Technology

Elon Musk is a very ambitious man with equally ambitious, but viable, projects up his sleeve. One of his companies is bent on changing the auto industry, while the other is busy trying to take humans to Mars, and the other is intent on supplying electricity to anyone who needs it. Clearly, Elon Musk is trying to reinvent the whole world in just a single lifetime.

But Tesla Motors and SpaceX are not the only major transport-related projects Elon Musk is working on. Elon Musk is deep in the works trying to invent a train system where computers can be transported between different cities at a very high speed- as high as the speed of sound. The train system is called the Hyperloop. The train system is an amalgamation of a railgun, Concorde plane, and an air-hockey table, as per the inventor.

Hyperloop technologies, which is in charge of the project, recently hinted on Twitter that it is planning to make earth-shaking announcements. It wasn’t immediately clear what those announcements it was planning to make were.

The company had announced in December 2015 that it was constructing a pioneering test track in the Apex Industrial Park in Las Vegas. The track is a little over half a mile, and Hyperloop technologies are testing it for sending its linear motors down the line at a speed of 330 mph.

By the end of the year 2016, Hyperloop technologies intend to construct a Hyperloop system that is two miles long, where a levitating pod can be accelerated to a speed of 700 mph before it is slowed down. The Hyperloop system is then set to eventually feature a low-pressure tube in which a pod packed full of commuters can travel up to a speed of 767 miles per hour between different destinations. For instance, a Hyperloop trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles will only take 30 minutes.

The Hyperloop system will depend on a passive magnetic levitation system which is developed by Lawrence Livermore National Labs. The magnetic fields within the tunnel will lift the pod before applying a thrust force that will accelerate the pod to a speed of up to 767 mph. The utilization of a passive levitation system effectively eliminates the necessity of a power station along the Hyperloop track, thus, making the system more suitable for the application. As a result, keeping its building costs low.

The system is very safe as levitation occurs only through movement. That means that should any type of power failure occur; the Hyperloop pods will continue to levitate and touch the ground only after reaching the lowest speeds.

Electric Plane

If you think that is all that this genius is thinking about, then you are sorely mistaken. Silicon’s most respected engineer is also planning to design an electric plane. And he has mentioned the idea of an electric plane on several occasions. Elon Musk says that he likes the idea of an electric aircraft company.

Probably, as Musk admits, the idea of an electric plane is premised on the forecast that all future vehicles will be electric and, thus, the idea of an electric plane is a very promising venture. He believes that all aircraft, ships, and all modes of transport are going to be fully electric. He has shared his thoughts in many interviews intimating that the ideal mode of long distance travel is a vertical take-off and landing electric plane.

That is not all that this technology enthusiast is up to. He indeed has a lot on his plate at the moment, but he seems to be coming up with more potent ideas even as days go by. His projects only get more ambitious. He has profoundly significant plans for Tesla and SpaceX. That is beside the fact that the engineer is engrossed on working on the release of a new form of Tesla Powerwall, which is an electric rechargeable battery for the home. To be able to produce this new Powerwall requires that they complete their Gigafactory by the year 2017.

Elon Musk has puzzled the world, and people all over keep wondering what he could be up to next. It seems that his mystique and his incredible successes cannot be explained so simply. Whatever his secret sauce is, the man has changed the world, and will impact it even in more profound ways.