March is not even halfway through but Elon Musk and his companies have already made headlines several times. Tech Times reported on March 11 that Tesla's Powerwall 2 can solve South Australia's energy crisis in 100 days or it's free and, earlier the same day, we also reported that the much-awaited Tesla Model 3 was road-tested and images quickly leaked online.
Now Hyperloop One, the company that modified some elements in Musk's design for a high-speed freight transport idea, reveals just how close to reality the SpaceX Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Technology Officer is by publicly releasing the first images of its nearly complete hyperloop test track.
Hyperloop One Vice President for Strategic Communications Bruce Upbin had the honor of writing about the construction status of the Development Loop, or DevLoop. According to Upbin, Hyperloop One is officially releasing the first images in order to avoid someone else who may stumble upon the huge construction site close to a Nevada highway from leaking bootleg images.
Upbin revealed that the nearly complete DevLoop construction has been on-going for the past five months and resulted from the hard work and dedication of 150 Hyperloop One engineers, technicians and fabricators.
"DevLoop is our proof of technology, a crucial test bed that will demonstrate our ability to accelerate a levitated pod at high speeds in a near-vacuum using our proprietary propulsion and control systems [...] We will be running hundreds of different kinds of trials over the next months, and channeling all the insights we get into the next few generations of production Hyperloop One systems over the years to come," he writes.
He also said that the last few tubes are already being welded into place and that the vacuum pump is already operational. The track, autonomous control systems, and linear motor are also in progress so it really will not be long until the company will be able to begin testing its technology using the 1 million kilogram structure.
Hyperloop One's first test has already been scheduled for some time in the first half of 2017 but the company's goals are still modest, aiming for a 10- to 20-second trip with its test pod. However, Upbin is confident that the piece of land DevLoop was constructed on will be considered as a historic site in the future.
