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201 MPH Pod Run Wins SpaceX's Second Hyperloop Competition (geekwire.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the now-this-is-pod-racing dept.

An anonymous reader quotes GeekWire: The speediest team from SpaceX founder Elon Musk's first Hyperloop pod competition has done it again: WARR Hyperloop from Germany's Technical University of Munich won today's second contest by sending its magnetic-levitation pod through a nearly mile-long test tunnel at a peak speed of 201 mph [video]. Musk announced WARR's victory to a crowd in the stands at SpaceX's headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and in a tweet... This weekend's competition brought about two dozen teams to Hawthorne, including a student group from the University of Washington. Each of the teams developed a pod that was designed to test engineering approaches for Musk's Hyperloop rapid-transit concept, which calls for sending people and cargo through low-pressure tubes at near-supersonic speeds.
Musk also tweeted that it "might be possible to go supersonic" in the 0.8-mile test Hyperloop tube, though he conceded it would require an extremely high acceleration (and deceleration) because of the short distance.

"For passenger transport, this can be spread over 20+ miles, so no spilt drinks."

3 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So "Hyperloop" is a 200mph maglev? by ziggystarsky · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maglev in evacuated tubes can, in theory, be one of the most energy efficient ways of transportation. There is no loss to friction–so not much to fear from Thermodynamic's second law, making the process reversable in theory. And if you can then use the Maglev technology to recover most of the kinetic energy, you're there.

  2. Real technical challenge by dmpot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The real technical challenge is not how to build a pod that can accelerate to supersonic speed inside the near-vacuum, the real challenge is how to build a very long vacuum tube that would be safe and cost-efficient to operate. So all those hyperloop competitions do nothing to advance the hyperloop idea -- it is just a show for a gullible public.

  3. Re:So "Hyperloop" is a 200mph maglev? by Whibla · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Can that maglev do 0-267-0 in 0.8 miles?

    No. It was design to carry human passengers without killing them.

    Hmm, is there an error in my maths then?
    ignoring trivial rounding that is...

    267 mph = 430 kph = 120 m/s

    0.8 miles = 1.3 km

    Assuming a constant acceleration, from rest, to peak speed, followed by constant deceleration, to standstill, pod will use half the track to reach peak speed.

    i.e. distance to reach peak speed = 0.65 km = 650 m.

    Using: v^2 = u^2 +2as gives:
    'v' and 'u' are interchangeable, depending on whether we're accelerating or decelerating. 'a' will have the same magnitude in both cases...

    120*120 = 0 + 2*a*650

    => a = 120*120/(2*650)

    => a = 11 m/s^2

    Are you really trying to tell us that a human body can't accelerate at 11 m/s^2?
    For reference acceleration due to gravity is roughly 9.8 m/s^2

    Unless there's an error in my maths of course - it has been 30+ years since I studied these equations in school...