The future is coming sooner than we thought.
With construction scheduled for November, Elon Musk's futuristic, high-speed Hyperloop ground transport system is actually becoming a reality.
The idea for this next generation of transportation was only seeded in 2013. First forwarded by Elon Musk, whom many consider to be a real-life Tony Stark, the Hyperloop dream went into hyperspeed development when Musk open-sourced the project.
Since then, a research company called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) — unaffiliated with Musk or any of his other companies and ventures — is right on track to making science-fiction legit science by building an actual test track for the technology in California.
In London, at an event called Transport To The Future, HTT's chief operation officer Bibop Gresta revealed that the $150 million five mile test track will be built in California's Quay Valley. Smack in the middle of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the full-size prototype track will take 32 months to build.
Upon completion, the Hyperloop will reportedly transport a total of 10 million passengers at a blistering speed of 160 miles per hour. When the transport pods are empty, they'll travel even faster at a full speed of 760 miles per hour.
"It is the closest thing to teletransportation," says Gresta. "We will crush every record on the ground... It will completely change humanity."
The Hyperloop transport system runs solely on solar power so it's self-sufficient. In fact, it is expected to have a surplus of solar, wind and kinetic energy that can be sold back to the grid and make the service profitable. The world's longest billboard is also to be built alongside the track to help finance the project and possibly even make travel free for passengers.
Passengers willing to travel inside computer-controlled capsules encased in straight tubes magnetically levitating on tracks will have to ready themselves to bear g-forces similar to those experienced by Formula One race car drivers. Such an exhilarating experience will cut the travel time between Los Angeles and San Francisco to just 30 minutes. That's fast for a trip covering about 400 miles. For futurists, the future cannot come fast enough.
