On December 15th, Virgin Hyperloop One conducted the third demonstration of its not-to-scale system in the desert outside of Las Vegas, sending its magnetically levitating pod through a nearly airless tube at 240 mph (387 km/h).
It was a significant increase over the team’s previous record of 192 mph, but far less than the hyperloop’s theoretical maximum speed of 700 mph…
Perhaps more important than the speed of the XP-1 pod was the demonstration of the team’s new airlock technology. In order to obtain the high speeds first theorized in Elon Musk’s 2013 white paper, the hyperloop pod needs to travel through a near-vacuum state. This frictionless environment allows the magnetically levitating pod to travel at airliner-speeds through the length of the tube.
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