{"id":17898,"date":"2017-07-26T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-07-26T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/eagle\/blog\/?p=1390"},"modified":"2023-09-25T12:42:56","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T19:42:56","slug":"what-is-hyperloop-where-its-going","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.autodesk.com\/products\/fusion-360\/blog\/what-is-hyperloop-where-its-going\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Hyperloop & Where It\u2019s Going"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going, Going, Gone – What Is Hyperloop, and Where It\u2019s Going in the Future<\/h1>\n\n\n

We chase after faster and thinner smartphones every year, lining up outside stores days before just to be one of the first to rip into that shrink-wrapped box. And we\u2019re constantly pouring more transistors into our computers, looking for ways to make things better, faster, and stronger than ever. But then we turn our attention to something like transportation, and well, that story just isn\u2019t changing much at all, now is it? We\u2019ve still got cars that crawl along roadways in our traffic-congested commutes. We\u2019ve still got trains that snake slowly along our landscapes. Or airplanes that feel like the seats are getting smaller and more constricted as the years draw on. This all makes you wonder, for how obsessed we are with improvement and evolution in consumer technology, why hasn\u2019t our development in transportation kept pace? This is the question that the Hyperloop is trying to answer.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Still Stuck In the Past<\/h2>\n\n\n

We\u2019re all familiar with today\u2019s methods of transportation, whether that\u2019s on the road, water, air, or by railway. All of these methods have three things in common – they\u2019re expensive to maintain, not as fast as we\u2019d like them to be, and they pump out some unpleasant stuff into our environment.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what\u2019s society to do when their primary method of getting around in this world comes with a lot of baggage? It\u2019s time to put inject some innovation into our ways of moving. This is where the Hyperloop concept comes in. In a nutshell, it\u2019s an idea for a high-speed transport system created by the one and only <\/span>Elon Musk<\/span><\/a> that can travel over 700 mph. The only transportation system that comes close to matching that speed is the Maglev train in Asia that only goes 347 mph. We\u2019ve got some catching up to do.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"maglev_train\"\/
The Maglev train in Shanghai will have some serious competition when the Hyperloop is born. (Image source<\/a>)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why the need for a transportation system better than what we\u2019ve got though? After all, we get around just fine as we do. That evening commute is just a fact of life, and we all consider air travel to be the holy grail of human mobility. But engineering is all about making things better, and that\u2019s what Musk wants to do.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concept for the Hyperloop came about when Elon Musk learned about the proposed development of the California High-Speed Rail System. Needless to say, Musk wasn\u2019t impressed at the proposed \u201cbullet\u201d train that was going to be one of the most expensive and slowest moving trains in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Musk\u2019s opinion, if you were going to invest billions into building a new transportation system, then it should probably have equally massive gains in safety, efficiency, convenience, and sustainability. But instead, what Musk saw was a state that was willing to throw tens of billions of dollars down on a system that wasn\u2019t any faster, and wasn\u2019t any more efficient to create. And so his idea was born for the Hyperloop. This concept presents some interesting benefits for our perceptions of transportation, including:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n