The Future of Mass Transit - CNBC (http://www.cnbc.com)

Musk unveils plans for $10 billion Hyperloop transportation system

   

Published: Monday, 12 Aug 2013 | 5:23 PM ET

By: Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News

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Air cushioning: That's the high-concept technology behind the high-speed transit concept that billionaire Elon Musk calls the Hyperloop.

Musk — who already plays leading roles in the SpaceX rocket venture, the Tesla electric car company and the SolarCity solar-energy company — unveiled what he has called the "alpha" version of the Hyperloop plan in a blog post on Monday. It runs to 57 pages as a PDF file.

The plan is aimed at cutting the travel time between San Francisco and Los Angeles to a half-hour, at a price that's less than an airline ticket between those two cities. Musk said the Hyperloop arrangement could be implemented between any pair of cities situated up to, say, 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) apart. For longer distances, air travel would probably be more efficient, he said.

Musk said he came up with the plan out of frustration with the shortcomings of California's $68 billion high-speed rail project, which is just getting started.

(Read more: Sci-fi Hyperloop-type technology under development at ET3)

How the Hyperloop would work

The Hyperloop would send travelers through a low-pressure tubes in specialized pods that zoom at high subsonic speeds, reaching more than 700 mph (1,100 kilometers per hour). That compares with typical speeds of 110 to 300 mph for high-speed rail travel.

Musk's plan would rev up the pods from their stations using magnetic linear accelerators — but once they're in the main travel tubes, they'd be given periodic boosts by external linear electric motors. The pods would also have electric compressor fans mounted on their noses that would transfer high-pressure air from the front to the rear. The journey would be nearly frictionless, thanks to a cushion of air between the cars and the tube's inner surface.

The whole system would be powered by solar panels installed onto the tubes. "By placing solar panels on top of the tube, the Hyperloop can generate far in excess of the energy needed to operate," Musk wrote.

The tubes would be elevated on pylons, and generally follow Interstate 5 between San Fran and L.A. Musk says that would cut down on the cost of land acquisition and rights of way. He said the whole system would cost several billion dollars to build. "Even several billion is a low number when compared with several tens of billion proposed for the track of the California rail project," he wrote.

More from NBC News:

What is the Hyperloop? Billionaire Elon Musk is finally tellingus

Elon Musk pondering Jetsons-like people mover

High-speed rail efforts gain momentum across the country

This combination of technologies is what led Musk to describe the Hyperloop last month as a "cross between a Concorde, a rail gun and an air hockey table." The hints that he dropped along the way sparked a flurry of speculation, about schemes ranging from "Jetsons"-like people-movers to underground vacuum tunnels.

One of the closest guesses came from a self-described "tinker" named John Gardi, who laid out a plan for a turbine-driven pneumatic system. "This story has been a classic case of the media not having a clue," Gardi said in a Twitter update just before Musk's big reveal. "I had to come out of semi-retirement to write a GOOD article."

Who'll build the Hyperloop?

Musk says he won't be able to build the Hyperloop himself, due to his duties at SpaceX and Tesla. For now, he's leaving it to others to build upon his initial open-source concept. But if no one picks up the idea and runs with it over the next few years, he might return to the task.

It's possible that the Hyperloop could be held back by technical as well as political and economic issues. Transportation policy experts say that high-speed transit in the United States has been stymied not so much by technological challenges as by the challenges of acquiring rights of way and getting enough money to build the required infrastructure.

Nevertheless, high-speed transit projects are beginning to gain traction. California, for example, is continuing with its next-generation rail system, and other states are proceeding with their own high-speed rail initiatives.

—By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Source: Elon Musk

A conceptual rendering shows the Hyperloop passenger pod inside a low-pressure transit tube.

Source: Elon Musk

Hyperloop passenger transport capsule conceptual design sketch.

US Attorney General Holder to call for scaled-back mandatory minimum sentences - CNN (CNN.com)

By Dan Merica and Evan Perez, CNN

updated 10:35 AM EDT, Mon August 12, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Attorney general to announce action for "certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders"
• Offenders must not have ties "to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels"
• Holder hopes the rising cost of incarceration in the United States will begin to shrink
• Effort has diverse support, including GOP Sen. Rand Paul, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy

Attorney General Eric Holder will address mandatory minimum sentences and increasing state and federal budget costs.

Washington (CNN) -- Attorney General Eric Holder will announce Monday that the Justice Department will no longer pursue mandatory minimum sentences for "certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders."

In a speech at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association's House of Delegates in San Francisco, he will make the case that the United States "cannot simply prosecute or incarcerate our way to becoming a safer nation."

Holder it set to announce that "drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences."

They now "will be charged with offenses for which the accompanying sentences are better suited to their individual conduct, rather than excessive prison terms more appropriate for violent criminals or drug kingpins."

Lessening the use of mandatory minimums -- sentences that require a mandatory, "one-size-fits-all" punishment for those convicted of federal and state crimes -- could mark the end of the tough-on-crime era, which began with strict anti-drug laws in the 1970s and accelerated with mandatory minimum prison sentences and so-called three-strikes laws.

Holder is set to label these types of sentences as "draconian," "counterproductive" and "excessive."

Opinion: Shame of mandatory minimums shows in Marissa Alexander case

The attorney general's speech will also hit upon the reality that the federal and many state budgets are experiencing -- increasing costs.

Legislation to lessen the use of mandatory minimums, Holder will say, "will ultimately save our country billions of dollars."

"Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state, and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. It imposes a significant economic burden -- totaling $80 billion in 2010 alone -- and it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate," Holder will say, according to prereleased excerpts of his remarks.

In 2009, incarceration cost federal, state and local budgets $83 billion.

The administration hopes the move will also address racial disparities in the U.S. prison population, of which ethnic minorities are a majority.

Holder going after Texas voting law

President Barack Obama nodded to some of the issues in remarks he made after the Trayvon Martin verdict last month, giving voice to African-American concerns that "there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws -- everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws."

Although Obama administration officials say the changes they are pursuing will not require congressional approval, some unlikely pairs of lawmakers have come together to push criminal justice changes.

Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have worked together to allow judges to depart from mandatory minimum sentences when circumstances merit. Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah have undertaken similar efforts.

Holder blasts 'stand your ground'

In his speech, Holder will highlight the work of each lawmaker.

In recent years, there has been a rise in support among conservatives for reforms to the criminal justice system. While more flexible approaches to crimes have long held support among liberal Democrats, fear of being tarred as weak on crime by Republican opponents has long caused moderate Democrats, particularly those running for president, to avoid the issue.

In addition to changes to mandatory minimums, Holder will call for expanding the use of "compassionate release" of people in jail who "pose no threat to the public."

"In late April, the Bureau of Prisons expanded the criteria which will be considered for inmates seeking compassionate release for medical reasons," Holder will say. "Today, I can announce additional expansions to our policy -- including revised criteria for elderly inmates who did not commit violent crimes and have served significant portions of their sentences."

Holder not afraid to take on race debate

CNN's Carol Cratty contributed to this report.

NYPD's Stop and Frisk Policy ruled unconstitutional - CNN (Cnn.com)

New York's stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional, judge rules

By CNN Staff

updated 11:04 AM EDT, Mon August 12, 2013

Opponents of the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy protest in January, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Judge Shira A. Scheindlin says an outside monitor will be appointed to oversee changes
• The ruling stems from a class-action lawsuit claiming minority men are stopped without reason
• Police officers testified quotes forced them to make unnecessary stops

(CNN) -- The New York Police Department's controversial stop-and-frisk policy violates constitutional rights and must be altered, a federal judge ruled Monday.

Judge Shira A. Scheindlin's ruling stems from a class-action lawsuitclaiming that the city's police officers routinely stopped minority men, particularly blacks and Latinos, without legal reasons.

Scheindlin said that an outside monitor will be appointed to oversee changes to the policy.

The police department had said that the policy -- in which police stop, question and frisk people they considered suspicious -- is used to deter crime. The practice is widely criticized.

The lead plaintiff in the case is David Floyd, a medical student who was stopped twice, once in the middle of the afternoon when he was in front of his home in the Bronx, according to the suit, which was filed in 2008.

The trial, which ended in May, featured nine weeks of testimony, including from men who say police stopped them for no reason and from police officers who say quotas forced them to make unnecessary stops.

Closing arguments gave conflicting accounts of stop-and-frisk incidents. While attorneys for the city argued that one man was stopped because he appeared to be smoking marijuana, the plaintiffs' attorneys argued that he was simply talking on a cell phone.

Another man was reportedly stopped because he fit the description of a wanted man in a high-crime area with a recent string of burglaries, but the plaintiffs' attorneys argued that he was more than a mile from where the burglaries occurred and that the last burglary in that area occurred more than 25 days earlier.

According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, the police department logged its 5 millionth stop-and-frisk under Mayor Michael Bloomberg in March.