hyperloop
Latest
Five miles of Hyperloop test track will be built in California
If you were worried that Hyperloop was nothing more than a fantasy, you might be happy to learn that some companies are taking the idea very seriously. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the companies inspired by Elon Musk's idea of making people travel in tubes, has signed a deal to build a five mile test facility in California. The facility will be built by a local developer along Interstate 5, and is expected to begin construction next year. According to CNBC, the scheme will cost an eye-watering $100 million to build and should be up and running by 2019.
Daily Roundup: Google Glass, Xiaomi phones, 2015 expectations and more!
The Google Glass experiment is over, but that doesn't mean Glass is finished. Nest co-founder Tony Fadell will take the reigns as Google builds the next generation of its head-mounted display. Meanwhile, Xiaomi continues to make waves with its lineup of impressive hardware that look, well, suspiciously familiar. With CES finally behind us, we share some of the things we're looking forward to in 2015. All that and more in today's Daily Roundup!
Hyperloop test track likely bound for Texas
Tesla CEO and SpaceX CTO Elon Musk took to Twitter this afternoon to provide a bit more info on his Hyperloop project. According to the tweet, the 700-MPH transit system will get a test track where both companies and student teams can visit to test pod designs. What's more, he says Texas will be the likely home for it. SpaceX announced in August that its new rocket facility would be built in Brownsville, and The Lone Star State was a consideration for Tesla's Gigafactory, so it's clear Musk and Co. fancy the area. There's also the possibility of an annual student competition, similar to the Formula SAE Series. Let's be honest: who wouldn't want to see some super high-speed pod racing?
Engineers are working for free to make Elon Musk's Hyperloop a reality
Nobody laughs much at Elon Musk anymore, but plenty of people snickered at his Hyperloop idea (okay, also the killer robot thing). To remind you, the Hyperloop is a series of underground trains powered by compressed air that transport folks between cities in tubes at around Mach I. While that may sound certifiably insane, a company called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) doesn't think so, and with the help of some UCLA students, has made considerable progress developing the idea. According to Wired, the startup (assisted by JumpStartFund investors) has enlisted top engineers from companies like Boeing, Airbus and SpaceX willing to work on Hyperloop in their spare time in exchange for stock options.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: triple-decker tree houses, prototype Hyperloop pods and a massive biodome
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. A man's home is his castle -- even if that castle happens to be a truck. A family of three recently transformed a small truck into a regal off-the-grid home complete with turrets and fake masonry. Singapore has seen a boom in innovative green architecture in recent years, and the city will soon be home to the world's lushest airport. Construction officially began last week on the Jewel Changi Airport, which will be filled with plants, and it will even feature the world's largest indoor waterfall. The massive biodome is expected to be completed in 2018. In other architecture and design news, the folks at Tentsile have created a new suspended tree tent that lets you create triple-decker tree houses in the sky. A team of tightrope walkers has them beat, however -- with a stupefying hand-knitted hammock suspended 400 feet above a desert canyon.
Former SpaceX director Marco Villa joins Hyperloop development team
When it was unveiled a few weeks ago, Elon Musk's Hyperloop project sounded almost too good to be true. Dr. Marco Villa, former director of mission operations at SpaceX, was among those who didn't get the memo from the naysayers, as he's just joined a team set on elevating Hyperloop from fantasy to reality. The crowd-sourced startup platform JumpStartFund enabled the group's formation after the Hyperloop plans were posted there in August; since then, a handful of talented individuals, led by Villa, received permission from Musk to work on developing the project. Joining Villa on the mission to make your high-speed travel dreams a reality is Dr. Patricia Galloway, who once served as president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (and was, notably, the first woman to hold that title). While the rail line is still a long way away from fruition, Villa seems optimistic, stating, "There does not seem to be any technical issues on this project that we can't solve, even if we do not know right away, we will figure it out."
Weekly Roundup: Smartphone buyer's guide, Hyperloop, Windows 8.1 release date, and more!
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Daily Roundup: HTC kicks off $1 billion rebrand, Elon Musk's Hyperloop, Liquid E2 review, and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Elon Musk details Hyperloop: public transit via aluminum pods and electric motors
Elon Musk is into transportation, whether it's an electric car or a spaceship. Today, he detailed a plan to revolutionize a portion of public transit. It's called the Hyperloop, and it's meant to get folks from SF to LA (or any two cities less than 900 miles apart) in 30 minutes seated in aluminum pods that are hurtled to and fro at 800 miles an hour in a pair of steel tubes. To keep things safe, pods will be spaced five miles apart so that they can stop without running into each other, which means a total of 70 pods could operate simultaneously. Of course, the real question is how to get the pods moving at those speeds? One main issue with such transport is wind resistance (and associated friction) that increases as the speed of the pods inside the tube escalate. Naturally, one could operate the tubes in a complete vacuum to eliminate the problem, but keeping such a system free of air would be difficult over such long distances. Instead, the proposed Hyperloop system works as a low air pressure environment that is easily maintained with standard commercial compressors. Additionally, "an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel" is there to relieve what air does build up at the front. This compressor fan would also generate an air bearing around the pod to keep it suspended in the middle of the tube, much as an air hockey table suspends a plastic puck. As for power? Well, that comes from external linear electric motors positioned every 70 miles to keep the pods humming along at subsonic speeds.
