LAB2.0 Architecture Magazine #19

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considered a foolery (to be read “revolution�), is being seen in a different light, as a possible experiment, and is being put into shape through different models is that the technological frontier is advancing. With the new technologies and new materials coming, with the formulation of new scientific theories and the discovery of new sensational realities, Humanity is walking through the land of progress, in every aspect, the scientific and technological one most of all. Hyperloop is going to take another major step forward, a real jump beyond the limits. While revealing his intuition, Musk was trustful about the success of this project, launching a challenge to entire generations of engineers, architects and designers: the Hyperloop open-source concept has started a season of call for proposals open to the whole world, to anyone being able to give an important contribution to this global scale mission. Many companies took up the challenge, like SpaceX, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Hyperloop One, and architecture studios, among which the colossus of Bjarke Ingels Group. SpaceX, headed by Elon Musk, is one of the greatest American aerospace manufacturer and might be the first to colonize Mars by the next decade; for the three years 2015-2017 he opened the Hyperloop pod competition, addressed to students and others, in order to lead to the construction of capsule prototypes being effectively compatible with the project and making it possible for it to come to life, to which many people applied, recording about five application requests per day from students, professionals and simple

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enthusiasts, singles or teams. The Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has obtained the permissions to build a primary full scale prototype, about five miles long, in the Quay Valley, in California. Its CEO Dirk Ahlborn affirmed that it could be the definitive one even by 2018, focusing on the possibility of taking advantage of massive crowfunding, and on recruiting people already employed in the aerospace technologies sector (many of them coming from Nasa and SpaceX) that could contribute to the project in their free time, in return for stock options in the company. Hyperloop One (first known as Hyperloop Technologies) might be the company moving better within the scenario of the Hyperloop technology development. Just think that in August 2016 it was the first one to take a successful test of the capsules propulsion system; the capsule prototype reached the speed of 116 mph traveling 1000 yards in just 1.9 seconds. In November 2016, BIG revealed its concept design for Hyperloop One, showing an even more innovative solution for the capsules: instead of being a sort of shuttle with seats within, they would be mere containers for smaller pods, with a cubic shape, assigned to each passenger. This would let you going out your flat in San Francisco and find, instead of an obsolete yellow cab, the small pod (a possible future collaboration with Uber is not to be excluded) you booked on your smartphone, that would take you to the central Hyperloop station of the city in minutes and get into the predisposed capsule, fitting perfectly between

Hyperloop One


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