November 17th| Anagha Deepak
When we think of public transport, we always think of a fixed route on a fixed schedule. Why can't we get a little more flexible on that?
All we need is a paradigm shift in the public transportation which will help us slice the time we spend stuck in traffic. Imagine all the cars on the road today, except doubled. That’s what we can predict will happen by 2040 if we continue going on our course the way we are right now. Americans already spend more than an average work week stuck in traffic each year. If something is not done about congestion, we could be sitting bumper to bumper for the rest of our lives. The accepted solution is to expand our highways, add more lanes, roads, that exits to account for the influx of new cars, right? But where is the land for that and moreover if we have more lanes, it would result in more number of cars & more traffic again. We would not be solving the problem here, we would only ensure that it gets worse over the years.
Our government too recognizes this problem of failing roads and transit and has come up with a trillion dollar plan to fix it.
While we started planning for our city Boomtown build, we knew that Transportation was one of the key elements to focus for building a better city. What we could do to relieve many from frustration, deforestation, global gas emissions, and more, all while stuck in traffic. Our team needed a boost to think out of the box & understand that there are so many fresh concepts around us in the making and we should not be fixated for only the ones which we see around us.
My brother Anirudh, is fascinated by the project of The Boring Company by Elon Musk of Tesla. He has seen and made us watch as many videos of the Test Tunnel in Hawthorne CA, built by the boring company for tunneling & public transportation systems. While we were researching, we came across Loop & Hyperloop.
My mom and Anirudh started researching more about that and found out about Texas Guadaloop.
Sounds cool right? I am sure when they get a chance to implement this in real life and when people start using this as their mode of transportation, it will work wonders for the human kind!
It not only chops the travel time, it also helps in saving our environment, as less cars will be used, which helps in reducing pollution. Then no road widening will be required which means that we can save the land & less deforestation will occur. I am looking forward for this cool feature in our city’s very soon.
As a learning experience for our team my mom was looking for opportunities to take the kids on a field trip to a place which makes more sense in our future cities, this fit the bill perfectly!
It was a good thing that our Amazon fulfillment center tour was completed online & most of the kids got to see how robotics was involved in the distribution of the packets. Our team could allocate some full fledged time for going to an actual field trip.
When we wrote to Texas Guadaloop, Javier Bonilla, who is the Head of Business, replied back and was very nice in accommodating our team and our kids’ requirements. He, along with David Spitler, who is the Head of Engineering, were amazing hosts & explained it all in a kid friendly way to the team.
First of all, some kids in our team were already under the impression that they would travel to Houston or somewhere else in the pod which was at the facility in 20 minutes…:)
And some thought that they are going to meet & talk with Elon Musk.., yes you guessed it right, that’s my brother! :)
I have understood that Field trips are an amazing experience to learn something new. We go with friends, have someone explain all the interesting stuff & show us how it works. Most of all, we go together as a team.
Javier & David had prepared for the presentation for the kids team so well! They also answered every single question of the kids... the kids had at least hundreds of questions.
The kids got to hold the air bearings and understand how it works. As it’s the most important part of the pod, it took awhile for the information to sink in.
They explained how the air bearings help levitate and achieve very low friction within the Hyperloop tubing. Most pods use magnetic levitation, better known as MagLev, which is expensive and energy draining, however the Texas Guadaloop took a different approach as they saw a fullfilling future with the air bearings.
What are air bearings? Think of an air hockey table, but reversed, where air is being pumped out of the puck (pod) instead of the table. They levitate on a thin gap of air allowing the pod to glide through the tubing. Air bearings are ideal for Hyperloop transportation because of their ability to create frictionless movement while decreasing drag.
Overall it was a great session & the two research scientists from the lab had prepared a custom made presentation for the kids. It was a fantastic presentation & it covered most aspects of physics, engineering & math. Hopefully the kids have/had paid attention . They had built a prototype resembling a horse model for the team to understand how levitation and air pressure works in the actual model.
Hopefully the kids keep this in mind while they build our Boomtown city. We had a great experience learning and had a great time getting to know what other innovations are already taking place to remedy our current dilema of traffic, hopefully encouraging the kids by giving them exposure to different solutions to the problems.
A small video of our Field trip: https://youtu.be/Wi9Zj8yp3JU
We thank the Texas Guadaloop team for accomadating our team.
A crane is a machine we are building used for lifting a load and moving it horizontally, with the hoisting mechanism an integral part of the machine.
We also made a quick note and a tap & go stop near an operating crane on the way back! One thing the team noted when we saw & observed it closely is that when the crane is operating, they have a flag hoisted on top, it helps us to know that it’s operating & stay in the required zone. While it’s not operating, the flag is down.
This was one cool trip to remember!!