Musk's Vision: The Hyperloop

Elon Musk made a bunch of money when PayPal sold; and then he created Space X and Tesla Motors.



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.

Google Self-Driving Cars: Technology Advance and Humans

In the not-too-distant future, there will be a fleet of self-driving cars that'll take people to different destinations.



I read an article on TechCrunch that predicted a future: 2023.

The concept that I don't actually have to drive while I'm in my car; maybe I could get more work done; maybe I could sleep, or anything; it's nothing short of amazing. It's absolute awesomeness.



It's not that crazy of an idea, Google Ventures is already an investor, and Uber, which is a car-service. I imagine legislation has been put into place where a human driver doesn't really need to be in the car, with a self-driving car (across locations). You can then use your handy-dandy Uber app, the car shows up, and there's no driver, the car would drive you to wherever you want, you input it. You won't even need to have any unwanted conversation, there's probably Wi-Fi in the car, you click to browse, and it's apparently safer because the technology has advanced so far. So far that the car can drive you to the airport and then drive itself back home, to take your lady to the grocery store.



It's all amazing things, except for the guy that'd normally have driven that car. Looking back, it's kind of history at this point: technology taking place of humans. That guy who'd normally have that job to support his family, no longer has that option.



And it ultimately wouldn't stop at taxi drivers, proportionately all transportation. So, you'd make the obvious jump to truck drivers. Literally, these guys can travel across a country with no sleep.



Basically, these truck companies won't have to pay self-driving trucks overtime (which is how human truck drivers feed their families). At the end of the day, your end result is a business owner who does not have to pay human employees; pay their health insurance; worry about their leave and their schedule; and you have a bunch of people out of their jobs.

Realistically, you (assuming you're the one in charge of the truck company with self-driving trucks) wouldn't be able to fire everyone, but you'd fire pretty much all of your drivers, and then hire a few other people to keep track of trucks.

The way I see it, in the future, affirmative action will no longer be about hiring a specific color or race. It'd definitely be about having a minimum amount of humans working on your force.