SpaceX contest prods "Hyperloop"
A "Hyperloop" would transform travel. Image: SpaceX.
SpaceX, the company known for high-profile projects in the space industry, is trying to make sure we have a chance to do exactly that. It has issued a challenge to students and independent engineering teams to design and build a pod capable of carrying human passengers on a Hyperloop.
So what is a Hyperloop, anyhow? The brainchild of Elon Musk, entrepreneur and founder of SpaceX, the Hyperloop is a high-speed ground transport system that appears to be a combination of the Disney monorail, a rocket ship and those old-fashioned tubes that sucked letters from one building to another in the days before email.
Musk proposed the Hyperloop in 2013, but SpaceX has not been developing the concept (other businesses have), the company’s website states. In attempt to boost development of the project, SpaceX is hosting the design competition. The company even plans to build a 1-mile test track next to its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. (Fill out a form on the company’s website to enter.)
A functional Hyperloop, a lightning-fast tube shooting along a bed of air, could alleviate traffic between cities approximately 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) apart, according to the SpaceX website.
The idea is to mount “an electric compressor fan on the nose of the pod that actively transfers high pressure air from the front to the rear of the vessel,” according to the website. San Francisco is roughly 380 miles from Los Angeles, or more than six hours by car. In the theoretical Hyperloop,traveling at more than 700 mph, the proposed trip would take less than an hour.
SpaceX wants to hold the competition in June 2016. The resulting technology will be open-sourced.
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