To determine which cities would be most suitable for Hyperloop, Suprastudio ranked 50 metropolitan areas by various factors such as population, jobs, current public transport and freight necessities.
More than 400 investors are reportedly willing to pour money into HTT, with roughly $4.75 million promised so far. HTT would need about $100 million for the test track, and an estimated $16 billion for a track from LA to San Francisco.
Hyperloop still has a long way to go before becoming the next-generation transportation system, but it has great potential — and it's now one step closer to reality.
