covering the week's top tech stores with a slight linux bias virgin hyperloop has trialed its first ever journey with passengers in the desert of nevada the futuristic transport concept involves pods inside vacuum tubes carrying passengers at high speeds in the trial two passengers both company staff traveled the length of a 500 meter test track in 15 seconds reaching 172 kilometers an hour you may recall from our past coverage as far as 2018 that the top speed for the hyperloop is said to be a thousand kilometers an hour and while this is only a fraction of that ambition it's a big step toward hyperloop transportation becoming a reality virgin hyperloop is not the only firm developing the concept but nobody has carried passengers before sarah lucian director of customer experience was one of the two on board and described the experience as exhilarating both psychologically and physically she and chief technology officer josh geigel wore normal clothing rather than flight suits for the event which took place on sunday afternoon outside of las vegas miss lucian said the journey was smooth and not at all like a roller coaster although the acceleration was zippier than it would be with a longer track neither of them felt sick she added she said that their speed was hampered by the length of the track and acceleration required the concept which has spent years in development builds on a proposal by tesla founder elon musk some critics have described it as science fiction it is based on the world's fastest magnetic levitation trains then made faster by placing the train inside vacuum tubes the world record speed for a maglave train was set in 2015 when a japanese train reached 374 miles per hour in a test run near mount fuji the hyperloop has already exceeded that speed but never with passengers critics have pointed out that hyperloop travel systems would involve the considerable undertaking of both getting planning permission and then constructing vast networks of tubes for every travel path miss lucian acknowledges the potential difficulties saying of course there's a lot of infrastructure to be built but i think we've mitigated a lot of risk that people didn't think was possible in speaking about the infrastructure challenges she pointed out that while governments can continue building up yesterday's transport systems people are looking for new solutions the transportation of the future big thanks to roy w nash and our community of viewers for submitting stories to us this week thanks for watching the category 5 tv newsroom don't forget to like and subscribe for all your tech news with a slight linux bias and if you appreciate what we do become a patron at patreon.com category5 from the category 5 tv newsroom i'm becca ferguson [Music] [Applause] so you