In the words, of a voice that spoke to Kevin Costner in the film “Field of Dreams,” or the protagonist of the book by W.P. Kinsella which was the basis for it, “Shoeless Joe,”….”if you build it they will come.” That’s not quite the case with Elon’s Musk, where if you theorize it and give it away they will build it will build it is more appropriate. Hyperloop One and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies started building and now, Moscow wants in on the action.
Moscow Deputy Mayor wants Hyperloop pilot program
The dreams of whizzing people around Moscow at speeds approaching 1,200 kilometers per hour is too much for Moscow’s Deputy Mayor Maxim Liksutov to ignore and spoke this weeks suggesting that Moscow wants to get started this year, likely December.
“In the next few years we’ll see a major breakthrough in the development of technologies which will facilitate our lives… Hopefully, Hyperloop technology will be developed, and, as far as I know, the pilot project will be launched in December. We will see how the theory works in practice,” Liksutov said at the Moscow Urban Forum.
Russia’s Summa Group and Hyperloop One already showed an interest in working together when they signed and agreement at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum earlier this month.
While the two, have reached an original accord, Rob LLoyd, CEO of Hyperloop One said that he had no idea how much it might cost to get a prototype/pilot program off the ground in Moscow beginning in December.
“The previous versions of magnetic levitation have traditionally been very expensive and Hyperloop One now plans to use passive magnetic levitation which really allows you to get levitation for a lot less energy,” Hyperloop One Product Engineering Manager Chris Vasquez told RT.
Getting started and “being first” was always the company’s intention after they raised money following Elon Musk’s white paper proposal in 2013. That meant that the company was always going to go for speed rather than cost cutting when it formed and got involved.
While there remain skeptics, they have largely been silenced with regards to accusations of “sci-fi fantasy” and “motion sickness.”
“Our acceleration will be very benign. And once you’re at high speed will be cruising pretty constantly…”
“Safety is our top priority. We are isolating ourselves from the rest of the environment. You don’t have to worry about weather or air turbulence… we really prevent a lot of the accidents that occur on the outside world,” Vasquez added.
