Hyper-Tube: The Korean 1000km/h Train You Never Heard About

This is the hyperloop without the hype!

Ever heard of the Hyperloop?

It’s the brainchild of the world renowned entrepreneur and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and has been touted as the next revolution in public transit.

Ever since Musk released a paper on what he called the “Hyperloop technology” in 2012 we’ve seen immense interest in the field.

Hundreds of hyperloop start-ups have popped up, billionaires like Richard Branson have gotten involved, and the name has become synonymous with next level transport.

In the simplest terms, Hyperloop is an open-source project that intends to make trains, or pods, reach supersonic (over 1200km/h) speed by using a vacuum tube to create near zero Atmospheric Pressure (atm) and magnets to remove any friction between the pods and its tracks.

According to Elon Musk, the technologies to enable this ludicrous speed already exist, and with enough money and brain-power it should theoretically already be creatable.

So 10 years after Hyperloop’s inception, what’s the progress?

Well, on November 8th 2020, the company Virgin Hyperloop (with Richard Branson as its main funder) managed to transport two people on their test track at a whopping speed of 160km/h (100mph)…

During the development of this “magnificent” milestone, the Korea Railroad Research Institute (Korail) had ben working tirelessly on a similar technology that they called the Hyper-Tube.

In fact, five days after Virgin Hyperloop’s test run, Korail announced that their prototype train had reached a speed of over 1000km/h in its test run!

Why Isn’t the Hyper-Tube as Hyped-Up as the Hyperloop?

Yes, the Hyper-Tube test-run actually happened! And yet nobody talked about it. No sensational headlines, no deep-diving articles, no Tweets from any billionaires. No nothing! Why??

Turns out that Korail doesn’t exactly have the marketing prowess of Elon Musk or Richard Branson.

Korail’s statement of having a working train prototype able to travel at supersonic speed was only announced on their website, in Korean, and only got picked up by minor niche engineering magazines.

Average viewership on articles on Korail’s website is less than 600

In fact, Korail seems so bad at marketing that when you search for Hyper Tube, Google suggests results about Hyperloop instead…

What is the Hyper-Tube?

Let’s move on to the actual train technology:

Korail has been working on the Hyper-Tube train project since 2017 and even in previous tests, they have managed to reach top speeds of around 700km/h.

So far, the Korail research institute has developed a 1:17 scale test model (still three times as big as the Virgin hyperloop test pod) to test the concept. The Hyper-Tube train is, just like the Hyperloop, intended for use in a near-vacuum tube and accelerates using powerful magnets.

According to Korail, its miniature model reached a top speed of 1,019km/h in a tube of 0.001 atm, which is far lower pressure than has been achieved in any comparable test.

This is twice as fast as the fastest ground transport currently available: Maglev trains.

So while Virgin Hyperloop is struggling to get their test pods (for two people) to reach 600+km/h, Korail is racing to develop a full-scale track and vehicle this year, 2022!

Will You Ever be Able to Ride in a Hyper-Tube Train?

Just like the Hyperloop, the Hyper-Tube technology struggles with issues of scalability, feasibility and cost. Turns out that creating near vacuum pipes and put levitating trains in them is easier said than done, and so far the project is still a pipe-dream with no release date in sight.

However, the progress of this project has been immense and continues to impress even the most ardent critics.

It is sad to see that such a promising project is not better funded than all the overhyped startups with charismatic leaders and lofty goals that have not been able to produce any viable results.

So I hope this article can help make the Hyper-Tube at least a little bit more known so that we can one day live in a future where there is a transit method like the Hyper-Tube. A future where we can travel in a carbon neutral, compactly silent way from New York to Chicago, Paris to London, Shanghai to Beijing or Tokyo to Osaka faster than you can say Hyperloop!