(TNS) — If anyone was going to be part of the first team to ride in a hyperloop capsule,
Josh Giegel
figured it should be him.
After all, he was in the
California garage six years ago when design work began on the revolutionary technology that theoretically can move capsules with passengers or freight at speeds of more than 700 mph in a low-pressure tube.
So on Sunday, the
McDonald native and chief technology officer for
Virgin Hyperloop One joined
Sara Luchian
, the company's director of passenger experience, for the first test anywhere of the technology with people on board. The test track in the desert near
Las Vegas is just 500 meters long, so the trip only lasted about 15 seconds and reached a speed of 107 mph — 6 seconds of acceleration and 9 seconds of deceleration — but it proved the system can run safely.
"It was kind of surreal,"
Mr. Giegel
said in an interview Tuesday. "It's one thing to do a lot of design on something. It's different to go and do it."
Mr. Giegel
described the brief trip as "smoother," "quieter" and "less bumpy" than he expected.
Hyperloop advances are important to the
Pittsburgh area because there are competing proposals to establish systems between
Pittsburgh and
Chicago —
Virgin Hyperloop's plan via
Columbus and
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc.'s option through
Cleveland. Both connections are years away and would cost billions to build.
But Sunday was a major step forward for the technology.
Until recently,
Virgin Hyperloop engineers had said there was no reason for human testing because riding in the pod was similar to riding in an airplane. But
Mr. Giegel
said safety for passengers was a major concern every time the firm dealt with government regulators, so engineers designed the two-passenger XP-2 pod to conduct the demonstration, which was repeated with another team Monday.
"As we continued to develop, we saw an opportunity to learn how to make this work for passengers," he said. "We've learned how to make it faster. Now we have to show how to make it safe.
"We've proved that now — the activity of getting it to the point where it is safe. It was good for us to get pushed where we hadn't been pushed before."
Mr. Giegel
said the ride gave him a different perspective on the project as an engineer, but it also was important for the other three riders who are not engineers to share their experiences as the company develops a 28-passenger pod. Moving forward,
Mr. Giegel
said, he expects the company to concentrate on developing a longer test track and demonstrating that the system can operate with a fleet of pods rather than just one.
"We've shown a vehicle can work," he said. "We must show a fleet can work."
The key all along has been reducing the cost of the technology to the point at which travel by hyperloop is affordable, competitive with air travel.
Mr. Giegel
said he is confident that can happen in the next five years.
Testing with human passengers is the latest step in a busy year of moving the technology forward.
In July,
U.S. Transportation Secretary
Elaine Chao
gave the developing technology credence by placing it under the
Federal Railroad Administration for regulatory purposes and making it eligible for grants.
In addition,
Virgin Hyperloop announced last month that it would build a $500 million technology certification facility south of
Somerset on 800 acres of old coal mining land in Tucker and
Grant counties in
West Virginia.
Mr. Geigel
said he wasn't nervous about Sunday's test, but he was aware of its importance. So his wife, his 2-year-old son and his engineer parents, David and Tommilea Giegel, attended the demonstration.
He and
Ms. Luchian
put together special effects envelopes before the trip and
Mr. Giegel's
included the usual family photos and an unusual-size socket his father gave him as they worked on a car when he was a teenager.
"It's actually pretty exciting to have been in a garage talking about this six years ago and seeing it happen now,"
Josh Giegel
said. "It's the first ... to be a part of that ... my son's going to read someday that we were the Orville and
Wilbur [Wright]
of the 21st century."
(c)2020 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
