Poland Is Best Place For Hyperloop, Says Polish Inventor
Marek Gutt-Mostowy, a Polish inventor and engineer, is putting together a team of 30 specialists to design and build a capsule for use in the Hyperloop. He first worked at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. He and his team were one of the 26 teams from around the world that won the first round of the Hyperloop design competition sponsored by SpaceX. Now they are working on a prototype.
Gutt-Mostowy hopes to make Poland the country where the first Hyperloop is created. Is he motivated by patriotism? Not at all. He said during the recent Innovation Congress in Warsaw, “We thought about which country would be the best place to start a project that could revolutionize transportation throughout the world. We decided that the best place is Poland.”
5 Reason Why Poland Is Best
He lists 5 reasons why Poland is ideal for this project. Quotes are translated via Google.
“First, there is a friendly environment for innovation in Poland because there are programs dedicated to such risky ventures like ours. We have applied for a grant from the National Center for Research and Development to get the project on the fast track.
“Second, Poland has excellent access to rail terminals. And third, Poland will be the western terminus of the new New Silk Road.”
That is an excellent reason to focus on Poland for the first Hyperloop, he says, because the new technology will be used in the first place for the carriage of goods. Transportation of people is at least 10 to 15 years in the future.
Fourth is the size of the country, which is fewer than 1500 kilometers wide in any direction. That’s the perfect size, Gutt-Mostowy says, because for distances longer than that, it is more economical to fly. The fifth reason is because Poland does not have a large number of high-speed rail options. The Hyperloop would go a long way toward improving travel within the country.
Prototype In Planning Stage
Gutt-Mostowy has decided to develop his own full-scale prototype of the capsule and build a test track 4 meters in diameter and up to 2 miles long in Poland. “We are considering two locations, one in Wrocław and the other in Rzeszów.” The capsule itself will be between 20 and 30 meters long. “We assume that the prototype will be ready in three years,” he says. He has applied to the national government for financing and hopes to get an answer by the end of September.
Gutt-Mostowy is a big fan of Elon Musk. “I remember when I saw the first Tesla electric car. From the beginning, I knew it was a breakthrough. And it was also a turning point in my life.”
When Musk unveiled his Hyperloop idea, Gutt-Mostowy immediately realized the engineering and technology required were very similar to what he did at CERN.
“For me, there are only minor technical differences between the Hyperloop and the Hadron Collider,” he says. Work on the Hyperloop has attracted talent from some of the world’s largest companies both in Europe and Silicon Valley. “This vision has brought many people to Poland. We have Polish engineers who are returning to Poland for this project.”
Where is he getting his talent? “From Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, but I cannot say from which companies because that is a secret. I can only tell you that we are talking to people in the largest, best-known companies in Silicon Valley.”
Several other companies are pursuing the development of the Hyperloop, but Gutt-Mostowy has every expectation his organization will be first to cross the finish line in the Hyperloop competition.
Source: Money Poland | h/t Jakub Stechly
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