Speaker 1: Get technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm a senior writer for how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, where we explain how stuff works. If you've
Speaker 1: ever wondered how a car engine works, or how people
Speaker 1: work or in some cases don't work, go to how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. You'll likely find the answers to
Speaker 1: all your questions there, and if you don't, let us know,
Speaker 1: we'll find the answers for you. But here on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I cover all things technological. I love technology, and I've
Speaker 1: been doing this for about eight years, so uh not
Speaker 1: that I've gotten really great at it, but I'm still
Speaker 1: so enthusiastic. I'm so enthusiastic in fact, that I'm going
Speaker 1: to revisit a topic that we covered way back in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen. That would be hyper loop. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: when we published the episode titled the Hype about hyper Loop,
Speaker 1: because I'm clever with headlines, y'all. Since that time, we've
Speaker 1: had a couple of startups that formed in order to
Speaker 1: pour in money, time, resources effort to make hyper loop
Speaker 1: into a reality. Change it from just this interesting vision
Speaker 1: Elon Musk had into an actual form of transportation. So
Speaker 1: I thought it would behoove us to revisit the topic
Speaker 1: and see where things stand now. Plus I can use
Speaker 1: the word behoove again. That's twice in the same day.
Speaker 1: I'm recording this. The same day I did a live
Speaker 1: stream about the game Dungeons and Dragons on a show
Speaker 1: called Game Changers. Behoof is my word of the day. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I can also talk about a really boring company, and
Speaker 1: that's what's called foreshadowing. Now, before I jump into the
Speaker 1: latest news, I should go back over the history of
Speaker 1: the hyper loop concepts upped and explain not just where
Speaker 1: it came from, but what is the actual idea of
Speaker 1: the hyper loop and how is it supposed to work?
Speaker 1: And why is it even something worth talking about. Well
Speaker 1: back in August, that's when the world at large learned
Speaker 1: about the hyper loop concept. It's when Elon Musk published
Speaker 1: a white paper that was about fifty eight pages long.
Speaker 1: And Elon Musk, in case you aren't aware, is the
Speaker 1: entrepreneur behind such companies as SpaceX, the private space company,
Speaker 1: and Tesla, the electric vehicle company. This white paper was
Speaker 1: all about a high tech transportation system is kind of
Speaker 1: a train, kind of like a subway, kind of like well,
Speaker 1: Elon must described it as a cross between a hockey table,
Speaker 1: like an air hockey table and a rail gun, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty exciting way to think about getting from
Speaker 1: point A to point B. Now, the motivating factor for
Speaker 1: all of this seems to be that the state of
Speaker 1: California had approved a high speed rail project and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk it got his dander up. If you were to
Speaker 1: look at Elon Musk's dander that day, it would have
Speaker 1: been in the up position. Now, that's because in that
Speaker 1: white paper, Musk laid out all of his frustrations with
Speaker 1: this high speed rail project, and they really boiled down
Speaker 1: to two major ones with a lot of subsidiary ones.
Speaker 1: The two major ones was that would be that that
Speaker 1: one it was incredibly expensive, just really a multibillion dollar project,
Speaker 1: so it was in his mind financially wasteful. Secondly, he
Speaker 1: argued that out of all the high speed rail systems
Speaker 1: that were in operation or proposed, it was one of
Speaker 1: the slowest. So he said, on a per mile basis,
Speaker 1: it's one of the most expensive. On a speed basis,
Speaker 1: it's one of the slowest. So why would you want
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of money to not get anywhere fast.
Speaker 1: He thought that that was an incredible waste of time
Speaker 1: and money, and that it wasn't going to solve the
Speaker 1: issue of of of of speeding up travel between major cities,
Speaker 1: specifically Los Angeles and San Francisco, which are quite far apart.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with California geography, you might think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: those are two cities in the same state, but they
Speaker 1: are hundreds of miles apart from one another. It takes
Speaker 1: more than five hours of driving to get between the two.
Speaker 1: So a high speed rail system would be nice, if
Speaker 1: in fact it were high speed. But Must argued that
Speaker 1: the the one that was proposed was not nearly fast
Speaker 1: enough to be any more advantageous than just taking a
Speaker 1: flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and that there
Speaker 1: had to be a better way, And so he said
Speaker 1: there needed to be a less expensive, safer, faster method
Speaker 1: of getting from San Francisco to Los Angeles or vice versa,
Speaker 1: and that he had the better idea. Now Must acknowledge
Speaker 1: that for cities that are really far apart from each other,
Speaker 1: think about a thousand miles or kilometers or more, supersonic
Speaker 1: air travel is likely the best option, assuming we can
Speaker 1: solve a few major issues with supersonic travel. One of
Speaker 1: those is getting the right airplane geometry to minimize sonic
Speaker 1: booms so that air travel doesn't become massively disruptive for
Speaker 1: the population on the ground. A sonic boom, by the way,
Speaker 1: is when you have uh some mass traveling faster than
Speaker 1: the speed of sound through whatever medium you are traveling through. So,
Speaker 1: in the case of air, depending upon air pressure and
Speaker 1: temperature and that sort of thing, if you're traveling faster
Speaker 1: than the speed of sound, you're building up this pressure
Speaker 1: wave that ends up collapsing in on itself after the
Speaker 1: object passes through that area, and that collapse creates this
Speaker 1: sonic boom. The sonic boom travels with the object as
Speaker 1: it moves through. So if you have a supersonic jet
Speaker 1: traveling overhead, that boom you hear as it passes over,
Speaker 1: it's not just a single boom. That boom is actually
Speaker 1: traveling with the supersonic aircraft as long as it is
Speaker 1: traveling at those incredible speeds. So there are companies that
Speaker 1: are working on building out better plane models that can
Speaker 1: travel at these supersonic speeds while minimizing that sonic boom,
Speaker 1: and they're making some amazing progress. Uh. These are include
Speaker 1: private companies as well as NASA working on these designs. So,
Speaker 1: assuming we get that problem solved, Musk says, it's probably
Speaker 1: going to be the case that the most efficient way
Speaker 1: to travel the most uh the cheapest way. Really, it's
Speaker 1: everything from the amount of time you're spending to the
Speaker 1: amount of money you spend, will probably be supersonic travel.
Speaker 1: But for cities that are closer together than that but
Speaker 1: still a good distance away, let's say, like nine hundred
Speaker 1: miles around kilometers apart from each other, you would want
Speaker 1: a different solution because with a supersonic jet, you would
Speaker 1: reach cruising altitude and you would only then be able
Speaker 1: to accelerate to supersonic speeds, but you would only be
Speaker 1: doing that for a very short while before you had
Speaker 1: to descend. You would be essentially be up and down
Speaker 1: so fast that you can't really take advantage of the
Speaker 1: supersonic travel part. So it doesn't make sense to take
Speaker 1: a supersonic flight between two cities that are nine hundred
Speaker 1: miles or closer together. What you could do is build
Speaker 1: this hyper loop system in order to travel at incredible
Speaker 1: speeds between those points. And that's where the sweet spot
Speaker 1: is between two cities that are nine miles apart or less,
Speaker 1: and that they have to be two cities where you
Speaker 1: would typically have a lot of heavy travel between the two.
Speaker 1: There's gotta be a lot of traffic. So assuming you
Speaker 1: have that situation, that's where hyperloop, he argues, would make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Again, his example being Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and San Francisco, but any major metropolitan areas where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of travel between the cities that are at
Speaker 1: this distance from one another would be candidates for this
Speaker 1: kind of transportation system. Uh. He would want this train
Speaker 1: sort of hybrid system to travel at incredible speeds, not
Speaker 1: quite supersonic. We'll get into that. This is a system
Speaker 1: that that consists of an enclosed tube or tunnel, and
Speaker 1: the air pressure inside that tube would be low. It
Speaker 1: would still be present, but it would be low. So
Speaker 1: you would have these giant pumps along the tube that
Speaker 1: would pump out a lot of the air. So you
Speaker 1: have a very low pressure system inside the tube that
Speaker 1: lowers the air resistance considerably but does not create an
Speaker 1: actual vacuum. So there's still air inside the tube. Usk
Speaker 1: acknowledges that the vacuum approach, though very effective it removes
Speaker 1: air resistance, UH, would be incredibly difficult to achieve from
Speaker 1: an engineering perspective, because even the smallest imperfection in the
Speaker 1: tube would allow air to leak in. You know, if
Speaker 1: you have an extremely low pressure system and you've got
Speaker 1: greater pressure on the outside, obviously any leak, any crack
Speaker 1: is going to allow air to rush in. So he
Speaker 1: says going with a low pressure system would make more
Speaker 1: sense than a vacuum. UH, it's too difficult to maintain
Speaker 1: a vacuum within a room, much less a five hundred
Speaker 1: mile long loop of tube. In his words, so rather
Speaker 1: than using something like a mag lev system magnetic levitation
Speaker 1: system in which the train would levitate above the tunnel
Speaker 1: floor using electromagnetic repulsion, Musk was proposing using air bearings instead.
Speaker 1: So this would not be a system where you use
Speaker 1: magnets in order to repel one another and that would
Speaker 1: make the capsule float off the floor of the tube. Instead,
Speaker 1: it would be like an air hockey table. So if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with these, UH, an air hockey table
Speaker 1: is a table that's got a surface with tiny pin
Speaker 1: prick holes in it, and a fan under the surface
Speaker 1: of the table blows air up through those holes. You
Speaker 1: put a little plastic hockey puck on top of the table.
Speaker 1: The air coming up from the bottom ends up making
Speaker 1: the hockey puck glide across the table. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of the principle he had for the the hyper loop concept,
Speaker 1: except instead of having the tube generating this air and
Speaker 1: blowing against the capsule, he thought of the capsule having
Speaker 1: essentially these pin pricks at the bottom of the capsule
Speaker 1: blowing air down, so that would be where the capsule
Speaker 1: would generate some lift. It would also generate left through
Speaker 1: its forward momentum. And at the front of this capsule
Speaker 1: he wants he post putting a pump a fan essentially,
Speaker 1: because there's still air inside the tube. If you didn't
Speaker 1: have a way of moving that air around the capsule,
Speaker 1: you would run into an issue where you're compressing the
Speaker 1: air ahead of you. As the capsule moves down the tube,
Speaker 1: it's pushing a column of air, and if the air
Speaker 1: cannot get around the capsule fast enough, you start compressing
Speaker 1: it and that ends up being like an air braking system.
Speaker 1: It will actually slow down and ultimately stop the capsule
Speaker 1: pushing against it in the other direction. So he proposed
Speaker 1: putting a fan in the front of the capsule to
Speaker 1: pull air in partly to allow the capsule to continue
Speaker 1: moving down the tube at speed, but also feeding into
Speaker 1: an air compressor that then would power these air bearings
Speaker 1: and allow the capsule to maintain lift on the bottom
Speaker 1: of the over the top of the tube flooring. And
Speaker 1: because you're not using wheels, you're not losing a lot
Speaker 1: of energy to friction. Right. You've got a little bit
Speaker 1: of airs instance that you're dealing with, but you're not
Speaker 1: dealing with wheels running against a surface, so that loss
Speaker 1: of energy to friction is minimized. It's still there, you
Speaker 1: still have some air resistance, you still have some other
Speaker 1: elements of friction, but it's greatly reduced. So uh, this approach,
Speaker 1: he said, was going to be an effective engineering solution
Speaker 1: to the problem. Um, now, what about propulsion. The air
Speaker 1: bearings provide lift, but how does the capsule actually move forward?
Speaker 1: This is where Elon Musk was suggesting the external linear
Speaker 1: electric motor version of of propulsion. So if you know
Speaker 1: how an electric motor works, let's use a very simple version.
Speaker 1: You've got let's say, a permanent magnet, and you've got
Speaker 1: some uh, you've got some electromagnet, you know, conductive wire,
Speaker 1: insulated conductive wire. We're we're talking more of a dynamo
Speaker 1: than a motor here. And you move the permanent magnet
Speaker 1: so that it's north and south poles are rotating and going.
Speaker 1: The coil of inductive wire is then being exposed to
Speaker 1: a fluctuating magnetic field that's going to induce current to
Speaker 1: flow through the wire. Uh. That also, by the way,
Speaker 1: generates its own electric field because you have electricity voltage
Speaker 1: essentially applied to this, uh, this conductive wire. He's thinking
Speaker 1: about the same sort of thing, but in a linear pathway.
Speaker 1: So you've got this, uh, this electro magnetic force that
Speaker 1: is pulling and pushing the capsule. You have opposite poles,
Speaker 1: magnetic poles attracting one another that's pulling the capsule forward.
Speaker 1: Then you have like poles pushing against each other that
Speaker 1: continues to push the capsule forward. This allows you to
Speaker 1: accelerate the capsule like a railgun. You're using the electro
Speaker 1: magnetic force to accelerate it in a linear motion. So
Speaker 1: it's going straight their bearings or what allow it to
Speaker 1: have the lift. The electric motor allows it to have
Speaker 1: the forward momentum, and this was kind of his general
Speaker 1: idea for the infrastructure. As for the capsules themselves, his
Speaker 1: version of it would seat twenty eight passengers per passenger capsule.
Speaker 1: He had a couple of different models of capsule. He
Speaker 1: also proposed a version that would have slightly larger capsules.
Speaker 1: These would hold up to three full sized automobiles, and
Speaker 1: you can have passengers inside the automobile, so you could
Speaker 1: be sitting in a car inside a capsule, and that
Speaker 1: way you would start in your car in l A
Speaker 1: and then thirty five minutes later you'd drive out of
Speaker 1: the capsule in San Francisco, which would save you a
Speaker 1: ton of time from the normal five hours plus of driving. UH.
Speaker 1: The maximum width for a passenger only capsule would be
Speaker 1: four point four three feet or one point three five meters,
Speaker 1: so not very wide, with a height of six point
Speaker 1: one one feet or one one zero meters, so again
Speaker 1: not very tall. If you're a tall person, you'd be
Speaker 1: stooping a bit in order to move around this cabin.
Speaker 1: UH doors would either be of a goal wing design,
Speaker 1: meaning like the DeLorean, they lift up, or they would
Speaker 1: be slides so that it would allow for easy uh
Speaker 1: loading and unloading of the vehicle. Luggage would go on
Speaker 1: one of the two ends of the vehicle, depending upon
Speaker 1: where you would put the rest of the components, so
Speaker 1: either in the very front or the very back, And
Speaker 1: the weight of the passenger capsule without the interior components,
Speaker 1: just the weight of all the external parts would be
Speaker 1: about six thousand, eight hundred pounds or three thousand one ms,
Speaker 1: and Musk estimated the cost for each capsule's exterior to
Speaker 1: be about two hundred forty five thousand dollars apiece. Now,
Speaker 1: all the stuff on the inside, like the seats, the
Speaker 1: door panels, the restraints, the various displays, would weigh another
Speaker 1: five thousand, five hundred pounds or two thousand, five hundred ms,
Speaker 1: and it would cost another two hundred fifty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Then there are all the other elements that add to
Speaker 1: the cost, such as the propulsion system components that would
Speaker 1: be in each capsule, the air compressor blades, the air bearings,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. All of that told, Musk estimated
Speaker 1: that a passenger only capsule would cost one million three
Speaker 1: hundred fifty thousand dollars apiece and have a weight total
Speaker 1: of fifteen thousand kilograms, And he goes on to estimate
Speaker 1: that you need about fifty four million dollars to make
Speaker 1: enough capsules for the hyper loop system he was proposing
Speaker 1: between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Now that's enough capsules
Speaker 1: where you would have them at either end so that
Speaker 1: you could have a consistent UH service between the two
Speaker 1: cities on any given day. So fifty four million dollars
Speaker 1: for just the capsules, that's not too bad. However, that
Speaker 1: doesn't include the cost of the infrastructure. Will get to
Speaker 1: that if you were traveling on that route, helps safe
Speaker 1: would it be? Well? Elon Musk, again arguing for the
Speaker 1: system he was proposing, said that there would be a
Speaker 1: lot of redundant safety features, including maintaining a healthy distance
Speaker 1: between capsules. So between you and the next closest capsule
Speaker 1: would be a gap of twenty three miles or thirty
Speaker 1: seven kilometers on average, which is a lot of safety
Speaker 1: space to prevent collisions between capsules. Still, tons of other
Speaker 1: safety issues that you would have to take into account
Speaker 1: and make sure we're UH prepared for. So that way
Speaker 1: you don't have any massive issues. Now. According to Musk,
Speaker 1: the hyper loop would allow for eight hundred forty passengers
Speaker 1: to travel per hour between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Speaker 1: Now that number could be increased by decreasing the amount
Speaker 1: of departure time between capsules. He was envisioning capsules arriving
Speaker 1: at a station, unloading, loading up, and every two minutes
Speaker 1: you would have a capsule leave either l A or
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Now that that doesn't mean that a capsule
Speaker 1: only spends two minutes per station. You would have one
Speaker 1: station or one capsule arriving at a station while another capsule,
Speaker 1: maybe three capsules ahead, is leaving, So you would still
Speaker 1: have several minutes to unload and load each individual capsule
Speaker 1: before it blasts off and heads over to its destination. Uh.
Speaker 1: These capsules would be going pretty darn fast. Musk talks
Speaker 1: about them hitting speeds of seven hundred sixty miles per
Speaker 1: hour or one thousand, two hundred twenty kilometers per hour,
Speaker 1: which is also known as mock point nine one at
Speaker 1: sixty eight degrees fahrenheit or twenty degrees celsius. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about going nearly as fast as the speed of sound,
Speaker 1: but not actually breaking the sound barrier at that speed
Speaker 1: at those temperatures. And again that offers me the opportunity
Speaker 1: to remind you guys, sound travels through the air at
Speaker 1: a speed that depends on other things like air temperature,
Speaker 1: So you have to take that into account when you
Speaker 1: talk about the speed of sound. It's not a constant
Speaker 1: through all altitudes and temperatures. You have to have these
Speaker 1: other variables in account before you can actually talk about
Speaker 1: the speed of sound, although we can usually just assume
Speaker 1: we're talking about a standard temperature when we're usually using
Speaker 1: that term. Back to the show, At that speed, you
Speaker 1: would be able to make the trip between Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and San Francisco in about thirty five minutes, and the
Speaker 1: high speed rail system would take two hours and thirty
Speaker 1: eight minutes on that same trip. So the system that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was saying was inefficient, slow, and expensive would
Speaker 1: take two hours thirty eight minutes. Driving takes five hours.
Speaker 1: A plane trip would take a little bit more than
Speaker 1: an hour, like an hour and fifteen minutes. So the
Speaker 1: hyper loop would theoretically be the fastest way to get
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles to San Francisco, assuming it works. The
Speaker 1: way Elon Musk imagines, so thirty five minutes is a
Speaker 1: huge amount of time saved going from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. It would be the fastest solution by far.
Speaker 1: You might wonder what it would be like to actually
Speaker 1: travel inside one of those capsules. According to Musk, he
Speaker 1: imagines that the entire interior would have displays, kind of
Speaker 1: like television displays or computer displays that would show a landscape,
Speaker 1: maybe a model of the landscape that you're actually passing through,
Speaker 1: or maybe it would be something else like outer space
Speaker 1: or under the water or some other city if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, Or maybe it would just be television, because
Speaker 1: there's no point in having windows your inside and enclosed tube.
Speaker 1: All you would see is the interior of a tube
Speaker 1: whizzing by at seven miles per hour. Using the displays
Speaker 1: would help you get some other sensory input. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: other interesting questions like would this affect your sense of
Speaker 1: of your your perception of space, Like would you feel
Speaker 1: an emotion sickness due to this kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a question that I don't know the answer to
Speaker 1: because as far as I know, no one's actually tried it.
Speaker 1: But it is really interesting Now we've got a lot
Speaker 1: more to talk about, uh, and I'm going to dive
Speaker 1: into some more details about what travel aboard the hyper
Speaker 1: loop would theoretically be like, as well as talk about
Speaker 1: some of the companies that are trying to bring it
Speaker 1: to life. But before I do that, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. Now I just mentioned
Speaker 1: about being inside those capsules and looking at those displays,
Speaker 1: and you know, seeing some gorgeous stuff and and that
Speaker 1: sounds really nice. You would have restraints on your your
Speaker 1: seats because you're talking about accelerating too pretty incredible speeds
Speaker 1: and then eventually decelerating. Now, the ideas that you would
Speaker 1: do this gradually so you wouldn't be experiencing any very
Speaker 1: powerful G forces. That would also mean that the tube
Speaker 1: itself would not be able to have any sharp turns
Speaker 1: on it because the amount of G force you would
Speaker 1: experience as a passenger would be too great. You would
Speaker 1: be very very much uncomfortable, if not blacking out due
Speaker 1: to those G forces being placed on your body if
Speaker 1: you were making sharp turns. So you'd have to have
Speaker 1: very gradual curves to your hyper loop track, and you
Speaker 1: would have to again have this long acceleration and deceleration
Speaker 1: so that you're not placing too much stress on your passengers.
Speaker 1: But let's go back to price for a minute. So
Speaker 1: I talked about the capsules and that they would cost
Speaker 1: a cool fifty four million dollars each. But what about
Speaker 1: the tube itself, Well, Musk said it would be several
Speaker 1: billion dollars. He eventually came up with the figure rough
Speaker 1: Napkin figure of being six billion dollars for a hyper
Speaker 1: loop system, but he adds that this would still be
Speaker 1: less expensive than the high speed rail system that California
Speaker 1: had approved. He said, Yeah, it's six billion dollars for
Speaker 1: this hypothetical thing I just made up, but it's many
Speaker 1: more billion dollars for this other thing that exists. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's kind of easy to say that
Speaker 1: it's only six billion dollars, only six billion dollars, when
Speaker 1: you have just proposed it and no one said to
Speaker 1: actually build the thing yet. But let's just for argument's sake,
Speaker 1: say that, in fact, it would cost six billion dollars
Speaker 1: to build. Because I don't want to cast aspersions towards
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. I'm just saying that until you build something,
Speaker 1: you really can't say how much it was going to cost,
Speaker 1: not with any real authority. It's only after you've built
Speaker 1: it that you really understand the cost of it. The tube,
Speaker 1: he says, would be made out of steel, and he
Speaker 1: says that you could constructed and prefabricated sections and then
Speaker 1: kind of snap them together, which is being a bit
Speaker 1: flippant on my part. It actually would involve using an
Speaker 1: orbital seam welder to create a seal between each length
Speaker 1: of tube. So you would put in a prefabricated length
Speaker 1: the tube, and then you would just seal it to
Speaker 1: the previous one using this orbital uh seal welder which
Speaker 1: kind of goes around the entire tube and make sure
Speaker 1: that they are nice and tightly welded together. And he
Speaker 1: also suggested that these tubes would rest on pylons, so
Speaker 1: it would be an elevated track that would be above
Speaker 1: or really to the side of Interstate five in California,
Speaker 1: which was more or less a direct path between l
Speaker 1: A and San Francisco without too many sharp turns. He
Speaker 1: says that you would have to have a few deviations
Speaker 1: from the highway in order to avoid putting too strong
Speaker 1: a curve in the track. But those deviations would be
Speaker 1: in his words, minor uh. That way, you could avoid
Speaker 1: putting those unacceptable g forces on the bodies of your passengers, which,
Speaker 1: as we have already discussed, would be a bad thing
Speaker 1: to do otherwise. Musk also said that the energy needed
Speaker 1: to power the hyper loop could come from solar panels
Speaker 1: along the top of the tube. Now, according to Musk,
Speaker 1: the panels would be enough would be able to generate
Speaker 1: enough electricity to power the entire system and also charge
Speaker 1: batteries that would allow the system to operate even if
Speaker 1: the sun weren't out. So if it were an overcast day,
Speaker 1: which is common in San Francisco, not necessarily so in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, or if it were nighttime, you can still
Speaker 1: take the system from LA to San Francisco, or San
Speaker 1: Francis Cisco to l A, because you'd have enough battery
Speaker 1: power to keep it going. This is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why he was arguing for this air bearing system.
Speaker 1: He said the air bearing system would be less expensive
Speaker 1: than a fully electro magnetic mag lev system, and it
Speaker 1: would consume less power than a mag lev system, so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to worry about creating a huge drain
Speaker 1: on the existing power grid. You could have it all
Speaker 1: self powered through these solar panels and batteries. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk again is behind Tesla, and Tesla's big product
Speaker 1: that's coming out aren't really electric cars. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the flashy side. It's really the battery solutions that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is behind. So are wing for a system that
Speaker 1: would rely heavily on battery power also serves his interests
Speaker 1: to some extent. In his paper, Musk argued that the
Speaker 1: energy per passenger using the hyperlop technology would be less
Speaker 1: than any other form of transportation. Travel by airplane would
Speaker 1: represent the greatest amount of energy expended per traveler per mile,
Speaker 1: So he was saying the hyperlop, based on his calculations,
Speaker 1: would end up being less of an energy drain per
Speaker 1: person per passenger than anything else that includes cars, motorcycles, trains,
Speaker 1: any other system in existence would be more energy per
Speaker 1: passenger to get people from point A to point B
Speaker 1: compared to his hypothetical hyper loop. And I keep saying
Speaker 1: hypothetical and things of that nature, again not to disparage
Speaker 1: the idea, but just to acknowledge the fact that without
Speaker 1: an actual working system where we're relying upon theoreticals, hypotheticals,
Speaker 1: We're not relying upon actual hard data that we can
Speaker 1: look at and say, oh yeah, in fact, the math
Speaker 1: does work out the right way. Uh. Due to this
Speaker 1: low cost of operation, Musk says that you can charge
Speaker 1: a very reasonable price for tickets on the hyper loop.
Speaker 1: His suggestion for a one way ticket from Los Angeles
Speaker 1: to San Francisco or vice versa, would be twenty dollars
Speaker 1: for a thirty five minute trip between the two cities.
Speaker 1: He says charging twenty dollars per ticket for twenty years
Speaker 1: would offset the six billion dollar estimated cost of constructing
Speaker 1: the whole shebang, which is pretty incredible. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: making a lot of assumptions again that you would have
Speaker 1: enough of a passenger base to be busy and charge
Speaker 1: at twenty dollars, and that you're patient enough to take
Speaker 1: twenty years to pay off this investment. But if it's correct,
Speaker 1: that is amazing. Twenty dollars would be a steal compared
Speaker 1: to an airplane ticket or even a ticket on the
Speaker 1: California Train, because that high speed rail train they were
Speaker 1: talking about much more expensive tickets than twenty bucks a
Speaker 1: person for a one way ticket. Uh. Again, without having
Speaker 1: all of the math done, we can't be sure that
Speaker 1: twenty years would be enough time to recapture the cost
Speaker 1: of construction. I don't know if that also builds in
Speaker 1: any potential maintenance costs that surely would come up over
Speaker 1: those times, but he claimed that twenty dollars a seat
Speaker 1: that would do it. A couple of notable companies have
Speaker 1: formed to try and bring this vision to life, and
Speaker 1: one of those is hyper Loop One. So let's take
Speaker 1: some time to talk about this company because it's got
Speaker 1: some stories behind it. So there's an entrepreneur named Shervin
Speaker 1: Pishamar who first talked to Musk in January two thousand thirteen.
Speaker 1: I remember it was August when Musk announced this idea
Speaker 1: of the hyper loop and they were traveling to Cuba
Speaker 1: and apparent Lee. During this trip, Musk talked about this
Speaker 1: hyper loop concept and Servin was really interested in it,
Speaker 1: and he even said later on that Musk should go
Speaker 1: public with this idea. So, according to the hyper Loop
Speaker 1: one web page, it was Servin who convinced Elon Musk
Speaker 1: to publish that white paper and talk about this after
Speaker 1: Musk's announcement, Servin gathered a team together to form the
Speaker 1: startup hyper Loop one. Now, if you go to hyper
Speaker 1: Loop one's website and you look at this team and
Speaker 1: includes some names on there, there's Jim Messina, there's Joe Lonsdale,
Speaker 1: David Sachs, and Peter Diamandis. But there's one name you
Speaker 1: will not find on the hyper Loop one website, but
Speaker 1: he was among the founders, and that's the name Brogan
Speaker 1: bam Brogan. So Brogan Bam Brogan, formally known as Kevin Brogan,
Speaker 1: was an engineer who worked at SpaceX and of course
Speaker 1: that's the private space exploration company. He married a woman
Speaker 1: named Bambi Lieu In. The two decided that they would
Speaker 1: merge their names together, so it was kind of forming
Speaker 1: a new name by combining their names. That's where he
Speaker 1: got Brogan bam Brogan, which I think is endurable. And
Speaker 1: he became the chief technology officer for hyper Loop one.
Speaker 1: But then things seem to go very wrong, and we
Speaker 1: don't know the full story, but we do know about
Speaker 1: the lawsuits, so I can tell you what the lawsuit said.
Speaker 1: According to bam Brogan and a few of his colleagues,
Speaker 1: things went sour at the corporate level at hyper Loop one,
Speaker 1: so you've got this company that is trying to create
Speaker 1: the actual technology that Elon Musk was talking about. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: according to bam Brogan, there were some shenanigans going on
Speaker 1: at the corporate level. He alleged that the company leaders
Speaker 1: were being wasteful, that they were blowing through investor money
Speaker 1: on things that weren't necessary, or that we're fraud gialant
Speaker 1: in his eyes. And he also claimed that the corporate
Speaker 1: leadership was engaging in nepotism, that they were hiring on
Speaker 1: friends and family for things that they weren't necessarily qualified for,
Speaker 1: or that there might have been more qualified candidates out
Speaker 1: there that were being ignored in favor of these folks.
Speaker 1: He also accused Pischavar of using stock options as leverage
Speaker 1: to get what he wanted from employees, essentially holding it
Speaker 1: over their heads. Uh as both a stick and a
Speaker 1: carrot at the same time. So, in other words, these
Speaker 1: were a whole series of really ugly all allegations and accusations.
Speaker 1: Beam Brogan then says that he and some of his
Speaker 1: colleagues voiced their objections and concerns and then they were
Speaker 1: all met with repercussions they were met with punishments. Beam
Speaker 1: Brogan was met with a threatening gesture. Specifically, he says
Speaker 1: that Pischavar left a rope nodded in a noose on
Speaker 1: bam Brogan's desk, and there's some security footage that seemed
Speaker 1: to potentially back up bam Brogan's accusation. There's a man
Speaker 1: who you know, they say was pishamr and he's clearly
Speaker 1: holding some rope, although you can't necessarily see if it's
Speaker 1: a noose or not, but still, if that is true,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty ugly move of intimidation. It's not your
Speaker 1: typical corporate behavior unless you're salesperson trying to move property
Speaker 1: in Glengarry Glenn Ross style. Always be closing guys, always
Speaker 1: be closing well. Ben Brogan then said that one of
Speaker 1: his colleagues was fired in front of his own family
Speaker 1: the next day and another one was demoted, and that
Speaker 1: bam Brogan himself was encouraged to take a leave of
Speaker 1: absence from the company, so he responded with a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Hyper Loop One's response was also accusatory. The company lawyer
Speaker 1: said that the lawsuit was quote unfortunate and delusional end quote,
Speaker 1: and also claimed that bam Brogan had been trying to
Speaker 1: undermine Pischamar and was actually trying to do a corporate
Speaker 1: coup and and change the leadership through some other form
Speaker 1: of corporate leverage, and so there were accusations flying on
Speaker 1: both sides. Now, in November twenty sixteen, news broke that
Speaker 1: the two parties had settled this lawsuit out of court
Speaker 1: for uh an unreported sum, so no one was talking
Speaker 1: about how much money changed hands. According to a statement
Speaker 1: from bam Brogan's lawyers, uh It's said this quote, My
Speaker 1: clients are pleased to announce they have reached a confidential
Speaker 1: resolution of litigation with their former employer and look forward
Speaker 1: to moving on with their future plans end quote. Bam Brogan,
Speaker 1: by the way, recently founded his own company called Arrivo,
Speaker 1: with its headquarters apparently less than one mile away from
Speaker 1: hyper Loop one's offices, So that's got to be awkward
Speaker 1: if you're ever in traffic. Arrivo is also in the
Speaker 1: hyper loop design game, so they're getting in that space.
Speaker 1: According to bam Brogan, his new company has a quote
Speaker 1: unique take end quote on the hyper loop concept. No
Speaker 1: idea what that means. Meanwhile, back at hyper Loop one,
Speaker 1: the company was installing a They installed a fifty ft long,
Speaker 1: twelve ft wide structure called the Big Tube. Now this
Speaker 1: was not a hyperloop tube. It was a testing facility.
Speaker 1: It was meant to create low pressure environments to test
Speaker 1: things like seals in test tracks, test tubes. Not a
Speaker 1: test tube, but a tube that they were testing to
Speaker 1: make sure that it was constructed properly. So it was
Speaker 1: a testing facility, not a hyper loop tube on its own.
Speaker 1: And the hyper loop one approach doesn't use air bearings
Speaker 1: the way Musk's design did. Instead, it did use mag
Speaker 1: lev as the means to suspend capsules in the tube,
Speaker 1: so they went with the electromagnetic levitation route. Uh so
Speaker 1: it requires a bit more power, more than a bit
Speaker 1: more power than the hyperloop one or hyperloop concept that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was first chatting about back in In December,
Speaker 1: hyper Loop one built the APEX Test and Safety site
Speaker 1: outside of Las Vegas, Nevada that would become the testing
Speaker 1: ground for prototype hyperloop infrastructure and capsules, and on May eleven, sixteen,
Speaker 1: the company hosted a Propulsion System Open Air test or
Speaker 1: p o a t POPE or poe AT. In this test,
Speaker 1: a hyper loop sled accelerating to a top speed of
Speaker 1: a hundred thirty six miles per hour in two point
Speaker 1: two seconds. That's an incredible acceleration. The test was to
Speaker 1: see if the acceleration motor would work properly, so they
Speaker 1: weren't trying to accelerate up to top speed. A hundred
Speaker 1: thirty six miles per hour is nowhere close to the
Speaker 1: top speed of what their capsules would ultimately take. The
Speaker 1: company also announced a global challenge to find the best
Speaker 1: hyperloop projects in the world. Hyper Loop one has proposed
Speaker 1: a system that would link Helsinki and Stockholm together, which
Speaker 1: would be pretty nifty, and in August seen the company
Speaker 1: began construction on the Development Loop or devl loop in Nevada.
Speaker 1: This was the first full scale hyperloop test track, and
Speaker 1: November of twenty sixteen, the first section of the devl
Speaker 1: loop was installed. It was called Fixity, and in January
Speaker 1: hyper loop announced that thirty five semifinalists had been uh
Speaker 1: had been had reached the global challenge, so they got
Speaker 1: down to thirty five semifinalists and these were proposals that
Speaker 1: would link various cities together to create hyper loop routes.
Speaker 1: On March seventh, seventeen, the DEVL loop construction was completed,
Speaker 1: and on May twelve, seventeen, the first full scale hyperloop
Speaker 1: test was conducted. On July twelve, seventeen, Hyperloop unveiled a
Speaker 1: prototype aero shell. This is the outer hall of the
Speaker 1: capsules that would be in its system, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of nifty looking. You should take a look at the
Speaker 1: picture of it. Sadly, this is an audio podcast and
Speaker 1: I cannot show you one. On July seventeen, they tested
Speaker 1: out a vehicle that traveled down the full length of
Speaker 1: the five DEVL loop track, accelerating for three and then
Speaker 1: gliding the rest of the way again at fives. You're
Speaker 1: not going to get to your full speed, you just can't,
Speaker 1: but you can test out the various systems to make
Speaker 1: sure that the concept behind them does in fact war.
Speaker 1: The company wants to have three production systems working by one,
Speaker 1: which is pretty ambitious. So hyper Loop one is probably
Speaker 1: the furthest along out of all the different hyper loop companies,
Speaker 1: and it inadvertently spawned a second one or EVO, but
Speaker 1: it is not the only one. There are other hyper
Speaker 1: loop companies out there, and they're all competing at this
Speaker 1: I'll talk about another one in just a second, called
Speaker 1: hyperloop transportation technologies. And it's really interesting to see people
Speaker 1: jump on this again in an area that hasn't had
Speaker 1: proven success. That's not to discourage them, but it kind
Speaker 1: of shows how Elon Musk has this amazing ability to
Speaker 1: inspire people to take chances without necessarily being able to
Speaker 1: show that you can have a return on them. People
Speaker 1: have talked about Tesla Motors struggling to be profitable while
Speaker 1: they are clearly creating products and people have a strong
Speaker 1: desire or to own them. The company as it stands
Speaker 1: is one of those that is always striving for profit
Speaker 1: but hasn't emerged as an enormously profitable company. So for
Speaker 1: Elon must to continue to go forward and make these
Speaker 1: bold proclamations and have people not just take it to heart,
Speaker 1: but then pour their own money and investments and resources
Speaker 1: into trying to make it come to pass. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty insanely awesome thing to be able to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: I can't convince people to give me a seat on
Speaker 1: the subway. So although I find that if I talk
Speaker 1: to myself a lot and argue, I often end up
Speaker 1: with a seat all to myself, but I think that
Speaker 1: might require that doesn't rely so much on charisma as
Speaker 1: it does just social awkwardness. All Right, when we get back,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk a little bit about hyper loop uh more,
Speaker 1: you know, the hyper loop transportation technol alogies, as well
Speaker 1: as Elon Musk's attempt to get into the hyper loop
Speaker 1: game himself. But I really wanted to cover that weird
Speaker 1: controversy of hyper loop one first and get that out
Speaker 1: of the way. We'll come back in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about hyper loop transportation technologies for a second.
Speaker 1: This is, like I said, was the other big startup
Speaker 1: to come out shortly after Elon Musk's announcement. Arriva was
Speaker 1: new to the scene, but hyper loop transportation technologies and
Speaker 1: hyper Loop one have been around for a while. So
Speaker 1: this company is also using mag lev technology, but in
Speaker 1: this case it's passive mag lev, not active mag lev.
Speaker 1: Now that means that part of the system, the system
Speaker 1: that would actually be lining the the tubes is just
Speaker 1: unmpowered coils of conductive wire, and so you're not putting
Speaker 1: any electricity through them and are not acting as electro
Speaker 1: magnets on their own. UH. This method was pioneered by
Speaker 1: a physicist named Richard Post and the concept itself ends
Speaker 1: up getting a little complicated, so I'm not going to
Speaker 1: dive too far into it because it would require almost
Speaker 1: a full episode all on its own. But basically, what
Speaker 1: you have are these various coils of conductive wire, and
Speaker 1: then you take these magnets and you put them in
Speaker 1: a specific configuration so that their polls are lined up
Speaker 1: in a very specific way with respect to one another.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm glossing over this because again, to get
Speaker 1: into real details, we'd have to dive into physics pretty deeply.
Speaker 1: If you pass this array of magnets over the coils
Speaker 1: of conductive wire, it induces uh a charge to flow
Speaker 1: through those those coils, and that in turn creates an
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field. The key to this is you have to
Speaker 1: get the capsule up to a certain speed before this
Speaker 1: will have But once you do get to that speed,
Speaker 1: then you are able to achieve magnetic levitation with a
Speaker 1: passive system, so you don't have to send any electricity
Speaker 1: through that that those coils of wire that would line
Speaker 1: the the hyperloop tube that means that you're saving a
Speaker 1: lot on energy. You just have to have the right
Speaker 1: uh systems aboard the actual capsule, but you don't have
Speaker 1: to power the whole tube itself, so that cuts down
Speaker 1: on your electricity needs. It also cuts down on the
Speaker 1: cost of operation, so you end up being able to
Speaker 1: pass the savings onto maybe the consumer, or maybe you're
Speaker 1: just pocketing a whole lot of extra profit. But it's
Speaker 1: a really cool form of magnetic levitation. Uh. The cool
Speaker 1: thing about it also is that in the case of
Speaker 1: some sort of problem that there is some sort of
Speaker 1: power loss on board the capsule. For example, the the
Speaker 1: capsule will start to cope and it once it dips
Speaker 1: below a certain speed a threshold, then it will not
Speaker 1: be able to create the electro magnetic field or won't
Speaker 1: be able to induce the electromagnetic field from these coils
Speaker 1: of wire, and the capsule will come to arrest on
Speaker 1: the bottom of the tube floor. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a safety measure because in a catastrophic failure,
Speaker 1: the capsules are all going to slow down on their
Speaker 1: own and then gradually come to arrest because just by
Speaker 1: the act of slowing down, they can no longer remain
Speaker 1: above the tube floor hyperloops. Hyper Loop Technologies leadership team
Speaker 1: includes Dirk all Born who is a co founder of
Speaker 1: jump Starter Incorporated, and Bebop g Gresta, who is another entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: and both of them have extensive experience in starting and
Speaker 1: funding ventures, so these are people who are used to
Speaker 1: starting up big companies or getting funding for big companies.
Speaker 1: They have agreements with lots of different cities, including cities
Speaker 1: in South Korea, in Indonesia and France, In Czech Republic,
Speaker 1: in the UH, they have an agreement with Abu Dhabi UH.
Speaker 1: There's an agreement in Slovakia all to construct hyperloop systems
Speaker 1: in the future. But all of this is really early
Speaker 1: on obviously, so it's the earliest phases of the hyperloop
Speaker 1: game from that aspect. Now recently, as of the recording
Speaker 1: of this podcast, Elon Musk has actually decided to get
Speaker 1: into this game himself. So when he first announced this
Speaker 1: back in two thousand thirteen, he did so as it
Speaker 1: as an open source project, meaning that he was allowing
Speaker 1: anyone to take this idea and run with it and
Speaker 1: alter it in any way they wanted to in order
Speaker 1: to build the sort of systems that he had in mind.
Speaker 1: So he was saying, look, I've got this great idea,
Speaker 1: but don't have time for this. I'm going to space
Speaker 1: and putting people in electric vehicles and other stuff. Being
Speaker 1: an international man of mystery, perhaps I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't have time to get into this as well, so
Speaker 1: someone else do it. Well, now he's saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna do this, And he has said
Speaker 1: that he's getting into this as well. And in fact,
Speaker 1: SpaceX has been working on building out a tube that
Speaker 1: would be not not quite hyperlop, but is sort of
Speaker 1: a stepping stone toward hyperloop technologies, and they've talked about
Speaker 1: also building a hyper loop test facility in Texas. So
Speaker 1: part of this involves a new company that Elon Musk announced,
Speaker 1: the TBC Company or the Boring Company insert tons of
Speaker 1: pun jokes here. The boring Company in this case does
Speaker 1: not mean a company that is uninteresting and we'll put
Speaker 1: you to sleep, although it may also do that. It
Speaker 1: is talking about a company that bores holes in to
Speaker 1: the earth or tunneling purposes, so it uses boring machines,
Speaker 1: machines that bore a hole into the ground so that
Speaker 1: you can build out tunnels. Now. They didn't build the
Speaker 1: boring machines. They bought them. In fact, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, they only have one right now, and it
Speaker 1: is named good And they decided to name their machines
Speaker 1: after literary characters and figures, so Goodo being from Beckett's
Speaker 1: play Waiting for Godot and Uh. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's a commentary about literature, about whether or not literature
Speaker 1: is supposed to be boring. I hope it isn't. I
Speaker 1: was a literature major in college, and I would find
Speaker 1: that deeply insulting. Not that I think Elon Musk would
Speaker 1: really care about that, but still, come on, Ellen, be
Speaker 1: a nice guy. So these machines would bore tunnels into
Speaker 1: the earth, presumably for a either an underground transportation system
Speaker 1: within US that would not be hyper loop. Instead, it
Speaker 1: would use electric skates. Imagine slot cars. If you've ever
Speaker 1: played with a slot car system where you've got these
Speaker 1: little cars and they fit into a slot, they snap
Speaker 1: into a slot on a track and then use a
Speaker 1: little controller and you can make the car zoom around
Speaker 1: the track. It's not dissimilar to that. Instead of slot cars,
Speaker 1: you would have these sleds that would be attached to
Speaker 1: this underground tunnel system. And what you would do is,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to travel across town, you would drive
Speaker 1: your car onto a platform of some sort that would
Speaker 1: lower you down onto one of these sleds, and then
Speaker 1: you would put the car in park and then the
Speaker 1: sled would zoom off, So it's like you're in a
Speaker 1: parking space that is moving. The sled itself can move
Speaker 1: through the tunnels, and it can even join in two
Speaker 1: tunnels that have existing sleds already moving through it using
Speaker 1: UH software. So it's essentially like an autonomous car, except
Speaker 1: instead of the car being on onymous, it's the sled itself.
Speaker 1: It's programmed to know where you want to be dropped off,
Speaker 1: and it picks you up, takes you through the tunnel system,
Speaker 1: drops you off wherever you need to go, and it
Speaker 1: can do so at a very high speed, at least
Speaker 1: according to Musk's design, like a twenty miles per hours,
Speaker 1: so pretty fast. And again this is for intercity travel
Speaker 1: from one point in a city to another, and the
Speaker 1: reason for this, Musk says, is to alleviate traffic issues.
Speaker 1: He says there are only two solutions. You have to
Speaker 1: alleviating traffic ultimately in big urban centers, and that is
Speaker 1: either to go up in the case of flying cars,
Speaker 1: or to go down in the case of tunneling. And
Speaker 1: he says, by tunneling, you can create this whole three
Speaker 1: dimensional transportation system that can get you anywhere within a
Speaker 1: city super super fast, uh, avoiding street traffic. So it's
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. Well, that was what the boring company
Speaker 1: was supposed to be, but he also said, oh and
Speaker 1: also you could, if you wanted to, you know, dig
Speaker 1: high per loop tunnels. So remember originally he had talked
Speaker 1: about hyper loop being a tube on top of pylons,
Speaker 1: but now he's also talking about the possibility of building
Speaker 1: a hyper loop that would be subterranean. You would go
Speaker 1: down a couple dozen feet, and then you would dig
Speaker 1: a tunnel to uh to house this hyper loop tube
Speaker 1: and you would go through that way. He says that
Speaker 1: you know, this would be less expensive than other tunneling companies,
Speaker 1: largely because he's thinking of building one way travel tubes.
Speaker 1: So instead of it being a double wide tunnel, it
Speaker 1: would be single wide. He says they would have to
Speaker 1: be only fourteen ft wide compared to your standard tunnels
Speaker 1: which are twice that length, and that would speed things
Speaker 1: up and make them less expensive. By speed things up,
Speaker 1: I think he's talking in relative terms because your average
Speaker 1: boring machine moves slower than a snail's pace. And that's
Speaker 1: not an exaggeration, that's legit. They actually moved slower than
Speaker 1: snails move. Now, Elon Musk wants to use this potentially
Speaker 1: to build this hyper loop system, and he tweeted not
Speaker 1: long ago in that he had received quote verbal approval
Speaker 1: and quote from the White House to build out a
Speaker 1: hyper loop system that would connect DC to New York
Speaker 1: City and also potentially connect other cities like Baltimore and
Speaker 1: Philadelphia within this loop. So verbal commitment isn't a contract.
Speaker 1: There are lots of other layers that any sort of
Speaker 1: agreement would have to go through before you could actually
Speaker 1: build out such a system. We're talking state level, we're
Speaker 1: talking city level, county level. There are tons of different
Speaker 1: layers that stand in the way of building out the system,
Speaker 1: and a verbal agreement doesn't really hold up as anything
Speaker 1: really firm. So we still have a long way to go.
Speaker 1: But if Elon Musk has his way a he would
Speaker 1: end up building out this system on the East Eastern seaboard,
Speaker 1: and you would have a way of getting from Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. To New York City in less than an hour,
Speaker 1: going more than six hundred miles per hour on one
Speaker 1: of these hyperloop trains. Um Obviously, we're still in the
Speaker 1: early days. Back in when we talked about this the
Speaker 1: first time, it was all very conceptual and no one
Speaker 1: had really built anything, not even a testing facility. Yet
Speaker 1: today we can say that there are testing facilities out
Speaker 1: there and they're showing some promising results. We still don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how expensive it will be to build out
Speaker 1: these systems, or how much interference or or resistance they
Speaker 1: might encounter. At a political level, there haven't been enough
Speaker 1: studies on the safety of such systems or potential environmental impact.
Speaker 1: I'm still curious to find out about how all these
Speaker 1: systems will be powered. If Elon musk system can in
Speaker 1: fact be powered by soul or power if he does
Speaker 1: a subterranean version, is he going to align the upper
Speaker 1: level with solar panels to power this hyper loop, or
Speaker 1: will it in fact draw its electricity from some other source.
Speaker 1: We don't have any details for these to answer these questions.
Speaker 1: As it stands, so I'm sure, assuming that tech stuff
Speaker 1: is still alive and kicking in the future, when hyperloop
Speaker 1: either becomes a reality or is abandoned altogether, we can
Speaker 1: revisit this again and talk about what did happen, what
Speaker 1: didn't happen, what went right, what went wrong. I can
Speaker 1: say that I want it to succeed. I want this
Speaker 1: to be something that works. I want to see cities
Speaker 1: connected in this way where you can have very fast,
Speaker 1: convenient travel. I want to see it at a price
Speaker 1: where the average person could in fact take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: If it's twenty dollars a ticket ends up being a reality,
Speaker 1: I think that's great. A lot of people have suggested
Speaker 1: that perhaps the expenses would be much greater than what
Speaker 1: what's anticipated, and therefore the price per ticket would be
Speaker 1: way way higher, which means you ultimately create a transportation
Speaker 1: system for rich people, and rich people, while they can
Speaker 1: afford to take it, there's not enough of them to
Speaker 1: support an entire transportation system on their own. You have
Speaker 1: to have something that can have the volume of passengers
Speaker 1: needed to keep it going with that flow of revenue.
Speaker 1: Ah Otherwise you're just gonna have a very expensive toy
Speaker 1: that ends up getting a little bit of use out
Speaker 1: of the gate, and then overtime winds down because there's
Speaker 1: just not enough financial support. Even if all the technology works,
Speaker 1: the economics might not work. And that's the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about tech is that sometimes all your parts are working
Speaker 1: just fine, it's just they're not working enough. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of the update on hyperloop, how it stands now
Speaker 1: and where it's going. We'll keep an eye on this
Speaker 1: and see if again, any actual construction happens on a
Speaker 1: major level in any of these cities, and if so,
Speaker 1: how it all turns out. Meanwhile, if you guys have
Speaker 1: suggestions for episode topics I should cover in future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, let me know. Send me an email.
Speaker 1: The address is text stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle of both of those is tech Stuff HSW.
Speaker 1: You should keep in mind I do live stream my
Speaker 1: podcast recordings. This episode was live streamed in front of
Speaker 1: a live studio audience who are chatting at me right now,
Speaker 1: and you can find that at twitch dot tv slash
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. Every Wednesday and Friday, I record episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, So come join me. Be part of the conversation,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and bathands of other topics because it has
Speaker 1: to works. Dot com nine