CLOSE Competing teams will be showing off their Hyperloop prototypes in a bid to see who can build the best, most viable system. USA TODAY 
 
 Elon Musk's SpaceX was the first to propose the notion of transporting people and cargo at speeds of 700 mph, a tech dubbed hyperloop. (Photo: SpaceX) 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO – The hyperloop wars are on. 
 
 On Monday, a crowdsourced enterprise led by NASA and Boeing veterans called Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced it had licensed passive magnetic levitation technology to power its prototype system, which like other hyperloop templates, promises to shuttle humans and goods in a vacuum tube system at speeds up to 750 mph. 
 
 How fast is that? Zipping from Los Angeles to San Francisco would take 30 minutes as compared to a six-hour drive or an all-day train ride. 
 
 Hyperloop Technologies, one of a number of outfits pursuing hyperloop tech, plans to show off its prototype in the desert north of Las Vegas this week. (Photo: Hyperloop Technologies) 
 
 The announcement comes just two days before rival Hyperloop Technologies Inc. plans to showcase the evolution of its technology to investors and media in the desert north of Las Vegas. On its website, Hyperloop Technologies features photos and videos showing off large tubes that would house long pods for either people or cargo. Both HTI and HTT are based in Los Angeles. 
 
 Another player in the space is skyTran, located at NASA Research Park just south of San Francisco. The company recently unveiled a technology demonstration system showcasing how its two- and four-person vehicles will work, and are aiming to build a 30-mile track in Lagos, Nigeria. skyTran has raised $30 million and is operating in partnership with NASA. 
 
 Hyperloop technology offers the possibility of moving people and things at great speeds without using fossil fuels. The pitfalls include making such transportation reliable while mitigating for potential catastrophes unfolding at around the speed of sound. 
 
 And hyperloop remains more Buck Rogers than your next shuttle to work. 
 
 The foundations of its tech are familiar: the maglev, or magnetic levitation, principle that allows a vehicle to achieve great speeds by riding on air is already at work on high-speed trains in Europe and Japan. But hyperloop would face the same infrastructure and regulatory hurdles that vex high-speed rail projects and autonomous cars. 
 
 And that's not to mention the price tag. A tube system linking L.A. and San Francisco with hyperloop pods has been estimated to cost north of $6 billion. 
 
 It's ON! We're 1 day away from some big announcements. Live-tweeting starts tomorrow @ 5PM PDT https://t.co/tASsQqwMyy#hyperloop — HyperloopTech (@HyperloopTech) May 9, 2016 
 
 In its Monday statement, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies says its design will tackle the safety concerns with a passive levitation system, which will eliminate the need for power stations along the Hyperloop track and keep construction costs low. 
 
 "From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, Hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground," said Bibop Gresta, chief operating officer of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, said. 
 
 Also in the hyperloop race is SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who first popularized the idea of shuttling people and cargo in tubes in 2013. 
 
 In January, a team from MIT won an inaugural hyperloop competition sponsored by SpaceX. Similar to HTT's approach, the MIT team proposed placing magnets on the pods that react to passive coils in the tubes, thereby generating lift or levitation. 
 
 Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has announced that is licensing tech that would allow high-speed transportation at lower than anticipated costs when compared to existing magnetic transportation tech. (Photo: Hyperloop Transportation Technologies) 
 
 “The beauty of the system we designed is that it’s completely passive, an elegant property that will make our pod very scalable," team captain Philippe Kirschen, a master’s student in aeronautics and astronautics, told MIT News when the team won. 
 
 Musk has tweeted that SpaceX may build a test track for its emerging hyperloop tech, "most likely in Texas." 
 
 While SpaceX is backed by Musk's drive and billions and skyTran has government support, the other two entrants in the hyperloop sweepstakes —HTT and HTI — have taken radically different approaches to financing their efforts. 
 
 Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) is powered by financial donations and the know-how of space tech veterans donating their time to the project. In contrast, Hyperloop Technologies Inc. (HTI) has raised $37 million to date, and is co-founded by early Uber investor Shervin Pishevar and former SpaceX engineer Brogan BamBrogan. 
 
 HTT's passive magnetic levitation approach is based on science developed by the late physicist Richard Post of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, east of San Francisco. 
 
 By placing magnets on the hyperloop transportation pods and having them react - and cause lift - with coils in the transportation pods, one can avoid the costly approach currently used by maglev trains, which require pricey tracks laced with copper coils. 
 
 In 2015, HTT said it would be installing its hyperloop tech in a proposed 75,000-resident solar-powered city in Quay Valley, Calif., halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In February, HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn announced that it was in talks with the Slovakian government about possibly building a hyperloop route in the former Eastern Bloc nation. 
 
 Follow USA TODAY tech reporter Marco della Cava on Twitter: @marcodellacava 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1T7rZcp ||||| Elon Musk's Hyperloop Dream Has Its 1st Public Demo 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Hyperloop One Hyperloop One 
 
 Updated at 3 p.m. ET. 
 
 Out in the Nevada desert today, the world got a good look at the first public test of the Hyperloop — a concept that could someday become a new mode of transportation. 
 
 Don't call it a Wright Brothers' "Kitty Hawk" moment just yet, though. The demo focused on only one piece of a very complicated system. 
 
 The Hyperloop, envisioned by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, would move passenger-filled pods through special tubes at incredibly high speeds — as in possibly crossing the 400 miles between San Francisco and Los Angeles in a mere 30 minutes. Musk offered up his ideas in 2013, and others got to work trying to build it. 
 
 One of the startups that jumped at the challenge is Hyperloop One, formerly Hyperloop Technologies, tested its propulsion mechanism today. Take a look, via CNBC: 
 
 The Wall Street Journal wrote earlier in the day: 
 
 "The focus of the test will be more on the propulsion technology — whether it can actually move the sled — than the speed. The track is shorter and there will be air resistance, two slowing factors which will be eliminated in future tests." 
 
 On Tuesday, Hyperloop One announced new funding and new partners in transportation and engineering. One of those partners is Danish architect Bjarke Ingels. Gizmodo says that Ingels, known for big public infrastructure projects, "will give some much-needed design direction for how Hyperloop One's projects might start to integrate with the cities they're meant to serve." Gizmodo also has this statement from the architect: 
 
 "With hyperloop we are not only designing a futuristic station or a very fast train, we are dealing with an entirely novel technology with the potential to completely transform how our existing cities will grow and evolve, and how new cities will be conceived and constructed." 
 
 Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd said in a statement that the company would work with these new partners "to redefine the future of transportation, providing a more immediate, safe, efficient and sustainable high-speed backbone for the movement of people and things." 
 
 toggle caption Joshua Caldwell of Cryptic Butterfly Photography/Hyperloop One 
 
 So will any of this actually work? NPR's Elise Hu asked the question when Musk announced his idea almost three years ago. Electrical engineer Marc Thompson told her it seemed that it would. But that's not the end of the story, said the Worcester Polytechnic professor: "The devil's in the details in terms of testing, safety, passenger safety, egress, vibration, all that engineering stuff." 
 
 Former U.S. Department of Transportation Assistant Secretary Emil Frankel also had reservations, which he shared with Elise at the time. 
 
 "To talk about these kinds of leapfrogging technology in a context when we can't really adequately maintain our existing infrastructure is really not terribly realistic. At least not in terms of the public policy debate," Frankel said. 
 
 Hyperloop One and competitor Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, or HTT, don't seem deterred. HTT is making progress, too, Wired notes: 
 
 "We think we will be able to demonstrate full Kitty Hawk capabilities by the end of this year." ||||| One small push for Hyperloop, one giant thrust for the future of transportation. 
 
 In the arid northern deserts of Nevada, far from the bright lights and towering edifices of Las Vegas, the Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One took a gamble and won, successfully testing its linear induction propulsion system. 
 
 A grandstand full of journalists and Hyperloop One supporters watched as a series of stators (basically electromagnetic blades) quickly powered up under the sled, which then flew by at about the speed of a fast car (115 mph or so). 
 
 Image: Hyperloop One/Mashable 
 
 The test, while fast, was, to be honest, somewhat underwhelming. After the initial countdown, the sled took off from the start position and whizzed by on a track at a measured 2.4 Gs of acceleration. Special grabbers underneath the sled then slammed into a sandpit, which effectively slowed the sled down to zero and ended the test. 
 
 Future tests on this track at the 39.9 acre facility will go much, much faster. 
 
 The Hyperloop One speed-by. Image: Hyperloop One 
 
 While the final Hyperloop One system will use permanent magnets to levitate the pods off the track, this sled actually sat on the metal rails, which probably future slowed it down. 
 
 The beginning 
 
 Image: Hyperloop One 
 
 "This is the first step in a long journey," said Hyperloop One co-founder and CTO Brogan BamBrogan 
 
 He's right. The electromagnet-based propulsion system is just one small part of the full transportation system that Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) hopes to launch in the not-too-distant future. 
 
 Hyperloop One Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Shervin Pishevar makes a statement moments before the big test. Image: Lance Ulanoff/Mashable 
 
 Originally the brainchild of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, Hyperloop transportation consists of sealed pods traveling at subsonic speeds in a low-pressure tube that's elevated above the ground on pylons. It's intended to be a low-energy (solar) and low-emission system. It could also be a viable mass transportation alternative for traffic-snarled corridors like those between New York and Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles and San Francisco, completing the latter trip in as little as 35 minutes. 
 
 Musk produced a lengthy Hyperloop white paper and then open-sourced the concept in 2014. As a result, the Hyperloop race is on, and, with Wednesday's test, Hyperloop One may have just inched ahead of rival HTT. 
 
 The Hyperloop One propulsion system test sled. Image: lance ulanoff/mashable 
 
 Hyperloop One CEO Rob Lloyd seemed elated by the short test's results and predicts that, with enough cooperation from local and state government bodies (the kind they've found in Nevada and Las Vegas), Hyperloop One will be moving cargo by 2019 and people as early as 2021. 
 
 As for what Hyperloop One has in store for the short-term, BamBrogan said, "a lot more of this testing." 
 
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– The age of uber-quick "hyperloop" transportation had a milestone Wednesday: One of the companies hoping to turn the idea into reality successfully tested its propulsion system in the desert near Las Vegas, Mashable reports. So what's a hyperloop? It's the brainchild of Tesla's Elon Musk, and the general idea is to move people in above-ground tubes traveling about 750mph. A six-hour drive from LA to San Francisco would be cut to 30 minutes, though we're still at least a few years away from reality. Some essentials: Hold the champagne: NPR explains that Wednesday's demo by Hyperloop One focused "on only one piece of a very complicated system." Forget the technology—the real problem would be passengers' vomit, explains a post at Inverse. The Verge has an "everything you need to know" audio explainer here. "The lack of air resistance and friction of traditional transportation are what would allow it to achieve such high speeds." The Wall Street Journal has some more basics on the science. USA Today looks at two other startups in the "hyperloop wars." One of those companies, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, plans a "magnetic levitation system," and Business Insider has the nitty gritty on how it would work. One huge hurdle: Obtaining land rights for such a system. Gizmodo digs in. A new video game is based on the concept, notes SlashGear.