Elon Musk’s Hyperloop: Is It The 5th Form Of Transportation?

On Monday SpaceX, Tesla, and PayPal founder Elon Musk will announce his new Hyperloop system, a new form of transportation that will cut the travel time from Los Angeles to San Francisco down to just minutes.

Many experts are positing that Musk’s new system will join boats, planes, trains, and automobiles as the 5th form of modern day transportation.

Estimates have guessed that the Hyperloop system will allows travelers to hop in two meter wide pods that travel at speeds of up to 600 MPH or approximately two times the average speed of commercial aircraft.

While we will have to wait until Monday to hear anything concrete about Hyperloop, the insurance site Gocompare.com created an infographic, below, that illustrates the rumored details about Hyperloop.

The Hyperloop system is believed to be solar-powered while creating more energy then it uses. It is also believed to be immune from weather conditions and almost as fast as a speeding bullet.

Of course, as with any system, there are still a lot of questions; for example, how will Hyperloop travel between cities? The human body can’t easily withstand sharp turns at 600 mph because of the G Force it would create. Hyperloop, if based on current predictions, would need straight lines to travel or a turning radius of about 40 miles.

Some of the answers to currently posited questions are answered in the infographic. Then again, we could all be wrong. Perhaps Musk has design a new type of flight travel, or maybe he’s going to “beam us up” now that he has conquered that whole pesky commercial space travel thing.

Whatever Hyperloop may end up being, we know, when it comes to space age technology, there are very few people on the same level as Elon Musk.

Here’s the Hyperloop infographic based on currently rumored aspects of the project: