How do you get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes?
theverge.com
 |
| 住洛杉磯的馬斯克Elon Musk，不滿加州高鐵興建費用高達700億美元約2兆元台幣，全球最貴，但速度卻是全球最慢，於是提出僅10之1興建費用的「超高速迴路」（Hyperloop）高鐵系統。 |
Elon Musk has made his name on big ideas, whether it's space tourism or the electric car — but his latest project, mysteriously dubbed the Hyperloop, may be more revolutionary than anything he's done. It started with a simple promise: the ability to travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in half an hour. As time went on, Musk added more. It would be low-friction, and use such minimal power that the entire thing could be run on electricity from solar panels installed above the tracks. It would use small pods, leaving "whenever you arrive" instead of cleaving to a schedule like an airliner. He's promised to unveil his alpha design for the project
in just under a month's time, but already, observers are speculating on exactly how this next-generation transportation scheme would work.
The closest we've got is Japan's bullet train
The details Musk has already hinted at tell us a great deal about the project, and outline a number of the challenges he's likely to face. Based on simple math, we know it will have to travel an average of more than 600 mph. And it will have to do so almost frictionlessly, allowing for the low-power travel Musk envisions. It's a big promise, and one that would have major consequences for the transportation industry and for society at large. For the technically minded, it raises the obvious question: how in the world is this thing going to work?
So far, the closest we’ve got is Japan's superconducting maglev train — best known as the "bullet train." Its official top speed is 361mph, although it usually travels closer to 300 mph. Jim Powell, co-inventor of the bullet train and current director of
Maglev 2000, thinks that’s as fast as open-air rail lines will ever go. "Air drag becomes too much of a problem after 300 mph, just from a power point of view," Powell says. "And then that air drag starts to generate noise. You wouldn’t want an airplane flying past your house at 600 mph."
The Hyperloop would solve that by enclosing the craft in a tube, creating a hermetically sealed environment that a car could move through with as little friction as possible. But what’s inside the tube is still unclear.
DeepField
