#1 skateboarder Tony Hawk test-rides first real hoverboard (VIDEO)
Millions of Back to the Future fans are hovering in excitement as number one skateboarder Tony Hawk has ditched his traditional set of wheels for a magnetic field to get a chance to test ride the world’s first real hoverboard.
A hoverboard imagined in the classic Back to the Future trilogy in the late 1980s and created a herd of fans who chased after the idea of being suspended by a physical force against gravity.
READ MORE:McFlying out the door? ‘Back to the Future’-style hoverboard comes to life
Now, without the use of any special effects, The RIDE Channel's Dave Carnie and Tony Hawk tested out the new technological marvel at Hendo company lab in in Los Gatos, California.
Testing out the 18th prototype of the Hendo Hoverboard, the world champion, Hawk glided about 1 inch above Earth's surface.
“The thing is really hard to ride. Even Tony had a lot of difficulty trying to figure it out,” Carnie wrote in an article in Ride Chanel about the experience. “The expression on his face was priceless. The great Tony Hawk was confused. I could tell what he was thinking: ‘I'm a skateboarder. I ride skateboards. I ride surfboards, snowboards, skimboards. Why can't I ride this board?’”
The magic behind the hoverboard relies on specially designed four disc-shaped hover engines with opposing magnetic field that provides the lift.
Here's what it's like to ride the world's first working hoverboard @BI_Videohttp://t.co/lGz461uuE1pic.twitter.com/9PErwTcMnG
— BI: Tech (@SAI) November 14, 2014
“While our hoverboard is primarily intended to be self-propelled, the actions which stabilize it can also be used to drive it forward by altering the projected force on the surface underneath it,” Hendo said.
The first 10 hoverboards with a price tag of $10,000 have been sold out before the release. But Hendo offers a developer kit so that anyone can make their own hoverboard for a fraction of the cost.
Arx Pax, the 20-person start-up beneath the board launched a Kickstarter campaign so that board call roll (or levitate) out into full scale production. It has already raised almost two times its original $250,000 goal with over three weeks remaining till the end of the campaign.
