Elon Musk is finally building the futuristic high-speed Hyperloop train that he first proposed in 2013 which would propel passengers through tubes from San Francisco to Los Angeles in specialized pods.
SpaceX has announced that it will start building a one-mile test track outside its headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., by June 2016. Musk has also launched an open competition asking entrants to submit designs for the Hyperloop pods.
"In order to accelerate the development of a functional prototype and to encourage student innovation, SpaceX is moving forward with a competition to design and build a half-scale Hyperloop pod," SpaceX said in an official document released June 14.
The document also mentions that SpaceX will build "a sub-scale test track (inner diameter between 4 and 5 feet; length approximately 1 mile)" in parallel with the competition. The plan is for the competition finalists to showcase their models on the test track in June 2016.
Full details of the competition will be released in August but an initial timeline calls for entries by September with a final design to be submitted by Dec. 15. The competition calls for entries from universities or commercial entities but warns that the pods to be tested in the competition must be unmanned. "No human will ride in any pod or other transport device used on the test track during this competition." SpaceX is also accepting proposals for individual "sub systems" or safety features.
From the start, when Musk published his white paper describing the project in August 2013, SpaceX has said that it had no interest in developing a commercial Hyperloop itself, but rather would help produce a prototype. This is reiterated in the competition document. "SpaceX has no affiliation with any commercial Hyperloop companies, including, but not limited to, those frequently referenced by the media," it reads.
One of the companies it is referring to is Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) which is rumored to be building its own 5-mile test track near Interstate 5 in California. Musk's 2013 paper proposed a travel time of 35 minutes between San Francisco and LA, while a paper released by HTT in December 2014 said passengers could expect to travel between the two cities in 30 minutes for just $30. HTT is made up of a group of more than 100 experts from top universities including Stanford and Harvard and companies like Airbus, Boeing, Cisco, NASA, Salesforce, SpaceX, Tesla and Yahoo who contribute their efforts in exchange for future company shares.
The other commercial player is Hyperloop Technologies, which announced its plans in February 2015 and is backed by a host of Silicon Valley and Washington superstars, most with a connection to Musk.
As per the original paper, all the Hyperloop plans consist of a "railway" of pressurized tubes depicted in the video below through which pods carrying people or freight are transported. A partial vacuum (air pressure less than one-sixth of the pressure of Mars' atmosphere) is maintained and motors on the pods create a cushion of air that allow the capsules to float through the tubes at extremely high speeds.
