Elon Musk’s idea of creating a high-speed transportation system that is neither plane nor train, but both at the same time, sounds good to us, and not an entirely unfeasible prospect – he called it the ‘Hyperloop’ and it’s Mach 1-capable. However, while he still endorses the idea, he won’t be a part of the plan to make it come true, because as Fox News reports, he’s too busy and others have taken up the challenge.
Patricia Galloway, the first female president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and former member of the US National Science Board, whose portfolio of completed jobs includes an extension of the Panama canal, is one of the managers behind the newly-created company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc.
She says that despite being a very young corporate entity that just came into being, “the feasibility is done. What we’re working on now is moving toward conceptual design.”
Her statements bristle with optimism; “It’s similar to what the Concorde did for air transport,” she said, certain that “This will revolutionize how we transport people from city to city.”
She will join forces with Marco Villa, former mission operations director at SpaceX, yet no connection will be made between this fledgling company and Musk’s private space agency. They will benefit from the support of other businesses manufacturing and design company GloCal Network Corporation (GLOCAL) and UCLA Architecture and Urban Design’s grad program SUPRASTUDIO, along with ANSYS (simulations specialists), whose director of automotive and ground transportation industry, Sandeep Sovani said they’ve “already virtually tested an initial concept of the Hyperloop.”
Money sources for the project are currently not plentiful, but an attempt will be made to try to go the crowdfunding route, but if this does what it says on the tin, they won’t have to and investors will be queuing around the corner to get a slice. However, they understandably need to see a working prototype before parting with their cash, and apparently that could be coming “as early as the end of 2014,” according to the quoted source article.
By Andrei Nedelea
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