Photo: rLoop
Where I come from there’s a saying that goes like this: one madman throws a stone in the pond and ten wise men struggle to get it out. Well, I’m not implying Elon Musk is cuckoo, but he sure stirred things up in the engineering world with his Hyperloop proposal.
It’s not hard to imagine why, though. After all, whoever will be successful in creating the Hyperloop is going to receive credit for one of the most important advances in personal transportation in years, if not centuries.
Finally, if all goes according to plan, we’re going to have a means of getting about that looks properly science-fiction. Remember all those drawings of how our trains were going to look by the year 2000? All those aerodynamic monorails and stuff? The Hyperloop pods aren’t going to be seen much as they spend most of their lives trapped in an airtight tube, but the whole thing has “it was aliens” written all over it.
Up until now, there are two companies with very similar names that have stood out as being ahead in the race to get this system up and ready. One of them is Hyperloop Transportation Technologies who is preparing to build a full-scale test track in central California, while the other is called Hyperloop Transportation, led by a former Cisco executive and a SpaceX engineer.
A third team is starting to catch up. Called rLoop, they’re a team of over 90 members from more than 14 different countries who use the Internet as a method of sharing their ideas and collaborating online towards reaching their final goal: making Hyperloop a reality.
On January 29, the team took part in the Design Weekend with their pod proposal, and won the best non-student team, being the only such group selected to move forward in the competition. Therefore, the rLoop team is now on track to build an ambitious competition pod system that will race at SpaceX facilities next summer, while also developing a full-scale pod after the SpaceX competition ends.
The rLoop team appear to be the underdogs here, but there’s no telling what will happen in the end. If you feel like you want to lent a hand, head over to their website and fill out a form. Who knows, maybe you too will be part of one of the greatest things to happen since landing on the Moon.
Finally, if all goes according to plan, we’re going to have a means of getting about that looks properly science-fiction. Remember all those drawings of how our trains were going to look by the year 2000? All those aerodynamic monorails and stuff? The Hyperloop pods aren’t going to be seen much as they spend most of their lives trapped in an airtight tube, but the whole thing has “it was aliens” written all over it.
Up until now, there are two companies with very similar names that have stood out as being ahead in the race to get this system up and ready. One of them is Hyperloop Transportation Technologies who is preparing to build a full-scale test track in central California, while the other is called Hyperloop Transportation, led by a former Cisco executive and a SpaceX engineer.
A third team is starting to catch up. Called rLoop, they’re a team of over 90 members from more than 14 different countries who use the Internet as a method of sharing their ideas and collaborating online towards reaching their final goal: making Hyperloop a reality.
On January 29, the team took part in the Design Weekend with their pod proposal, and won the best non-student team, being the only such group selected to move forward in the competition. Therefore, the rLoop team is now on track to build an ambitious competition pod system that will race at SpaceX facilities next summer, while also developing a full-scale pod after the SpaceX competition ends.
The rLoop team appear to be the underdogs here, but there’s no telling what will happen in the end. If you feel like you want to lent a hand, head over to their website and fill out a form. Who knows, maybe you too will be part of one of the greatest things to happen since landing on the Moon.
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