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Adjacent to SpaceX headquarters, 25 teams gathered for another Hyperloop Pod Competition. This time the winner would be judged by how quickly they could go down the 1.25 kilometer (about .77 miles) track. On the final day of competition, three teams advanced to the finals and had the chance to push their pod to the limit.
With a speed of just over 200 miles per-hour, the Warr (pronounced Varr) team from the Technical University of Munich handily beat the two other finalists with its small, but quick pod. Weighing just 80 kg (176 pounds) and powered by a 50kw motor, the vehicle was essentially a small electric car built specifically for winning the competition.
[...] At the end of the competition, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk mused that there's no reason why future pods in the competition couldn't hit 500 to 600 miles per-hour on the 1.25 kilometer track. Of course that means that there will be another Hyperloop Pod Competition sometime next year and who knows, maybe we'll see pods hitting the speeds that'll make the mode of transportation truly rival air travel.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/27/hyperloop-pod-competition-winner-hits-200-mph/
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:42PM
Interesting. I did not know the Britain's canals were once an industrial backbone, but it makes sense. I believe the new scheme would work for many uses cases and could replace freight lines. Overnight and passenger travel will obviously need to be much faster. Also, I plan on designing it so that gravity and water flow replaces propulsion. It's a passive system that only requires energy input at the pumping/lift stations. If those can be as energy efficient as we can make it, and the capacity of these canals is much larger than Britain's, it may provide for much cheaper transport as opposed to rail, plane, and Hyperloop. I'm thinking solar and wind where possible. I'm thinking there could even by hydro power production serving a similar purposes to regenerative braking on electric vehicles.
Where it is different would be in the costs once it scales. Not good for every transport job you need, but when logistics and lead times give you the ability to ship across 10 days versus 24 hours, you can realize quite a bit of savings now just by switching from plane to freight.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.