The richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, proposed in 2013 the creation of an underground tunnel for the transit of a hyperspeed train that united Europe and the United States. However, the magnate’s ambition ran into several obstacles to the development of his project, including the high cost or lack of the necessary technology.
The initial idea was that the infrastructure would link London and New York, separated by almost six thousand kilometers of water and land, and that Through a hyperloop system the journey could be traveled in just one hour. To do this, a train would move through vacuum tubes with which speeds close to 4,800 kilometers per hour could be reached, ten times faster than the fastest train in the world today.
Some of the drawbacks that the billionaire faces in this project, designed more than a decade ago, are the money or high technology it requiresnot yet available today. This last obstacle is even more important, because although it is estimated that the approximate cost of the project would reach 18 billion euros, this is a ridiculous figure for who is currently the richest man on the planet.
An alternative to this project would be that of the company Boom Technology, the XB-1, a supersonic commercial aircraft which during its testing period reached a speed of 926 kilometers per hour, a third of that of the hyperloop train.
Another idea proposed by the owner of SpaceX is the use of space rockets to make routes between the main capitals, taking only about 30 minutes to complete the journey at a speed of 29 thousand kilometers per hour.
