A rendering of a Hyperloop pod. Courtesy of Elon Musk hide caption toggle caption A rendering of a Hyperloop pod. Courtesy of Elon Musk You can thank brainy billionaire Elon Musk's Hyperloop proposal for bringing electro-magnetic-powered transportation and the linear induction motor back into the public consciousness. The Hyperloop is a system for really-really rapid transit. If built, Musk claims it can carry people about 800 miles per hour, which could get you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 30 minutes. It would carry passengers in aluminum pods inside above-ground tubes. The system, as imagined, could carry people or cars. Bloomberg Businessweek explains: Inside the tubes, the pods would be mounted on thin skis made out of inconel, a trusted alloy of SpaceX that can withstand high pressure and heat. Air gets pumped through little holes in the skis to make an air cushion, Musk says. The front of the pod would have a pair of air jet inlets—sort of like the Concorde. An electric turbo compressor would compress the air from the nose and route it to the skis and to the cabin. Magnets on the skis, plus an electromagnetic pulse, would give the pod its initial thrust; reboosting motors along the route would keep the pod moving. And: no sonic boom. With warm air inside the tubes and high tailwinds, the pods could travel at high speeds without crossing the sound barrier. "The pod can go just below the speed of sound relative to the air," Musk says. Sponsor Message So the vision combines the concepts behind pneumatic tubes, linear induction motors and magnetic levitation, but aren't direct implementations of those technologies. "Magnetic levitation has been proposed for many years," says Mark Thompson, an electrical engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic University, who earned his doctorate in magnetic levitation at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The Japanese built a prototype, the Chinese have a train that runs. It's a new application for an older technology." Originally, Musk didn't want to even develop or finance the Hyperloop, since Tesla and SpaceX are his top priorities. On a conference call to explain his design Monday, he signaled a change of heart. "It would be cool to see a new form of transport happen," Musk says. "I think it might help if I made a prototype and sort of helped get things going in that way." Related NPR Stories