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Hyperloop One Hits a Milestone: 70 mph and 5.3 Seconds of Magnetic Levitation

posted by n1 on Friday July 14 2017, @09:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the levitating-shopping-carts dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Hyperloop One claims that its prototype ultra-fast train has completed a first full systems test in a vacuum, reaching a speed of 70 mph. The sled was able to magnetically levitate on the track for 5.3 seconds and “reached nearly 2Gs of acceleration,” according to the company.

The test was conducted privately but Hyperloop One offered some video that included footage from testing. Based on that footage plus a few seconds of additional b-roll shared with media, a lightweight skeleton sled uses a linear motor to accelerate, levitates briefly, and then comes to a halt as the brakes are applied.

Hyperloop One was created as an answer to a challenge from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who wrote a white paper envisioning a mode of transportation that would send pods at speeds greater than 700mph using a low-friction environment and levitation using air bearings.

Source: Ars Technica

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Arik on Friday July 14 2017, @02:04PM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday July 14 2017, @02:04PM (#539113) Journal
    Exactly. Mythbusters are pretty bad at it and they had to put a dent in the tanker to get it to collapse. Wabash National guys knew exactly what they were doing and didn't even need to do that. Either way, you get to see what a 'vacuum collapse' looks like. And that's not simply something you can get when you draw a vacuum on a container that can't handle it - it's also something that can happen when a container under vacuum is weakened in some way - by being dented, by a temperature change, etc.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday July 14 2017, @02:47PM

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Friday July 14 2017, @02:47PM (#539126) Homepage
    They were completely different vessels of course. The Wabash one was a tin can compared to the Mythbusters one, which managed just one crease along its whole length, whilst the thinner one was properly crushed. Both fun and impressive in their own right. And both feeble compared to what Musk intends on creating.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @03:12PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @03:12PM (#539139)

    The thing that a lot of people miss is that you don't even need a complete collapse of a section to be fatal to anybody in the tube at the time. All it needs is to dent enough that the capsule catches on the dent in order to be a catastrophic failure that would destroy a portion of the tube, the capsule and anybody in it.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday July 15 2017, @02:07AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 15 2017, @02:07AM (#539435) Journal

      All it needs is to dent enough that the capsule catches on the dent in order to be a catastrophic failure that would destroy a portion of the tube, the capsule and anybody in it.

      I guess that depends on how close the capsule is to the shell of the tube. But if it's not close, then you'll need a huge dent. Events that make huge dents are easy to detect. Huge dents are easy to detect as well.