A real life hoverboard that works, the Hendo Hoverboard. This is the futures, ladies and gentlemen.
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Welcome to the future. Starting next year, the hoverboard won’t just be a thing from Back to the Future or Dr. Who. A California startup called Arx Pax has successfully constructed a working hoverboard, reported Engadget, Oct. 21 and you may be able to take it for a test ride sooner than you'd think.
Ringing in at $10,000, the levitating platform may not be cheap, but Arx Pax is hosting a Kickstarter to prove that they have the technology, not just a concept, for the Hendo Hoverboard. Sean Buckley of Engadget took one for spin. He reported that the board supported his full weight of 200 lbs. and never dipped during the length of his trial.
While the hoverboard doesn’t quite bring its riders to the heights and speeds that Marty McFly’s did - let alone the distance across time and space that a Pan-Dimensional Surfboard the likes of Blon Slitheen’s might have taken her (Dr. Who, Series 1, Ep. 11) - it does consistently hold a fully grown person and keeps an altitude of approximately one inch from the ground.
The boards have other limitations, too. Though future boards will easily support 500 pounds (they currently can support up to 300), some very special pathways are going to be needed for the boards to work at all. “The Hendo uses the same kind of electromagnetic field technology that floats MagLev trains -- meaning it will only levitate over non-ferrous metals like copper or aluminum.”
So, how do you get to take one on a test ride yourself, you might ask? Arx Pax’s Kickstarter has some interesting perks for its backers. If you pledge at least $100, you can take one for a spin as soon as March 2015. If you are more serious about maybe, say, owning a piece of hover tech of your own, you can pledge $299 which will get you a Hendo hover engine set and enough surface material for you to hover on. You can even use the engine to hover other things (the engineers at Arx Pax are working on hovering whole buildings to protect them from things like earthquakes and floods). Pledge $699 and you get an app with your hover tech which allows for propulsion and control (act quick, this perk and many others are flying!). At the $10,000 level, you can call yourself a jetsetter. With only 10 initial hoverboards available, you can “smile widely as you glide past scores of envious faces,” writes Arx Pax.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
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