The Hyperloop, the transportation system of the future, is a new revolutionary transport system that has made significant progress recently. However, few know that it was first conceived by the Romanian inventor Henri Coandă. Later on, the idea was adopted and developed by Elon Musk and successfully implemented by the Romanian Denis Tudor.
Few are aware that in the 1970s, the great Romanian scientist Henri Coandă designed a train that exceeded the speed of today’s most modern Chinese trains, capable of reaching speeds over 500 kilometers per hour. The brilliant engineer created a revolutionary transport system where trains would travel through a complex network of pipelines, transporting both goods and passengers. Inside these pipelines, the carriages moved due to a difference in atmospheric pressure, artificially generated by a cleverly designed fan and compressor.
Coandă’s project for the passenger train envisioned a pipeline route between Bucharest and Ploiești, an innovation that would have significantly reduced travel time between the two cities. The 60-kilometer distance would have been covered in record time, radically transforming transportation and providing a fast and efficient alternative. Coandă’s avant-garde vision underscores not only his technical talent but also his desire to revolutionize the way we travel.
The difference between Coandă’s invention and Musk’s
On August 12, 2013, Elon Musk unveiled the revolutionary Hyperloop project, a transportation system promising to surpass the speed of sound by using low-pressure tunnels.
Unlike Henri Coandă’s inventions, which focused on vacuum or normal atmosphere conditions, the Hyperloop operates in low-pressure tubes.
“I think people have sort of gravitated towards these two ideas but haven’t applied it to low pressure. I haven’t seen the low-pressure idea anywhere.”
Within these low-pressure tubes, trains are supported by links made of inconel, an alloy highly resistant to pressure and heat, also used by SpaceX. Air is pumped through holes in these links, creating an air cushion, and jet turbines mounted at the front of the train, similar to those on the Concorde, enhance performance. An electric turbo compressor directs pressurized air from the front to the links and the train cabin. Magnets on rails and an electromagnetic pulse provide initial acceleration, maintaining constant speed by restarting the engines. There will be no sonic boom, as “the train can go faster than the speed of sound relative to the air,” Musk explained.
Professor Martin Simon, quoted by “Bloomberg Businessweek,” noted that Musk’s idea is not new, but the innovation lies in separating the air cushion from the linear induction of air.
Inside the tubes, vehicles would be mounted on thin skis made of inconel, an alloy Musk has used at SpaceX, capable of withstanding high pressures and heat. The skis have small holes through which air is pumped, creating an air cushion. The front part of the vehicle will feature a pair of air intakes similar to those on a Concorde. Inside, an electric turbo compressor will compress the air received through the front and direct it towards the skis and cabin.
Furthermore, the skis will have magnets and will be propelled by an electromagnetic pulse at the start of the journey. Along the route, re-acceleration motors will be installed to maintain the vehicle’s movement. And the best part: there’s no sonic boom like that from jet planes when they exceed the speed of sound. With warm air inside the tubes and the airflow pushing the vehicle from behind, it can travel at very high speeds without breaking the sound barrier. The energy needed would be supplied by solar panels mounted on the tunnel through which the vehicle passes.
“The vehicle can travel even below the speed of sound relative to the surrounding air,” Musk added.
According to “New Scientist,” the air pressure inside the tubes would be 1/100th of atmospheric pressure, equivalent to 1/6th of the pressure on Mars. Even at this low pressure, air friction remains a challenge. The “fan” at the front of the train sucks in air, pressurizes it, and sends it through the holes in the rails, allowing the train to float on an air cushion.
Henri Coandă’s vision for the future of transportation
Henri Coandă left behind an innovative transportation system for communist Romania, which, however, was not completed and required further improvements. Nevertheless, his revolutionary idea was well defined.
Until his final years and his death on November 25, 1972, Henri Coandă served as the director of the Institute for Scientific and Technical Creation (INCREST), which he founded on his own initiative. His goal was to gather all of Romania’s scientists in one place to contribute to the country’s development.
INCREST studied and applied the Coandă Effect, aiming to create a “transportation in evacuated tubes” system where capsules would travel through tubes. Coandă proposed constructing railway lines between Bucharest and Brașov, between Bucharest and Constanța, as well as towards a project called the City of the Future. This city, named Delta, was envisioned as Romania’s Silicon Valley, situated on the shores between the Danube Delta and the arms of Sfântu Gheorghe and Sulina, extending to the Black Sea coast.
Between Bucharest and Brașov, there would have been two pipelines—one for passengers and another for freight—and the route to Constanța was planned to be known as the “Sun Highway.”
The first test of the evacuated tube transportation took place in Bucharest near CET SUD in June 1971. A pipeline 200 meters long and one meter in diameter was constructed there. Following the success of this test utilizing the Coandă effect, authorities established a branch of the “Aerotubexpress Department” in Măneciu Ungureni, in the Ciucaș Mountains. Two pipelines with a diameter of 1,020 millimeters were installed over a length of 1,300 meters, following the Teleajăn riverbed.
Henri Coandă’s transportation system implementation and fate
The propulsion station consisted of four fans. The freight containers did not exceed a speed of 35 kilometers per hour but managed well on the winding route imagined at Măneciu. The system was automated and operated from a control panel.
After 1980, more than eight years after Coandă’s death, experiments were conducted with human transportation in the pipelines. A steel capsule, six meters long and accommodating up to two people, was constructed. A 400-meter pipeline was built, and the capsule had its own braking system. The maximum speed was 70 kilometers per hour, but the major issue was the deafening noise inside the capsule.
Similar lines were also built in Baia Mare and in the Danube Delta, but they did not survive long after the Revolution. Dan Ionescu, one of the engineers involved in these projects, stated that the fear of failure in communist Romania was too great to see a project through to completion.
After the Revolution, nothing remained of the facilities built based on Henri Coandă’s ideas, and at Măneciu, only concrete foundations can be seen.
Americans, Chinese, and Spaniards dared to innovate
In 2012, the United States announced plans to build a high-speed train based on Coandă’s principles. The train is designed to travel in a tubular system at speeds up to 6,500 kilometers per hour and will connect the cities of New York and Los Angeles. The distance between these two metropolises, 4,000 kilometers, could be covered in approximately 45 minutes.
Researchers at Jiaotong University in China have begun developing a similar train capable of speeds up to 1,000 kilometers per hour and have announced plans to build the country’s first hyperloop train line by 2035. This mega-project will connect two bustling cities, Shanghai and Hangzhou, over a distance of 150 kilometers.
According to experts, the futuristic hyperloop train will travel inside a specially designed vacuum tunnel, allowing it to reach speeds of up to 1,000 km/h.
The Spanish company Zeleros is a key player and leader in hyperloop technology development in Europe. The company has announced several transport lines between cities in Europe. One line aims to connect Paris (France) and Berlin (Germany), promising a journey of about 90 minutes. The second line is between Lisbon (Portugal) and Madrid (Spain), estimating a travel time of one hour.
Sorin Dinea is a young engineer passionate about the work of the great scientist. His scientific colleagues have nicknamed him “Little Coandă” because he continues research on the Coandă Effect.
“I suspect and feel that the time has come to apply many of Henri Coandă’s inventions, and we will hear about them and use them soon,” says Sorin Dinea.
He believes that Coandă’s trains are the future. In his opinion, these trains could be successfully used at the Black Sea for underwater tourism. Romania is not lacking in brilliant minds with exceptional inventions that can change the world. What we lack, however, is the courage and interest to put these achievements into practice.
As for Henri Coandă’s exceptional work, while we have turned his experiments into ruins, the Americans are determined to adopt them and revolutionize train transportation worldwide. And they are not alone.
In 2015, another Romanian, Denis Tudor, changed the world with technology he invented.
After winning multiple editions of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition and discussing with Elon Musk about developing high-speed ground transport technology, Denis Tudor conceived the Swisspod project.
Dr. Denis Tudor is the CEO and co-founder of Swisspod Hyperloop Technologies, a leading company in ultra-rapid transportation. He completed the world’s first PhD in Hyperloop at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Recognized as a winner of Elon Musk and SpaceX’s Hyperloop competitions, he has received awards for innovation and contributed significant scientific papers to prestigious journals in the field. His company has secured substantial funding from the Swiss Government, the European Union, and private investors to develop Europe’s first Hyperloop research center, solidifying its position at the forefront of future transport technologies.
The Swisspod project began in 2019, co-founded with Cyril Dénéréaz, who serves as CTO and with whom Denis participated in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition.
“Swisspod was a natural progression from my past experiences, having participated and won several times in the competitions organized by SpaceX and Elon Musk, followed by earning a PhD in Hyperloop technology. Starting Swisspod with Cyril allowed us to build a team that innovates extensively in sustainable propulsion. We’re now close to testing the technology and have a few steps left to complete,” explained Denis Tudor, co-founder and CEO of Swisspod Technologies, during an interview with ZF IT Generation.
What exactly do the Swisspod team members do?
“We are creating a new mode of transport, which we call the fifth mode of transport, with which we aim to transport packages and people at very high speeds inside depressurized tubes. They can also be called vacuum tubes, but it’s not necessarily a very precise term – the tubes must have a pressure that is 50% of the normal pressure found on Earth,” explained Denis Tudor, adding that in Lausanne, Switzerland, the team has managed to build the testing infrastructure for this new technology, with the startup being supported by the Swiss government.
Swisspod is a solution for the transportation system proposed by Musk: tunnels through which travel at very high speeds will be possible. According to the company, Swisspod capsules will be able to transport passengers from Geneva to Zurich, a distance of over 270 kilometers, in just 17 minutes.
In one of his interviews, he spoke about his project and the mechanism through which it operates.
“It’s about a vacuum tube in which capsules are launched at very high, almost supersonic speeds, and the propulsion involves a technology that uses electromagnetic fields. Essentially, capsules are propelled at very high speeds through a contactless solution: there’s a propulsion motor generating magnetic fields that propel the capsules inside,” explained Denis Tudor.
He emphasized that this is a solution that is 50% faster than airplanes, but the primary advantage of the hyperloop is not necessarily speed, but energy consumption. “The energy consumption, compared to an electric car, is six times lower, and the energy is sustainable, so the efficiency in terms of energy and carbon emissions is more important,” pointed out Denis Tudor.
Swisspod announced on Thursday, through a press release, that it has completed a pre-Series A investment round to develop the largest hyperloop testing center in the world in the state of Colorado, USA.
At this investment round, E-INFRA, a Romanian group composed of five companies active in construction, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure, contributed.
The pre-Series A investment was also supported by Charlie Holding, a real estate development services company, together with Polysys Industries from the United Arab Emirates, specializing in tech startup investments and development. Additionally, a group of individual investors, known as business angels, contributed to Swisspod’s financing.
In April 2024, Swisspod launched a fundraising campaign with a target of 200,000 euros on the Romanian crowdfunding platform Seedblink, as part of this pre-Series A round. Moreover, in November 2022, Swisspod announced another fundraising campaign on Seedblink, with a target of 1.1 million euros.
The startup did not disclose the exact value of the investment round in its press release, but typically, pre-Series A funding rounds involve multimillion-euro sums, through which investors acquire minority stakes in the startup.
On the other hand, Swisspod communicated that, in collaboration with a consortium of five research centers across Europe, it had previously secured a 3.5 million EUR grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI) for the Muspell project. This project aimed at developing a thermal management solution for hyperloop. Additionally, the startup has benefited from other grants from the Swiss government.
With the capital raised, the American-Swiss startup intends to complete its second hyperloop testing facility in Colorado, USA. This facility will span 162,000 square meters, three times larger than the Louvre and twice the size of the White House grounds, described as “the world’s largest hyperloop testing unit” and “the only hub designed for long-distance hyperloop missions, due to its unique closed-loop configuration,” according to Swisspod statements.
After installing the first 100 meters of hyperloop tubes in the USA, Swisspod has already begun construction on the next 100 meters. As part of its strategy to introduce hyperloop to the market, Swisspod has initiated technology tests in Switzerland at the first hyperloop testing unit in Europe. Recently, the company achieved a record journey in hyperloop, covering 9.6 km with a scaled-down model, equivalent to 115.2 km for the full-scale system. The testing facility was built in partnership with Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Haute Ecole d’Ingénierie et de Gestion du Canton de Vaud (HEIG-VD).
The company’s map includes a city in Romania.
Romania would represent a very good market for the hyperloop system because current transportation methods are not very advanced, and it’s possible to directly transition to a transportation solution that covers multiple market domains, according to Denis Tudor.
However, he says that the implementation of the project depends heavily on the geography of the specific location, and therefore a feasibility study must be conducted first.
“I don’t know what lies beneath the ground in Bucharest and how it looks exactly, but we believe that we fall somewhere between 25 and 45 million Swiss francs per kilometer, which is not far from the infrastructure cost of a train. So, somehow, with the technology solution we have on the capsule side, we manage to minimize the infrastructure cost and be competitive with the existing market,” explained Denis Tudor.
In the founders’ vision, the new transportation system would not bypass Romania. Cluj Napoca is placed on the company’s map as a key node between Southern Europe and Northern Europe.
What is Hyperloop technology?
Hyperloop is a high-speed transportation concept involving the movement of passenger or cargo capsules through low-pressure tubes. The capsules utilize principles of magnetic levitation and electric propulsion to achieve speeds exceeding 1,000 kilometers per hour.
One of the potential modes of future transportation, Hyperloop technology, is making progress in its development and implementation in smart cities. Internationally, there are increasing testing initiatives shedding light on new aspects of this transport technology.
The Hyperloop transport system eliminates waiting times as journeys occur through a closed tube, offering more space and preventing congestion.
Moreover, the transport capsules can be fully adjusted to accommodate between 16 and 28 passengers. The tubes can be configured for various types of transport, including freight. Regarding this transport system, everything is automated, and human contact during and after the journey is limited. There are also discussions about introducing contactless technologies, facial recognition, and thermal scanning.
Josh Giegel, CEO of Virgin Hyperloop, stated, “Hyperloop will change how we think about time and distance, where we live, where we work, how often we get to see our friends and family. It combines the best aspects of all modes of transport – the speed of a plane, the convenience of a metro, the efficiency of an electric car, is accessible and safe, and most importantly, it will give us back time. That’s what I consider the mobility system of the future.”
How Hyperloop Works:
- Low-pressure tubes: The tubes through which the capsules travel are nearly evacuated, significantly reducing air friction.
- Magnetic levitation: The capsules are equipped with magnetic levitation technology to lift them and eliminate friction with rails.
- Electric propulsion: The capsules are powered by an electric propulsion system for acceleration and maintaining speed.
- Turbines and compressors: Turbines and compressors at the ends of the capsules help manage air within the tubes, ensuring smooth and efficient movement.
Benefits of the Hyperloop System
- Speed: Hyperloop can achieve speeds of over 1000 km/h, significantly reducing travel time between destinations. For example, a journey between Los Angeles and San Francisco could take approximately 30 minutes.
- Energy Efficiency: The system is designed to be highly energy-efficient, using electric propulsion and magnetic levitation technologies that reduce energy consumption compared to traditional means of transportation.
- Lower Operating Costs: After the initial infrastructure investment, operating costs could be lower due to energy efficiency and reduced maintenance costs of a magnetic levitation system.
- Reduced Environmental Impact: Hyperloop is considered more environmentally friendly than many other forms of transport because it uses electric power and produces fewer carbon emissions.
- Safety: Thanks to advanced control and propulsion technologies, Hyperloop can provide a high level of safety for passengers and cargo.
- High Transport Capacity: The system can transport a large number of passengers and goods in a short time, which can contribute to relieving congestion on traditional transport routes and improving logistical efficiency.
- Enhanced Connectivity: Hyperloop can rapidly and efficiently connect cities and regions, thereby stimulating economic development and facilitating cultural and commercial exchanges.
Hyperloop Conclusions: A Leap into the Future
Hyperloop represents a technological and conceptual leap in high-speed transportation. Based on low-pressure tubes, magnetic levitation, and electric propulsion, this system promises to revolutionize how we travel, drastically reducing travel time and environmental impact. Its benefits include energy efficiency, lower operating costs, enhanced safety, and high transport capacity, all contributing to unprecedented urban and interurban connectivity.
Henri Coandă: Pioneer of Innovative Transportation
Henri Coandă, renowned for discovering the effect bearing his name, was a visionary in transportation technologies. While his projects, like the vacuum tube transport system, were not fully realized, his ideas laid the groundwork for modern transportation concepts. His legacy in technical and scientific innovation remains a significant milestone in engineering history.
Elon Musk: Visionary of the 21st Century
Elon Musk has taken up the mantle of transportation innovation with the Hyperloop project, demonstrating how old ideas can be reinvented and updated using modern technologies. Hyperloop not only emphasizes efficiency and speed but also underscores the importance of sustainability and reducing carbon emissions. Musk’s vision to transform global transportation reflects his ambition to create a better and more connected future.
Denis Tudor: Romania’s Contribution to Hyperloop
Denis Tudor, a young Romanian engineer, has made significant contributions to the development of the Hyperloop project. His involvement showcases how talents from Romania can have a global impact, continuing the tradition of technical excellence and innovation started by Henri Coandă. Denis Tudor exemplifies how young engineers can influence and shape the future of transportation.
In conclusion, Hyperloop is not just a technological achievement but also a symbol of human progress, inspired by pioneers like Henri Coandă and brought to life by modern visionaries such as Elon Musk and Denis Tudor. This system promises to transform the future of transportation, making the world smaller, faster, and more interconnected.
