SpaceX Dismantles Hyperloop Prototype to Build a New Parking Lot

They held a "memorial service" for it.

Hyper Oops

Bloomberg reports that SpaceX has dismantled its roughly mile-long Hyperloop test tunnel at its factory in Hawthorne, California — to make way, in an ironic rebuke of the hypothetical mass transit tech, for more parking spots.

It's a sad and symbolic move by the Elon Musk-led company, underlining how the idea of a vacuum-powered, ultra-fast transportation system has clearly been relegated to the backburner.

Mole Men

That's despite Musk promising that his tunnel-digging venture The Boring Company "will attempt to build a working Hyperloop" in an April tweet.

"From a known physics standpoint, this is the fastest possible way of getting from one city center to another for distances less than [around] 2000 miles," he wrote.

In 2022, though, the Boring Company has yet to come even close to realizing that dream. It did open a tunnel at the Las Vegas Convention Center, ferrying attendees inside individual Tesla vehicles. But that's still a far cry from the concept of a Hyperloop, which aims to blast passengers through a vacuum tube at up to 760 mph.

Hyper Memorial

Other companies have also struggled to turn the idea into a reality. Virgin Hyperloop, for instance, hasn't made much progress in building out a full-scale test track, but did successfully manage to launch the first passengers through a test tunnel back in 2020.

Before it was demolished, SpaceX's test tunnel was meant to be a testing ground for the idea from 2017 onwards, allowing students to compete on building Hyperloop pods.

"We had a sentimental moment knowing this was going to be taken down," Erik Wright, CEO of Precision Construction Services, which built the tunnel for SpaceX, told Bloomberg. "Like a memorial service."

READ MORE: Musk’s SpaceX Dismantles Hyperloop Prototype, Puts Up a Parking Lot [Bloomberg]

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