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Earlier this week, everyone was talking about Virgin Hyperloop, the train in a tube that is said to be capable of reaching speeds of 1000 km / h (620 mph) when completed.
Specifically, everyone seemed pretty excited to have managed to perform their first try with two real human passengers. But I’d like to take a step back for a moment and ask us to do a big reality check before I consider how remarkable this milestone is.
Let’s put this in context.
This Virgin Hyperloop test hit a top speed of just 48.07 meters per second, or 107 mph, and it traveled 395 meters. Nowadays, it’s not really far or fast.
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Hyperloop is actually a magnetic levitation (maglev) train in a vacuum tube. As the name suggests, maglev technology suspends trains on concrete tracks using electromagnets to float in the air. Magnets are also used to propel the train forward by exploiting the fact that the North and South Poles repel each other.
Maglev trains are already among the fastest trains in the world and can reach speeds of over 370 mph. A Japanese-made maglev train managed to hit a record 370 mph for just over 10 seconds in 2016.
Maglev trains are not new technology either. They have been traveling at insane speeds for decades. By the late 1970s, maglev trains were comfortably reaching speeds of over 300 mph and doing so with the capacity to carry hundreds of passengers, not two.
Additionally, unless passenger pods can accommodate hundreds at a time, Hyperloop will not be accessible to the general public and will not be cheap. It went very well for Concorde, didn’t it?
Estimates suggest that building a Hyperloop-type system between Los Angeles and San Francisco (about 400 miles) will cost more than $ 7 billion to build. This sounds like a fairly conservative estimate considering that the Eurostar line from London to Paris (around 300 miles) costs around $ 5 billion – which was 80% more than expected, let’s hope Hyperloop won’t be at fault for the same miscalculation. Crittics of Hyperloop suggest it will cost closer to $ 100 billion.
Hyperloop seems like a very expensive and complicated way to just make maglev trains run faster. But it’s not the speed we need, it’s the accessibility.
Of course, Virgin Hyperloop promises some really remarkable things. An on-demand transport service that connects cities around the world that could help people travel from London to Lisbon faster than a plane with less environmental impact. I am all for it.
But he is determined to achieve high speeds rather than accessibility and provide a transport tool for the masses.
The success of these systems also depends heavily on the collaboration of governments around the world to build huge intercontinental loop networks. There is no guarantee that they will.
We have services like the Eurostar, which can reach speeds of 186 mph, which will get you from Amsterdam to London in a matter of hours without stopping. With maglev technology, we could make this trip faster and more comfortable. It’s a comparatively safer bet than Hyperloop.
With unity, collaboration and open borders, we could quite easily establish connections between cities of the world with existing technology.
More importantly, it would be a system that a significant portion of society could afford. One that would have an undeniably more positive impact on the world than a fancy vacuum train in a tube that only a wealthy few are likely to afford.
It may be a matter of perspective, but I’m just not as impressed with Hyperloop as everyone seems to be.
Long live maglev.
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Published November 12, 2020 – 10:47 UTC
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