News: a company has been set up to work on and provide Elon Musk’s higher-speed Hyperloop transport system, which utilizes magnets and fans to propel passenger capsules via a network of pipes.
Crowdfunding platform JumpStartFund has launched a new company dedicated to generating a final working prototype of the Hyperloop inside ten years, and says it will take the technique abroad if politics and red-tape get in the way of it becoming built in America.
Connected story: Billionaire reveals Hyperloop supersonic transport system
JustStartFund’s CEO Dirk Ahlborn said construction of the 1st prototype would begin in 2015, with the final working system to be in place “within the decade”.
The concept was initially developed by Elon Musk, billionaire and founder of Paypal, electric-automobile firm Tesla Motors and space technology business SpaceX, as “the fifth mode of transportation”.
Employing magnets and fans to propel capsules floating on a cushion of air by means of a long pipe-like structure, Musk stated his Hyperloop could be capable of speeds in excess of 700 miles per hour, potentially cutting travel instances amongst America’s west and east coast to just 30 minutes.
Sitting in the capsules, passengers would be blasted via the 1.35-metre-wide tubes at speeds more rapidly than commercial aeroplanes on routes developed to be as straight as feasible so as to keep away from the detrimental effects of high g-forces.
Hyperloop passenger capsule version cutaway with passengers onboard
When the style was unveiled, Musk stated studies had shown that the Hyperloop would be “both quickly and affordable for folks and goods”. But critics had been sceptical about the system’s proposed route from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Ahlborn says that his company’s “principal aim is to develop the Hyperloop”, even if that indicates it isn’t built in America as Elon Musk intended, and believes he the concept will attract considerable funding once it has been verified to operate.
Ahlborn told Wired: “I have no doubt that after we are finished, as soon as we know how we are going to create and it makes financial sense, that we will get the funds.”
Other ventures published on Dezeen by billionaire inventor and philanthropist Elon Musk include his car company’s autonomous vehicle and his gesture-controlled application for designing 3D-printed rocket parts.
