Reporters in Las Vegas will soon get a peek at one of the key technologies that could eventually power the Hyperloop, a high-speed transportation concept initially devised by Elon Musk.
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Musk has tweeted that SpaceX may build a test track for its emerging hyperloop tech, “most likely in Texas”.
The seconds-long, outdoor demonstration by Hyperloop One featured what appeared to be a blip of metal gliding across a small track before disappearing into a cloud against the desert landscape.
They described a future where there’s no such thing as a long-distance relationship, and it doesn’t matter where you live because the commute to work would be so quick.
Hyperloop One is one of several companies working on transportation technology known as hyperloop, which will feature pods or cars racing through tubes in near-vacuum conditions with little to no air resistance to maximize efficiency and increase speed.
Here’s a look at the sled Hyperloop One is testing in North Las Vegas today. The tubes that the pods pass through can also be built underground, which would eliminate the risk of the system being affected by inclement weather. HTT announced on Monday that it had exclusively licensed passive magnetic levitation technology that would serve to keep Hyperloop pods off the track, minimizing friction as they speed through a tube.
The plan has detractors including James Moore, director of the University of Southern California’s Transportation Engineering Program. Musk open-sourced the idea and now a number of startups are competing to make the technology their own.
Such roadblocks are keeping self-driving vehicles off the road decades after the idea was born, he said.
“I would certainly not say nothing will come of Hyperloop technology”, Mr Moore told the Associated Press.
Hyperloop One hopes to be moving cargo as soon as 2019 and predicts it will be ready for passengers by 2021.
Yesterday, Hyperloop One also announced that it had received $80 million in financing, from current and new investors, to develop the transportation system.
While Hyperloop technology has the theoretical potential to reach speeds of over 700 miles per hour, the test unit shown today only reached speeds of around 150mph, albeit in under two seconds.
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The US town of Kitty Hawk in North Carolina went down in history as the locale where the Wright brothers made the first successful flight of a powered plane in 1903.
