There has been much talk recently about the development of what is known as a hyperloop — a sort of low-pressure or vacuum-sealed tube through which specially designed pods transport people and/or cargo far faster than any sort of mass transportation system currently in use, according to Digital Trends.
One of the biggest proponents and financial backers of hyperloop development is billionaire Elon Musk — of SpaceX and Tesla fame — who held a competition Sunday at his own mile-long test track of three different “pod” designs, the second such competition Musk has held, according to Tech Crunch.
The winner of this contest was a group of students from the Technical University of Munich in Germany, whose lightweight WARR Hyperloop pod constructed of carbon fiber crushed the competition by reaching a top speed of 201 mph and coming back to a complete stop in less than eight-tenths of a mile.
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Musk posted video of the trail run to his Instagram account, and it can only be described as exhilarating, according to Digg.
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Tech Crunch reported that this was actually the second such competition that Musk has held at his test track, with the same WARR team from Germany having won the first competition in January.
Astonishingly, their top speed in that first contest was only about 58 mph, which should give an indication of how rapidly this futuristic technology is being developed.
Ultimately, Musk hopes to soon see speeds exceeding 300 mph on his hyperloop test track. The next competition is tentatively scheduled for next year, so perhaps we will see that incredible speed reached then, maybe even by the same crew of students from Munich, who apparently are pretty good at designing and developing hyperloop pods.
Eventually, Musk wants to help build a hyperloop system connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco that will see travel at speeds of up to 700 mph. If that proves successful, it would only be a matter of time, and some serious investment of billions of dollars, to build a hyperloop track connecting the West Coast to the East Coast, perhaps enabling hyper-speed travel between Los Angeles and New York in less time than it takes to watch a TV drama.
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