Fasten your seatbelts, Elon Musk's 'hyperloop' could become the fastest method of travel in the world.
The future of public transport and world travel could end up being the 'hyperloop', which is essentially a big tube that uses magnets to levitate a pod full of people down to the other end at great speeds.
It uses technology similar to 'maglev' (magnetic levitation') trains which can go at incredible speeds, but hyperloop could manage to outpace even those and become the fastest way to get around the world.
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And one of the main champions of this idea is Musk, who first outlined his plans to make the technology a reality back in 2013.
One of the reasons why hyperloop transport could be the fastest thing in the world is due to the lack of air resistance involved.
While planes, trains and automobiles have to push their way through the air, hyperloop tubes could have most of the air sucked out (while still keeping it in the pod where the people go) to reach even higher speeds.
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But the Tesla boss isn't the only person working on hyperloop technology, with Virgin also successfully testing their own version of the transport system.
They were able to get two passengers in a pod moving at over 100mph, while their final vision plans to use working pods which can fit more than 20 people inside by 2030.
Theoretically, hyperloop technology could go as quickly as 760mph and come close to breaking the sound barrier, though part of the problem with hitting this speed is the track and tunnels the pods run on are not long enough.
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You would need a very long tunnel to hit a speed of 760mph, let alone space to slow down and come to a complete stop.
And good luck even putting someone in one of those pods at that speed without the proper track length, you'd just be firing people out of a giant cannon at supersonic speeds.
Virgin's speed tests have hit 240mph, while Musk has been letting people take Tesla rides down his tunnel as a way of testing automated high speed car rides.
The Boring Company, another business owned by Musk, has also been trying out automated cars which speed through the tunnels at up to 150mph and turn what could have been a 45 minute walk into a two minute drive.
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According to Insider, the goal for developing this technology is to have 30,000 people taking the hyperloop every hour and using them for superspeed travel between major cities.
It's an audacious plan and one of the major obstacles is the sheer amount of tubes that would need to be built, along with working out where people will be able to embark and disembark.
After all, there's no point spending massive amounts of money on being fired down a tube that's in the middle of nowhere in some desert.
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If the goal is to make this a form of transportation, then all these hyperloop tubes will need to be built between cities and have actual stations people can use.
Before any of this can become more than a series of fancy tests, someone is going to have to fork over the billions required to build all of this.
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Topics: Technology, Elon Musk, Tesla
Joe Harker