In Marvel movies and comics, vibranium is a practically indestructible metal that bends the laws of physics to its will. In real life, it doesn’t exist—well, didn’t exist. In a bit of marketing flair that certainly caught our eye, the Hyperloop transportation pods will be made from a material that Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is calling “vibranium.” I guess in the real world, the only thing stronger than vibranium is a lawsuit from Marvel. Who knew?
To back up a bit, the Hyperloop is a futuristic transportation technology that shoots magnetically levitated pods full of people through a low pressure tube at incredibly high speeds. The idea of using the tech for a next generation travel system was floated by SpaceX and Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk, and startup companies, including Hyperloop One (who recently tested their tech) and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, are now competing to turn it into a reality. If we learned anything from Captain America: Civil War, when you’re in a conflict, you want the most vibranium that you can get on your team.
“Did someone say, ‘The most vibranium’?”
Unlike Marvel’s nation of Wakanda, though, there’s nothing incredibly special about Hyperloop Transportation Technologies’ vibranium. The Verge reports that it’s “eight times stronger than aluminum and 10 times stronger than steel alternatives,” but that’s not out of the ordinary for the two-layer carbon fiber coating that makes up HTT’s real world version of the material. What is unique about the material is that it’ll have built in sensors to transmit critical data about the Hyperloop pod for safety purposes. This “temperature, stability, integrity and more” information will be sent “wirelessly and instantly” to ensure that if there’s a problem with the Hyperloop pod, it’s addressed immediately.
When you’re shooting along in a metal pod at around 700 mph, you definitely want notification at the first sign of any trouble, so quick, sensitive measurements are a necessity. If the pod is, say, vibrating (ahem) too much, you’d want to know before it turns you into a pancake. We already travel at pretty high speeds in metal tubes called airplanes, though, so as long as proper safety measures like these are in place, the Hyperloop should be perfectly safe—until Black Panther comes looking for the vibranium thieves.
(images via Marvel Entertainment)
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