If Elon Musk via Twitter When someone congratulates you personally, you can be sure that something has gone really well. And that's exactly what happened for the WARR Hyperloop team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), which won the second Hyperloop Pod Competition. The team's second capsule raced through the test tube on the SpaceX campus in Los Angeles at 324 kilometers per hour. The TUM students thus defended their victory in the first competition earlier this year. Elon Musk watched the race and personally congratulated the Munich students afterward..
SpaceX founder Elon Musk launched the "Hyperloop Pod Competition" in 2015. The Hyperloop is the concept of a high-speed train that would travel at nearly the speed of sound in a partially vacuumed tube. Student teams from around the world are invited to submit their concepts for the so-called pod—the cabin capsule that would transport passengers through the tube.
In the first competition, which took place in January 2017, two main prizes were awarded: A grand prize for the fastest pod, won by the WARR Hyperloop Team of the Technical University of Munich, and a main prize for the best overall concept, which went to TU Delft. In the second competition, however, only speed counted.
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WARR by far the fastest
More than 20 teams traveled to Los Angeles for the second competition to test their capsules in the specially constructed tube on the SpaceX site. Only three teams qualified for the finals after the rigorous technical preliminary tests. In addition to the WARR Hyperloop team from the Technical University of Munich, these teams included Paradigm Hyperloop, a team from Northeastern University and Memorial University of Newfoundland & Labrador, and Swissloop from ETH Zurich.
The Swissloop capsule reached 39 kilometers per hour in the vacuum tube, while Paradigm Hyperloop reached 104 kilometers per hour. WARR Hyperloop was the last team to start. Their pod was one of the smallest in the competition. It weighs just 80 kg and is powered by a 50 kW electric motor. The concept worked: In the tube, the capsule accelerated to 324 kilometers per hour, making it by far the fastest in the competition.
