Gadgetory

the Hyperloop a far-out transportation idea popularized by billionaire Elon Musk officially came to Texas in the form of hundreds of eager bright-eyed engineering students participating in the first-ever Hyperloop pod design competition representing 120 colleges and three high schools they were all gunning for the ultimate prize the chance to build and test their designs on Musk's personal Hyperloop track in California this summer you know this is the first major Hyperloop event so we're here to be a part of it to be a part of the community show off the work we've done when we sold the announcement for the SpaceX Hyperloop competition we thought okay let's do that it's a new idea and just introduced so it's doing you need to know how far you can go with what you have learned it so far to make it applicable with something different and something valuable to the community what what inspired you guys to get involved in this competition honestly we thought it was really cool what is a Hyperloop imagine an aluminum pod filled with passengers levitating on a cushion of air and traveling through an elevated tube and transonic speeds we're talking seven hundred eight hundred miles per hour slightly faster than a Boeing 747 it sounds fantastical but it's closer than you think and these students are at the forefront of that movement the Hyperloop to me means being able to connect cities making it more efficient in a plane but as convenient as a train I want people to just very conveniently be able to travel very high distances while barely using any energy obviously this is like a big idea it doesn't exist yet in the world you guys think that it has the chance to actually happen moti I have never seen ten years from now hyper loops connecting cities and towns oh definitely the technologies here this amazing competitions really an impetus for technology to be built and for the system to be built full scale so I'm very excited for the future it's really not about winning it's about it's about really just developing this product as a whole in developing the Hyperloop system as a whole that's the point of the competition as you can see you from xmas treats a lot of energy a lot of work people have worked it so hard so you realize that ok you are part of something big and you need to work more on it they came from all over California Wisconsin and Washington as well as South Africa Pakistan in Egypt they presented their designs for Hyperloop pods and stations subsystems for levitation propulsion pressurization and braking so we're just hugging a full pod it will be about 12 feet long and we plan to enter this for the June competition and our pod is more focused on the passenger passenger experience so a person steps inside your PI to travel from LA to San Francisco for instance what's what's that experience going to be like what are they going to be seeing hearing feeling feeling very very low because the control systems on this had to be very very precise even a few millimeters moving here and there would not be acceptable so as in a plane you might feel turbulence this thing will be the smoothest ride you ever have I like that idea yeah so the idea traveling at speeds of 200 miles an hour Elon Musk's design has it going maybe 700 miles per hour is that something that's safe do you feel like that something that people are going to be willing to put themselves into if it's if it comes down to it we're gonna have to prove it to people to make to show them that this is safe and in fact that's why our design from the start and actually that was one of my kind of functions within the group was to say this thing must not it can fail but it has to fail gracefully or as we like to call in systems engineering graceful degradation it's great to see all the different designs all the teams are obviously very passionate about the technology and about the Hyperloop idea the concept so it's great just to be in here they you know the vibe the excitement for the future of Hyperloop and transportation is it's palpable right but the students weren't the only ones in attendance several of the high-profile companies that are actively involved in building Hyperloop s-- were there to stake out their positions in this increasingly competitive field but the biggest shocker was the surprise appearance of musk himself who offered a sneak peak at this summer's Padres that he was hosting the crowd greeted him like a rockstar and he left them feeling like all their efforts were about to pay off