Hyperloop could revolutionize transport – The Blade
APEX, Nev. — The most striking aspect of the testing facility for the potentially revolutionary, multibillion dollar Virgin Hyperloop One in the Mojave Desert is that it is made up of a series of Big Top Fabric Structures, a super-size version of a backyard party tent.
But the 40-acre site 29 miles outside of Las Vegas has everything engineers need to test the high-speed pod that runs inside a low-pressure tube: a 500-meter test track, which is about 1,600 feet; a mission control area about the size of a two-car garage, with 20 computer monitors and two large display screens; temperatures that can range from 10 to 127 degrees, sometimes with monsoon-type wind and rain, and several dozen tube sections about 11 feet in diameter, about 50 feet long and weighing about 58,000 pounds strewn about the site for crews to experiment with.
The proposed route doesn’t run through or near Toledo, but advocates in the Toledo area are pushing for the Hyperloop route farther north along what they say would be the most direct route between Chicago and New York: through the Toledo and Cleveland metro areas, with the Ohio Turnpike and I-80 as a logical corridor across Ohio and Pennsylvania.