The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Hyperloop Team came out victorious following this past weekend’s SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition Design Weekend, which was held at Texas A&M Univ.
Though MIT won the best overall design award, they will be joined by 21 other student teams in California this summer, where they will test their design prototypes on SpaceX’s Hyperloop Test Track.
“The future of engineering was on display this weekend in College Station,” said M. Katherine Banks, Texas A&M’s Engineering vice chancellor. “We challenge our students to step outside their comfort zones and approach engineering problems in novel ways. The young men and women at this competition definitely accomplished that, and presented design and technical concepts that were well beyond anyone’s expectations.”
MIT’s 250 kg pod should be accelerated at 2.4G, reaching a maximum speed of 110 m/s. “The pod will utilize a passive magnetic levitation system that incorporates two arrays of 20 neodymium magnets,” according to the MIT Hyperloop Team. “After liftoff, the pod will maintain a 15mm levitation gap height at cruising speed and a peak lift-to-drag ratio of 14.”
The team hopes to start construction on the pod this month, and start testing in April.
Joining MIT in the top five teams are Delft Univ. of Technology, the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Virginia Tech, and Univ. of California, Irvine. The top 22 teams were chosen from a pool of 124 teams, representing 26 states and 20 countries.
“World-changing events such as this do not happen often, so to be able to say one took place at Texas A&M is truly special,” said Texas A&M’s president Michael K. Young. “It is our hope that everyone who participated uses the momentum from this historic meeting of young innovators to go out into the world and continue to create and innovate.”
The Hyperloop has been touted as a transportation system capable of transporting passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in under 30 min, reaching speeds over 700 mph.
