If and when it comes to full-speed fruition, the Virgin Hyperloop system won't be moving the world's populace and products forward at "Star Trek"-like warp speed, but it will be moving them a lot faster, more efficiently and more sustainably than any other mode of Earth-bound travel.
Its path has taken a recent, major turn into West Virginia.
Los Angeles-based Virgin Hyperloop announced on Oct. 8 it will construct and operate a certification facility on land spanning nearly 800 acres in Tucker and Grant counties, on the site of a former coal mine.
The Hyperloop Certification Center will employ established technology to develop the Virgin Hyperloop as a safe, commercially viable form of 21st century transportation, hoped to be functioning for passenger traffic by 2030. (Virgin Hyperloop aims to acquire safety certification for the system by 2025.)
What is a hyperloop?
Using electric propulsion coupled with electromagnetic levitation, hyperloop travel moves passengers and cargo in pods through a vacuum tube at speeds exceeding 600 mph. (Virgin Hyperloop engineers are endeavoring for the pods to, ultimately, achieve speeds of 670 mph.)
An example of time savings the company has cited would be a Virgin Hyperloop trip from Washington, D.C., to New York City -- slightly more than 200 miles -- in a half-hour. Another comparison: Traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a total of 382 miles, takes six hours by car and 90 minutes or so by air. Via Virgin Hyperloop, that travel time is estimated to be 43 minutes.
The history of hyperloop
The prospect of moving items and people in tubes is far from a 21st century, "Jetsons"-esque notion. British mechanical engineer/inventor George Medhurst received the first patent to transport goods via tubes in 1799. Other "atmospheric railways" were proposed, tested and developed in following decades around the world, with varying levels of success, powered by air, steam or other means.
Rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard is credited with introducing the concept of hyperloop transportation in 1910. Goddard produced designs of a train, floating on magnets within a vacuum-sealed tunnel, which could travel from Boston to New York in 12 minutes, but his project was never realized.
Flipping the calendar pages forward more than a century, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk proposed hyperloop as a theoretical global transportation system publicly in 2012. Musk's original concept used reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors. He said characteristics of his system would incorporate immunity to weather, the ability to avoid collisions, running twice the speed of a plane, requiring low power consumption, and containing energy storage for 24-hour operations. (Musk also described the hyperloop as a "cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table.")
Private firms, universities and innovators around the world have run with Musk's "open-sourced" vision. Startup group Hyperloop One became a major investor in the idea. Its work on the concept started in 2015 in a Los Angeles garage.
Two years later, Hyperloop One conducted its first successful test run of hyperloop travel in Las Vegas, with the pods attaining a ground speed of 240 mph during straight-track testing. Nearly 200 Hyperloop One engineers and colleagues were on site for the event, which the company called its "Kitty Hawk" moment.
Since then, the company has conducted more than 400 tests on tracks of up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) in length.
Also in 2017, Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson invested significantly in Hyperloop One's research and development, prompting the name change to Virgin Hyperloop.
The Virgin Hyperloop system will be 100% electric, capable of drawing power from any available energy source along the route. Solar panels covering the tube can also supply power. Pods will attain their initial velocity from an external linear electric motor, which will accelerate it to the desired speed. Between periodic power "boosts," pods would be propelled in near-vacuum conditions, similar to coasting, along their routes. Each pod could carry 28 passengers.
"The reason why this system is able to reach airline speed using about 1/10th of the energy of a plane is twofold," Virgin Hyperloop Vice President of Marketing and Communications Ryan Kelly said. "One, in the tube, it's sucking out atmospheric pressure to near space levels, the equivalent of being 200,000 feet above sea level. It takes friction out of air and is almost frictionless. It allows for our magnetic levitation engine to propel forward and lift off the track because it doesn't have any resistance, without electrifying a track. Mag level trains in Asia now, for example, have to be completely electrified. Taking the frictionless approach even creates more energy efficiency for the system."
Advantages of hyperloop travel
Virgin Hyperloop officials say the passenger and cargo pods will travel three times faster than high-speed rail and more than 10 times faster than traditional rail travel. They project the cost for users will be comparable to rail travel fees and less than most airplane tickets.
Other advantages of the Virgin Hyperloop, its website states, include travel at airline speeds with the same G-forces as rail travel, monitored for safety by central command and control.
Timetables aren't really necessary, either; several pods can depart every minute and the system doesn't require stops at every station along its high-speed routes.
The system also produces zero direct emissions, an environmental boon. "We're only as clean as the grid we're working on," Kelly said, "but, from a sustainability standpoint, using a tenth of energy versus a short-haul flight which has emissions, is going to make a huge impact on the environment."
As well as moving passengers, he said, hyperloop travel will focus on transporting high-priority, on-demand goods, such as fresh food, medical supplies and electronics, in a more expedient, less expensive fashion.
"Hyperloop doesn’t make sense for carrying things like coal and other bulk goods which can be on the back of a truck or train for weeks with little impact. Air cargo currently accounts for less than 1% of world trade tonnage, yet 35% of world trade value is carried by air. This is an expanding market that is currently limited by capacity challenges," Kelly said in a June 2019 PortTechnology.org interview.
He added that e-commerce was expected to grow to $4 trillion worldwide this year and the market for express and parcel freight is set to reach $516 billion by 2025. "This expanding market is currently limited by airline/airport capacity challenges," he said. "Hyperloop can serve as an integrated logistics backbone, supporting the fast, sustainable and efficient delivery of palletized cargo. Deliveries can be completed in hours versus days with unprecedented reliability." A hyperloop-enabled supply chain can help reduce finished goods inventory by 25%, cut required warehouse space by 25% and shrink inventory lead times, Kelly said.
Local and worldwide economic impact
Construction on the $500 million Hyperloop Certification Center is expected to begin next year and take roughly five years to complete.
Virgin Hyperloop plans to hire between 150 and 200 engineers and technicians at the outset of operations, reportedly sourcing local candidates when possible. The project is also anticipated to create 7,300 jobs over the next five years and more than 6,000 jobs as it advances to the operational phase in coming years.
The center expects to transition from originally a construction testing hub for hyperloop pod vehicles into a training ground for conductors and operators when commercial hyperloop travel is approved and ready to be implemented.
According to the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research, the center will produce an annual windfall of at least $48 million for the Mountain State.
WVU President E. Gordon Gee said he wants to create a consortium of universities from the state and extending around the country to develop the Hyperloop. Along with WVU, Marshall University and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System are involved in the project.
Western Pocahontas Properties donated the land for the facility to the WVU Foundation as part of the partnership with Virgin Hyperloop.
Future prospects
An initiative of WVU's John Chambers College of Business and Economics designed to launch businesses tackling complex, current challenges, Vantage Ventures has been an integral component of the West Virginia Virgin Hyperloop project since its proposal.
"We knew West Virginia was uniquely positioned to provide the differentiated, substantive engineering, human health and safety expertise as well as the support at the state and federal levels that would improve the likelihood that Virgin Hyperloop would be the first to achieve regulatory approval,” Vantage Ventures Executive Director Sarah Biller said in an Oct. 15 WVU article. “The team at Vantage Ventures coalesced key partners from academic, public and private industry to remove the obstacles for Virgin Hyperloop and enable them to focus on success.”
“West Virginia has always been a place with tremendous resources and opportunities, and Virgin Hyperloop is giving us an opportunity to showcase those on a global scale,” Chambers College Dean and Startup West Virginia Vice President Javier Reyes said. "They are changing the world with their groundbreaking ideas for transit, and they will transform West Virginia’s economy through a new way of thinking about job creation in the process.”
“We knew this could be the start of an Appalachian Silicon Valley. We talked a lot about new technologies and their feasibility, and what’s reasonable to get someone interested in a project like this,” said WVU Assistant Professor Janet Fraser, who is also the Chambers College Business Data Analytics program coordinator.
The federal government is also getting on board with hyperloop development. In July, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a guidance document to establish regulations for the hyperloop system as it evolves. “These formerly abstract ideas, evocative of science fiction, have now matured into physical prototypes and project proposals. Inventors, investors and stakeholders are ready to build out these technologies,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a subsequent statement.
"Imagine what the world was like before the plane or before the train," Kelly said. "The idea of being able to travel from New York to London or across the country in a day to people who'd never heard of a plane before would be mind blowing.
"What we're excited about is that we have something that goes as fast as a plane, but we we want to it be at a price point where people can use it more frequently.
"To be able to change a trip that takes, say, five hours to a half-hour really changes the landscape opportunity for you, where you choose to work, where you choose to live. Mobility is something that expands opportunities for people. From West Virginia, you'd have the opportunity to work in Japan if you have the wherewithal to do it," Kelly said.
"In the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s, that would be considered preposterous. We'll maybe have hyperloops going under the ocean at some point.
"I envision a world where mass and personal transit could create huge opportunities for people," Kelly said. "I think the West Virginia project is one of those things that is an opportunity to create a whole new industry.
"If hyperloop is able to be safety certified and people are going to want to use it around the world -- and we think they will -- this opens a brand new category in industry.
"We haven't done something like this in a century. Mass infrastructure requires commitment, but, at the same time, as support around the world for this has shown us, it's a need that's been neglected for a really long time. As a private-sector company, we're hoping to provide that solution," Kelly said.
Its path has taken a recent, major turn into West Virginia.
The Hyperloop Certification Center will employ established technology to develop the Virgin Hyperloop as a safe, commercially viable form of 21st century transportation, hoped to be functioning for passenger traffic by 2030. (Virgin Hyperloop aims to acquire safety certification for the system by 2025.)
What is a hyperloop?
Using electric propulsion coupled with electromagnetic levitation, hyperloop travel moves passengers and cargo in pods through a vacuum tube at speeds exceeding 600 mph. (Virgin Hyperloop engineers are endeavoring for the pods to, ultimately, achieve speeds of 670 mph.)
An example of time savings the company has cited would be a Virgin Hyperloop trip from Washington, D.C., to New York City -- slightly more than 200 miles -- in a half-hour. Another comparison: Traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a total of 382 miles, takes six hours by car and 90 minutes or so by air. Via Virgin Hyperloop, that travel time is estimated to be 43 minutes.
The history of hyperloop
The prospect of moving items and people in tubes is far from a 21st century, "Jetsons"-esque notion. British mechanical engineer/inventor George Medhurst received the first patent to transport goods via tubes in 1799. Other "atmospheric railways" were proposed, tested and developed in following decades around the world, with varying levels of success, powered by air, steam or other means.
Rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard is credited with introducing the concept of hyperloop transportation in 1910. Goddard produced designs of a train, floating on magnets within a vacuum-sealed tunnel, which could travel from Boston to New York in 12 minutes, but his project was never realized.
Flipping the calendar pages forward more than a century, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk proposed hyperloop as a theoretical global transportation system publicly in 2012. Musk's original concept used reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors. He said characteristics of his system would incorporate immunity to weather, the ability to avoid collisions, running twice the speed of a plane, requiring low power consumption, and containing energy storage for 24-hour operations. (Musk also described the hyperloop as a "cross between a Concorde and a railgun and an air hockey table.")
Private firms, universities and innovators around the world have run with Musk's "open-sourced" vision. Startup group Hyperloop One became a major investor in the idea. Its work on the concept started in 2015 in a Los Angeles garage.
Two years later, Hyperloop One conducted its first successful test run of hyperloop travel in Las Vegas, with the pods attaining a ground speed of 240 mph during straight-track testing. Nearly 200 Hyperloop One engineers and colleagues were on site for the event, which the company called its "Kitty Hawk" moment.
Since then, the company has conducted more than 400 tests on tracks of up to 500 meters (1,640 feet) in length.
Also in 2017, Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson invested significantly in Hyperloop One's research and development, prompting the name change to Virgin Hyperloop.
The Virgin Hyperloop system will be 100% electric, capable of drawing power from any available energy source along the route. Solar panels covering the tube can also supply power. Pods will attain their initial velocity from an external linear electric motor, which will accelerate it to the desired speed. Between periodic power "boosts," pods would be propelled in near-vacuum conditions, similar to coasting, along their routes. Each pod could carry 28 passengers.
"The reason why this system is able to reach airline speed using about 1/10th of the energy of a plane is twofold," Virgin Hyperloop Vice President of Marketing and Communications Ryan Kelly said. "One, in the tube, it's sucking out atmospheric pressure to near space levels, the equivalent of being 200,000 feet above sea level. It takes friction out of air and is almost frictionless. It allows for our magnetic levitation engine to propel forward and lift off the track because it doesn't have any resistance, without electrifying a track. Mag level trains in Asia now, for example, have to be completely electrified. Taking the frictionless approach even creates more energy efficiency for the system."
Advantages of hyperloop travel
Virgin Hyperloop officials say the passenger and cargo pods will travel three times faster than high-speed rail and more than 10 times faster than traditional rail travel. They project the cost for users will be comparable to rail travel fees and less than most airplane tickets.
Other advantages of the Virgin Hyperloop, its website states, include travel at airline speeds with the same G-forces as rail travel, monitored for safety by central command and control.
Timetables aren't really necessary, either; several pods can depart every minute and the system doesn't require stops at every station along its high-speed routes.
The system also produces zero direct emissions, an environmental boon. "We're only as clean as the grid we're working on," Kelly said, "but, from a sustainability standpoint, using a tenth of energy versus a short-haul flight which has emissions, is going to make a huge impact on the environment."
As well as moving passengers, he said, hyperloop travel will focus on transporting high-priority, on-demand goods, such as fresh food, medical supplies and electronics, in a more expedient, less expensive fashion.
"Hyperloop doesn’t make sense for carrying things like coal and other bulk goods which can be on the back of a truck or train for weeks with little impact. Air cargo currently accounts for less than 1% of world trade tonnage, yet 35% of world trade value is carried by air. This is an expanding market that is currently limited by capacity challenges," Kelly said in a June 2019 PortTechnology.org interview.
He added that e-commerce was expected to grow to $4 trillion worldwide this year and the market for express and parcel freight is set to reach $516 billion by 2025. "This expanding market is currently limited by airline/airport capacity challenges," he said. "Hyperloop can serve as an integrated logistics backbone, supporting the fast, sustainable and efficient delivery of palletized cargo. Deliveries can be completed in hours versus days with unprecedented reliability." A hyperloop-enabled supply chain can help reduce finished goods inventory by 25%, cut required warehouse space by 25% and shrink inventory lead times, Kelly said.
Local and worldwide economic impact
Construction on the $500 million Hyperloop Certification Center is expected to begin next year and take roughly five years to complete.
Virgin Hyperloop plans to hire between 150 and 200 engineers and technicians at the outset of operations, reportedly sourcing local candidates when possible. The project is also anticipated to create 7,300 jobs over the next five years and more than 6,000 jobs as it advances to the operational phase in coming years.
The center expects to transition from originally a construction testing hub for hyperloop pod vehicles into a training ground for conductors and operators when commercial hyperloop travel is approved and ready to be implemented.
According to the West Virginia University Bureau of Business and Economic Research, the center will produce an annual windfall of at least $48 million for the Mountain State.
WVU President E. Gordon Gee said he wants to create a consortium of universities from the state and extending around the country to develop the Hyperloop. Along with WVU, Marshall University and the West Virginia Community and Technical College System are involved in the project.
Western Pocahontas Properties donated the land for the facility to the WVU Foundation as part of the partnership with Virgin Hyperloop.
Future prospects
An initiative of WVU's John Chambers College of Business and Economics designed to launch businesses tackling complex, current challenges, Vantage Ventures has been an integral component of the West Virginia Virgin Hyperloop project since its proposal.
"We knew West Virginia was uniquely positioned to provide the differentiated, substantive engineering, human health and safety expertise as well as the support at the state and federal levels that would improve the likelihood that Virgin Hyperloop would be the first to achieve regulatory approval,” Vantage Ventures Executive Director Sarah Biller said in an Oct. 15 WVU article. “The team at Vantage Ventures coalesced key partners from academic, public and private industry to remove the obstacles for Virgin Hyperloop and enable them to focus on success.”
“West Virginia has always been a place with tremendous resources and opportunities, and Virgin Hyperloop is giving us an opportunity to showcase those on a global scale,” Chambers College Dean and Startup West Virginia Vice President Javier Reyes said. "They are changing the world with their groundbreaking ideas for transit, and they will transform West Virginia’s economy through a new way of thinking about job creation in the process.”
“We knew this could be the start of an Appalachian Silicon Valley. We talked a lot about new technologies and their feasibility, and what’s reasonable to get someone interested in a project like this,” said WVU Assistant Professor Janet Fraser, who is also the Chambers College Business Data Analytics program coordinator.
The federal government is also getting on board with hyperloop development. In July, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued a guidance document to establish regulations for the hyperloop system as it evolves. “These formerly abstract ideas, evocative of science fiction, have now matured into physical prototypes and project proposals. Inventors, investors and stakeholders are ready to build out these technologies,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said in a subsequent statement.
"Imagine what the world was like before the plane or before the train," Kelly said. "The idea of being able to travel from New York to London or across the country in a day to people who'd never heard of a plane before would be mind blowing.
"What we're excited about is that we have something that goes as fast as a plane, but we we want to it be at a price point where people can use it more frequently.
"To be able to change a trip that takes, say, five hours to a half-hour really changes the landscape opportunity for you, where you choose to work, where you choose to live. Mobility is something that expands opportunities for people. From West Virginia, you'd have the opportunity to work in Japan if you have the wherewithal to do it," Kelly said.
"In the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s, that would be considered preposterous. We'll maybe have hyperloops going under the ocean at some point.
"I envision a world where mass and personal transit could create huge opportunities for people," Kelly said. "I think the West Virginia project is one of those things that is an opportunity to create a whole new industry.
"If hyperloop is able to be safety certified and people are going to want to use it around the world -- and we think they will -- this opens a brand new category in industry.
"We haven't done something like this in a century. Mass infrastructure requires commitment, but, at the same time, as support around the world for this has shown us, it's a need that's been neglected for a really long time. As a private-sector company, we're hoping to provide that solution," Kelly said.
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