Virgin Hyperloop announced that it has conducted an investigation of its ultra-fast transportation system with human passengers for the first time.
The test took place Sunday afternoon on the company’s Devlop test track in the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada. The first two passengers were Virgin Hyperloop’s chief technical officer G officer Fischer and co-founder, Josh Gigel, and head of travel experience, Sara Lucian. After the company’s shiny white and red hyperloop pods were strapped to their seats in a dub called gas gasus, as the air inside the closed vacuum tube was removed, they were transferred to an air lock. Then down the length of the pod track, fast at 100 miles per hour (160 km / h), before slowing down at the stop.
This is a significant achievement for Virgin Hyperloop, founded in 2014 by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, with a view to the future transportation system of magnetically laden pods traveling through airless tubes at speeds of 760 miles per hour (approximately 1,223 km). had been done. H) a reality.
The Devloop test track is 500 meters long and 3.3 meters in diameter. The track is about a minute away from Las Vegas, a type of desert or hyperloop pod can be passed in a day or minutes. The company says it has conducted more than 400 tests on that track, but never before with human passengers – to date.
“No one has come close to what we’re talking about right now,” said Jay Wilder, CEO of Virgin Hyperloop. Edge. “This is a full scale, working hyperloop that not only runs in a vacuum environment, but will have one person in it. No one came close to doing that. ”
The gas gasus pod, also known as the XP-2, used for the first passenger test, was built with the help of the famous Danish architect Bazarke Engels’ design company. It represents a smaller version of the Virgin Hyperloop’s hope that it will eventually be a full-size pod capable of carrying 23 passengers. It weighs 2.5 tons and measures 15-18 feet long, according to Giselle. Inside, its greenery is meant to be familiar to white interior passengers, who will not be immediately comfortable with the idea of shooting slings through a vacuum-sealed tube at the speed of a commercial jet.
“It’s not like inventing some crazy, new stupid science fiction,” Luciane said in an interview several days before the test. “It’s something that reminds me of the place I’ve been and I’ve used it so many times, so I feel comfortable putting Grandma in and sending her on a visit somewhere.”
Prior to the test, Lucian said he was keen to experience acceleration, as well as monitor the temperature inside the pod and ventilation system. Giselle said he wants to see the system’s security practices in action, and keeps track of whether they are able to communicate with tors operators during testing. “If it’s not safe enough for me, it’s not safe enough for anyone,” he said.
Giselle said the acceleration plane would look like a flight. The pod is propelled by magnetic levitation – the same technique used for bullet trains. The top speed of the fastest commercial bullet train, the Shanghai Maglev, goes around 300 miles.
To be sure, the pod did not reach the theoretical maximum speed of the hyperloop of 760 miles. With Virgin Hyperloop projects or enough tracks it could eventually reach 670 miles per hour – but the company’s record to date is 240 miles per hour, which it gave in 2017.
“It’s going to be a little shorter,” Gigel said before the test. “We can reach about 100 miles an hour, and we can accelerate, slow down and it will be easier. We are not astronauts, we are there – we are sitting in it. “
In 2013, Kasturi published his “Alpha Paper” which theorized that aerodynamic aluminum capsules filled with passengers or cargo could be advanced through an airless tube at an airliner-speed of 760 miles per hour. These tubes, either erected on pylons or sunk under the earth, could be built either inside or between cities. He called it the “fifth mode of transportation” and argued that it could help change our lives, work, trade and travel. The most amazing sight he proposed was the trip from LA to San Francisco in just 30 minutes. The idea captured the imagination of engineers and investors around the world.
Virgin Hyperloop was initially founded as Hyperloop Technologies, renamed Hyperloop One in 2016 and then again in Virgin Hyperloop One by Richard Branson’s company. The company came out of the gate with millions of dollars in funding and a bold vision of hyperloop systems around the world.
But the journey was not always easy for the Virgin Hyperloop. In 2017, the company sued one of its co-founders over rival claims of harassment and vandalism. A year later, another co-founder was fired amid allegations of sexual assault and misconduct.
The company was also stripped for cash for a significant period of time. Brans helped secure the new $ 50 million investment of two existing investors, which helped meet payroll obligations. Most recently, Virgin Hyperloop raised 17 2,172 million in new funding in 2019, of which 90 90 million went to Dubai port operator D.P. Came from World, which had previously invested 25 million in the company and already has two seats on the startup’s board of directors.
After that, things worked out, with Gigel and his team working diligently to validate the technology with a series of tests. On the regulatory front, things are looking bright. To further the vision of the future of high-speed transportation in West Virginia, the company recently announced plans to build a 500 500 million certification center. And the federal government has recently given hope to companies like Virgin Hyperloop that it could collapse based on a full-size operational hyperloop system in shape.
Critics say the hyperloop is technically possible, but it’s still only in the amount of steam. It is called “Utopian Vision” which is financially impossible to achieve. It’s also one of those techniques that, according to its boosts, is also “just around the corner” – externally still appearing despite years away. Top executives of Virgin Hyperloop said in 2017 Edge They expect to see “by 2020 … working hyperloops around the world”. That deadline was later pushed to 2021, the year they believe the hyperloop will be ready for human passengers.
Constantine Samaras, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, said there are still many safety questions that need to be answered. “A hyperloop vehicle will travel faster than a high speed rail, perhaps even reaching 70 mph,” Samras said in an email. “It is very important to maintain safety at such a fast pace, and all unforeseen disasters need to be engineered into the system. Earthquake? Is the vacuum tube broken? Does the train somehow punch through the tube? At such speeds, these events increase the fear and therefore safety should be paramount. “
No government in the world has yet given any agreement or approval to create a hyperloop system. It is unclear how much it will cost to build a hyperloop, but surely it will be in the billions of dollars. Financial documents leaked in 2001 suggest that the hyperloop will cost between $ 9 billion and 13 13 billion, or between 84 84 million and 1 121 million per mile – significantly more than high-speed rail. Despite being publicly funded, any company would need millions of dollars in funding, land acquisition, huge land grabs, and certification that the hyper loop could be operated safely. That is to say, the hyperloop is still very far away.
The ability to maintain a vacuum in a tube, especially a hundred miles long, is another formidable challenge. Every time a pod arrives at the station, it has to be deselected and stopped. Then the plane has to close, push and reopen. Then the airlock must be cleaned before the pod comes to the next pod. The speed at which this happens will determine the distance between the pods. The turn will also be very difficult. As one Virgin Hyperloop engineer once said, a hyperloop would need about six miles to run 600 miles per 90 degree turn. New York Times.
Another possible obstacle is the head. As long as these capsules progress, it can determine how much mass transport the hyperloop can be. Rators porters can try to compensate by making larger capsules, but then they will need stronger steel for their tubes to accommodate the extra weight, and that will cost more.
The Chinese leader, who has worked with China and the U.S. Has run a public transportation system in and recently head of City Bike in New York City, he said the full-business, commercially operated hyper loop will have a “few seconds ending” for most trains compared to 2 minutes or more.
Luchin said he’s excited, if a little nervous. He said, “A little nervous energy, just because I can appreciate the gravity of the moment.”
She said it is important that the experience of riding in a hyperloop feels comfortable and familiar, such as riding in a train, other ordinary people will reject it as a possible and safe mode of transport. She noted that neither Giggle nor she had undergone special training before or wore protective clothing such as astronauts.
“Even for such an important occasion, for contingency technology like six seven years ago, we don’t need to do all these repetitions with experts.” “We’re coming in.”
For Gigel, this test was the culmination of years of labor. It’s been almost six years since he quit his job as a systems propulsion lead to start a hyperloop company in his garage at Virgin Galactic.
“I think from now on, this thing wouldn’t exist in the desert until we put it here, it would be a place where people could see and say, ‘It was a really big idea, it was a really dangerous idea.’ “But they came, they did it and they made it a success,” he said. ”
