Elon Musk's new 5th form of transportation. The Hyperloop.

[RealSNR]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

They're overcomplicating it. I can come up with a very easy high-speed transportation system. Listen to my concept.

You know when you go to the airport and they've got those moving sidewalks? You walk up and get on it and it goes maybe 3 mph. It's easy to get on and off.

Now imagine a moving sidewalk where you get on from the left. You're cruising at 3 mph, but now to your right there's another moving sidewalk, and it's going 6 mph. Relative to your current speed, it's only 3 mph faster, so you can easily step onto that sidewalk. Now you're trucking along pretty good.

But keep the concept going. Now imagine 240 of those next to each other. You get on, and then you move to the right, speeding up with each crossing, and in the far right sidewalk you're going 720 mph. When it's time to get off, you just start moving left again and eventually get off of the 3 mph moving sidewalk as your destination. Voila. I have solved high-speed travel.

The only problem would be wind so you'd want to wear goggles and crouch at the higher speeds. But maybe we put a big fan in or something to neutralize that.

Now, you might ask what happens if the drive belt breaks. Are you going to go flying at 720 mph toward something stationary? The answer is no. Because per the Rain Man design, you don't just enter from the left side. You enter from both sides. So you've got 479 moving sidewalks, and the outside ones are the slowest, and the middle one is the 720 mph walk. If the 720 mph walk breaks suddenly, you pitch forward at 720 mph, but you'll land on an adjacent walk that's going 717 mph. Nothing but a scuffed knee.

I'm going to email Musk about this to discuss a partnership.

via GIPHY