More than a pipe dream.
Elon Musk, saviour of humanity and love child of Stephen Hawking and Wonder Woman (maybe), has been working on plans for The Hyperloop, a fully enclosed pod-based transporter that travels at speeds faster than sound, for several years now. Well, according to the two companies bidding to be the one to make it a reality, it is definitely happening.
The Hyperloop, which has been planned initially as a super-fast way to get from LA to San Francisco before spreading out across the world, would see passengers sit in enclosed pods that use electric engines to reach speeds of up to 758 mph, covering the distance between the two cities in just 30 minutes.
Hyperloop One, and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, the two companies hoping to make it happen, were both recently present at InnoTrans, the transport industry trade fair. As well as showing off what their versions of the Hyperloop would look like, they even had VR headsets to give people the sense of what it would be like to travel at 700 mph through a glass tube. We need to try that.
No matter who gets the contract, it seems that the way we travel about the planet could soon be changing.