The transport of the future from Musk brought to life: the first passengers rode on the Hyperloop

Virgin Hyperloop makes the first ever passenger trip in the Nevada desert. The edition told more about it. with the BBC.

Photo: Shutterstock

The concept of futuristic transport involves movement in capsules in vacuum tubes at very high speeds.

During the test, two passengers - company employees - drove 500 m in 15 seconds with a maximum speed of 172 km/h.

However, this is just the beginning - Virgin's travel speed ambitions reach more than 1000 km/h.

Virgin Hyperloop isn't the only company developing such a concept, but nothing has carried passengers before.

Sara Lucian, Director of Customer Relations, was one of the passengers and described the experience as "exciting both mentally and physically."

While traveling to Las Vegas on Sunday afternoon, November 8, she and CTO Josh Gigel wore fleece jackets and jeans rather than flight suits. Ms. Lucian said the journey was smooth and not at all like a roller coaster, although the acceleration was "lightning fast." None of them got sick, she added.

According to her, the length of the route and the necessary acceleration did not allow to develop high speed.

The concept, which has been in development for several years, is based on the idea of ​​Tesla founder Elon Musk - although he had nothing to do with its implementation. Some critics called it science fiction.

It was based on the world's fastest trains with magnetic levitation, which were accelerated by moving inside vacuum tubes.

On the subject: Ilon Musk for the first time showed a superfast tunnel near Los Angeles

The world train speed record was set in 2015 - then a Japanese train reached a speed of more than 600 km/h during a test run near Mount Fuji.

Founded in 2014, Virgin Hyperloop received an investment from the Virgin Group in 2017. She was formerly known as Hyperloop One and Virgin Hyperloop One.

In a 2018 interview, then-Virgin Hyperloop One boss Rob Lloyd, who has since left the firm, said speed would theoretically allow people to travel between Gatwick and Heathrow airports, 72 km away on opposite sides of London, in four minutes.

Virgin Hyperloop, based in Los Angeles, is also exploring launch opportunities in other countries. In particular, we are talking about a hypothetical 12-minute route between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which takes over an hour by public transport.

Critics point out that making Hyperloop travel possible would require significant effort, both to obtain planning permissions and to build huge networks of tubes for each route.

Ms Lucian acknowledges the potential challenges, but notes: “We can continue to build today's or yesterday's transportation systems and continue to face the challenges they pose. Or we can really develop something that will solve these problems. "

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