The Man Behind the Loop
According to an interview given by ReasonTV, Dirk Ahlborn, the CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies or HTT, explains that an important piece of hyperloop travel is that there aren’t long waiting times in the station before the journey because then that would defeat the purpose of fast speed travel. You can get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in thirty minutes but if you have to wait an hour and a half in the station before you take off then that adds onto travel time and taking a plane would be just as long. HTT’s goal is for you to be able to use your smart phone to book a seat and then as soon as you get to the station be able to walk into the pod and proceed with you travels.
Dirk Ahlborn’s vision is that one day people are able to live in the middle states where people may not normally look to live today due to under development and a shortage of jobs and then work in the coastal states. He believes that this future is possible one day using the technology present in the Hyperloop.
The list of societal benefits is long, it will improve economic growth because transportation time of freight will be shortened causing production time to decrease and overall cause the economy to grow. It also allows people to travel more efficiently allowing them to be more productive for a longer period of time which also makes the economy grow. The great thing about the Hyperloop is that it not only has societal benefits but there are also environmental benefits. Ahlborn explains that the hyperloop system is clean and has no carbon emissions. The system will run on solar panels that run on top of the tubes and potentially have the ability to produce excess clean energy that the surrounding area may be able to use to run other surrounding machines. The hyperloop will also be built on pylons or underground so that the footprint on the earth will be as minimal as possible. Compared to large highways the Hyperloop footprint will be considerably smaller. The Hyperloop seems to be an almost perfect form of transportation and can change the entire world for the better.
Source:
R. (2015, April 07). Meet the Man Building Elon Musk’s 760MPH Hyperloop: Interview with Dirk Ahlborn. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Klla4de0KFc
