UCI’s Hyperloop model grounded on first weekend of SpaceX contest, but it can get another chance
After more than a year of exerting some major brainpower and elbow grease, UC Irvine students finally took the HyperXite pod they constructed to the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition at the rocket and spacecraft company’s headquarters in Hawthorne over the weekend.
About 30 teams were invited, all hoping that their project would lead to a prototype for the Hyperloop, a high-speed ground transportation concept introduced by SpaceX founder Elon Musk in 2013.
SpaceX opened the contest to university students and independent engineering teams worldwide to design and build functional scale models of levitating pods that might one day shoot passengers through low-pressure tubes from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about an hour.
Weekend I of the competition was the first chance teams got to test their models on a 1-mile track near the SpaceX headquarters. But before they could have their run on the track Sunday, their projects had to pass a series of steps, including tests to evaluate the pods’ structure, mechanical fit, function, navigation system and braking system.
Only three teams passed the tests with scores high enough to run their pods. They were from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Delft University in the Netherlands and Technical University of Munich, Germany.
Delft’s project received the highest overall score from Weekend I.
Though UCI’s HyperXite team went home empty-handed Sunday, it can return for Weekend II of the competition this summer. A date has not been announced.
“We’re hoping to come back, especially to go into the tube,” HyperXite project manager Mackenzie Puig-Hall said through a university spokesman. “We want to test the air levitation system and get data on that.”
“This competition has never been about winning or losing,” Puig-Hall added. “It’s been about how we can make the Hyperloop real together as a group.”
During the weekend, the UCI team had a display booth for its pod where people attending the competition, including Musk, stopped by to see the HyperXite.
The pod is designed to float on a thin film of air and to brake using electromagnets. The model the team took to the competition is about 14 feet long and 4 feet wide. The full-scale pod would fit 28 passengers.
Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
