Issue 3 | Volume 151 | February 4, 2019
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Campus Industry and Technology Sports Entertainment
On Track to the
Future
Abigail Johnson Staff Reporter
Elon Musk has, once again, decided to present a ground-breaking conceptual idea to the modern age. Science fiction movies and stories revolve around the idea of cities thriving off advanced technologies and “flying cars”. A few years ago, Musk proposed an idea to create this first step to a “futuristic society” by designing an underground rail system that can accelerate and travel at high speeds. His youngest company, named the Boring Company, began to tackle this idea by building tunnels underneath areas around Los Angles to test a model system. As of late 2018, a two-mile test track was completed and a Tesla Model X was placed onto the track. Volunteers and test subjects could enter the Tesla and test the new track at a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour. Musk claims that he strives to get the system to run up to nearly 200 miles per hour near completion. As expected, there were few complications. The test riders complained of the ride being bumpy. One person testing the track even got sick from the nauseating environment. The Boring Company acknowledged this outcome and stated that this was simply a test to discover what needs to be improved and how the system would operate. The Boring Company desires to complete this system by 2021, but with the various other projects that Musk is conducting, this seems highly unlikely. Musk initially announced the intentions of building this “hyperloop” system to travel quickly from place to place for business meetings and conferences at a cheaper cost than a plane ticket. He described his goal of building a system from New York City to Washington D.C. that can transport passengers from one city to another in only half an hour. This could open a wide avenue of job opportunities for people by shortening the commute to larger cities or even allowing people from nearby states to find jobs in different cities. While this new and exciting idea is great, the impact on the airline industry will be conflicting if this system runs nationwide. If it would be cheaper to use the hyperloop system than to pay for aviation tickets and fees, then aviation businesses would be forced to lower their prices in order to compete. SpaceX has recently faced competition with Virgin Orbit and Virgin Galactic in the space industry, but now Elon Musk must face the newly constructed Virgin Hyperloop One, a system designed to rival the hyperloop built by the Boring Company. Musk in the past years has claimed that he wasn’t fully pursuing the avenue of high-speed track systems for transportation and shared his conceptual ideas to the world. Virgin Hyperloop One was rumored to form shortly after and took advantage of the opportunity to tackle the design challenge. Before we know it, the hyperloop system may be the most efficient and easiest means of traveling nationwide.
Photo Courtesy: The Boring Company