It might not be long before people are being whisked from Los Angeles to San Francisco in an underground pipeline akin to the tubes drive-up banks use. The wild idea comes from Elon Musk, who has or has had high stakes in PayPal, Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Here’s what Musk told PandoDaily:
“How would you like something that never crashed, was immune to weather, that goes three or four times as fast as the bullet trains we have now or about twice the speed of an aircraft, that would get you from downtown L.A. to downtown San Francisco in under 30 minutes and it would cost you much less than any other type of transportation.”
There’s been a lot of futuristic means of travel proposed in the past — flying cars, hover boards and teleporting, to name a few — but with billionaire backing, this idea seems like it’s actually on track. Get ready for the fifth form of transportation, folks; one that blows planes, trains, automobiles and boats out of the water. Here’s a few reasons why:
- It’s solar powered.
- It leaves leave as soon as you arrive “so there is no waiting for a specific departure time,” according to Musk.
- It’s better than a bullet train: capsules will be propelled as fast as 4,000 miles per hour, but passengers will be exposed to the G-forces of an ordinary car ride.
- Musk wants to keep the invention open source, and not apply patents to it.
[via Smithsonian magazine]