These Students Built A Working Hyperloop (A Very Tiny One)
'What is this? A Hyperloop for ants!?'
Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is an idea as ambitious as it is fantastical. A train that travels at 760 mph through a pressurized tube is a hard sell, even with it gracing the latest cover of *Popular Science magazine. So it’s pretty cool to see a real, working version — albeit in miniature. Engineering students at the University of Illinois recently made their very own, tiny Hyperloop model (1:24 scale) as part of a senior design project, Motherboard reports.
Watch it in action below:
The model is less a proof of concept and more a very similar small-scale design. The metal pod inside rides on metal bearing instead of air, so there’s much more friction than in an ideal, full-sized Hyperloop. And this one fits in a room, which means some tighter turns than an ideal straight-shot transit line. So: not a working Hyperloop yet, but a fun Hyperloop-like simulation. Now, how about a real one?
