If you were worried that Hyperloop was nothing more than a fantasy, you might be happy to learn that some companies are taking the idea very seriously. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the companies inspired by Elon Musk’s idea of making people travel in tubes, has signed a deal to build a five mile test facility in California. The facility will be built by a local developer along Interstate 5, and is expected to begin construction next year. According to CNBC, the scheme will cost an eye-watering $100 million to build and should be up and running by 2019.
Although Elon Musk himself is credited with the Hyperloop idea, he had originally stated that he was too busy with SpaceX and Tesla to develop the project. Since then, however, the entrepreneur has changed his tune, pledging to build a test facility of his very owndown in Texas. Unlike HTT’s, the Musk loop will be used by companies and students to test pod designs, and could even host a student race competition in the vein of Formula SAE. All we can say is that we hope it won’t be long after that before we start seeing Hyperloop tunnels popping up across the country.