And you thought airplanes were stingy on space.
LA-based startup company, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), is looking to design a hyperloop system that will be safe to transport passengers (contrast this with rival company Hyperloop One, which is more focused on transporting freight between the Ports of Long Beach and LA).
At a Vienna-based conference, HTT has recently given the public a glimpse inside its pods. For those of you who are easily terrified of small, cramped spaces—beware. Some of you might not even realize you are until you flip through the images.
At 760 mph, there wouldn’t be much to look at outside the windows (except the inside of the tubing as the pod snakes its way through the system’s underground intestinal tract at death-defying speeds). HTT is therefore working with Munich-based company, Re’Flekt, to design virtual and augmented reality panels that display the time, weather, and pod route.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not thrilled at the thought of having to squish myself into such a tight space with minimal leg room (and I’m barely over five feet tall)—not to mention the fact that I’d be careening along at the speed of sound in a metal tube without any visual reference points.
Still, the fact that people could one day be traveling from Washington D.C. to New York City in less time than it takes me to get to work in the morning is a tantalizing idea…so long as the engineers also find a way to rid people of their claustrophobia.
