inside Musk's Hyperloop [an infographic]

On 12 Aug 2013, billionaire entrepreneur and inventor Elon Musk (founder of PayPal amongst else) unveiled the Alpha design of the Hyperloop, a high-speed train that promises travel at twice the speed of a commercial aircraft, transporting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 30 minutes. Though Musk has been tight-lipped about the mechanics and design of the new system, plenty of enthusiasts across the web offered up their own guesses as to how this incredible 600 mph super train is supposed to work, adding ofcourse to the whole hype. Check out this infographic prior to the official release.

Elon Musk's vision for a futuristic Hyperloop transportation system concept involves sleek passenger capsules flying within a tube on a cushion of air. Solar panels along the entire length of the tube provide more power than needed to run the system. Capsules travel just under the speed of sound, at 760 mph (1,220 km/h). Passengers could travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes. Streamlined capsules carrying 28 passengers each would depart from the station every few minutes. Passengers ride in pairs, with luggage stored at the front or rear of the capsule. The system is designed to keep accelerations on the passengers below 0.5 g (one-half the acceleration of Earth’s gravity). [1]

In Musk's own words : "When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? Note, I am hedging my statement slightly by saying “one of”. The head of the California high speed rail project called me to complain that it wasn’t the very slowest bullet train nor the very most expensive per mile." Continue reading his rationale and reasoning here.

[1] Ref. http://www.space.com/22347-hyperloop-elon-musk-transportation-technology-inforgraphic.html

[Ref.] Wikipedia page on the Hyperloop : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop

Download the Hyperloop brief (in pdf format) from the location here.