There is a new method of getting from place to place that could potentially change the world of transportation. On September 18, 2013 Elon Musk and his team announced this technology called the Hyperloop. The Hyperloop is a new innovative form of transportation that has many positives, and negatives to it, yet can still affect most of the world in big ways. Hyperloop is a pod inside of a low pressure, vacuum tight sealed tube moving on electromagnetic suspension to reach max speed.
One of the various problems with this is a pressure build up. Basically, when a pod is too close to the wall inside, it starts to push and a build up pressure, like a syringe, and when that happens you would have to go very slow, or your pod would begin to slow down at an accelerating rate. In order to fix this, Elon Musk thought up of a battery powered electric compressor fan to pump air to the back and release pressure. Bibop Gresta says this about the hyperloop, “ This system, which only uses solar panels, can produce 30% more energy than the technology will consume.” This is a very important component to the Hyperloop. Because of the solar panels, the hyperloop runs off of a renewable resource, and becomes ecosystem friendly, which gives it the upper hand when comes to both trains and cars. Trains would normally pump astonishing amounts of smoke into the air, and the collective amount of exhaust that comes from cars from all over, would normally cause most of the pollution in societies today.
If the Hyperloop was to become a big, worldwide method of transportation, we can save a lot of wildlife and even human lives that suffer from cancer that comes from all of the pollution. Not only would the solar panels save lives, but they would also provide more than enough power to the pod, like Gresta said: the solar panels can produce 30 % more power than the tech will use, which is very useful in case of emergencies . Having the 30 percent extra power the Hyperloop might be able to solve the problem, or even prevent the problem from happening quicker than it would normally take. Also it almost assures that the Hyperloop really should never run out of power. If something does happen, the pod can just use the excess juice left over in order to bring the passengers to the closest station, so the Hyperloop can be fixed and the passengers safe. Because of the fact that the solar panels take solar energy, which is a renewable resource, they won’t have to pay money for the materials to keep the pods moving, unlike current methods of transportation.
For example, trains require expensive charcoal, or a combustion engine car or plane that needs gasoline or diesel to be able to go. A hyperloop would not be in need of such things, for its power is free, making it cheaper in the end game. There is even the fact that the sun is always going to be there so long as we are still on earth, alive. Making it so that the Hyperloop will never be a machine that is running out of the resource to power it, such as automotives that will run out of gasoline in a couple of years.
Bibop Gresta also believes that the Hyperloops profitability could be really good. The solar panels that provide 30 percent more energy are considered very profitable because down the line, the panels will produce more energy, and the cost will drop. Bibop says this about the panels on the Hyperloop, “there’s a breaking point where the production of energy could actually subsidise the entire development. It’s amazing to think of a future where the infrastructure doesn’t cost anything.” Proving that the profit from the panels is at an almost unbelievable height. Also, because of the fact that the pods won’t have windows, Bibop says that you could put HD screens in there with videos of outside, so it seems like a window, or there would be other places to look at like Paris or New York, and request that passengers pay a small fee order to use them, (kind of like watching a movie on a high class plane ride). By doing this, you basically ensure that you will get money. What person wants to travel the whole ride without anything to entertain themselves? And if they were to keep the price for the screens low, than people will pay for it for sure, without even questioning it. Not only do you get money from people paying for outside, but you also don’t have to pay when windows break because when windows do break you have to pay someone a lot of money to replace and/or fix the broken window, now you do not have to worry about that happening.
A problem with the Hyperloop concept is finding the money to pay for it. The hyperloop is a good idea and it is very possible to make the technology to get to work, probably the most threatening problem is finding the money to build it. Sure Elon Musk is a millionaire, but he doesn’t have enough money to make the concept of Hyperloop come to full, complete fruition. To make this dream come to reality, it would approximately cost 11.5 million per mile of tubing/track. (Imagine from Houston to Dallas). That is approximately 239.1 miles, so it would cost about 2 billion 749 million dollars for a 25 minute long ride. If we’re going to make the hyperloop a main form of transport, there is going to have to be a lot of pods and tubes. And if there is a lot of pods and tubes, there is going to have to be hundreds of billions of dollars spent on making them. You would have to be one of the richest people on the planet to pay for something like this.
According to Forbes Elon Musk has already invested about 50 million on just tests, and they have only got a couple of miles built. It’s just like any plan or idea though. If you want to make something, you can build and think and even test all you want, but if you don’t have enough money, than all of those thoughts and tests were for nothing because you still can’t pay to actually make, or patent anything. Though it is possible to get a loan, no other company or person would be willing to just had over that much money. Even if they were to get Bill Gates to give them a loan. I seriously doubt that he would be willing to give them that amount if money and be expected to get all of those billions of dollars back. Ryan Bradley writes this about the costs of hyperloop “Calculating the economic payoff of a working Hyperloop is very hard to do, especially before raising the piles and piles of cash necessary to build it.” He is saying that finding how much money the company will make off of the hyperloop is pretty difficult and since they do not have the money to even pay for it they cannot clearly determine how much money they need to make off of the hyperloop to get the money spent back, therefore making it almost impossibly difficult to find out just how much they will need to make their money back.
Though it is very expensive to build, some people believe that if the engineers, companies, and inventors pair up with the government it can become a reality. Not only is the government already extremely rich, but they also can give most of the tax payments to funding this project so that it can stop being just a project. If you were to think about it, it really is the only possible way. America collects 4.1 trillion in just one year, just give them a quarter of that, and they should be able to complete the hyperloop. Why would the government even do that you ask? Well, as repayment the hyperloop can serve as and become America’s main form of transportation.
Which brings me to my next topic. What would happen to the world of transportation? The world of transportation is fairly big, you have cars, trucks, boats, planes, and so forth. The hyperloop would probably get rid of all of those things. I am able to go from my house to my grandparents in about 25 minutes by car, while the hyperloop will be able to take me from my house to Dallas in the same timeframe. What would be the point of driving cars anymore? Maybe they won’t have stops for that short of a distance, but maybe they will, and even if they didn’t, you would still most likely get the feeling that cars are useless, and irrelevant now.
Then some inventors would start getting ideas inspired by hyperloop to go a short distance, or make short distance hyperloops, just something that will get rid of the problem of having to use a slow car. If they were to do that, then what would happen to cars? Would they rust up in people’s driveway and just sit there? Would they all be sent to the chop shop? Would they be recycled into parts to build more hyperloops, or would it be, a little bit of it all? I’d say probably all of it, but regardless it would be a dramatic change in transportation if any of these happened. Now begs the questions, what would happen to boats and planes? Boats would most likely not change at all because most of them are not used just as transportations people usually use them for things like fishing or having fun while on cruise ships. Planes on the other hand would have changed a lot. All of the multiple airports found in america would become very scarce. You would only have a couple of airports because there is no need to go from state to state on a plane when you can go by pod. Planes take slightly longer, the distances are too long, and you have to plan and buy expensive tickets.
On top of that, the estimated price to ride a hyperloop would be $20, so why ride a expensive hundred dollar plane, when you can pay just twenty dollars to go the same distance? Even if you are coming from another country, you can use a plane to get here, but once you arrive here you can just take a hyperloop to wherever you want, so even though we would have a couple of airports, there really would only be a need of about four in all of America. Then what would happen those huge pieces of machinery? Would the presidents still travel in planes or would they be safer in a hyperloop pod? This is what I mean when I said that the hyperloop would change the world of transportation, and honestly, I believe it may change the world as a whole as well. If it was a technology used in all countries, people would be getting from place to place very fast, so it might get rid of the problem of terrorists on planes, or it might open up multiple opportunities so that we can change the world. As you can see the negatives and positives that come with the hyperloop concept, but in the end the hyperloop without a doubt, would change the world of transportation.
There are also problems with the world that the hyperloop would stop, prevent, or change. Some of the problems that the hyperloop effects, are the concern of every single country, others are only the concern of America, and some are even more of a concern to a single state. For example, the loss and dwindling of fossil fuel resources. Because fossil fuels are used all over the world, it is a resource that all countries, depend on. Once there are no fossil fuels, there are no more viable, and dependable means of transportation, thus greatly diminishing the “said” countries economy monumentally, and changing a working person’s lifestyle.
This produces a low productivity rate out of all countries, and completely slows the process of technological development, or any development. (In fact, we might be set back a couple of steps). In the situation where there is one country that runs completely out of fossil fuels first, that “said” country, will have to by oil and other products from a different country for a much higher price. Not only does this cost the government directly, but it also raises in cost for the citizens. The gas prices would become unreasonably high and the price for coal would be very hard to pay for. The money that the government pays, plus the money that each citizen pays, is a major blow to our country’s economy. The hyperloop would fix this problem and the others before just by being a reliable, cheap, efficient, fast, and electrical form of transportation that we could very well use on our everyday lives. Instead of having to rely on a gas powered automobile, that is a 100 mph killing machine, responsible for the deaths of most teen drivers.
This is not the only worldwide problem that the hyperloop relieves, but it also solves the problem of pollution. As long as the hyperloop becomes a fully accepted form transportation, it should excuse this problem fairly easily. As you may or may not know, one of the main causes of global warming is CO2 emissions, and most of that CO2 comes from automobiles and other gas powered machinery. The CO2 goes into the atmosphere and creates a heat trapping dome around the earth. Pollution is a well known, and fairly feared thing, but nobody fears it enough to do anything about it. We sit here, and make documentaries, have sanctioned forms of government that are supposed to stress this issue, but never get up and change anything. With the hyperloop, sooner or later you would have to. Once it is created it will be faster than any car that has ever existed, and faster than any commercial plane ever flown. There will be little to no reason whatsoever to use a car, or pay for a plane ticket, this vacuum encased train of pods will get you there in less than half of the time that a plane ride would take. The reason why is because of the fact that the hyperloop is a inside of vacuum tubing which gets rid of nearly all wind resistance, and the magnetic railing which keeps it from being slowed down from the friction between the ground and wheels.
This is what I used to want to do. The hyperloop is an interesting concept, that I did a lot of research for, but two different yet similar reasons changed my mind and made me decide to do a different concept. The first reason was that I found something more interesting, and I felt like if I were to research something I am more passionate about, I can research it better and more efficiently. The second reason why is because even though there is a lot to the hyperloop it is an idea that already exists, and I did not create this idea. On top of that the hyperloop does not have a big enough problem that I am able to work with.
