Only hours have passed since Governor Jerry Brown signed the controversial bill providing initial funding for California’s $68 billion High-Speed Rail project, which will connect Sacramento to San Francisco to Los Angeles, but already another plan has emerged that could blow all of California’s efforts out of the water.
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and the co-founder of both PayPal and Tesla Motors, isn’t content with his plans to get astronauts to the International Space Station or put humans on Mars. He recently shared with PandoDaily his desire to patent a 5th mode of transportation, which he coins the “Hyperloop,” that would cheaply get passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles – in just 30 minutes. What’s more, Musk claims the “Hyperloop” will never crash, be immune to weather, go twice as fast as an aeroplane, four times as fast as a bullet train, and – to top it off – run completely on solar power.
So, what would it look like? Although Musk likened the idea to Aeromovel (shown above) as well as a “Jetsons-tunnel” that “whisks you away,” no one really has any idea. Musk’s open sourcing the implementation to “anyone who can make a credible case that they can do it.” So whether the next frontier of transportation is pod-like, tube-like, or just a glorified train, we’ll have to wait at least a few weeks more before Musk’s willing to give up any more details…
Story via The Atlantic, Inhabitat, Business Insider, and Dvice.
