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Hyperloop

Hyperloop is a new form of ground transport currently in development by a number of companies, It could see passengers travelling at over 700 miles an hour in floating pod which races along inside giant low-pressure tubes, either above or below ground.

What makes Hyperloop different?

There are two big differences between Hyperloop and traditional rail. Firstly, the pods carrying passengers travel through tubes or tunnels from which most of the air has been removed to reduce friction. This should allow the pods to travel at up to 750 miles per hour.

Secondly, rather than using wheels like a train or car, the pods are designed to float on air skis, using the same basic idea as an air hockey table, or use magnetic levitation to reduce friction. 

What are the benefits of Hyperloop?

Supporters argue that Hyperloop could be cheaper and faster than train or car travel, and cheaper and less polluting than air travel. They claim that it’s also quicker and cheaper to build than traditional high-speed rail. Hyperloop could therefore be used to take the pressure off gridlocked roads, making travel between cities easier, and potentially unlocking major economic benefits as a result.

When are the first Hyperloops going to be available?

A number of different companies are working to turn the idea into a functioning commercial system.

Hyperloop technology is still in development even though the basic concept has been around for many years. At the moment, the earliest any Hyperloop is likely to be up and running is 2020 but most services are expected to be later, as trials of the technology are still in their early stages.

Where will Hyperloop services run?

It’s still not clear where Hyperloops will actually be established but a number of companies have sketched out routes in the US, Europe, and elsewhere. Potential routes include New York to Washington DC, Pune to Mumbai, Kansas City to St Louis, Bratislava to Brno, Vijaywada and Amaravati, and many more.

What is the history of Hyperloop?Russia taps Hyperloop for domestic transportA proposed project to bring Musk’s Hyperloop to Russia would cost between $12 and $13 billion.

The idea of using low-pressure or vacuum tubes as part of a transport system has a long heritage. The Crystal Palace pneumatic railway used air pressure to push a wagon uphill (and a vacuum to drag it back down) way back in Victorian south London in 1864. Similar systems using pneumatic tubes to send mail and packages between buildings have been in use since the late nineteenth century, and can still be seen in supermarkets and banks to move money around today.

One clear predecessor of the Hyperloop is the ‘vactrain’ concept developed by Robert Goddard early in the twentieth century; since then, many similar ideas have been proposed without much success.

However, it was entrepreneur Elon Musk who really reignited interest in the concept with his ‘Hyperloop Alpha’ paper in August 2013, which set out how a modern system would work — and how much it would cost.

What is Hyperloop Alpha?

In his Hyperloop Alpha paper, Musk set out the case for a service running between Los Angeles and San

Francisco, which would be cheaper and faster than a proposed high-speed rail link. He argued that his Hyperloop could be safer, faster, more affordable, weather-proof, self-powering — and less disruptive to people living along the route.

Musk said that a Hyperloop service could be the answer to travel between cities less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart; beyond that, supersonic air travel would be more efficient, he said.

“Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome (someone please do this), the only option for super fast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that contains a special environment,” Musk wrote. Nobody has got very far with the teleportation idea, alas, but a number of companies have seized at the potential of Hyperloop.

How does a Hyperloop tube work?

The basic idea of Hyperloop as envisioned by Musk is that the passenger pods or capsules travel through a tube, either above or below ground. To reduce friction, most — but not all — of the air is removed from the tubes by pumps.

Overcoming air resistance is one of the biggest uses of energy in high speed travel. Airliners climb to high altitudes to travel through less dense air; in order to create a similar effect at ground level, Hyperloop encloses the capsules in a reduced-pressure tube, effectively allowing the trains to travel at airplane speeds while still on the ground.

In Musk’s model, the pressure of the air inside the Hyperloop tube is about one-sixth the pressure of the atmosphere on Mars (a notable comparison as Mars is another of Musk’s interests). This means an operating pressure of 100 pascals, which reduces the drag force of the air by 1,000 times relative to sea level conditions, and would be equivalent to flying above 150,000 feet.

How do Hyperloop capsules work?

The Hyperloop capsules in Musk’s model float above the tube’s surface on a set of 28 air-bearing skis, similar to the way that the puck floats just above the table on an air hockey game. One major difference is that it is the pod, not the track, that generates the air cushion in order to keep the tube as simple and cheap as possible. Other versions of Hyperloop use magnetic levitation rather than air skis to keep the passenger pods above the tracks.

The pod would get its initial velocity from an external linear electric motor, which would accelerate it to ‘high subsonic velocity’ and then give it a boost every 70 miles or so; in between, the pod would coast along in near vacuum. Each capsule could carry 28 passengers (other versions aim to carry up to 40) plus some luggage; another version of the pods could carry cargo and vehicles. Pods would depart every two minutes (or every 30 seconds at peak usage).

How would Hyperloop be powered?Elon Musk’s Hyperloop: Here’s the Dutch team with designs on supersonic train conceptEngineers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands are taking tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Hyperloop travel idea very seriously.

The pods will get their velocity from an external linear electric motor — effectively a round induction motor (like the one in the Tesla Model S) rolled flat. Under Musk’s model, the Hyperloop would be powered by solar panels placed on the top of the tube which would allow the system to generate more energy than it needs to run.

How is Hyperloop different from high-speed trains?

Supporters argue that Hyperloop is significantly better than high-speed rail. It is lower cost and more energy efficient because, among other things, the track doesn’t need to provide power to the pods continuously and, because the pods can leave every 30 seconds, it’s more like an on-demand service. It’s also potentially two or three times faster than even high-speed rail (and ten times the speed of regular rail services).

How much would a Hyperloop cost to build?

For the LA to San Francisco Hyperloop that Musk envisaged, he came up with a price tag of under $6bn. Musk envisioned an LA to San Francisco journey time of half an hour with pod departures every 30 seconds, each carrying 28 passengers.

Spreading the capital cost over 20 years and adding in operational costs, Musk came up with the figure of $20 plus operating costs for a one-way ticket on the passenger Hyperloop.

Most of the cost of the system lies in building the tube network: the overall cost of the tube, pillars, vacuum pumps, and stations was calculated at just over $4bn for the passenger version of Hyperloop ($7bn for a slightly larger version that could also take freight). The cost of the capsules was put at around $1.35m a piece; with 40 needed for the service, the cost of these is around $54m (or $70m for a mix of passenger and cargo capsules). That’s less than 9% of the cost of the proposed passenger-only high-speed rail system.

What will it feel like to travel in a Hyperloop?

Critics of Hyperloop have warned that travelling in the tube might be an uncomfortable experience, due to nausea-inducing acceleration, plus lateral G-force on bends in the route. However, Virgin Hyperloop One says that a journey via Hyperloop will feel about the same as riding in an elevator or a passenger plane.

“Although Hyperloop will be fast, the systems we are building will accelerate with the same tolerable G-forces as that of taking off in a Boeing 747,” it said. Acceleration and deceleration will be gradual, it added, with no G-forces and turbulence.

Travelling in a concrete pipe in a windowless pod means there isn’t going to be much to look at; Musk’s original vision said that “beautiful landscape will be displayed in the cabin” and each passenger will have access their own personal entertainment system.

How much will Hyperloop tickets cost?

Musk’s LA to San Francisco version offered tickets at just $20 but Virgin Hyperloop One is more vague on its plans: “Difficult to say as it will depend greatly on the route, but the goal is to make it affordable for everyone,” it said, while Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) said it expects “a profitable system with low ticket price projections”.

Will Hyperloop be a success?

That’s the huge, multibillion dollar — and, as yet, unanswered — question around Hyperloop. The concept has been around for a long time, but until now the technology has been lacking. This time around, it’s possible that the technology may have just caught up with the concept. 

There are well-funded companies racing to be the first to deliver a working service but, despite their optimistic timescales, these projects are still very much in the pilot and experimental stages. Going from short test routes to hundreds of kilometres of track is a big jump that none of these firms has made yet. 

If the technology is still in development, that’s also very true of the business models to support it. The success of Hyperloop will vary depending on the destinations, local economics, and geography. Trying to build a new line overland across England, for example, can prove an expensive and complicated business which can take many years (as the ongoing HS2 controversy has shown).  In other countries where land is cheaper or where routes can travel through less populated areas, it may be easier to get services up and running faster.  

Capacity is another issue. It’s not clear that Hyperloop can do a better job of moving a large number of people than other mass transit options. Critics argue that lots of pods will be required to achieve the same passenger numbers as more traditional rail, which uses much bigger carriages. And there are many engineering hurdles to overcome, like building the tubes strong enough to deal with the stresses of carrying the high-speed pods, and finding energy- and cost-efficient ways to keep them operating at low pressure. 

Moving from a successful test to a full commercial deployment is a big jump, and passenger trials are still to come. Assuming that consumers are happy being zoomed around in these tubes, finding the right price for the service will be vital, too.

Right now Hyperloop is at an experimental stage, even if the companies involved are very keen to talk about its potential.

Can Hyperloop make a profit?Why hyperloop is poised to transform commutes, commerce, and communitiesElon Musk may have popularized the concept, but multiple teams are racing to deploy hyperloop routes at key spots across the globe.

The companies building Hyperloop services argue that they are significantly cheaper to build than high-speed rail services. Musk’s Hyperloop Alpha paper claimed his LA to San Francisco route could be built for one-tenth of the price of a high-speed rail alternative. Other companies have said their services could be one-third to half the price of rail services and much faster. Being cheaper to build should mean these services can become profitable quickly. 

However, there are plenty of engineering challenges to be tackled which could push the costs up, and how these services will be funded in the first place is not clear; many of the feasibility studies under way are looking at how to finance them, likely through a combination of public and private investment.

How is Hyperloop like Linux?

Rather than keeping the Hyperloop to himself, Musk threw the idea open to anyone who wanted to develop it, comparing it to the Linux operating system: an open-source design built by a community of developers in order to bring it from concept to reality.

Indeed, in his Hyperloop Alpha paper, Musk noted that a number of areas still remained to be resolved including the control mechanism for Hyperloop capsules; station designs with loading and unloading of both passenger and passenger-plus-vehicle versions of the Hyperloop capsules; comparisons of Hyperloop with more conventional magnetic levitation systems; and testing to demonstrate the physics of Hyperloop.

Who is building Hyperloop services?

Despite doing much to lay the groundwork for Hyperloop services, Musk initially said he was too busy to develop his own service. There are now a number of companies working to turn the idea into reality, including startups and others that have been working on the idea for some time already. Among them are Virgin Hyperloop One, HTT, TransPod, Arrivo, and others. Each is developing a slightly different set of technologies, but the fundamental underlying idea remains the same.

Is Elon Musk building a Hyperloop service?

Despite saying he was too busy, it looks like Musk remains intrigued by the idea of Hyperloop: last year he said that he had received ‘verbal approval’ for a New York to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington DC Hyperloop, which would cut the New York to Washington DC travel time to just 29 minutes. “Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly,” he added.