HyperloopTT’s first full-scale passenger hyperloop capsule aims for 2019 operation
Posted: 2 October 2018 | Global Railway Review | 1 comment
HyperloopTT’s first full-scale passenger capsule, built in Spain by Airtificial, will soon be transported to the company’s Toulouse R&D facility for optimisation.
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HyperloopTT) has provided the first look at their full-scale passenger hyperloop capsule at an unveiling ceremony in Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain.
The event also commemorated the five-year anniversary of the founding of HyperloopTT and showcased the company’s progress since it was established as the first hyperloop company in the world.
The capsule, named ‘Quintero One’, is constructed almost completely out of Vibranium, a specially made dual-layer smart composite material. It was built at the Southern Spain aerospace facilities of HyperloopTT’s partner Airtificial, a new company formed by the merger of Carbures and Inypsa.
The design for the capsule was created in collaboration with PriestmanGoode and won the Gold award at the 2017 London Design Awards. Quintero One is 32m long, with an inner cabin of 15m, and weighs five tonnes.
“Working together with engineers from HyperloopTT, we are proud to be pushing the envelope of smart materials in transportation and manufacturing,” said Airtificial co-Founder and Chairman, Rafael Contreras. “We have unveiled a new type of transportation vessel built with an industry high percentage of composite, which makes the hyperloop capsule perhaps the safest transportation vehicle in the world.”
The creation of the capsule demanded 21,000 skilled engineering hours, 5,000 skilled assembly hours, 82 carbon fibre panels, 72 sensors, 75,000 rivets and 7,200 square metres of fibre.
The capsule will be delivered to HyperloopTT’s R&D facility in Toulouse, France for additional assembly and integration into the system, before it is used on one of the commercial tracks.
“The creation of this capsule represents over a year long journey of the best expertise in design, engineering and the development of cutting edge materials,” said Dirk Ahlborn, HyperloopTT co-Founder and CEO. “In just five years we have solved and improved upon all of the technology needed with our new levitation system, vacuum pumps, batteries and smart composites. This capsule will be a part of one of the most efficient transportation systems ever made.”
Recently, HyperloopTT became the world’s first company to be able to offer an insured commercial system. In collaboration with Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance company along with global certification and inspection company TÜV SÜD, governments and partners, HyperloopTT is creating the first regulatory guidelines and the necessary legal framework for hyperloop systems around the world.
“In 2019, this capsule will be fully optimised and ready for passengers,” said Bibop Gresta, Chairman and co-Founder of HyperloopTT. “Since we have taken major steps in solving government regulations with our safety certification guidelines and insurance frameworks, we are now closer than ever to bringing hyperloop to the world.”
The word safety is mentioned first in the last paragraph.
We can see how this will go, and it will basically be the same as the steam era. Capitalists frothing over the prospects of profits by monopolisation (things are much worse now, with over-inflated IP as well). And then nothing can come in their way, as reflected by the writer: safety at the end, as if it is an afterthought.
The billionaires behind this kind of thing have an approach to safety which boils down to lobbying against regulation or any social accountability. Otherwise, when you have to spend, spend on PR and defense lawyers. And on attacking accusers, smearing them eg politically, even though the businessman is talking from an undeniable position of conflicted interests.