The concept is advancing
Imagine taking a trip at high speed, gliding smoothly through an airless tunnel, without facing obstacles such as traffic or weather changes, that is precisely the vision that the Hyperloop project has been trying to realize since Elon Musk launched the concept in 2003. .and now it has reached an importance.
In Switzerland, a test facility of the prestigious EPFL, the federal polytechnic of Lausanne has just completed the longest run of a hyperloop capsule in a vacuum environment.
This test is part of the LIMITLESS project, an ingenious acronym that means "linear induction motor for traction and levitation in sustainable hyperloop systems", within this project a reduced-scale model of the hyperloop and a proportion of 1 by 12 was tested in a 40 cm diameter tube with a 125 m circular track.
Tests that break limits.
Over the past few months, LIMITLESS project engineers have conducted no less than 82 tests, with the most notable test so far involving a capsule that traveled an impressive 12 km, the greatest distance ever covered by a hyperLoop capsule to date.
At maximum speed, the prototype reached 40 km per hour, which when scaled to full size would be equivalent to a speed of 488 km/h, not bad for a technology that is still in the development phase, although it has not yet reached the amazing 100 km per hour. That hyperlock promises to one day achieve this Swiss milestone shows that the potential for a Revolution in long-distance transportation remains tangible.
It is worth remembering that recently a test in China reached the impressive speed of 623 km per hour on a short test run with a scale model, all these advances indicate that the hyperloop is not a forgotten idea but a project that continues to advance constantly facing and overcoming technical challenges.
In the end, what is at stake is much more than a new means of transportation, it is the possibility of redefining the way we travel by drastically reducing travel time between cities, all this with a technology that promises to be more sustainable and efficient than conventional methods. conventional.
We are really close to seeing the hyperlook on the roads or rather in the tunnels, one thing for sure, the LIMITLESS project and other international efforts make it clear that the dream of futuristic and ultra-fast transportation is still very much alive and we are waiting to see how far. This journey can take us.
