Elon Musk’s SpaceX dismantles Hyperloop prototype in California, puts up a parking lot

Inside the SpaceX hyperloop track along Jack Northrop Drive in Hawthorne, California. (Brad Graverson/The Daily Breeze/SCNG File Photo)

The mile-long hyperloop tube runs the length of Jack Northrop Avenue next to the SpaceX campus in Hawthorne on Sunday, July 22, 2018. (Photo by Scott Varley, Daily Breeze/SCNG)

Elon Musk's Boring Company won approval from the Hawthorne City Council Tuesday night for a prototype of a revolutionary new garage that would connect passenger cars to an underground hyperloop. Image courtesy Boring Co.

This image from Tesla Motors shows a sketch of the Hyperloop capsule with passengers onboard. When billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk published fanciful plans to shoot capsules full of people at the speed of sound through a tube connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, he asked the public to perfect his rough plans. From tinkerers to engineers, the race is on. (File photo by Tesla Motors via AP)

ROBYN BECK/Agence France-Presse

In this file photo taken on July 22, 2018 SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company founder Elon Musk speaks at the 2018 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, in Hawthorne, California. - Tesla shares fell hard on August 17, 2018, after chief executive Elon Musk's comments about his struggles with exhaustion as he works to ramp up production for the electric automaker and an unsuccessful effort to find a number two executive. In early trade, Tesla shares skidded 7.3 percent to $311 following the wide-ranging interview in Friday's New York Times. (Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images

Hyperloop One makes history with world's first successful Hyperloop full systems test, which took place May 12 in the Nevada desert, the company said. (Photo courtesy of Hyperloop One)

Los Angeles-based Hyperloop One announced its latest milestone Wednesday. Its electromagnetic train pod reached nearly 200 mph inside a specially designed tunnel track in the north Las Vegas desert. (Courtesy photo)

Team HYPEA from Edinburgh shows off their pod, as the last of 4 teams of students comprised of over 600 competitors from more than 40 countries around the world compete in Hawthorne, California, to showcase their pods at SpaceXÕs third Hyperloop Pod Competition Sunday. The winning team was WARR Hyperloop, as they hit speeds of 284 mph today.Photo by Gene Blevins/LA DailyNews/SCNG

Space X CEO Elon Musk (L) looks over a pod constructed by Ales Tech from Pisa, Italy during testing for the SpaceX Hyperloop competition in Hawthorne, California on January 29, 2017. (GENE BLEVINS/AFP/Getty Images)

Team EPFLoop from Switzerland get their pod ready, as the last of 4 teams of students comprised of over 600 competitors from more than 40 countries around the world compete in Hawthorne, California, to showcase their pods at SpaceXÕs third Hyperloop Pod Competition Sunday. The winning team was WARR Hyperloop, as they hit speeds of 284 mph today.Photo by Gene Blevins/LA DailyNews/SCNG

Team EPFLoop from Switzerland does some last minute checks on the pipe track as the last of 4 teams of students comprised of over 600 competitors from more than 40 countries around the world compete in Hawthorne, California, to showcase their pods at SpaceXÕs third Hyperloop Pod Competition Sunday. The winning team was WARR Hyperloop, as they hit speeds of 284 mph today.Photo by Gene Blevins/LA DailyNews/SCNG

By Sarah McBride | Bloomberg

Erik Wright was thrilled when he got the news in 2016 that his business had been selected to help with an ambitious technology project: building the prototype tunnel for Elon Musk's Hyperloop. The initiative was envisioned as a test run for a futuristic transportation system involving levitating pods hurtling through tubes at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Earlier this year, Wright got a text with an update on the tunnel: It was slated to be torn down.

The demise of the test tunnel — a roughly mile-long white cylinder running along Jack Northrop Avenue near the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. office in Hawthorne, California — is symbolic of a larger retreat. While Musk still says he wants to build a Hyperloop, the project has been indefinitely shelved. Musk did end up founding a tunnel-based company called Boring Co., but it falls short of levitation and jet-like speeds. Instead, at its transit system in Las Vegas, Teslas drive conference-goers through dedicated subterranean roads at a ho-hum pace.

Boring Co. and SpaceX representatives didn't respond to requests for comment.

Still, Wright said, the short-lived test project remains a highlight of his career. Back when his company, San Luis Obispo, California-based Precision Construction Services, took the work, it was a small firm with just a handful of accomplishments. Since then, it has landed several high profile gigs, including building a 3D printing lab for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and work on various launch facilities at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

"The Hyperloop is quite a badge of honor for us," Wright said. It even helped the company land several non-transportation contracts, such as an 8,000 square foot climbing gym. Customers told him, "If you built the Hyperloop, you can definitely build my project," he said.

Before it was torn down, the Hawthorne Hyperloop test tunnel served as a proving ground for would-be Hyperloop technology. Starting in 2017, it hosted student competitions for running Hyperloop pods at high speeds.

Construction engineering firm Aecom designed and built the tunnel's foundation and steel tube. Precision was responsible for everything inside the tube, including the concrete subtrack, concrete joints, the aluminum track and the interior lighting. Each of those components expands and contracts at different rates, making it hard to meet the forty-thousandths-of-an-inch measuring requirements.

Today, the Boring Co. has expansive plans for its Las Vegas transportation network. But there hasn't been any sign of a return to the ambitious dream of superfast pods — despite the occasional tantalizing tweet from Musk. Still, Wright hasn't given up on a future Hyperloop system emerging one day, and credits the Boring Co. with taking things in the right direction.

In the meantime, last week no trace of the Hyperloop tube remained on Jack Northrop Avenue. A team of workers wearing hard hats dug and made measurements. A local city council member said parking spots for SpaceX workers would soon line the street in the spot where the tunnel once ran.

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