South Korea plans 1,000km/h, near-supersonic, ‘hyper-tube train’ that would leave maglev in the dust

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A screen monitor inside Central Japan Railway Co’s L0 series maglev train shows the train is running at a speed of over 500 km/h during a test-ride event for the press on September 22, 2014, in Tsuru, central Japan. But so-called hyper-tube trains could run much faster because of the absence of air resistance. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 1:58pm, 18 Jan 2017Updated: 10:02pm, 18 Jan 2017

South Korea is seeking to develop a train-like public transport concept that is almost as fast as the speed of sound reaching 1,000km/h, the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) said Tuesday.

The state-run institute will join forces with other research groups and Hanyang University to build the near-supersonic “train”, which would be able to travel from Seoul to Busan in half an hour.

“We hope to create an ultra-fast train, which will travel inside a state-of-the-art low-pressure tube at lightning speeds, in the not-too-distant future,” said a KRRI official.

“To that end, we will cooperate with associated institutes as well as Hanyang University to check the viability of various related technologies called the hyper-tube format over the next three years.”

Currently, the fastest ground transport in the world is magnetic levitation (maglev) trains, which can travel at around 500km/h.

Sand is displaced as a test sled is slowed during the first test of the propulsion system at the Hyperloop One test site in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo: AFP

The innovative hyper-tube, or hyper-loop, technology, which transports people in floating pods inside tubes under a partial vacuum, was first proposed by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk.

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