“Flying
700 miles per hour through a tube using magnets and sunlight isn’t a dream.”
The
baritone narrator in a video describing the proposed Great Lakes Hyperloop
makes the case that a twenty-eight minute commute over the 343 miles that
separate Cleveland from Chicago is a near-term reality.
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For Chuck Michael (CE 77),
hyperloop is the future of transportation. “This is a game-changing technology with
a huge public benefit,” he says. “You could work in downtown Chicago and live
in Cleveland and get to work faster than sitting on the freeway from the
Chicago suburbs.”
The
hyperloop concept involves a magnetically levitated capsule that is propelled
through a vacuum tunnel at velocities approaching the speed of sound using
renewable wind and solar energy. Michael is the head of US feasibility studies
and regulatory advisor for the company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
based in Los Angeles. “We use a proprietary passive magnetic levitation system,
developed at Lawrence Livermore National Lab,” Michael says. A small forward
motion on the permanent magnetic array creates a field that aids both propulsion
and levitation.
“We can
levitate twenty tons at walking speed,” Michael says. A "re...