TL;DR
The dream of riding a train through a tube with most of the air pumped out, fast enough to rival a plane, just got one of its European builders back. Hardt Hyperloop, the Dutch company that started as student work at Delft University of Technology, went bankrupt in March and is now restarting with a U.S.-led investment of "several million euros," NL Times reported on Nov. 7. The new money is meant to keep the technology going, revive earlier plans, add new projects and carry the company into North and Latin America. What Hardt has actually built is modest: a test track of about 420 meters where an unmanned vehicle made its first successful run in 2024 at 30 km/h, about 19 mph, roughly a brisk bicycle pace. Meanwhile China's state contractor CASIC says its own tube train reached 623 km/h, about 387 mph, in June. Two very different tracks, one shared goal: ground travel at airliner speed. To see our odds on when people actually ride one, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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