The Hyperloop
You might have seen us reference the Musk Hyperloop in the past, as it was considered to be one of the worst ideas he ever had. Musk saw the bullet train in places like Japan and felt this could be improved upon with the Hyperloop. He even teased the idea back in 2013 when he unveiled the idea to the public. Musk hyped it as the “fifth mode of transport,” as it would be capable of reaching speeds of 700 mph.
Passengers would ride in pressurized tubes to propel pods across the country at high, breakneck speeds. However, when evaluated by engineers, they claimed his concept could never actually work. Not only did Elon Musk not consider some very important structural problems, but the cost to even do this would be extreme. In fact, it would cost far more than Musk has in his bank account.
While Musk’s Boring Company is apparently still making underground tunnels for Tesla vehicles, Elon was going to shift things to use the tunnels for the hyperloop. Well, until his plan turned out to be nonsensical, dangerous, and costly. On top of this, Musk is not the first to come up with the idea. It was conceived back in 1799 by the incredible inventor, George Medhurst.
In 1904, Robert H. Goddard then invented the vactrain which essentially did a version of the same thing. In an ironic twist, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, a SpaceX competitor, has a hyperloop that makes far more sense and had a successful launch in November 2020. The Virgin Hyperloop is able to reach up to 670 mph as of this writing. They also managed to cut the cost of tunnels in half!