A thrilling Sunday afternoon in California, where everything was about hyperloop, speed, futuristic pods and Elon Musk’s Space X. Yes! We are talking about the high-tech Hyperloop Pod Competition from Elon Musk, where the TU Delft Hyperloop team comprising of 37 students secured the second position with their pod speed of 142kms per hour speed.
The winning team was from Germany, WARR Hyperloop of the technical university of Munich which set up a new speed record with 457 kms per hour and went more than three times as fast as Delft Hyperloop. The third finalist was EPF Loop from Switzerland. As noted in the official website of Space X, the competition focused on a single criterion—maximum speed. Additionally, all Pods had to be self-propelled.
Pod entering the tube right now pic.twitter.com/5uCrlxOUin
— Delft Hyperloop (@DelftHyperloop) July 22, 2018
TU Delft’s Hyperloop pod was not able to attain the maximum speed before stalling and was showing problems before the event as well. The team was reported saying, that the competition did not go as planned.
Reportedly, there were also some software issues in the pod, a week before the competition but the Hyperloop team had fixed it and has two successful runs in the tube without vacuum.
Due to the successful runs, the team was reportedly informed on Sunday morning that it was selected alongside three other international teams to make a real run in the 1.2-mile test tube next to the headquarters of Elon Musk’s space company in Los Angeles.
We just had our final hyperloop run, with a speed of 142 km/h. It did not go completely as planned, we were hoping to go further and faster. But we are very proud that we were able to run! The best of luck to the other teams ? pic.twitter.com/RpwgzNGQIS
— Delft Hyperloop (@DelftHyperloop) July 22, 2018
The Hyperloop Pod Competition was set up by Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. With the competition, he wants to stimulate the development of a revolutionary form of fast and energy-efficient transport, in which people and goods travel at a speed of 1,200 kilometers per hour through tubes with very low air pressure. Challenged by Musk, student teams around the world designed, built and tested hyperloop pods.
Just last month, the Delft Hyperloop unveiled the Atlas 01, which consists of a pod and a launched at the event in TU Delft. With this, the team is aiming to bring feasible and high-speed travel between Amsterdam and the rest of Europe under 30 minutes by traveling within an airless vacuum tube. The TU Delft team was hoping to establish a speed more than 384 kilometers per hour to shatter the world speed record.
Hope the team is successful in the future and makes Hyperloop a reality soon.
For more updates, stay tuned to Silicon Canals.
