Tony Stark...ahh, Elon Musk teases Hyperloop Transit announcement
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, has gone on to start such geek-cool companies as Tesla and Space-X -- the latter of which is the first independent contractor to successfully push a space vehicle to the International Space Station (ISS). Despite seeming to have his hands full with major investments in electric cars and rockets, the billionaire is now turning his attention towards the transit system.
Hyperloop is still a theory -- an alternative to traditional transportation methods that Musk hopes will travel three to four times faster than traditional methods. "You would go from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under 30 minutes", Musk once proclaimed in an interview. That is quite a claim, and Musk plans to unveil how it will reach this goal on August 12 according to a tweet he posted today -- "Will publish Hyperloop alpha design by Aug 12. Critical feedback for improvements would be much appreciated".
"What you want is something that never crashes, that's at least twice as fast as a plane, that's solar powered and that leaves right when you arrive, so there is no waiting for a specific departure time", Musk told Bloomberg in September 2012. Yes, that sounds about what most of us would dream of having. Safety is certainly an important part of travel -- I once had a flight land in which the pilot announced the conclusion of the safest part of our journey and wished us luck driving home.
Little is known about details on this project, but a man who can reach space seems a good candidate to make this sort of thing work. Now we wait to see what sort of nuclear-powered monorail is unveiled next month...okay, perhaps it will be less impressive than that, but it still should prove fascinating.
Image Credit: Alta Oosthuizen / Shutterstock