SpaceX’s hyperloop race was a milestone for the futuristic transportation system

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/1/14470630/spacex-hyperloop-race-mit-delft-warr-elon-musk

Last weekend, excitement ran high at the SpaceX Hyperloop competition, a culmination of a year’s work on dogged research and development to imagine and build the transportation of the future. Just before the first finalist’s pod launched, a rustle ran through the crowd of SpaceX employees, hyperloop teams, and journalists. Elon Musk appeared on the stage.

Back in 2013, Musk released his white paper that theorized the possibility of aerodynamic aluminum capsules filled with passengers or cargo that could travel in a nearly airless tube at roughly the speed of sound. “Hyperloop Alpha” teased the possibility of traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles in just 30 minutes. His idea inspired engineers and investors around the world, ultimately prompting Musk to launch the design contest. Part one was held at Texas A&M University last year, while part two — in which actual pods were propelled through an actual hyperloop tube, a global first — wrapped up last Sunday.

While not officially scheduled to speak, the billionaire industrialist couldn’t resist, much like at the Texas design competition last year. During that event, over 1,000 students from 120 colleges around the world took on the challenge of turning Musk’s vision of a “fifth mode of transportation” into a reality. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team was the overall victor of that two-day competition, while 22 other teams advanced to the next stage, tasked with building their proposed pods to test on the SpaceX hyperloop track.

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On Sunday, the second phase of the competition culminated at the company’s in Hawthorne, California, just outside of Los Angeles. Twenty-seven teams from all over the world were there to show off their fully functional pods. Each pod was built to scale in order to fit into the hyperloop tube, roughly half the size of the potential finished product. Contestants had less than a year to engineer and build these pods, and while there were a handful of versions presented, the majority of the pods used one of three propulsion systems: wheeled designs, magnetic levitation, and air bearing suspension. The tube — six feet tall, 4,150 feet long, and an outer-diameter of 72 inches — was constructed by SpaceX and built accommodate all three types of propulsion systems. But before any team could put their pod on the track, it had to pass a structural and functional vacuum test.

The stringent tests left some hearts broken. At the end, only three of the 27 teams successfully completed the evaluations to compete at Sunday’s final: Delft University from the Netherlands, WARR from Munich Technical University, and MIT. Only these teams would be able to demonstrate their pods in actions on the test track. For the rest, their journey was at an end — for now.

But first there were speakers.“This is what the future looks like,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti from the podium. “This is a town that consistently is reimagining things, and today, we’re looking at the very first hyperloop pods ever. The ones that are the vision for the future of transportation.”

When Musk took the stage, he surveyed the teams around him. The cult of personality surrounding Musk is why many of these college students decided to compete in the hyperloop contest. “What this was really intended to do was encourage innovation in transportation technology, to get people excited about new forms of transport, things that may be completely different from what we see today,” Musk said. With innovation such a prominent part of this competition, it was only fitting for Musk to watch the first of the three finalists propel down the hyperloop from the best seat in the house: directly in front of the only window looking inside the tube.

The final test itself consisted of three phases: pusher, coast, and brake. The SpaceX Pusher resembled the frame of a scaled-down Model S with four wheels. It accelerated to roughly 50 miles per hour, pushing the pods down the track, before the pods start coasting through the tube on their own power. Pods either gain speed or slowly decelerate before the braking phase. Each pod uses their own braking system to come to a stop at the end of the track.

Of the three finalists, the WARR team’s hyperloop pod was up first. After much anticipation, the pod raced down the tube, before hitting the top speed for the competition of 58 mph. This team had much to prove as it was up against the two formidable foes: MIT, which won the best overall design award in Texas, and Delft University, which took home the pod innovation award.

notice the wheel lift off the track

The team from Delft University earned the highest score and design and construction awards, while Munich Technical University earned the fastest pod award. MIT didn't win one of the major awards, but took home the safety and reliability award. The University of Maryland team took home the performance and operations award, while the teams from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and rLoop, originally formed on Reddit, took home pod innovation awards.

Round two may be over, but the 24 teams that didn’t make it into the finals still have a chance to compete. The final phase of the three-part competition will happen this summer, and teams that failed to meet the standards to run on the track can make the necessary changes based off the weekend’s test results to be eligible to compete in the final phase. SpaceX says two words will define the final phase of the competition: “maximum speed.”

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/...igning-hyperloop-train-that-could-go-765-mph/

Menlo Park: Engineers designing Hyperloop train with 765 mph goal
Team builds prototype for new form of transportation that can travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes

Forget high-speed rail. Imagine traveling inside a tube that can shuttle passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes.

A team of 140 engineers from 14 nations gathered at a Menlo Park facility last year to build a prototype vehicle for the Hyperloop, a new type of transportation that could move people at speeds faster than passenger jets.

The prototype, a bullet-shaped, bright yellow pod the size of a small fishing boat, is named Infira (for infinity and rapidity). It proved workable enough to win the Innovation Award, one of five prizes presented at a SpaceX competition in Hawthorne in January. The team that built it, dubbed rLoop, was one of 29 competitors — down from an initial 1,200 teams — to make it to the finals.

The pod was constructed over a roughly 6-month period last year on the former TE Connectivity campus along Bayfront Expressway that was purchased by Facebook in 2014. TE, which is currently moving its headquarters to Fremont, signed on to provide the team with a working space after SpaceX founder Elon Musk in mid-2015 announced an open competition for engineering teams to design a half-scale pod for the Hyperloop and have it tested on SpaceX’s mile-long test track in Hawthorne.

The Menlo Park team didn’t make it onto the track, which is actually an elevated tube, citing last-minute issues that put them behind other teams. The use of the track was limited to three teams on a first-come, first-served basis, according to rLoop project manager Brent Lessard, who is based in Toronto, Canada.

Lessard considers the rLoop team to be unique among the competition. As the team describes it in a video series on YouTube, rLoop is “the only non-university open source team that virtually formed.” Within hours of Musk’s announcement, a future member issued a post on Reddit encouraging the community to form a team, after which the team sprouted entirely online.

“(The post) reached No. 1 … on Reddit,” Lessard said. “That got us a lot of eyes on the project.”

RLoop team members hard at work on its prototype for the SpaceX Hyperloop competition. (Courtesy of rLoop)
The team, made up completely of volunteers with full-time jobs, is taking a break before reconvening to tweak the prototype in the hopes of qualifying for a second competition round this summer and possibly getting the pod onto the track.

“When you go skydiving, you want to get back in the plane and do it again,” said engineering lead Thomas Lambot, who divides his time between the Bay Area and Belgium.

The next competition, Lessard said, will focus on how fast the pods can travel.

Lambot said pods can only reach a top speed of around 300 mph on the test track, but in reality would need the ability to top out at 765 mph to make the roughly 400-mile trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“The scoring for the second competition is strictly top speed; they’re looking for who’s going the fastest,” Lessard said. “We’re looking to make modifications to the current pod that would optimize for speed, but we still want to use the opportunity to demonstrate all the tech we built.”

Building a longer test track that could achieve that speed is something the rLoop team is considering as a future project. The current pod is specifically designed to work on the SpaceX test track.

Lessard and Lambot consider the success of a bunch of strangers getting together and gelling as a team as important as the fact that the prototype received the prestigious SpaceX award. Unlike most teams that were sponsored by their high schools and universities, rLoop argues that because it had no allegiance to any sponsor, it is focused more on building a prototype that will actually scale up to the real world rather than winning awards for certain aspects of its model.

“We want to keep working on Hyperloop, but we want to do other things,” Lambot said. “We’ve fostered a very good community.”

RLoop team members Brent Lessard, center, and Thomas Lambot, right, attend an undated panel discussion on its Hyperloop vehicle prototype. (Courtesy of rLoop)
The team ran a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, ultimately raising $100,000 to build the pod. That didn’t include donated equipment and manufacturing expertise, such as the support from TE, one of the first entities to back the project.

Just a small contingent of the team worked at the Menlo Park facility, with the rest dialing in remotely. Some of the parts were assembled in other countries and sent to the TE site to be attached, similar to Legos.

Lambot calls the prototype a cross between a “very high-altitude plane and a train” and “as convenient as a train and as fast as a plane.”

The pod employs a magnetic hover engine built by Los Gatos-based firm Arx Pax that levitates when placed inside the SpaceX tube, which is almost completely vacuum-sealed to prevent friction. A series of magnets attached to the motor spin at up to 2,000 revolutions per minute to achieve levitation when placed in the tube, which has a copper plate along its entire base. Wheels attached to the sides of the pod keep it from hitting the sides, allowing for a smooth ride. Everything except for the hover engine was built by the team from scratch, Lambot said.

Lessard said the Hyperloop could be a reality in just a few years. He said the barrier lies not with technology but on “the courage for someone to invest in the long-term infrastructure project that Hyperloop will be.”