A company called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies says they are moving rapidly forward developing a prototype for vacuum-sealed pods that will transport people or cargo at speeds of up to 700 miles-per-hour. They hope to have the first ready in 2018.
They look like modernistic buses that will travel through what called “hyperloops,” tunnel-sized tubes, carrying up to 40 passengers or a shipment of cargo. While that might sound like something far-fetched and beyond likelihood, University of Houston graduate, futurist Ross Shott, says the same was said once about flying. “I think that’s perfectly reasonable to do. We travel in pods like that now and we do it in the sky, and look at how safe that is,” he says. All transportation is moving in the direction of being autonomous and computer-controlled. “When you can do that with vehicles it eliminates the need for traffic lights. You can move the vehicles using computers with mass-transportation software that moves people from here to there much safer,” Shott suggests.
Schott thinks it possible that we’ll be moving from one city to the next in these high speed pods within ten years. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is currently developing systems for Indonesia, the Middle East and Europe.