California tech company attempts floating skateboard Hoverboard

Whoa, that’s heavy, doc.

A California couple is trying to make the hoverboard, a floating skateboard made popular in the “Back to the Future” films, a reality. Science might not necessarily be on their side, though.

On Tuesday, Greg and Jill Henderson, founders of Arx Pax, began a Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of the final market version of the Hendo hoverboard, which can be purchased for a $10,000 donation. It uses magnet engines, dubbed magnetic field architecture, to create a working prototype.

But can these dual magnetic fields work to make an object fly for more than a few seconds and keep it stable? That has yet to be proved.

So far, their campaign has raised a little more than $120,000.

“The underlying technology is totally scalable; we can make it really small or really big,” Greg Henderson said on the Kickstarter video.

Meaning, magnetic field architecture could be used for objects as big as buildings, which would be advantageous when earthquakes hit, according to the Hendersons.

However, for the moment, the primary focus seems to be on the hoverboard.

The Hendo utilizes four disc-shaped hover engines, which create a magnetic field, lifting the board off the ground, according to the company.

However, to create the force for lift, the board currently can be used only over a non-ferromagnetic surface, meaning the board and surface must have opposite magnet poles, according to the company.

Still, according to the company, and as seen on a video with the Kickstarter, the Hendo can be ridden like a hoverboard from “Back to the Future” films with the proper parameters.

Requests for additional comment from the company were not returned.

According to the company website, the Arx Pax team is made up of 20 people, including the couple.

Greg Henderson graduated from West Point with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and received a master’s in architecture from UC Berkeley, according to the company site.

Jill Henderson holds a bachelor’s degree from San Diego State and a master’s in speech communication from the University of Denver, according to the site.

Follow Ryan Parker for breaking news at @theryanparker and on Facebook.