The renowned innovator Elon Musk is at it again. His company Tesla has announced that they are about to begin construction in California (US) of an ultra-speed transportation system called Hyperloop. It is the world’s first supersonic overland transport system with the ability to reach speeds over 1,200 kph. Like most other Musk-inspired creations, the Hyperloop concept seems like something out of science fiction. Dirk Ahlborn, the head of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) says, “We feel that we’re at a stage where the theoretical questions have been answered, so now we’re moving on to building a prototype.”

This first Hyperloop system will be 8 kilometres long and connect to a new sustainable community called Quay Valley, located between Los Angeles and San Francisco. “This will allow us to completely test the technology, from the boarding process to the safety procedures – really everything except top speed,” Ahlborn said. The shape of the Hyperloop looks like a long network of above-ground tubes. It is filled with very low air pressure which is what allows its bus-sized capsules to travel through the tubes at near supersonic speeds. Tesla says that the full-scale version of the vacuum transportation network will take passengers and freight at average speeds of well over 1,000 kph. “We will move people and cargo at speeds never thought possible. We will make the world smaller, cleaner and more efficient,” states HTT on their website.

About 200 engineers from NASA, Yahoo, and Airbus are involved in developing this transportation system with the potential to change the way the world commutes. If it works as projected, a traveller of the future could hop on the Hyperloop in New York, and be in Miami in under 2 hours... or Los Angeles in just over 3 hours. That’s much faster than flying, and it is also meant to be more affordable and far better for the environment. It certainly sounds like science fiction, but the prototype is happening right now, so it looks like the future is Now.