A team from Germany showed a result of over 300 km / h in the competition Hyperloop II

Magnetic suspension "nacelle" developed by WARR



SpaceX Company held the second in a row competition Hyperloop . This event is designed for the participation of student teams, and the goal is to create a transport worker who could quickly fly through a test tunnel built near Hyperloop headquarters (Hawthorne, California). This time the fastest was the system from the German team, which is called WARR. It includes students from the Munich University of Technology.



The speed developed by the German locomotive turned out to be much higher than the speed of test systems of other teams. The event was attended by the head of SpaceX Ilon Musk, who said that he was very impressed with the achievement of students. The fact that such a fast system (324 km / h) was created by students made the greatest impression on the entrepreneur.





In addition, Musk said that next year will be held a similar event, the third in a row. By the way, last year the current winning team was able to achieve with its test system only a speed of about 80 kilometers per hour. After completion, students managed to raise this figure several times. One of the reasons - the “gondola” this time was created (with the exception of some elements) entirely of carbon fiber, lightweight and very durable material. The gondola can not only pick up speed, but also quickly slow down. Despite the tremendous speed (for the test nacelle), the system can reduce speed to zero in just five seconds.



In total on Sunday (just then competition was held) three teams fought. They were chosen from a much larger number of groups of different universities who wished to take part in the event. The main criterion is the design of the transport system that the team is going to use. In order to ensure the normal course of the competition, we need decent projects, which turned out to be not so much.



The second and third teams that participated in the competition:

• Paradigm Hyperloop - a team of students from Northeastern and some other US universities;
• Swissloop is a team that includes students from a number of Swiss universities.

As mentioned above, the purpose of such competitions is to identify the best design of transport for Hyperloop tunnels. The company can use the best ideas during the development of full-fledged systems. Ideally, Hyperloop should shorten the long hours to a few minutes.





Ilon Musk recently announced his desire to start developing high-speed trains Hyperloop. Several years ago, Musk provided a more or less detailed technical calculation of the project, showing that the seemingly fantastic idea was quite viable. After that, investors were interested in the idea. Hyperloop One, the most promising company, and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (planning to build tunnels in Slovakia and South Korea) are working in this direction, and Arrivo, founded by former chief engineer of Hyperloop One, Brogan BamBrogan .







Shervin Pishevar, head of Hyperloop One, has already commented on Mask’s decision to also enter the Hyperloop market: “This will attract a lot of clear minds and attention from many people, which will allow the project to develop.”



The main task now for all these companies is to create a full-size practical nacelle for high-speed vacuum lines, as well as a working tunnel. There are already test tracks, but so far no one has yet created a full track (let it be short). The competitions held by SpaceX are one of the ways to speed up the work. It may well be that Musk himself decided to take up Hyperloop to speed up the appearance of the first commercial routes.



So far, despite the abundance of projects and opinions, how to implement these projects for the creation of vacuum tunnels, the launch date of at least a small segment of a new type of road remains unknown. At the same time, some companies are seriously discussing the construction of intercontinental tunnels that would allow passengers to travel long distances in a short time.