[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Ci sono persone che diventano figure di importanza storica grazie a una invenzione o a una innovazione capace di cambiare radicalmente le abitudini e lo stile di vita delle persone. Questa semplice considerazione non vale per Elon Musk which has already been the engine of three revolutions and is preparing to realise the fourth. After being among the founders of PayPalhaving put all their eggs in the luxury full-electric car basket with Tesla Motors and realised and his visions of space travel through the SpaceX, today the South African-born, naturalised US billionaire began the testing phases of a new revolutionary land transport technologywhich promises greater speed than air transport and significantly lower costs.
The Hyperloop is a technology strikingly similar to the pneumatic mail tube that was once used in the administrative offices of large companies, only in this case the depressurised tube has a diameter of 4 metres and is made entirely of steel. The wagon moving inside it travels on a pressurised air cushion and is driven by a turbine that creates a vacuum in front of the wagon. This circumvents the two limitations that have hitherto hampered the performance of conventional trainsair resistance and the friction of the wheels on the tracks; both factors become critical for speeds above 300 km/h.
With Hyperloop technology, people and goods will travel at ultrasonic velocities (estimated over 1200 km/h) with zero emissionsas the entire technological structure will be powered by the photovoltaic panels that make up the tube's outer shell. The technologies necessary for the construction of the first 500-kilometre stretch between Los Angeles and San Francisco are all in place; all that is needed is to finish the testing phase and verify that from an energy point of view the system is balanced and that the many innovations that make up the project are reliable to the real stresses of the Hyperloop.
A first one-mile (1.6 km) long experimental section was carried out in Nevada, where an electric motor capable of reaching the speed of 540 km/h. Between the end of 2016 and early 2017 the first complete prototype of the wagon will be tested on a 3-mile trackwith the aim of achieving full speed.
From then on, the road to Hyperloop will be downhill. The funds needed to build the first system on the Californian route are estimated at around 6 billiona more than reasonable cost considering the many advantages of this new means of transport, in fact even in Europe many states are interested in this technology.
Following the Open source philosophytypical of the way Elon Musk understands innovation, the design of the wagon (called the Pod) was outsourced with a contest open to all universities on the planet and transport engineering companies. Here are the winners of the contest:
- Best Overall Design category: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Pod Innovation category: Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands)
- Pod Technical Excellence category: University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Pod Technical Excellence category: Virginia Tech and University of California Irvine
Sources: Popularmechanics.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][mk_button dimension=”outline” corner_style=”full_rounded” size=”medium” icon=”mk-icon-home” url=”/” align=”center” margin_top=”30″ margin_bottom=”0″ margin_right=”0″]Torna alla Home[/mk_button][/vc_column][/vc_row]
