The vaunted Hyperloop advanced transportation system reported its “Kitty Hawk moment” this week, after a 70-mile-per-hour, 315-foot test run on its development track in Nevada in May.
“Shortly after midnight May 12, Hyperloop guided a wheel-mounted sled 315 feet through a vacuum tube, reaching ‘nearly 2Gs of acceleration’ and a top speed of 70 mph as it travelled down a guideway for 5.3 seconds,” the Washington Post reports, citing a company release. “The sled accelerated for about 100 feet—the length of the motor—and lifted to a glide.”
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“The wheel mounts rumbled along for a second, and then the rumbling stopped as the pod lifted off the track and glided for 3 seconds before coming to a halt on its own,” Hyperloop stated, in website text accompanied by a video of the test.
“By achieving full vacuum, we essentially invented our own sky in a tube, as if you’re flying at 200,000 feet in the air,” said Hyperloop One Executive Chair Shervin Pishevar. “For the first time in over 100 years, a new mode of transportation has been introduced. Hyperloop is real, and it’s here now.”
