Hyperloop; the 5TH mode of Transportation

“A body at rest will tend to remain at rest, and a body in motion will continue its motion until some external force acts upon it” a statement of Newton’s 1st law of motion. Almost every science student is familiar with it. But in spite of this we see moving bodies stop, though there is no apparent force being applied on them. How? The answer is the invisible forces like gravity, air resistance, friction, and viscosity. This is the reason why our conventional modes of transportation (Airplane, Ships, Train, and road Vehicles) consume too much power to generate enough force to counter these hurdles in one way or other. And this is what design engineers have been working on for centuries to somehow overcome these resistive forces and curtail the air/vehicle contact.

But! What if we can come up with an entirely new mode of transportation that almost completely eliminate the pain of air resistance and friction? Yes Hyperloop it is, a technology which enables small air tight capsules to carry people/cargo through long evacuated tubes, using electric propulsion system. The absence of air makes it possible for the vehicle to travel with a speed 3 times faster than conventional high speed trains. To cope with frictional force, this technology uses Maglev (Magnetic levitation) based railway track. The maglev technology uses magnetic poles to ensure the train does not make any direct contact with the track and thus eliminates the friction force that occurs in traditional railway tracks. This technology has been employed in high speed bullet train systems as well. 

The idea of transportation through evacuated tube is not new rather it goes back to the end of 18th century. The idea to move goods through cast iron pipes using air pressure was proposed by George Medurst in 1799. Later in 1847 he built the first pneumatics railway station to carry passenger cargo. Throughout the 19th century many scientist worked on this technology, but it was mostly used for carrying goods. The idea of integrating maglev subway with pressurized air transport system was introduced by an American rocket scientist Robert Goddard, though it was never built. In 1990 some researchers at MIT also proposed a similar design of moving through an evacuated tube with magnetic track, but remain a theoretical design.

It was 2013 when the star entrepreneur and CEO of SpaceX, Tesla Cars, and Solar City, presented his 57 page white paper on transportation of air tight magnetically levitated pods through long vacuum tubes. He called it the Hyperloop Technology. Elon Musk left it open for the tech industry for commercialization. According to Elon Musk this mode of transportation will be faster, cheaper, safer and more environmental friendly than traditional ones. Virgin Hyperloop One USA, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) USA, TransPod Canada, DGWHyperloop India, and Elon Musk’s newest venture The Boring Company etc. are some of the ventures that are currently working on turning this state of the art technology into a reality. In addition to that countries such as South Korea, China, Slovakia, Abu Dhabi, the Czech Republic, France, Sweden and Indonesia are also aiming to build their own Hyperloop.

To promote research and development in the Hyperloop technology, the fame entrepreneur Elon Musk announced a competition under the umbrella of SpaceX called The Hyperloop Pod Competition to give University students a chance to build functional prototypes based on this technology. The first competition took place in January 2017, followed by another in August of the same year. Now the third edition is scheduled to take place on 22nd July 2018 where the judgement criteria would be speed and self-propelling ability of the model. The winner of the August 2017 competition was a German team WARR which hit over 200 mile per hour. But critics say that this speed was achieved because of the high power miniature electric car and there was no contribution of the Hyperloop technology in it. The model could have achieved the speed even outside the tube.

Just like any disruption, the Hyperloop technology has also been the target of massive criticism and has been declared far from reality. The first criticism is that the cost estimated by Elon Musk is highly unrealistic and the real body is going to cost many time higher than the one estimated. The 1.25 km Hyperloop test track built by SpaceX for the competition, costed about 1m dollars. Based on this, the tube alone from Loss Angelus to San Francisco (600km) would cost about 4.8 Billion dollars. In addition making such a huge vacuum will require the removal of millions of cubic meter air from the tube, which means making a vacuum many times greater than the largest vacuum system (NASA’s vacuum system) ever built. Other potential problems which restricts Hyperloop from becoming a reality include expansion and contraction of the tubes due to temperature changes, and the colossal force exerted on the tube by the atmospheric air due to pressure difference created by the vacuum etc.    

To the critics the Hyperloop may seem surreal, but to the people like Elon Musk and companies like Hyperloop one and other working on this technology, imagination is the only limit. The evolution of technology gives a clear view of how every innovation faced resistance from the people who believed in the status quo. Almost everything that we see around wouldn’t have been there if people had to follow the apparent realities.