TechStuff Classic: The Hype About Hyperloop

published November two thousand thirteen. It is titled the Hype About hyper Loop, and it's interesting to point out that in the seven years since we recorded this episode, we haven't seen an enormous amount of progress on hyper loop. There have been some tests, there have been some sort of uh experiments with hyper loop technology, most of which are not true implementations of the original vision of hyper loop, but we really haven't seen a whole lot of no

pun intended movement on this. Let's listen back to this classic episode. Long time tech Stuff fans will remember that one of my co host, uh, the legendary Matt Frederick, made a guest appearance on tech Stuff right many many moons ago. So anyway, we are grateful to have you here, and uh, you know you you're you're kind of sort of a transportation guru by now, I would say, And I asked Ben what topic would he like to cover, and he said, hey, have you guys covered hyper loop?

And that's when I had to kind of kick the ground and look at the look at the ground, and then say no, because we did an episode about Elon Musk, who has a lot to do with hyper loop, but we did that on March thirteen, and he didn't talk about hyper loop until like June. Yeah, this is a pretty This is a fairly recent development in the context of his career. Now, Ellen Musk, for anybody who hasn't checked out the Tech Stuff episode on you, yeah, shame on.

You get the to a speaker of some sort, find an RSS feed or iTunes or something and download that and listen to it. We'll wait, Okay, welcome back, Yeah, welcome back. And that was what you just listened to if you hadn't heard it before. Was a great overview of this inventor's life, including his origin story and the companies he's been associated with. Jonathan if if I could defer to you for a quick recap of l mu s okay so um. He came up with a little

idea that would eventually be called PayPal. PayPal is, of course, a payment system that you can use online. You can create an account through PayPal, and it allows you to process payments or to to make payments to vendors that accept PayPal, particularly things like eBay. But it was one of those ideas to try and make online transactions secure and easy, so that maybe you didn't want to um

to hand over your credit card information every time. Maybe you want to create a special bank account and then make that a PayPal account, and so you could do transfers in a more secure format. You knew that you had a certain amount of money in that account, nothing beyond that was ever going to get tampered with. Yeah,

it kind of controlled your risks. Yeah, absolutely. And now, of course, as we've talked about with inventors in the past, because you've also done a show called Stuff of Genius, so we know that often when somebody invents something that appears to be new, they're standing on the shoulders of giants earlier innovations. PayPal not necessarily the first time someone

attempted to do this, but by far the most successful instance. Yeah. Yeah, and even that was not Elon Musk's first foray into business. He had tried a few times, but PayPal was I guess you could say, ridiculously successful. Yea. It gave him the freedom to pursue whatever else he wanted to do because he made so much money so quickly that the constraints were off, and so he began to pursue another interest of his, which was, you know, cars that go

really fast. Yes, Tesla Motors, another little company by must that some of you may have heard of. You Scott Benjamin and I cover this often on car stuff and tech stuff. Has also looked into some of the fascinating innovations and technology here. Uh. So we've got a guy who's done PayPal, We've got a guy who's done Tesla Motors. Uh. He also was interested in another transportation initiative. Yeah, before

we even get to hyperloop. He was interested in a transportation that would send you up, like really really up. And not not balloons on a house. No, no, not not not that up. No. We're talking, of course about space X, which is a privatized space initiative. Really it's

it's the business of getting things up into space. But because as we all know, NASA was getting further and further budget cuts as time was going on, and it became apparent that if we weren't going to have a public space industry, something that was funded by the government. Then if we still wanted to pursue things in space, and we do, because there was a lot of important stuff out there, communication satellites being one of the simplest to explain, it meant that we had to have some

private industry step in. And so Musk said, you know, I think this is something else that I'm really interested in. I've always been interested in space. And he began to devote quite a bit of time and money and resources to creating a viable private space enterprise, and in fact, but not the spaceship, and that would have been probably a little beyond even his amazing reach. It's yeah, so mostly what he's looking at is our ways to try

and create an aconomically feasible private space enterprise. And he talked a lot about how that's difficult to do because you have very limited vendors from whom you can get the important components or your rockets. So he remember specifically, he pointed out this problem he had in Russia, where he would be quoted a price, he would agree to purchase a certain number of units of rockets at that price, and then upon the actual manufacture of it be told. Oh,

we're sorry. I know. We said there was gonna be twenty million dollars for all of these, but it's actually gonna be twenty million per rocket. Yeah, something along those lines. It's just he talked about how, you know, you have to deal with these things, and that it gave him a lot of uh experience and knowledge about the industry and how to try and and get around that by making as much of the stuff yourself as possible. In fact, that was one of the things he said, like this

explains why NASA budgets go out of control. It's not that they're poorly managed. Is that you have such limited resources to go to to get what you need that you're kind of held hostage by them. So, but that all of these interests are stuff that we had already talked about on Tech Stuff, right. Yes, that was the quick and dirty recap of the episode you should listen to in full. We say all of this to say that Musk has some street cred. He's not just some guy,

you know making a YouTube video. Uh. He is proposing another transit innovation, another potential transit innovation, and that would be the hyper loop. But my first question, you, Jonathan, we're talking hyper loop, What what is it? Well, if we were to take elon Musk's own words, and this is somewhat paraphrased from an interview he gave at the D eleven event, he said, it's a cross between a

concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table. He I of the air hockey table last, like he said concorde and a railgun first, and I got a great responses. You know, technically, if I really want to blow your minds, I need to add in the fact that there's an air hockey table element in there too. And then he made uh an inappropriate joke, But essentially he said that if these three things got together and had nice romantic times, hyper loop would be the bibbet that would be produced

as a result. You now that that alone doesn't really tell you what hyper loop is, and I think that was actually Musk's point. He knew he didn't want to spoil the surprise at that event, so he wanted to give just enough information for people to get curious about it, but not enough to actually explain what it was. Right, and one of the things one of the best ways for us to approach this. Over the course of this episode, I think we're going to go into what the science

behind a hyper loop. Uh, you know, maybe some pros, some cons some similar systems. Uh, the elevator pitch. We we can't really beat that great quote, right, but if you want to, if you want something that's a little easier to actually visualize beyond the fact that what you're gonna shoot people through some form of high energy mechanism and they're just gonna fly across you and you get points if they hit the goal, And I'm like, what

is this? Yeah, but no, it's it's more like, all right, so it's it's an elevated system in more ways than one. For one, it's going to if it were to be built, would be built on pylons that would go and hold the the whole system above ground. Um, it's was proposed, but to be between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yes, with an incredibly short transit time. Yeah, we'll get into that.

I don't want to spoil it, but but it's it's the ideas that the capsules that you would travel and it wouldn't be a train, it would be a sort of a capsule that could hold a certain number of people. Um that these these capsules would float above the floor of the system. The whole thing would be inside a tunnel that's on top of these pylons, so it's all in loosed, but the capsule would float above the ground.

So that means you've eliminated friction from the wheel. There's no wheels towards huge and then it would be propelled down this tube, which also would have very low air pressure, so you would have low air resistance. It's of partial vacuum. Yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about that too in a second. So essentially you're talking about some sort of imagine a straw, but the straw has closed off at both ends more or less, there's there's a little bit of a gap in there to allow some air passage.

And then imagine a P that's inside, like a dried p that's inside that that straw. And then imagine that you have somehow maybe bombarded that p with electrons so that it now has built up a negative electrostatic charge, and then you put another negative magnet end next to it, and it would zip across to the other end of the tube in a very very oversimplified way. That's what

the hyper biz. And you are inside the p Yes, you are inside, so you yeah, obviously there's some questions that we have to answer, but that's the general idea. So you know, this is this is actually it's we'll talk about this too. This is not the first time

this kind of system has been proposed. And in fact, there's a really interesting story we'll get to about another person who has proposed a very similar system that they've they've been talking about for a couple of years before Musk ever said anything, and they received a slightly different reaction, I would say, than what Musk has received. Um, and we'll we'll have to talk about spoilers. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

it's just just teasing you. So Hyperloop essentially, what we're getting at is it's a high speed transportation system that allows multiple passengers to go between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco, at least initially. Shouldn't never be built. Yeah, and uh, also, of course the questions that we need to address, they are going to be popping up in everybody's head. Um, I just want to put this in

the radar for the very end of the show. Jonathan the question I want to us both to attempt to answer the very end of the show, is this vaporware. That's an excellent question, and yes, I think that we will have to kind of give our own opinions on that at the very end. So we've got a lot to talk about. But before we get into the nitty gritty about exactly how this thing is supposed to work, should it ever be built, let's take a quick break

and thank our sponsor. You've probably tried Hulu dot com. Now with Hulu Plus, you can watch your favorite shows anytime, anywhere. Hulu Plus lets you watch thousands of hit TV shows in a selection of acclaimed movies on your television or on the go with your smartphone or tablet, and it all streams an HD for the best viewing experience. With Hulu Plus, you can watch your favorite current TV shows

like Agents of Shield, Community and Sleepy Hollow. You can also check out exclusive content, including Hulu originals like The Awesome starring us Nell, Seth Myers and moon Boy starring Chris Odwald from four two. Hulu Plus also offers a great selection of acclaimed films for only seven dollars nine nine cents a month. You can stream as many TV shows and movies as you want wherever you want. Right now, you can try hu Plus free for two weeks when you go to Hulu Plus dot Com Forward slash Tech.

That's a special offer for our listeners. Make sure you use Hulu Plus dot Com Forward slash Tech so you get the extended free trial and they know that we sent you. Go to Hulu Plus dot Com Forward slash Tech now. And as for shows I like to watch on Hulu Plus, Agents of Shield is a big one, actually, because occasionally I'm traveling and I miss stuff, and when I come back, I want to catch up and see what's going on. I feel that shows really just now

starting to hit its stride. I think it might have struggled a little early in the Marvel universe. It's so huge, and then you're dealing with these, you know, human people and how they are interacting in this world. And I think they're really getting into some interesting territory. So that's a recommendation for me. You should go check it out. Alright, so we're back, let's talk about all the hyper loop

would actually work. Now. You remember I was mentioning that whole idea of a closed off straw with a P in it. Yeah, so if you know that's that's that's okay, except for the fact that if you have air in that tube and the air doesn't have anywhere to go, that P is going to be pushing against the air in that tube, and even if there's space around the P, it's not going to go as fast as it could if there were no air at all. Right, The air

resistance is one of the biggest speed killers. Yeah, so there. You might have heard of some maglev trains, you know, trains that actually float above the track through magnetic levitation. And by magnetic levitation, we're essentially talking about magnets that repel one another and maintain the trains distance above a tract. Usually it's it's like just a tiny distance above it, right, and that's you know, and this this helps reduce friction

for those those sorts of systems. I think what we're seeing here is that these can be thought of as similar in some ways, but they have they have very different mechanisms. And also, you know, if you have a mag lev train that's in an uncovered track, then it still has to deal with that air resistance. It's top speed is going to be mitigated by the fact that it has to push against air. So one of the elements of this hyper loop system is it would be at a very low pressure. You would have have a

near vacuum, but not a total vacuum. Total vacuum is very difficult to maintain if you are talking about a significantly long tube, right, Yeah. Total vacuum is in fact so difficult to maintain that even if one could just throw billions of dollars at the problem making really long when uh, it might be impossible to do it effectively. You would have to have some form of of you know, vacuum stations all along the tube just to constantly deal

with any differentiation and pressure. So in stead, Musk says, why don't we just have something that will lower the air pressure quite a bit, uh, and that will allow for reduced air resistance because you don't have as much air to push against, and then all that means the capsule can move faster within that tube. So that's that's one element to Another element is, well, how do you get the tube to float above the base of the track,

the base of the tunnel, and it's not through magnetic limitation? Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's weirdly enough. It goes back to our air hockey comparison exactly, the air cushioning. Right, Yes, so you've got you've got these little air skis on the base of the metal capsule. So imagine these flat surfaces, lots of surface area on the base of this capsule, and then the track could blow air up and the

capsule is on a cushion of air. So that there's another reason why you can't have a total vacuum, because if you're using air to keep the the capsule up, Uh, you obviously can't have a toll vacuum, right. Yeah. In this in this case, in a very crew comparison, it would be trying to drive a car without wheels. Yeah yeah, And um, for anyone who has tried that, I'm sorry. I wish we had talked earlier. I know a lot of people who have cars without wheels on their front yard.

But that's because we live in the South, right, that is because we live in the South. But so if we just take if we just take these two ideas, right, partial vacuum, eliminating the air resistance, having these air skis. Um one of the first things that I thought about when I was reading about the hyper loop system was it always reminded me in principle of the pneumatic bank tubes, remember those. Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about.

And there's even a there's even this such a tangent, but there's even a system that someone tried to build, I believe in New York that was supposed to be a pneumatic train system. Spoiler alert didn't work out? And so how how would we like We're gonna keep explaining the science, but but it's it's important that we under line, we emphasize that this is at best wildly ambitious. So we've got um, we've got back to uh to the idea with the science. Now at this point we're talking

about principles, we're talking about blue sky stuff. I love that you brought up the p example. This is a great example P A P E A for our family show. I'm sorry, so this uh, this p this sealed capsule um could carry twenty eight passengers, right, so it's larger than your average pe. He even suggested that if you wanted to expand the hyperloop, you could have larger capsules that could carry not just passengers, but cars as well.

One of the reasons for that is that the proposed stations that would be in Los Angeles and San Francisco would actually be in outlying areas, meaning that once you've got there, you would not be right there in the city center. You would have to find some other means of transportation to getting you to your final location, assuming that it's not a hotel that's a jacent to the

to the station, right, which would be probably wildly expensive. Yeah, well, you know, yes, And I remember I read one report that said because you would have to transfer to a different form of transportation, that would significantly increase the travel time. And I'm thinking, have you ever driven between San Francisco

and Los Angeles? Because I don't know, you know, if you know what the word significant means, because I have gone between San Francisco and Los Angeles by car and it is not leisurely is a good word for it? How long did it take? We actually decided to make it a road trip, so we stopped overnight between the two and we we took a more scenic route anyway.

We didn't take a direct route between San Francisco in l A. We went down the Coastal Highway, so we were already going out of our way, but we stopped just south of Big Sir, which is gorgeous by the way. If you've ever been to California, and you've been there, you know what I'm talking about, and if you haven't, you should check it out. It's absolutely beautiful landscape. But it's a long drive, and we decided we would make

that an ex sperience as opposed to a frustration. Right, We planned for it to be a long drive and that we would take a break halfway down. Now, if you were to go just down the highway, it'd be a few hours, right, it wouldn't be It wouldn't be like a you know, a twelve hour drive or anything, depending upon how bad the traffic is, because it can get rough. But it's it's it's definitely not a quick trip and uh, at least not yet, but the hyper

loop could possibly make it a quick trip. Now. We haven't talked even about the propulsion system, all right, Yeah, we talked about that. It's floating above the track, well, not even a track. It's floating above the ground of this tunnel, which again is elevated. It's on these pylons, and we talked about how uh you know, it's we got the lower air pressure inside the tunnel, but how

does it actually move. It uses a series of linear electric motors which actually create a magnetic field, and so in this case, it's like the maglev trains that also use magnetic fields for two purposes. They use it one to levitate the train and the second one is to propel the train down the track. So while you're not using magnetism to levitate the capsule inside the hyperloop, you

are using it to push it forward. And here's the neat thing it is because you've got that low air pressure system within this tunnel and you don't have to worry so much about friction. You've really reduced friction. You only have to accelerate the capsule for a relatively short amount of time and then it can glide the rest of the way. Because you don't have to continuously pour an energy to maintain that speed. You will slow down on your own because uh, you still have entropy to

deal with. It's not a purely frictionless system. It's not a pure vacuum. So clearly eventually it's going to stop. But the term there is eventually. So that's the neat thing is that you accelerate to a top speed and then you stop, and then you just allow the capsule to travel the rest of the way. So, now that we know how it goes, how fast can this thing go? The route is three hundred fifty four miles or about

five seventy kilos. Uh. Yeah, And and since we know, since now we can get into our spoiler territory and say that the proposed transportation time is thirty five minutes. That's incredible. That's so such a short amount of time to go between l A and San Francisco. That's that's crazy. We are automatically gonna be old codgers who people will dismiss when we say, you know, day, it took here. It took care at least five hours to get it to me. It takes more than thirty five minutes to

drive across Los Angeles. I mean that's l A is enormous. So yeah, and this, um, so this this speed, let's see, how would you I've I've heard some differing numbers, so um, I usually say I usually say it's right around like just below six hundred miles per hour as the average speed somewhere somewhere between five and six hundred miles per hour would be the average speed. So that's roughly around nine kilometers per hour give or take, you know, kilometers

per hour. Because because again, like you said, the discussions vary on this, because it all depends upon uh, you know, how you're defining everything. And thirty five minutes, I think when they say thirty five minutes, to me, that just sounds like a number, like like, I don't know that they have specifically worked it out where scientifically speaking, it's thirty five minutes travel time and almost to me sounds like, well, here's here's a short enough amount of time for you

to consider this incredible accomplishment. But that would mean that you would have a top speed, Like I said, you'd hit that top speed and then allow it to slow down. That would be probably around between seven and fifty and seven and seventy five miles per hour, or around twelve

hundred kilometers per hour for your top speed. That's faster than what how most uh commercial jets travel, right, And that also gives us that also gives us a good place to note that if you are ever writing in this and you have some sort of phobia about this kind of stuff. Um, you know, do your best. You might you might need to um have someone sing you a sweet song thirty five minutes because if you think

about you are in an enclosed capsule. I'm guessing that there wouldn't be any real windows, because what would be the point. There's a really a way to do it that would be worth the effort. Yeah, I mean, I

guess you could. You could put something along the tubes so that when you travel it's almost like animation that I've actually seen train tunnels that have this kind of stuff where because as long as the train is moving at the average speed, you get this illusion of animation because of the way that things are lit and the way you're moving through this tunnel. So I guess you could do that. But otherwise you are in an enclosed steel tunnel. It's not like you've got a lot to

look at. So if you are clustrophobic, I would imagine that would be scary. Plus you're going to experience some some you know, some acceleration. I I I'm sure that the acceleration would be gradual, so it wouldn't be so incredible that you'd be you know, crushed back in your seats, experiencing like tend gees of force. That would be way too much, um, but there, Yeah, but there will definitely be noticeable effects. It's pretty much unavoidable at that at

that level of speed. Yeah, and then you have to also worry about deceleration when you get to the end of your trip. So again they would be using magnets to help slow down the capsule's travel so that you would come to a smooth stop. But that would be something that you have to take special care of. And obviously, like you, you definitely need to put this into very narrow ranges of acceptance because otherwise, how can you guarantee that the average person would would experience no ill effects

inside this capsule? Keeping in mind that the average person, you know, there's what we say average, We're talking about a huge variety of variables, everything from uh, you know, health issues, part conditioning right right exactly, or you know, just someone who is older, would they be safe? Would they are they likely to suffer ill effects from this acceleration and deceleration. Well, someone who really had to use the bathroom but they forgot to do it before they

got on the train. Yeah, I don't know if there would be a bathroom in here. You would think there would need to be, just because you know, if you've got a group of people together. Yeah, and asking someone to hold it for thirty five minutes might be a bit much depending upon that person, but they they're probably okay, I'm gonna go out and live and say there probably isn't at least yet. We do know that there are emergency exits built along the tubes um or at least

there there would be. We haven't. We haven't built anything yet. Yeah, let's underline that again. And you did a great job emphasizing that in the beginning, but we can't say it enough. This has not been built yet. And the recording of this podcasting of this podcast, Hey guys, it's Jonathan from here to break in just so that we could take a quick break, will be right back. Where does the hyperloop get its power? Because you're talking about electric motors

providing that force to propel them. Uh, presumably you'd be using some form of electric motors to to create the air cushion. So where are you getting that power? And Musk had said, well, let's put solar panels along the top of this this raised tunnel and you just harvest solar energy and you store that and use that as the power source, saying that if you did this properly, you would not have to tap into the power grid

at all. It would be completely self contained in that respect, which you know obviously that would be a huge benefit. You can say, well, while the operating costs have only like, we can't even estimate what the operating costs of this system would be, but if you can remove power from that, then you can at least compare that part to any

other alternative plan. That's true. And also you know the other the other power source they're inside the pods would be the batteries that Tesla that again come from uh Tesla bottlesque electric cars. Well they don't, they're related to it, yeah, and Tesla, the Tesla motors. The one of the things that they've they've really innovated in is battery technology and

charging technology. They have something called a supercharger which allows them to charge batteries to essentially full capacity at relatively short intervals. So that would allow them to continuously operate and recharge these these capsules so that you didn't have to worry about taking them offline for a great deal of time. Now clearly. Uh. You know, one of the criticisms I've heard is that the system might work in California,

where you get a lot of sunshine. But if you were to try and expand this so that you could, you know, maybe people who I don't know don't live in California. As crazy as that sounds to the people who in this room three, really because we got no here too, none of us live in California. We would not be able to take advantage of this unless we were to head out and see our buddies at Revision three and then say, hey, let's go to Disneyland. Uh. And you know it's just a thirty five minute tripped

on hyperloop. Um. But yeah, it's it wouldn't necessarily work everywhere using solar energy. It's like in the UK. Yeah, yeah, the UK might not get enough son to keep that going. So they Now, you could argue that sure, you could offset whatever the power needs were with solar panels, and then the rest you would supply with whatever the power grid would supply. So it's not like it's an all or nothing game. It's not a zero sum game. I don't mean to say that, but it's one of those

things you've got to take into consideration. So all right, so this sounds pretty incredible. Ben, This, this, this whole system sounds amazing to me. Um, you know what, everything that's amazing comes to the price tag. And I'm curious how much Musk thinks this system would cost. Oh man, you know, I think the bargain number that I've heard thrown around is as low as uh six billion? Is

that what? That's what I saw? That's the the alpha design has been called six billion dollars because this is again, no one has seriously looked into building this, at least to the point where talks go beyond just a kind of hypothetical situation. Right. Yeah, that's a good point. Right now. A lot of the numbers that you and I are pulling come directly from a fifty seven page uh. I think it's fair to call the manifesto written by Musk about the hyperloop and this, uh, this number comes from

his estimate this alpha system. Think of it like, uh, think of it like when the first PlayStation came out, you know, it was it was it was chunky, it was first gin. It didn't have all the amenities, all the bells and whistles. For instance, the Alpha system doesn't take into account the idea of UM which you mentioned earlier,

the idea of putting passenger vehicle right right. So in fact, I think they said that if you wanted to make it for passenger vehicles UH to be stored on those kind of pods as well, it would be more like seven point five billion, and at one point five billion

increase for something that significance seems really really optimistic to me. Yeah, optimistics the diplomatic word, because you imagine that any capsule that could hold at least a vehicle and presumably more than one, if you're talking about this being a mass transportation system, then you know you're going to have to have larger capsules, which means in turn, you have to have larger tunnels to to accommodate those larger capsules, stronger

pylons or the weight. Yeah, it's I mean, everything ends up having to be larger and more more resilient, and it just then means it's going to cost more. So one point five billion more is kind of I mean,

I'm curious to see how they arrived at their numbers. UM. I've read other estimations one person and had suggested that it would be more like one hundred billion dollars to make such a system because you have to factor in everything from the design prototypes, development, testing it, making sure that it's safe for people to use, and then finally building out the real system, and then uh and then

operating it, maintaining it. You know that there are a lot of costs in there, so uh, it's interesting too. Did you see how much they had proposed a ticket would be on the hyperlop, Yeah, twenty dollars. One way, it's more it would be more expensive for you to take a cab to the station than it would to take a trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Yeah, and twenty dollars. That to me, out of all the numbers we've got thrown around, twenty dollars is the one

that is most likely to make me smirk. Yeah, because that's that's blue sky. Know. If it works, is it fantastic? Sure? If it's fifty dollars for a ticket, is it worth it still? Yes? Yes, there's so much worth it. Yeah. That's the thing is that I wonder there. I've seen some economists say that I can't understand how they would come up with this idea that if you had a twenty dollar ticket, it would recapture the cost of building

this thing within the time frame that Musk was suggesting. Uh, you know, I just I also think now, granted, Musk is a a pretty smart businessman. He's he's he's achieved way more on the business side of things than I have or that I ever expect to achieve. You know, you never know what tomorrow brings. You know, maybe I maybe I end up coming up. Hey, I came up with an idea that could win me a Nobel Prize when I was talking about possibly the existence of white

holes and why we haven't identified any. I'm still waiting on that check. I got a certificate though, I'll show it to you. Episode listeners sent me a certificate. Um. Yeah, it's just to me that just that twenty dollars per ticket, it really makes me wonder how many people per day the system would allow to travel so that you would

recapture those costs within a reasonable amount of time. Well, I've got musk take on it, and it is an excellent question because that price has to we have to assume that there are there, there's at least concrete estimation behind that. Um, here is what he's thinking. He said the capacity of would be on average eight forty passengers per hour. Wow. So he argues that's more than sufficient enough to transport all of the six million passengers traveling

between l A and San Francisco per year. Uh, and that accounts for sevent those travelers to use hyper loop during rush hour. So there's a lot of there's a lot of wind at your back scenario stuff going on dred and forty per hour that's you know, that's pretty amazing if and how many people did they say the capsule could hold, like twenty something, So there are there are a lot of capsules traveling on that system in order to get and obviously this is a two way loop.

I mean there's a loop, So you would divide that by two to figure out how many are traveling north versus south essentially and leaving every two minutes. That's the interval of the trains. Again, that's the proposed interval of the trains. And um, you know, yeah, it might sound weird to some of the listeners that you and I are taking a few moments every few minutes to say, well,

that would be this is conditional. But it's very, very very important to note this because any time that we're talking about um an infrastructure process uh an infrastructure of this size, or in any any kind of new transportation, we have to understand that it's very safe to assume

that the cost will balloon, will skyrock. Sure, yeah, because you're always going to run into other costs, just like Musk ran into other costs with SpaceX, things that he did not anticipate because he was told one thing and

it turned out to be another thing. I would imagine the same situation would happen here where things that you know, you're basing it off of a certain set of expectations, but you haven't factored into all the other variables that could affect any of those numbers, including things like well, in order for me to get the political uh angle covered, I need to make sure that all these other things are covered first, or I'm not going to get the support I need to get this done, which kind of

this is kind of brings us into those pros and cons. Obviously, the pro here is that you would have a high speed transportation system that could get you between two distant cities in thirty five minutes, which is phenomenal for a low price twenty bucks a ticket. That's yeah. I can imagine so many people in l A or San Francisco taking weekend trips. You know, because you've got twenty bucks

a person, it's not nothing. You can go visit the other city and your you can spend most of your time doing whatever it is you want to do instead of in the car. Great. Yeah, I like the idea that's getting most it's electricity from solar power, so it's

not causing too much of a carbon footprint. Depending upon how you know, you would have to factor in how much carbon footprint was generated just through the construction, but the operation you would imagine would be you know, pretty low since you're using solar power as your source of energy.

I love that. I love innovation obviously. I love the idea that if this were actually to be as cost efficient as Musk claims, it would be remarkably less expensive than the proposed train high speed train system that they want to build between l A and San Francisco. Ah. Yes, I am so glad you mentioned that because that's one of our that's one of our other factors. We should take just a just a sidebar here and talk about that,

uh hyper loop is. While hyper loop might be the Internet favorite right now, it is not is not the only contender in the game for high speed transit in this realm Uh there's also califour ands UH state sanctioned transit system, which which, let's see, what's the nicest way to say it. It throws that six billion dollar price tag into a very favorable contrast, right. Yeah. Musk was making this point when he was talking about hyper loop

for the first couple of times. He said he was looking at the figures for this proposed bullet train between l A and San Francisco, and he said, there are two factors here, two superlatives that you never want. One, it's the most expensive bullet train per mile than any other one in the world. And to it's the slowest one. So it's very slow and very expensive. He's compared to

other bullet train systems. Right, and we know that we know that in the case of bullet train technology, this is not in the same situation as the hyper loop. Bullet train technology has been tested, has been proven to work successfully in Japan, and works successfully in China. There's some in Europe as well as some in Europe as well. And it's not as though it's not as though this is slow and inordinately expensive because of a lot of research.

It might just be, as Must proposes, a frustrating example of poor implementation, which he was so frustrated with it that it led to this hyperloop idea. Yeah. I said that that was essentially the impetus that got into thinking there had to be a better way to get people quickly between uh, these two cities and at a lower price. Yeah, And I'll put on some pros to dovetail with the pros that you you earlier mentioned, which we are all great good points. Um. One of the other pros that

I see, and this is all blue sky. If this works, how amazing would it be to be able to build a network of hyper loops kind of picture just almost like a chain of loops around a around a coastline or traversing through the United States. I mean, that's wildly ambitious. That's that's something that's not to bring mortality into it, Jonathan, but that's something that might be beyond our lifetimes even

if it did work. Right, we have this, uh, well, I can also imagine that if you're talking about a more of a nationwide rollout of this, you would face other,

uh interesting opponents to it. I could imagine the airline industry being very much interested in the fact that you would suddenly have a high speed method getting between two locations at perhaps lower travel times than you would in the air and you know that would be there'll be a lot more politics going into it, absolutely, And it's funny because on car stuff, we did an episode once on the proposal for a global inter interstate system lack

of a better word, and by far even countering the infrastructure, even countering in the cost of maintenance, which is astronomical. Yeah, the by far one of the most difficult things would be political opposition, which I think leads us naturally into

the cons of of this system. Right. So one would be we can't really be sure what the cost is, so we don't while we know what Musk claims he thinks it'll it'll cost that maybe wildly optimistic um, Whereas we can look at what other systems cost based upon previous builds. Although I think the the proposed bullet train is already something at like sixty eight billion dollars. So it's already ten times more expensive than what Musk is proposing. And it was sixty billion dollars and it jumped up

eight billion by right. And it also it would take you about two hours forty minutes to get from l A to San Francisco on that train as opposed to as opposed to the Musk's train or Musk's hyperloop. It's not trained but anyway, um, so that's a con. Another con is it's a totally unproven technology. So with no precedent, it's really hard to say whether or not it will work. Like you could build some prototypes and test it out,

but we honestly don't know. And it could be one of those things where you test out and it doesn't work, and then you've you've, in some people's minds anyway, wasted time, energy and effort in order to prove that you could not do what you had hoped to do. So there's that's one. Another one is just you know, trying to figure out how do you you know, how do you navigate those tricky political waters where you want to erect

all these pylons alongside highways in California? You know, and and then just the construction alone, like how how long would that take to build an enormous loop built on pylons? Uh, you know, And and so there's there's that con as well. Yeah, and that's a that's an interesting one because that is a con that is going to become more expensive over time given the growth of that area of California. If

you know, let's say, let's just be wildly optimistic. Man, let's say eight years from now, right the great ground, and they've got they probably have a lot of agreements secured right for the land or whatever. But then it's obviously it's going to take more than a year to build something this gargantelin. So the next year comes around and wait, oh the prices have changed. So instead of twenty million dollars for this stretch of land, it's twenty

million per acre now, just like the rockets. But again, just back to your earlier point, there's no, it's very difficult because there's so many variables that are in the dark. I've got some additional cons that I haven't seen totally addressed, um one of at least, and a lot of stuff we've been reading. Now. One con that I love that you brought up was the idea that of the price,

of course will balloon. And people have rightly said that there are some factors that are not taken in consideration here. I think that is up there with political political maneuver, and I think that is the thing that will be most likely to kill it. Another thing is um Now you know, I'm kind of like a softie. I'm a heart on my sleeve or whatever. Uh, this could be damaging to some communities or industries that rely upon that traffic to sustain their part of the problem. Exactly nail

on the head. Now. Of course this could be a little bit dark for some people, but in the spirit of objectivity, we must mention this what happens when there's an accident. What happens if we already have a sunk cost of billions of dollars and then there's a disaster. Yeah, because if the capsule has a failure inside it, you're talking about a low pressure system, it's much higher pressure inside the capsule. You just like an experience of being in a plane at a high enough altitude, You've got

very low pressure outside, higher pressure inside. If there's a breach, then everything gets blown out and there's a there is a line of well, if you think about an entire loop of other capsules two minutes behind, So if there is any sort of failure of the propulsion system, then you could end up having a collision. If there's a failure of the propulsion system in the sense of deceleration, then you could have injuries as the capsule gets to

its stopping point. There are a lot of safety questions. I mean you're talking especially if some talk about capsule's leaving every two minutes. That thing literally has to run like clockwork like. It would have to be so efficient.

You would have to have a very secure system to slow down capsules and maybe have them in a little waiting area along one section of the loop before uh, the previous capsule is completely unloaded, because again, depending upon who is in that capsule, it may take longer than average, or you know, it may not take that long at all. And that whole thing has to be set up so that you know, you don't have any safety concerns. That's huge.

The software would have to be as innovative as the two idea itself, because you have to be continual security. I'm not seeing it's impossible man, it's just hard. It's just hard, that's the thing is. And then you know, humans have done some stuff that's really freaking hard. Yeah,

and the Musk has sent people into space. So it's not that it's not that we're saying that it's impossible to do, but you know it, we definitely have to keep the challenges in mind in order for us to meet those challenges, Like, even from the optimistic side, you've got to acknowledge it so that way you're prepared to overcome them. If you don't acknowledge them, then you're just

it's just a ticking time bomb. Really. Hey, it's twenty Jonathan. Again, we're gonna loop on into this episode so that we can take another quick break. Okay, So we've talked about Musk and his influence. We've talked about his idea of the hyperloop and how it would work assuming everything went as planned. We talked about the pros and cons. Let's

talk about some of the other systems out there. We've mentioned a little bit about Maglev trains, and I've done an episode about Maglev trains, so I don't want to go over it too much, but it is, like we said, a similar idea, this idea of having a train that doesn't actually sit down on wheels, at least not the entire way on. Whenever it's at a station, it would be down on the track, wheels to the track, and then once it leaves the station, magnets would end up

creating a repulsive force against one another. And they're different approaches to this. There's the electromagnetic suspension, there's electro dynamic suspension. UH. There's the induct tracks system, which is the permanent magnet passive suspension. There's all these different ways of doing it,

but essentially the same idea arises. You're just using these magnets to push the train up over the rails and then to propel them down the track's length uh, and then also to slow them down when they get to where they need to be, where they can then come back down onto their wheels and come to a rolling stop. And these are these are also high speed. But how high speed are we talking in comparison to the hyperlop proposal. They're not as fast, mostly because most of them are

not encapsulated in a tunnel with low air pressure. They tend to be out among the outside, so they still travel at an incredible speed because again, you don't have to worry about that friction. See, friction is not just something that slows you down. It means that you're losing energy. Because you're losing energy in the form of heat. Right, you're having to pour more energy into your vehicle to make it go the speed you want to compensate for

the fact that you're losing energy and heat. By making it frictionless, not only can they go faster, but you don't have to pour as much energy into it because you're not losing so much in this this heat problem.

There are other issues. For example, most maglev trains have to use superconductors because you know, actually they all use superconductors in order to generate these magnetic fields, and superconductors are not cheap and uh, most of them, although this has changed over the last couple of decades, most of them require being cooled to very, very very low temperatures.

We're talking just a couple of degrees above absolute zero, so right, and that's not just to be clear, that's not something that happens every every so often or on a cycle that has to be continuous. Yeah, So you're talking about using something like liquid nitrogen to get it down to a certain temperature and then switching to liquid

helium because liquid nitrogen is not cold enough. That being said, there are some supercolliders that have been developed since then, since they started building maglev trains that operate at higher temperatures, and by higher I still mean really really cold, just not just not as cold, right. So it's not like the deepest reaches of space cold, right, but it's way chillier than it gets in Minnesota and the winter cold. So um, you know, it's not it's not something that

makes it. It makes it more expensive to operate. And so because of the expense of having to operate these not just operate them, but also build them. There there aren't as many maglev trains as you might imagine based upon their their initial appeal from the fact that they don't have as much fiction. There are maglev trains, there's not a lot of them. Some of them are just prototypes. Yes,

some of them are just prototypes. And and for a while, to be honest, maglev trains seemed like they could be a candidate for this. There's this joke that you and I have made before off air, and that's gott I have made before off air that there's all this fantastic technology. Man, it's just ten years away. Yeah, it's always ten years ago whatever, right, you always are You're always just ten years away. Yeah, we make that same joke on forward

thinking as well. Plug um. But yeah, so so the love trains their top speeds maybe somewhere between three and so that's still significantly slower than what the hyperloop would attain assuming it worked the way we think it's supposed to. Yeah, big difference being that maglev trains are wait for it real um. So that I think alone gives them some bonus points in my book. But also if we if we think about this, um, the the advantages that maglev trains have are um in comparison to the hyper loop.

You have to ask yourself, does do those advantages make the maglev trains a more feasible option? You know? Is the advantage of extra speed uh preferable? I think the biggest advantage maglev trains have is not, uh, you know, in their operation, but the fact that we have proof of that it works, right, Like, we know that maglev

trains work. So therefore that is a huge advantage over the hyper loop because that's something that from what we understand, it should work, assuming you built it the right way, but we don't have proof of it. Alright, So Ben, let's talk about this other guy. Have you heard about Darryl Auster. Darryl Auster, Yeah, he might be familiar. Why he proposed a system that would be a transportation system.

It's a steel tube on some elevated structure, like on pylons, that would use linear electric motors to push capsules at high speed across vast distances. Um, might sound a little familiar. Yeah, Hey, I didn't. I didn't want to interrupt, but um, this this does sound a little bit familiar. Not to be a guy living in the past. But isn't this just what we've been talking about? Yeah? Yeah, like, um, like five minutes ago. Yes, this is exactly it's It's called

the Evacuated Tube Transport System or e T three. Right, And didn't the ET three hit the news and hit the public sphere, uh before this hyper loop proposal? Yeah, well before it. And also Auster, interestingly enough, paid a little visit earlier this year to SpaceX, which is Um, I don't know if you know this, because we talked about at the top of the show, one of the things Musk does. It's the it's the ancient paths to

Me now the top of the show. But the Yes, this is a very interesting point because this has fueled some uh, some speculation. Yes, yes, yeah, I would agree,

that's a good word for it. So the speculation is essentially that perhaps either Musk knew about Auster's idea and essentially lifted it because other people had suggested that Auster was, for lack of a better word, whackadoodle um, or rather that his ideas were probably unrealistic and difficult to put into practice, he did not get the same consideration or

street cred that that he encountered much more. Skepticism is right best way, and it's it's possible that Musk is exactly the right guy to go to about this sort of thing, because Musk has this already has this past of making these incredible accomplishments, things that some people might

have called impossible before he achieved them. So, uh, there's some speculation that in fact Musk has licensed the technology or the design from Auster, and in fact Auster has said that there are people or organizations that are licensing his ideas but he does not go so far as to identify who they are. He says that that's up to them. It's their choice to come out and say, yes, I've licensed this technology from so and so. Yeah, and

that's you see. I think we're being very fair about this because the only three things there are three things we know for sure. First, the design of hyperloop and et three very similar. Second, uh, the Darryl did visit SpaceX. Yes. Third, uh, Darryl did mention that there was licensing involved, But none of that even all of that together does not can eclusively prove anything. No, it's circumstantial. Circumstantial, So we call it. We call it speculation. And I'm gonna go ahead and

call it interesting. Yes, I I will go so far as to say very interesting. I raise your interesting with a very um yeah. I think it would not surprise me to find out that Musk had heard of this and then thought it was a great idea, and that maybe together they realized that because of the resistance that Auster had faced when he was proposing his idea to other you know, like essentially outlets were like that's crazy. Then must goes forward and he says essentially the same

thing and it's crazy awesome. Yeah. So so it's it's possible that this is in fact an evolution of Auster's idea. It could very well be that it's two people who thought the same thing independently. That has happened many, many, many times. It happened Tewriter, Yeah, it happened with it happened with calculus, that happened with lots of things, you know. So we're not going to jump to that conclusion, but

it is interesting. Uh. And so you know, there are a couple of other things we can mention, like there's some other high speed technologies that could possibly come into play. But I think that that really it's down to the brass tacks, Ben. I think we have to sit down and actually predict will hyperloop come to pass or is it as you mentioned before, vapor ware, Get out of my head. You're reading my mind, man, because you're right,

the time has come. Uh. I don't know if we have any dramatic music playing in the background, but it's in my head right now. Who should do the honors? Sir? You know what I'm gonna go first. I'm going to say that we will not see this become a transportation between Los Angeles and San Francisco, because the challenges of making sure that it will work properly and navigating those tricky political waters that are already so invested in a bullet train uh plan for those cities. I just think

that's too great a challenge to overcome. I think that even if you were to prove the technology works, getting past that political barrier is a huge, huge task, right, Okay, So to dovetail onto that, I am going to also have a bit of a qualified prediction. I I predict, I want to be optimistic about this, that we're going

to see something like the hyper loop in the future. However, I don't think it's going to be quite up to the specs that we've heard proposed, and I am also skeptical that it could be built in California at this juncture. You know, there's a reason that Google Fiber went to Kansas City, right, yeah, right, right, that's my prediction. I

think that's fair something like it. And I will say that the hyper loop proposal is in many ways much more deserved than Auster's originally uh than his proposal, because Auster had said that he wanted this e T three system to be deployed throughout the United States, which means that you have interstate politics to deal within, not just within one state, right, You've got all these different states that you have to factor into that consideration, and that

makes it way more complex. And that wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future topics for current episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.