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Friday, March 17, 2017

Hyperloop Pod prototypes competition in California


27 teams from the US and around the world participated in the world's first Hyperloop Pod Competition just outside SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA, USA. Acceleration of the development of functional prototypes and encouragement of student innovation to design and build the best high-speed pod were the purposes of the competition.
Teams performed test runs with their scaled-down prototype pods in a 1.25-kilometre Hyperloop tube. A team from Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) won the main prize, and a team from TU Munich in Germany got the award for the fastest Hyperloop pod.
Hyperloop is a system, proposed by  Elon Musk in August 2013, that uses capsules and tubes to transport people and goods at speeds of up to 760 mph. As a comparison, a typical high-speed train has a top speed of just 150 mph. It means that a Hyperloop service running between Los Angeles and San Francisco is projected to get you to your destination in as little as 35 minutes! For comparison - the same trip by regular train takes over 8 hours, by car - five and half hours, and by plane - one hour and 15 minutes. Read more at http://ecotechdaily.net