Since Saudi Arabia’s millennial Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is in America for a 3-week tour, he met with Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Galactic Company, to discuss the plan of bringing a high-speed Hyperloop transit system to Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince along other officials of Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry met the CEO at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, which is known for known for developing vehicles for commercial space travel. They discussed a potential partnership with Saudi Arabia.
The meeting of Branson and the Prince touted the idea of developing a high-speed Hyperloop transit system in the capital city of Riyadh carrying passengers to another major city of Saudi Arabia, the commercial hub Jeddah, in 76 minutes. By the current public-transport methods it takes about 10 hours to travel between the two cities, while with direct flights it takes about 95 minutes.
As a part of the Vision 2030 Hyperloop Pod, the Crown Prince illustrated a partnership between Saudi Arabia and Virgin. The goal of the partnership is to modernize the transport system in Saudi Arabia.
Prince Mohammed said from the Virgin Hyperloop HQ,
“Hyperloop is the catalyst to enable all fourth generation technologies to flourish in the Kingdom while creating a vibrant society and thriving economy through visionary cities and high-tech clusters,”
CEO Branson asserted that the Hyperloop system could position Saudi Arabia as a “gateway to three continents.”
Hyperloop pod run by team WARR pic.twitter.com/ntaMsoxkZE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2017
The Hyperloop system is the future and it can easily outpace traditional rail services. Hyperloop is basically a high-speed transit system which was first proposed by Elon Musk in 2013. The end goal of the system is to make pods in which passengers can sit and send those pods through tubes at extremely high speeds. Saudi Arabia is bringing revolutionary changes and the Crown Prince also plans to enhance the country’s transport systems as well as improve infrastructure “internally and across borders,” with the help of global partners such as Virgin.
