GettyElon Musk has just been given a permit to build a Hyperloop from Washington to New York.
The space entrepreneur and motoring pioneer has been championing a high-speed transportation system between ‘BY-Phil-Balt-DC’ since he tweeted last summer he’d received ‘verbal govt approval’.
The Boring Company now intends to begin work on a ‘hyperloop’ from a location near the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
It would propel ‘pods’ of people from the US capital to New York in just 29 minutes, report The Washington Post.
Elon Musk/InstagramD.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s chief of staff John Falcicchio said:
We’re just beginning in the mayor’s office, our conversation to get an understanding of what the general vision is for Hyperloop.
We’re open to the concept of moving people around the region more efficiently.
The pods, holding 16 people each, would speed around on electric sleds which would also carry individual cars (probably Teslas) to and from other stations.
Just last week it was announced Elon Musk was to launch his first global internet satellite.
A launch planned this week has the mission to deliver Paz – an observational satellite heavily financed by the Spanish Ministry of Defence.
Riding alongside Paz on the recycled Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX have loaded two experimental broadband satellites.
WIRED reports SpaceX has a space-based internet venture up its sleeve called Starlink.
The first two tester satellites Microsat-2a and Microsat-2b will be the predecessors to thousands of broadband satellites which will be launched over the next decade – this could open up the possibility of ‘making high-speed internet accessible anywhere on the globe’.
However, SpaceX hasn’t commented on the inclusion of the bonus payloads and has been revealed by documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission to license the company to conduct the mission.
SpaceX reportedly want to place 4,425 of the small spacecraft in low-Earth orbit – between 600-800 above the Earth’s surface, hoping to begin in the next year.
The next step would be to create a larger constellation of over 7,500 satellites placed 200 miles high, which could enable them to achieve their goal of making high-speed internet available around the world.
The microsats being launched will help the company prove the basic infrastructure of the spacecraft’s sound and will give SpaceX the chance to test ground-to-space communications. ‘Ground control to Major Tom’ indeed.
As if this doesn’t sound too bizarre to anyone who doesn’t have a basic appreciation of science and space as it is, the satellites aren’t even planned to stay in a fixed position in relation to Earth – SpaceX will have to constantly shift them as they float around in orbit above us.
Basically, Musk has got a lot on his enterprising plate.
While I’m all down for a high-speed train from Washington to New York, I’d appreciate it if he worked on a train from Leeds to Manchester which didn’t take an hour.
