I’ve been pretty negative about the hyperloop hype, and if I did a search on my posts, I’m sure I predicted that the original specs would be scaled back
Now instead of +700mph its defaulted to 200mph in this piece
Great engineering problems and solutions, excellent learning for these young engineers, though
I’m surprised anyone considers the Hyperloop practical with jetpacks just around the corner.
You’re seriously referencing the speeds achieved in a student competition project as evidence that a speculative technology with several multi-million dollar projects under way is being “scaled back”?
I’m not saying any of those big players are going to launch 700 mph vehicles right off the bat, but the fact that relatively small players are participating already at 200 mph is clearly not evidence of anyone’s reduction in ambition.
Now it only goes from inside the bank to your car.
I am old, so I have info/theories/data points which precede the Web.
Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Anyway:
Ca 1830, it was accepted fact that the human body could not go faster than (something on the order of) 19 mph.
This was the limit of this new-fangled “railway”.
And the thought of building tracks all over Great Brittan was preposterous on the face of it.
An 1830’s era engineer would never have even guessed that trains would go 100+ mph on rails laid through mountains.
Will future people look at the relatively rudimentary attempts at pressurized transport inside tubes as toyed with at “the turn of the last century” as we look at the earliest steam locomotives?
Elon Musk has had some great ideas - PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla Auto. I don’t want to bet against Hyperloop just yet.