What is Hyperloop?

Intro 

The first several pages will attempt to describe the design in everyday language, keeping numbers to a minimum and avoiding formulas and jargon. I apologize in advance for my loose use of language and imperfect analogies. The second section is for those with a technical background. There are no doubt errors of various kinds and superior optimizations for elements of the system. Feedback would be most welcome – please send to hyperloop@spacex.com or hyperloop@teslamotors.com. I would like to thank my excellent compadres at both companies for their help in putting this together. Background When the California “high speed” rail was approved, I was quite disappointed, as I know many others were too. How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world? Note, I am hedging my statement slightly by saying “one of”. The head of the California high speed rail project called me to complain that it wasn’t the very slowest bullet train nor the very most expensive per mile. The underlying motive for a statewide mass transit system is a good one. It would be great to have an alternative to flying or driving, but obviously only if it is actually better than flying or driving. The train in question would be both slower, more expensive to operate (if unsubsidized) and less safe by two orders of magnitude than flying, so why would anyone use it? If we are to make a massive investment in a new transportation system, then the return should by rights be equally massive. Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be:

 Safer
 Faster
 Lower cost
 More convenient
 Immune to weather
 Sustainably self-powering
 Resistant to Earthquakes
 Not disruptive to those along the route

Is there truly a new mode of transport – a fifth mode after planes, trains, cars and boats – that meets those criteria and is practical to implement? Many ideas for a system with most of those properties have been proposed and should be acknowledged, reaching as far back as Robert Goddard’s to proposals in recent decades by the Rand Corporation and ET3. Unfortunately, none of these have panned out. As things stand today, there is not even a short distance demonstration system operating in test pilot mode anywhere in the world, let alone something that is robust enough for public transit. They all possess, it would seem, one or more fatal flaws that prevent them from coming to fruition.