Moapa, Nev. – Hyperloop technology, which promises to transport people and goods at speeds of up to 600 miles per hour, has long seemed to be true. But one company says it has approved the important step of commercializing it by moving two of its employees through a testing system.
Virgin Hyperloop on Sunday became the first company to conduct a human test of the technology on its 500-meter test track in the desert north of Las Vegas. The two volunteers, dressed in casual street attire, were whipped into a pod, which was looted by a magnet inside a vacuum tube at 107 miles per hour in 6.25 seconds.
The morning sits on white vegan leather-covered molded seats, housed inside a white-carbon fiber-wrapped pod.
When the G-Force on the pod was three times larger than the airplane, “it was easier than I expected,” said Sara Lucian, one of the passengers in the morning test and a year-old passenger. And unlike the plane, there were no side forces that would have sunk the pod, he said.
Josh Giggle, co-founder of the company and another volunteer, said it didn’t feel any different than speeding in a sports car.
“This is a step of historical significance,” said Jay Werder, the company’s chief executive, pointing to 20 months of planning. “I don’t think you can move it forward. This is a moonshot moment. I have no doubt this will change the world. ”
Whether it will then become a huge leap for mankind is still unclear.
The Virgin Test may be symbolically important as it is crucial to the ultimate success of the technology. Pode traveled much slower than Hyperloops supporters claim to be technically capable, while company officials described it as a safety target.
“My number one question from investors is, ‘Is it safe enough to ride?’ “We’re everyday people, we’re not astronauts. This shows it’s safe, and observers can take this to their investors and interested municipalities.”
Testing also gives a sense of reality to a construction like an otherwise abstract scientist. “You can show a very gorgeous figure but what matters at the end of the day is, will people run it? This is an example of a picture of a thousand words, “said Ms. Luchian.
The modern hyperloop concept was first described in 2012 by Elon Musk, a top executive at SpaceX and Tesla. He made this offer to anyone who wanted to exploit him, and neither he nor his companies were working on hyperloops.
Virgin Hyperloop, which counts Richard Branson’s Virgin Group as a minority investor, is one of many companies seeking to commercialize the technology, which they hope will eventually move travelers to and from cities and ports.
If it works as advertised, travel time can be significantly cut – a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco, for example, can take less than an hour.
Mr. Walder has a close knowledge of transportation systems and has served as head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York, London, and head of transport. Mr Verlder claimed that Hyperloop technology could be the first new mass transit system in a century.
“The US Interstate Highway system, which began in 1956, cannot end our imagination in terms of how we move,” he said. With the hyperloop, “we may have a fundamentally different transportation system.”
Unlike trains, which run on a fixed schedule, hyperloop pods will act more like smart elevators. The artificial intelligence will adjust the number of passengers in the caravan journey and departure time based on the demand.
Many experts doubt that the technology will stick to its great promises or be financially viable.
A truck pushing the tube could shut down the system, said Carlo van de Weiger, general manager of the Eindhoven AI Systems Institute in the Netherlands. In system aging, it will require costly maintenance. Hyperloops will also not be able to transport many people or goods as its proponents claim because individual pods need to be slowed down to get into the spot tracks.
“Every success starts with a fantastic idea,” said Dr. Van de Vieger. “But not every strange idea is a success.”
Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute for Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, said hyperloop companies, like high-speed rail systems, have a right to inflation.
The tubes carrying the hyperloop pods must be very straight for high-speed travel, and the turns must be very wide. Once the roads are set, getting every necessary parcel of land can be a nightmare. “If a road is taken, there is no alternative,” Mr Matute said. “Airlines don’t have this problem.”
Still, some government officials and Hyperloop are committed to advancing entrepreneurial technology. Virgin Hyperloop, which has doubled its workforce to 300 in the past two years and raised more than $ 400 million, has chosen West Virginia as the site for its certification center and six-mile test track.
There are several projects at the planning stage: the road between Pune and Mumbai in India; The second between Jeddah and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia; And one connecting Chicago, Columbus, Ohio and Pittsburgh.
“We are very positive and very interested in the possibilities for a hyperloop,” said Thea Ewing, director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission.
The council estimates that over a period of more than 30 years, a hyperloop connecting cities will displace 1.9 billion cars and truck trips, reduce carbon emissions by 2.4 million tons and generate આર્થિક 300 billion in economic benefits.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a Los Angeles and Dubai-based company, has built a 320-meter test track in Toulouse, France, and is designing a 1000-meter test track for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. It has also partnered with a container operator at the port of Hamburg to design a system for moving cargo.
The ability to move people safely at this stage of Techno’s development is not so important, said Andres de Leon, the company’s chief executive. “We’re selling the program from an engineer’s point of view, not a marketer’s.”
In the Netherlands, a 35-employee hyperloop company called Hard has built a 30-meter track that allows the company to test its levitation, propulsion and lane-switching technologies. The company has teamed up with Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport to explore the possibility of connecting a hyperloop connecting major airports in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Belgium and Britain.
But it is the movement of cargo that Hardt is developing first. “The risk is lower and it’s easier for stakeholders if we don’t put pressure on passengers,” said Mars Juz, the company’s chief commercial officer. “It’s easy to take small steps.”
Two other companies, Transpod in Toronto and Zelros in Valencia, Spain, are also working to develop hyperloop systems.
Hyperloop companies have been encouraged by government findings that technology is possible. In 2019, the U.S. The Department of Transportation entrusted the Federal Railroad Administration with developing standards and regulations for hyperloops.
In Europe, many hyperloop companies have formed technical committees to develop standards, which they hope will be adopted by the European Union.
After Mr. Gigel and Mrs. Lucian entered the capsule, he was pushed into the decompression chamber to wait for a vacuum to form. At that point, the gate valve opened and the pod entered the tube, ready for testing.
Virgin’s successful human tests can give true believers mental growth in technology. Company officials believe the system will be commercialized by the end of the decade.
“This technology could be the transition to the future that we all want,” Mr. Giselle said. “Today we go from childhood to adolescence.”
