Elon Musk says that he got a verbal agreement from the White House that would allow him to build an ultra fast underground transportation system between Washington, d C. And New York City. But is the hyperloof just height? I'm Jonathan Strickland, and this is tech Stuff Daily. Back in two thousand thirteen, Elon Musk published a white paper in which he proposed an alternative to the high speed rail
system the government of California had just approved. Must found the approved system to be underwhelming, to say the least. He claimed it was one of the most expensive high speed systems on a per mile basis, while simultaneously being one of the slowest in the world. In his view, it was both too expensive and not effective. There had to be a better way. Musk's idea of a better way was a concept he called the hyper loop. Imagine an enclosed steel tube mounted on pylons. The tube forms
a loop between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Inside the tube, passenger capsules carry twenty eight people at a time from one city to another, completing the journey in about half an hour. Compare that travel time to alternatives to drive your car between the two cities would take about five and a half hours. A flight would be a bit more than an hour, and a trip on this approved high speed rail system that California had been talking about would be two hours thirty eight minutes for cities that
are about nine hundred miles apart or less. Musk says his design makes the most sense both from an economic standpoint and logistics approach. Any further apart than that, and Musk says supersonic air travel is likely more efficient, So you might not hop on a hyper loop train to go from Atlanta to San Diego, but you could go
from Atlanta to St. Paul, Minnesota. Musk's design involved a special system of air bearings, sort of like what you'd find on an air hockey table, except in this case, the air blows down from the capsule, allowing the capsule to hover above the tube floor. A linear electric motor would provide the acceleration, allowing the capsule to travel faster
than seven miles per hour at top speed. Air pumps would keep the air pressure inside the tube blow It wouldn't be a total vacuum, but it would reduce air density inside the tube to cut down on air resistance. A pump mounted to the front of each capsule would allow the pods to pull air in from in front of them and pump them into a compressor, which then would be used to power the air bearings. It was an interesting system. Since Musk's proposal, a few different companies
have formed to try and bring it to reality. These companies take a slightly different approach in their designs, leaning more heavily on magnetic levitation and is shoeing the air bearings approach. Several cities around the world have signed preliminary agreements with these companies to build hyperloop transportation systems between them. Musk himself initially said that he was too busy to get into the hyper loop game directly and instead made
his proposal an open source project. But these days Musk seems eager to give it a shot. He founded the Boring Company. It's an organization with one goal digging tunnels to create transportation systems. That brings us to this verbal agreement from the White House. Must wants to tunnel from DC to New York City and install a hyper loop transportation system to cut travel time down to half an hour. There are many other barriers in the way, of that goal.
Some of them are technological, boring machines are pretty slow. Some are legislative, as there are plenty of other levels of government that would have to sign off on such a major project. But if he can do it, the outcome would be dramatic. Such a transportation system could transform how people live and work. Imagine living in one city and commuting to another hundreds of miles away, depending upon property values. You could save a lot of money that way.
Why live in Brooklyn, where the cost of living is high. If you could have a home outside of Washington, d C. For much less and just commute in every day. It remains to be seen if the hyper loop projects will live up to all the expectation. Ideally, they will create economic, environmentally friendly alternatives to other means of transportation. They could transform our cities so that we start to see similar populations in cities that are hundreds of miles apart because
of their ability to travel between them. Or it could all just end up falling short of where we hope they can go. To learn more about the history of the hyper loop concept and how it works, check out the tech Stuff podcast. In every episode, we dive into the stories and inner workings of technology. Whether it's particle accelerators or air conditioners, you're bound to learn something. Episodes published every Wednesday and Friday. That's all from me for now, See you next time. Won