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Hyperloop To Whisk Passengers From NY To DC In 29 Minutes — Musk Gets Verbal OK

By Roz Zurko
Published on: 08:34 PST, Jul 20, 2017

Elon Musk’s dream is closer to a reality today now that the “verbal” green light has been passed down from the government for this new mode of ground transportation that can travel up to 700 mph. The Hyperloop is set to come off Elon Musk’s drawing board and materialize in the not so very distant future up and down the East Coast.

The ultrafast Hyperloop is one long tube that will whisk passengers inside a pod from New York City to Washington D.C. in under 30 minutes. While it almost sounds like something the Jetson’s might have created in their cartoon of futuristic technologies, it is a realistic project proposed by Elon Musk and one that’s up and working in test stages already in Nevada.

According to KNPR.org, Elon Musk has been given the go-ahead to start planning for this Hyperloop that will connect the larger cities along the East Coast. Musk, who sounded excited now that the first hurdle of a verbal OK is now out of the way, notified the masses in a tweet, which can be seen below.

His Twitter post started a stampede of curiosity, and he later added, that there’s a lot of work ahead of them before getting the “formal approval,” but he believes this will happen rather “rapidly.”

The passengers and cargo will load into the pods and travel in the enclosed tube in a vacuum environment. The pod rides on air, levitated by magnets and it is pushed along via an electric motor. It sounds almost like riding in one of the contraptions that are used in many of the nation’s banks at their drive-thru windows, suggests a Twitter user.

Elon Musk’s company describes the Hyperloop One.

“With Hyperloop One, passengers and cargo are loaded into a pod and accelerate gradually via electric propulsion through a low-pressure tube. The pod quickly lifts above the track using magnetic levitation and glides at airline speeds for long distances due to ultra-low aerodynamic drag.”

The Hyperloop would service the same main East Coast cities as Amtrak does today. It will run from New York to Philadelphia and on to Baltimore and Washington, which is a heavily traveled route via Amtrak today. Just like Amtrak, the Hyperloop will bring the passengers into the heart of the cities.

There is already a working model of the Hyperloop in Nevada, and it underwent its first public test run last summer, which by all accounts was a success. The 500-meter-long Hyperloop was erected in the Nevada desert for the purpose of testing the concept. It is about 550 yards long, or approximately the length of five football fields laid down end to end.

The first phase had the pod going at only 70 mph, but the next round of tests will have it up to speeds nearing 250 mph. When the Hyperloop becomes a reality up and down the East Coast corridor, the stations that this mode of transportation will service are expected to each have “up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators.”

[Featured Image by By Phil Stafford/Shutterstock]

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