13-Year-Old Scientist Designs Alternative To Hyperloop

dryriver shares a report from CNN: Several rival companies may be hard at work trying to get Elon Musk’s Hyperloop concept off the ground, but hurtling across country — maybe even across continents — at 600 miles per hour in a low-pressure steel tube still feels far from reality. But 13-year-old New York student Caroline Crouchley may have invented a more economically viable and eco-friendly Hyperloop solution. Crouchley’s idea, which just won second place in the annual 3M Young Scientist Challenge, is to build pneumatic tubes next to existing train tracks. Magnetic shuttles would travel through these vacuum tubes, connected via magnetic arm to trains traveling on the existing tracks. This system would utilize current train tracks, thereby cutting infrastructure costs and, Crouchley says, eradicating the potential safety risk posed by propelling passengers in a vacuum. There’d be no need for trains to use diesel or electric motors, making the trains lighter and more fuel-efficient. This is important to Crouchley, who aims to devise active solutions to the climate crisis. “I pinpointed transportation as something I wanted to work on because if we can make trains more efficient, then we can eliminate the amount of cars, trucks and buses on the road,” Crouchley tells CNN Travel.