Not too long ago, he revealed the Hyperloop. He described it as the solar-powered, high-speed future of inter-city transportation.
Apparently, one of the reasons he was inspired to do this, was the high-speed train planned to be built between San Francisco and LA.
It's been greatly disputed; many people saying it is highly political. More importantly, it's going to cost seventy billion dollars!!!!!!!
Additionally, many people say that it's too expensive, too slow, and too impractical.
So, in walks in Musk's vision: the Hyperloop, aluminum pods enclosed inside of steel tubes that travel up to seven hundred miles per hour...
...that's too freaking fast!!!
According to Musk, the pods themselves would utilize air bearings to reach such speeds!
The Hyperloop would also utilize a low-friction pod system, in which Musk proposes, 70 pods would blast out every 30 seconds.
Regardless, the trip would take a super boring 30 minutes to complete.
Musk goes on to detail that 840 passengers can make the trip per hour.
His proposal paints a picture where an elevated track would run alongside the I-5 freeway in California, between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The pods themselves would shoot air out, creating space between the pods and the track.
This creates the low-friction environment necessary for subsonic speeds, which will be achieved by an electric motor that would give the pod a boost every 70 miles. Just a little push.
For safety, the space between each pod would be around 5 miles; and of course, it would have emergency brakes. A lot of the train crashes that we read about every now and then, are because new systems have not been integrated.
Musk suggests that the price tag on the Hyperloop system would sit right around six billion dollars, but that's just for the people version. For an extra four billion dollars, the system would be able to ferry cars from LA to San Fran as well.
Paraphrasing, instead of a seventy billion dollar train, Mr. Musk believes he can do this for six billion dollars. Or, for ten billion, if they made the larger Hyperloop that people could drive their cars on. That'd be extra-large (pods) and awesome!!!
No one's stepping up to the plate to make this happen quite yet; and if no one does, Musk says he'll throw the time and money into building a prototype himself.
And, if it does become a reality, and it works, and people don't die in fiery, subsonic disasters, then the world would see these popping up between big cities everywhere. As long as they're no more than 900 miles apart according to Musk...
...any more than that, and it'd be cheaper just to sit your ass at home, and do whatever you want to do.
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