Hold onto your cap. Hamilton is literally supporting Hyperloop One—the revolutionary high-speed super tube that’s poised to completely reinvent public transportation as we know it.
Last month, Hyperloop One successfully tested a trial run in the Nevada desert, and guess who provided the casters transporting the pod on its mobile platform? Fast forward to Minute 00:59 of this video, and you’ll catch Hamilton Maxi-Duty Duel Wheel Swivel Casters working their magic as the test pod gets rolled into its tunnel.
Elon Musk first suggested the idea of a hyperloop in 2012, and subsequently open-sourced the concept so private companies could develop the technology. Hyperloop One, which is based in Los Angeles, has emerged as the industry leader. Resembling a bullet train, the 28-foot-long Hyperloop One can theoretically travel at velocities nearing the speed of sound (about 700 miles per hour). Imagine being able to travel from L.A. to San Francisco—normally a six-hour drive—in just over 30 minutes.
As “the first new form of public transportation in more than 100 years,” Hyperloop’s revolutionary technology uses magnetic levitation to guide and lift the “pod” off its track. A series of vacuum pumps remove nearly all the air inside, effectively creating a “sky in a tube.” Because resistance is vastly reduced, a nominal amount of electricity is required to achieve such extraordinary speeds above land or underground.
During the test, the pod ran nearly the full length of the 500-meter full-scale track and topped out at 192 miles per hour. Conditions mimicked those in the Earth’s atmosphere at 200,000 feet above sea level, where there’s very little friction due to rarified air. Good thing the pod was ably transported by our super duty Superlast wheels, with 1”-thick polyurethane molded to their forged steel core.
In other Hyperloop breaking news, a team of 30 students in Germany won the SpaceX Hyperloop competition on August 27. Their winning prototype pod, WARR Hyperloop, reached a speed of 201 miles per hour, comfortably beating out finalists from Switzerland and Canada. Check out Elon Musk’s Twitter post of the video.