About a year ago, I wrote a story with the headline “The hyperloop is dead for real this time,” based on the news that Hyperloop One, one of the biggest companies pursuing Elon Musk’s dream of tube-based, 700mph travel, had shut down.
Well, I stand corrected. The hyperloop, in fact, lives on — as a 1/12th scale model in Switzerland.
Sure, this isn’t exactly the full realization of Musk’s 2013 white paper, in which he theorized that aerodynamic aluminum capsules filled with passengers or cargo could be propelled through a nearly airless tube at speeds of up to 760mph. These tubes, either raised on pylons or sunk beneath the earth, could be built either within or between cities. Musk called it a “fifth mode of transportation” and argued…