Despite thousand and thousands of entries, one of the United States’ most prestigious engineering schools once again showed its class by winning the Elon Musk sponsored hyperloop pod design contest.
From white paper “fantasy” to reality, the hyperloop is coming
When Elon Musk presented the world with his idea to move humans at around 700 miles per hour in 2012, a number of people scoffed at his notion. The real world Tony Stark shouldn’t be taken lightly as he’s repeatedly shown through his co-founding of PayPal, the marvel that is Tesla Motors and his ability to build a private space company that supplies the ISS while successfully returning a rocket booster to earth with a vertical landing.
Now, that notion of the hyperloop is rapidly becoming a reality. Hyperloop Technology has already broken ground on its test track in Nevada while Hyperloop Transportation Technologies has filed plans for its Quay Valley, CA track that hopes to see passengers in 2018. While all this was going on, Elon Musk recently sponsored a hyperloop pod design contest held at Texas A&M University and the winner has been announced and it’s MIT.
MIT brings home the money, prototype constructions to begin shortly
Student engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were recently named the victors in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition Design Weekend in Texas this last Saturday.
While the team was given the title of overall winners, others were also winners in other categories including: levitation, braking, design and propulsion.
The MIT team beat out Delft University of Technology (Holland), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Go Badgers), Virginia Tech and the University of California-Irvine that which comprised the second through fifth place respectfully.
“Congratulations to the finalists and all the student teams who competed in the first-ever SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition,” announced Texas A&M University System chancellor John Sharp following the two day event.
Now the team will build out their prototype to be tested at the test track under construction near the home of SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA. It’s believed that the aforementioned teams that rounded out the top five will also build their designs.
The MIT team’s pod is “only” designed to travel at a max speed of 250 miles per hour, just less than a third of the promised 760 miles per hour envisioned by Mr. Musk.
Testing is expected to begin in April of this year.
