New Hyperloop World Record

BUSINESS | Innovation

NEW HYPERLOOP WORLD RECORDTeam Munich garners its fourth victory in fourth race

Once again, the students of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) won this year’s Hyperloop competition in Los Angeles – the fourth win in a row. At a top speed of 482 km/h, the TUM Hyperloop surpassed the speed of all other pods: At 160 miles per hour (257.5 km/h), the Swissloop team of ETH Zurich came in far behind. The EPFLoop team of the EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland) reached 148 miles per hour (238 km/h).

The Hyperloop is a new way of transport that could revolutionize intercity travel, making a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco as short as 36 min or from Munich to Berlin as short as 30 minutes. A Hyperloop is designed to cover long distances sustainably and extremely quickly. A high-speed train equipped with a high speed sound absorber would travel in a tube in which there is almost a complete vacuum. The reduced air resistance allows the capsule inside the tube to reach speeds of more than 1000 km/h.

In order to get students from all over the world enthusiastic about Hyperloop technology and to use their creative potential for the development of this new transport system, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk introduced the idea of a Hyperloop Concept in 2013. Since 2015, international student engineering teams have been invited to build Hyperloop prototypes and to participate in the annual “Hyperloop Pod Competition.” There, the latest developments of the top participants are demonstrated and tested in a 1.2-kilometer-long vacuum tube on the premises of SpaceX in Los Angeles.

In Munich, the Hyperloop initiative began in 2017 and has been part of a larger student organization, the WARR. Since the Hyperloop project has consistently increased in size, it was decided to separate the project from the WARR. Members from the third WARR Hyperloop team founded a new student organization called “NEXT Prototypes” focused on building prototypes and participating in student competitions. It’s only focus now is the project “TUM Hyperloop”.

The team from Munich has participated in all competitions organized by SpaceX since 2017 and they won the four of them, each year being able to increase the top speed and overall performance.

To mark this amazing achievement this, the German-American Business Association (GABA) in Southern California, who followed the trajectory, helped organize a post competition event (photos top right and below) which allowed the victorious team from Munich to celebrate their win and reflect on the points of improvement..

During the competition week, the Hyperloop pods had to pass some 100 tests. „We passed all tests successfully, but not all at the first attempt,“ says TUM team manager Toni Jukic. ”Components failed and part of the software had to be rewritten. But, in many night shifts they ultimately managed to solve all problems.”

And the students have set their sights on yet another ambitious goal: They‘re no longer concentrating on speed alone. The Research Team, consisting of 15 students, is researching the concept of the Hyperloop in terms of viability, sustainability and cost-efficiency.

The vision of traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 36 minutes has just become more attainable.

For more information visit → https://tumhyperloop.de/

Petra Schurmann

HEIMAT abroad | FALL 2019 | 21