Travel in a Tube: Elon Musk’s Futuristic “Hyperloop”

Would you like to travel at the speed of sound? If you think the concept of people travelling between cities - or even across the nation - in a matter of minutes is just a bit of Jetsons science fiction fantasy, wait until you hear about the Hyperloop from Elon Musk, who has been considered the world’s greatest living entrepreneur.

Elon Musk has always been a man of impossible dreams. He is not only an entrepreneur but also an inventor, innovator, and engineer. He personally designs electric cars and spaceships. He has created three companies with the market cap of more than $1 billion – PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors. His passion for innovation has made him one of the richest men in America, with an estimated worth of $10 billion.

And now Musk wants to change the way we travel. “I was stuck in LA traffic. I was about an hour late for a talk, and I was thinking, man, there’s got to be a better way to get around,” he said. And he found this better way: the Hyperloop! He shocked the world with this concept for a futuristic high-speed transportation system. He thought of the system as a way of getting from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 30 minutes at an average speed of 800mph. “You could live in one city and work in another city...It gives people more freedom,” he says.

But what is the Hyperloop and how does it work? The Hyperloop is essentially a futuristic train. Musk calls it “a cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table”. It uses tunnels and pods or capsules to move from place to place in a very short time.

Is Hyperloop the future of travel? It is not certain yet. But let’s accept that our transportation systems are badly flawed now, whether it is planes, trains or automobiles. Here’s hoping that Elon Musk’s Hyperloop will lead us to a new age of transportation that’s cheap, fast, weatherproof, crash-proof and always on time.

If anyone can do it, it’s Elon Musk.