Whoopee... Hyperloop!

Author: Sreelata Menon

Illustrator: Satya Krishna Prakash
Little Vishnu was a dreamer. He loved to read. He also loved to travel. But he hated waiting at airports and
train stations, taxi stands and bus terminals. Travel always seemed to take so much time!
‘How I wish I had a magic carpet,’ he thought. ‘I would whizz from place to place in no time like Aladdin.’

2/17
How did human beings first go from one place to another? They
walked.

Once they learnt to tame animals, they rode donkeys, horses,

camels, and elephants. Hundreds of years passed. The wheel
was invented, and bullock carts and other carriages took people
everywhere.

3/17
A few centuries ago, the steam engine was perfected and trains
were built. Next came the motor car, and people got to places
faster.

Cars ran on internal combustion engines. The Wright brothers

took this engine and worked on it so that it could power a plane.
Engineers took this a step further. They designed rockets to fly
humans to outer space and to the moon.

4/17
‘But why are we still slower than a magic carpet?’ Vishnu wondered.

He asked his mother. He asked his father.

He even asked his teacher. Nobody could give him a satisfactory answer.

His father said, “We are faster than we ever were. We can go from Chennai to Bengaluru in five or six hours
by rail or road. And it takes less than 40 minutes by air. Why, you can even fly from Delhi to Washington in
just 16 hours! The Japanese bullet trains take people from one island to another in just a few hours. How
much faster do you want to go, Vishnu?”

5/17
How far in 40 minutes?

4 km

40 km

60 km

600 km

6/17
‘They don’t understand,’
thought Vishnu. Every time
he travelled, he wished he
had magical powers that
would take him anywhere in
an instant. He grumbled
about it to Rahul, his best
friend.

7/17
One day, Vishnu saw a newspaper headline that sent his little
world into a spin. It said: ‘Hyperloop: the modern day magic
carpet’.

He ran to his friend’s house. “Rahul, the Hyperloop is coming! It

is going to be faster than any train or plane,” he said.

“What is that?” asked Rahul’s sister Anuradha, joining them.

8/17
“Hyperloop is a super, super, SUPER fast mode of transport. I
just read about it in the newspaper. It’s a system with small
vehicles called pods that will carry people through long, massive
vacuum tubes. These tubes will rest on columns or be
constructed underground.”

9/17
The more Vishnu told Rahul and Anuradha about the hyperloop, the more
excited he became.

“We would be able to go from Chennai to Bengaluru at the speed of aplane —

in less than 40 minutes! Isn’t it great? It takes five to six hours when we go by
bus or train.”

10/17
 Anuradha was full of questions.
“How will it move? Is it safe?”

“The pods will go whoosh!

Through the tubes...
levitating all the while.
Safety tests for the hyperloop
are being carried out right now,” Vishnu said.

11/17
“They will be faster than bullet trains!” said Rahul.
“Really?” asked Anuradha.
“The idea is to work towards the speed of sound, about 1,235 kilometres per hour,” said Vishnu.
“But how?” asked a puzzled Rahul.

12/17
“With hardly any air resistance or friction to slow them down in
vacuum, the pods can whizz through the tubes. Imagine zipping
from Chennai to Bengaluru in a matter of minutes!
How awesome is that?”

They laughed, thrilled with the idea.

13/17
“But tomorrow I have to take a bus to Bengaluru!”
groaned Vishnu. That night Vishnu dreamt of
travelling in the hyperloop...

14/17
Hyperloop, the dream transport

The hyperloop is a futuristic transport system. It is expected to be environment-friendly since the tubes can
have solar panels on the roof, allowing for a clean and self-powering system.

15/17
India is already working on a hyperloop project. It will run from Mumbai to Pune.

16/17
But the world has seen
great inventions because of
people’s dreams and
imagination.

Vishnu dreams a lot.

What do you dream about?

17/17
 This book was made possible by Pratham Books' StoryWeaver platform. Content under Creative
Commons licenses can be downloaded, translated and can even be used to create new stories ​‐
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Story Attribution:
This story: Whoopee... Hyperloop! is written by Sreelata Menon . © Pratham Books , 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license.
Other Credits:
'Whoopee... Hyperloop!' was originally published on StoryWeaver by Pratham Books. The development of this book has been supported by CISCO.
www.prathambooks.org
Images Attributions:
Cover page: children running , by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2017. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 2: Boy on a
flying carpet, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 3: People travelling on
vehicles and animals, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 4: Three children
sitting, another waving to them, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 6: A
stopwatch, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 7: Two boys with a toy plane, by
Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 8: Children looking at a newspaper, by Satya
Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 9: Tube with seats, by Satya Krishna Prakash ©
Pratham Books, 2017. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 10: Three children watching the hyperloop, by Satya Krishna Prakash ©
Pratham Books, 2017. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 11: Puzzled girl and a snail, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books,
2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 12: A bullet train, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights
reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license.

Disclaimer: https://www.storyweaver.org.in/terms_and_conditions

The development of this book has been supported by

Some rights reserved. This book is CC​-BY​-4.0 licensed. You can copy, modify, CISCO. www.prathambooks.org
distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking
permission. For full terms of use and attribution,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
 This book was made possible by Pratham Books' StoryWeaver platform. Content under Creative
Commons licenses can be downloaded, translated and can even be used to create new stories ​‐
provided you give appropriate credit, and indicate if changes were made. To know more about
this, and the full terms of use and attribution, please visit the following link.

Images Attributions:
Page 13: A boy with a plane, another watching, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license.
Page 14: Vehicles at a railway crossing, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 15:
Solar panels on tubes, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 16: People at a
construction site, by Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license. Page 17: Rocket taking off, by
Satya Krishna Prakash © Pratham Books, 2018. Some rights reserved. Released under CC BY 4.0 license.

Disclaimer: https://www.storyweaver.org.in/terms_and_conditions

The development of this book has been supported by

Some rights reserved. This book is CC​-BY​-4.0 licensed. You can copy, modify, CISCO. www.prathambooks.org
distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking
permission. For full terms of use and attribution,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Whoopee... Hyperloop! Vishnu loves to see new places. But he hates long journeys. Why
can’t we have a faster mass transport system, he wonders. So when
he reads about the hyperloop, he is blown away… whoopee! What’s
(English) this futuristic mass transport system?

This is a Level 4 book for children who can read fluently and with confidence.

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