text: These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| The company developing Elon Musk's 700mph maglev train has announced new details about the levitation system it plans to use. 
   
   Hyperloop Transportation Technologies said on Monday that it will use a passive magnetic levitation system developed by Lawrence Livermore National Labs in the US. 
   
   The Los Angeles-headquartered transportation company wants to build a system that involves firing a pod full of people through a low-pressure tube at speeds of up to 760 mph. It has been described by inventor Musk as a mix between Concorde, a rail gun, and an air hockey table that could take you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in under 30 minutes. 
   
   Hyperloop Technologies said that magnetic fields in the tunnel will lift the pod before a "thrust force" is applied, accelerating the pod to speeds just shy of the speed of sound (767 mph). 
   
   The same thrust force is simply reversed to decelerate the pod. As the pod slows down, the system's battery is recharged through what Hyperloop describes as regenerative breaking. 
   
   "Utilising a passive levitation system will eliminate the need for power stations along the Hyperloop track, which makes this system the most suitable for the application and will keep construction costs low," said Bibop Gresta, COO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, in a statement. "From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, Hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground." 
   
   Critics have questioned whether Hyperloop will ever come to fruition, targeting cost and safety as potential major setbacks. ||||| Elon Musk's Hyperloop Dream Has Its 1st Public Demo 
   
   Enlarge this image toggle caption Hyperloop One Hyperloop One 
   
   Updated at 3 p.m. ET. 
   
   Out in the Nevada desert today, the world got a good look at the first public test of the Hyperloop — a concept that could someday become a new mode of transportation. 
   
   Don't call it a Wright Brothers' "Kitty Hawk" moment just yet, though. The demo focused on only one piece of a very complicated system. 
   
   The Hyperloop, envisioned by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, would move passenger-filled pods through special tubes at incredibly high speeds — as in possibly crossing the 400 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles in a mere 30 minutes. Musk offered up his ideas in 2013, and others got to work trying to build it. 
   
   One of the startups that jumped at the challenge is Hyperloop One, formerly Hyperloop Technologies, tested its propulsion mechanism today. Take a look, via CNBC: 
   
   The Wall Street Journal wrote earlier in the day: 
   
   "The focus of the test will be more on the propulsion technology — whether it can actually move the sled — than the speed. The track is shorter and there will be air resistance, two slowing factors which will be eliminated in future tests." 
   
   On Tuesday, Hyperloop One announced new funding and new partners in transportation and engineering. One of those partners is Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Gizmodo says that Ingels, known for big public infrastructure projects, "will give some much-needed design direction for how Hyperloop One's projects might start to integrate with the cities they're meant to serve." Gizmodo also has this statement from the architect: 
   
   "With hyperloop we are not only designing a futuristic station or a very fast train, we are dealing with an entirely novel technology with the potential to completely transform how our existing cities will grow and evolve, and how new cities will be conceived and constructed." 
   
   Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd said in a statement that the company would work with these new partners "to redefine the future of transportation, providing a more immediate, safe, efficient and sustainable high-speed backbone for the movement of people and things." 
   
   toggle caption Joshua Caldwell of Cryptic Butterfly Photography/Hyperloop One 
   
   So will any of this actually work? NPR's Elise Hu asked the question when Musk announced his idea almost three years ago. Electrical engineer Marc Thompson told her it seemed that it would. But that's not the end of the story, said the Worcester Polytechnic professor: "The devil's in the details in terms of testing, safety, passenger safety, egress, vibration, all that engineering stuff." 
   
   Former U.S. Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary Emil Frankel also had reservations, which he shared with Elise at the time. 
   
   "To talk about these kinds of leapfrogging technology in a context when we can't really adequately maintain our existing infrastructure is really not terribly realistic. At least not in terms of the public policy debate," Frankel said. 
   
   Hyperloop One and competitor Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT, don't seem deterred. HTT is making progress, too, Wired notes: 
   
   "We think we will be able to demonstrate full Kitty Hawk capabilities by the end of this year." ||||| CLOSE Competing teams will be showing off their Hyperloop prototypes in a bid to see who can build the best, most viable system. USA TODAY 
   
   Elon Musk's SpaceX was the first to propose the notion of transporting people and cargo at speeds of 700 mph, a tech dubbed hyperloop. (Photo: SpaceX) 
   
   SAN FRANCISCO – The hyperloop wars are on. 
   
   On Monday, a crowdsourced enterprise led by NASA and Boeing veterans called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced it had licensed passive magnetic levitation technology to power its prototype system, which like other hyperloop templates, promises to shuttle humans and goods in a vacuum tube system at speeds up to 750 mph. 
   
   How fast is that? Zipping from Los Angeles to San Francisco would take 30 minutes as compared to a six-hour drive or an all-day train ride. 
   
   Hyperloop Technologies, one of a number of outfits pursuing hyperloop tech, plans to show off its prototype in the desert north of Las Vegas this week. (Photo: Hyperloop Technologies) 
   
   The announcement comes just two days before rival Hyperloop Technologies Inc. plans to showcase the evolution of its technology to investors and media in the desert north of Las Vegas. On its website, Hyperloop Technologies features photos and videos showing off large tubes that would house long pods for either people or cargo. Both HTI and HTT are based in Los Angeles. 
   
   Another player in the space is skyTran, located at NASA Research Park just south of San Francisco. The company recently unveiled a technology demonstration system showcasing how its two- and four-person vehicles will work, and are aiming to build a 30-mile track in Lagos, Nigeria. skyTran has raised $30 million and is operating in partnership with NASA. 
   
   Hyperloop technology offers the possibility of moving people and things at great speeds without using fossil fuels. The pitfalls include making such transportation reliable while mitigating for potential catastrophes unfolding at around the speed of sound. 
   
   And hyperloop remains more Buck Rogers than your next shuttle to work. 
   
   The foundations of its tech are familiar: the maglev, or magnetic levitation, principle that allows a vehicle to achieve great speeds by riding on air is already at work on high-speed trains in Europe and Japan. But hyperloop would face the same infrastructure and regulatory hurdles that vex high-speed rail projects and autonomous cars. 
   
   And that's not to mention the price tag. A tube system linking L.A. and San Francisco with hyperloop pods has been estimated to cost north of $6 billion. 
   
   It's ON! We're 1 day away from some big announcements. Live-tweeting starts tomorrow @ 5PM PDT https://t.co/tASsQqwMyy#hyperloop — HyperloopTech (@HyperloopTech) May 9, 2016 
   
   In its Monday statement, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies says its design will tackle the safety concerns with a passive levitation system, which will eliminate the need for power stations along the Hyperloop track and keep construction costs low. 
   
   "From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, Hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground," said Bibop Gresta, chief operating officer of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, said. 
   
   Also in the hyperloop race is SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who first popularized the idea of shuttling people and cargo in tubes in 2013. 
   
   In January, a team from MIT won an inaugural hyperloop competition sponsored by SpaceX. Similar to HTT's approach, the MIT team proposed placing magnets on the pods that react to passive coils in the tubes, thereby generating lift or levitation. 
   
   Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has announced that is licensing tech that would allow high-speed transportation at lower than anticipated costs when compared to existing magnetic transportation tech. (Photo: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies) 
   
   “The beauty of the system we designed is that it’s completely passive, an elegant property that will make our pod very scalable," team captain Philippe Kirschen, a master’s student in aeronautics and astronautics, told MIT News when the team won. 
   
   Musk has tweeted that SpaceX may build a test track for its emerging hyperloop tech, "most likely in Texas." 
   
   While SpaceX is backed by Musk's drive and billions and skyTran has government support, the other two entrants in the hyperloop sweepstakes —HTT and HTI — have taken radically different approaches to financing their efforts. 
   
   Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) is powered by financial donations and the know-how of space tech veterans donating their time to the project. In contrast, Hyperloop Technologies Inc. (HTI) has raised $37 million to date, and is co-founded by early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar and former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan. 
   
   HTT's passive magnetic levitation approach is based on science developed by the late physicist Richard Post of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, east of San Francisco. 
   
   By placing magnets on the hyperloop transportation pods and having them react - and cause lift - with coils in the transportation pods, one can avoid the costly approach currently used by maglev trains, which require pricey tracks laced with copper coils. 
   
   In 2015, HTT said it would be installing its hyperloop tech in a proposed 75,000-resident solar-powered city in Quay Valley, Calif., halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In February, HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn announced that it was in talks with the Slovakian government about possibly building a hyperloop route in the former Eastern Bloc nation. 
   
   Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava on Twitter: @marcodellacava 
   
   Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1T7rZcp ||||| One small push for Hyperloop, one giant thrust for the future of transportation. 
   
   In the arid northern deserts of Nevada, far from the bright lights and towering edifices of Las Vegas, the Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One took a gamble and won, successfully testing its linear induction propulsion system. 
   
   A grandstand full of journalists and Hyperloop One supporters watched as a series of stators (basically electromagnetic blades) quickly powered up under the sled, which then flew by at about the speed of a fast car (115 mph or so). 
   
   Image: Hyperloop One/Mashable 
   
   The test, while fast, was, to be honest, somewhat underwhelming. After the initial countdown, the sled took off from the start position and whizzed by on a track at a measured 2.4 Gs of acceleration. Special grabbers underneath the sled then slammed into a sandpit, which effectively slowed the sled down to zero and ended the test. 
   
   Future tests on this track at the 39.9 acre facility will go much, much faster. 
   
   The Hyperloop One speed-by. Image: Hyperloop One 
   
   While the final Hyperloop One system will use permanent magnets to levitate the pods off the track, this sled actually sat on the metal rails, which probably future slowed it down. 
   
   The beginning 
   
   Image: Hyperloop One 
   
   "This is the first step in a long journey," said Hyperloop One co-founder and CTO Brogan BamBrogan 
   
   He's right. The electromagnet-based propulsion system is just one small part of the full transportation system that Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) hopes to launch in the not-too-distant future. 
   
   Hyperloop One Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Shervin Pishevar makes a statement moments before the big test. Image: Lance Ulanoff/Mashable 
   
   Originally the brainchild of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, Hyperloop transportation consists of sealed pods traveling at subsonic speeds in a low-pressure tube that's elevated above the ground on pylons. It's intended to be a low-energy (solar) and low-emission system. It could also be a viable mass transportation alternative for traffic-snarled corridors like those between New York and Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and San Francisco, completing the latter trip in as little as 35 minutes. 
   
   Musk produced a lengthy Hyperloop white paper and then open-sourced the concept in 2014. As a result, the Hyperloop race is on, and, with Wednesday's test, Hyperloop One may have just inched ahead of rival HTT. 
   
   The Hyperloop One propulsion system test sled. Image: lance ulanoff/mashable 
   
   Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd seemed elated by the short test's results and predicts that, with enough cooperation from local and state government bodies (the kind they've found in Nevada and Las Vegas), Hyperloop One will be moving cargo by 2019 and people as early as 2021. 
   
   As for what Hyperloop One has in store for the short-term, BamBrogan said, "a lot more of this testing." 
   
   Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments. ||||| A few days ago, an executive with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies — one of two major companies seeking to turn Hyperloop from science fiction to reality — said the major expense incurred during construction would be “the tube.” This is absolutely right if he’s thinking about building Hyperloop just as a proof of concept. If he wants to build something functional, that people use, he should prepare to spend the bulk of his company’s cash on carpeting. The problem with Elon Musk’s hyperfast hypertransport — the one people aren’t already talking about — is that riders are going to vomit everywhere. 
   
   That’s hyperbolic of course, but the fact remains that the way Hyperloop is being pitched to the public right now — a 750 mile-per-hour pneumatically-run speed tube designed to get Tesla owners from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes — doesn’t touch on human physiology and creature comfort. When people are commuting to and from work, trekking across town to take care of errands, or traveling long distances, they want to do so without feeling profoundly uncomfortable. Speed is great, but there’s a reason people will forgo a crowded subway for ungodly traffic if it means they can at least enjoy some space in their car. 
   
   In a vacuum, humans can handle a constant speed, whether it’s at a snail’s pace or a bullet’s screech. But a real Hyperloop won’t just travel several hundred miles and then reverse course in the opposite direction. There will be stops, a lot of them if this kind of technology emerges as the successor to our aging railroad system. That means pods will be speeding up and slowing down more frequently than most of us would want. And the United States is not flat — it’s got a pretty gnarly terrain in some places. Hyperloop will be forced to go around these things, and above them in some instances. 
   
   Currently, high-speed trains (all the rage in Asian countries like China and Japan) top off at around 200 miles per hour or so. Moving at this high rate of speed consistently produces few physical symptoms, but acceleration, deceleration, and turns get problematic after a certain point. The human body can only handle about 0.2 Gs of acceleration vertically or laterally. Hyperloop would involve accelerations that would potentially push way past this limit (up to seven times greater than the limits imposed on Japan’s Shinkansen bullet train). 
   
   When you move, G-forces act on your body, in both positive ways (e.g. pushing you back to your seat) and negative ways (e.g. pulling you forward into your seatbelt). When you throw in the ability to move in three different planes, you’re contending with G-forces in three different directions. Your gastrointestinal tract can lurch in a different direction than your spinal column. That’s when nausea sets in — and if the ride doesn’t end soon or if you don’t find a way to adjust, prepare to say hello again to your latest meal. 
   
   The solution, naturally, is to go slower. The Hyperloop Pod Competition sponsored by Elon Musk and SpaceX requires teams to construct pods that go at least 240 miles per hour. Naturally, teams like MIT are building prototypes capable of moving considerably faster. As Hyperloop moves forward, however, the 240 mph range might actually be standard outside of the Great Plains. If too fast is too uncomfortable, the Hyperloop will slow down. 
   
   It’s important to emphasize that human physiology is relative — what causes one person to wretch is someone else’s cup of tea. Some people can handle a bumpy ride better than others. The problem with the Hyperloop — in its most ideal form — is that any turns it makes will make everyone uncomfortable. As a technology, the Hyperloop is one of the most intriguing projects under development right now. But we should approach it with a healthy sense of skepticism before we start to see how actual human passengers react to getting shipped around nine-tenths the speed of sound. ||||| Browser game tests you to survive Elon Musk’s Hyperloop 
   
   Excited by the prospect of high-speed travel by riding in a pod through airless tubes in Elon Musk’s concept of the Hyperloop? Want to give it a try now? Well, there’s a 8-bit styled web browser game that has you navigating a pod with the hope of keeping it one piece. Called Break-a-Pod, it’s ridiculously hard in a similar way as Flappy Bird was, but it was actually created by a team that’s building a pod prototype with the hope of bringing it to SpaceX, the company behind Hyperloop. 
   
   The game has you controlling a pod’s speed and stability, with a goal of “going as fast as you can without crashing or running out of power.” It’s simple, but it’s also much harder than it looks. You only need to use the four arrow keys, with up to accelerate, down to brake, and right/left to keep it stable. Hitting the sides of the tubes too many times or losing control of the pitch sees you instantly explode. 
   
   The team behind the game, which calls themselves rLoop, after forming on Reddit, explains that they “hope that the game will act as a vehicle to make the Hyperloop concept fun and accessible to a wider audience, and inspire further research and engagement.” 
   
   Break-a-Pod was also released as a way to bring attention to rLoop’s IndieGoGo campaign, which has a goal of raising $66,000 to finish building their prototype pod. Should they receive enough funds, the game might also see a mobile release on iOS and Android, giving them another source of raising money for the Hyperloop project. 
   
   SpaceX has already held an open contest for pod designs. Out of hundreds of entrants, the rLoop team was selected as one of 18 finalists, and has been invited to the next stage of the competition. Scheduled to be held in California later this year, the event is supposed to see the prototypes demonstrated, but SpaceX hasn’t yet finished building a section of test track. 
   
   VIA The Verge ||||| Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF 
   
   In 2015, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies filed a permit to build a 5-mile prototype in Quay Valley — a utopian, eco-friendly community planned for Central California. And while we’re rooting for them to succeed with their test track, it still doesn’t change the Hyperloop’s largest challenges. Because the biggest hurdle isn’t the tech behind Hyperloop, it’s the land rights and every other bureaucratic obstacle that goes along with building enormous infrastructure projects. 
   
   Back in the summer of 2013, Elon Musk announced to the world that he had a revolutionary idea about the future of transportation. He called his concept the Hyperloop, and everyone was excited that they’d soon zip between distant major cities at 600 miles per hour. The tech press quickly picked apart the technical minutia of such a proposal, debating whether Musk’s idea was technologically possible. What so many reporters then and since have continued to ignore is that you can’t build a mode of transportation between cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles without rights to the land in between them. Not to mention the other challenges things like environmental impact reports or liability considerations. 
   
   “After over two and a half years of research and development our team has reached another important milestone. This will be the world’s first passenger-ready Hyperloop system,” Dirk Ahlborn, the CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, said in a statement released to The Verge about the plans for Quay Valley. “Everyone traveling on California’s I-5 in 2016 will be able to see our activities from the freeway.” 
   
   With every puff piece that’s published about companies like Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (not to be confused with competing company Hyperloop Technologies), everyone seems focused on the tech, rather than the real challenge: Land rights and bureaucracy. Assuming their permit is approved for Quay Valley, the idea of building a Hyperloop track between two distant cities remains a techno-utopian fantasy arguably as misguided as Quay Valley itself. 
   
   Josh Stephens makes this same point in a recent blog post: 
   
   And yet, this combination of enthusiasm and magnetism doesn’t buy farmland. It doesn’t ease eminent domain takings. It doesn’t blast through bedrock or relocate utilities. It doesn’t design station area plans. It doesn’t write [Environmental Impact Reports] or dismiss [California Environmental Quality Act] suits. Trains, whether propelled by steam, diesel, or a frictionless tube, are still terrestrial things. And what terra we have in California. The very same mountains, cities, canals, farmers, and habitats that complicate [High Speed Rail] also complicate Hyperloop. The more the Hyperloop people drop hints and make innuendos about zipping this way and that without addressing the monumental public policy challenges that they’re going to face, governmental cooperation they’re going to need, and money that it’s going to cost, the less it’s going to sound like Tesla for the masses and the more it’s going to sound like a lost chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.” 
   
   Advertisement 
   
   None of this is new. Even before the official announcement back in August of 2013, I wrote a post raising skepticism that you’d be able to build a Hyperloop between San Francisco and Los Angeles without putting it underground or out in the ocean. And even then, you’d still have to get land rights and work with the government in myriad ways. 
   
   
   
   So we’ll wait with earnest optimism as Hyperloop Transportation Technologies to build a working Hyperloop prototype in Quay Valley, a planned community on virgin soil by sometime this year. But until we hear that any Hyperloop company has a legal and lobbying team as big as its tech team, we’re going to remain pretty damn skeptical that this will happen within our lifetime. 
   
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   This post was originally published on January 20, 2016.
target: – The age of uber-quick "hyperloop" transportation had a milestone Wednesday: One of the companies hoping to turn the idea into reality successfully tested its propulsion system in the desert near Las Vegas, Mashable reports. So what's a hyperloop? It's the brainchild of Tesla's Elon Musk, and the general idea is to move people in above-ground tubes traveling about 750mph. A six-hour drive from LA to San Francisco would be cut to 30 minutes, though we're still at least a few years away from reality. Some essentials: Hold the champagne: NPR explains that Wednesday's demo by Hyperloop One focused "on only one piece of a very complicated system." Forget the technology—the real problem would be passengers' vomit, explains a post at Inverse. The Verge has an "everything you need to know" audio explainer here. "The lack of air resistance and friction of traditional transportation are what would allow it to achieve such high speeds." The Wall Street Journal has some more basics on the science. USA Today looks at two other startups in the "hyperloop wars." One of those companies, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, plans a "magnetic levitation system," and Business Insider has the nitty gritty on how it would work. One huge hurdle: Obtaining land rights for such a system. Gizmodo digs in. A new video game is based on the concept, notes SlashGear.