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German research group completes Europe's first Hyperloop test track

2023-08-04T17:57:00-04:00

Europe’s first certified full-scale Hyperloop test track is now ready for test operations, marking a significant milestone in sustainable and ultra-fast transportation. The 24-metre-long track was developed by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) Hyperloop research group. The first successful test run with a passenger pod in vacuum conditions took place on the 10th of July 2023.

The research and development program TUM Hyperloop at the Technical University of Munich reached a milestone when it successfully conducted the first passenger ride under vacuum conditions on July 10, 2023. As reported by Innovation Origins, the group will now focus on refining their track’s drive system, levitation technology, and behavior when in vacuum conditions.

Image © Andreas Heddergott/TUM

TUM Hyperloop was founded to compete in the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, an annual competition from 2015–2019 that called for hyperloop transport vehicle designs and prototypes.

Image © Andreas Heddergott/TUM

TUM’s recent triumph comes following another achievement it has made in hyperloop design, in which a student team won the “Not-A-Boring Competition” with a tunnel boring machine that employs an innovative horizontal digging technique.

Video courtesy TUM Hyperloop/YouTube

TU Delft wins overall for first phase of SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition

2017-02-02T12:37:00-05:00

TU Delft recently won the overall winning title in the first phase of SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod competition, which the aerospace company launched in 2015. Students and independent engineers worldwide were invited to design a human-scale Hyperloop pod, as a way to help accelerate SpaceX's development of a functional Hyperloop prototype.

This past weekend, SpaceX held the first Competition Weekend at their headquarters in Hawthorne, California. After various performance tests, only three student teams were qualified to test their pods on the 1.2 kilometer test tube: TU Delft, the Technical University of Munich, and MIT.

Delft Hyperloop pod at the SpaceX competition in Hawthorne. Photo via TUDelft/Twitter.

Their pod wasn't the fastest one, but TU Delft achieved the highest overall score and won best innovative design. The Technical University of Munich came in second and won the fastest pod award, while MIT placed in third overall and won best safety and reliability.

Speed wasn't the main pri...

Hyperloop, brought to you by Aecom

2016-01-27T13:19:00-05:00

SpaceX has selected Aecom ... to build its Hyperloop test track later this year [...] The nearly one-mile-long test track will be built adjacent to SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, headquarters [...] The test track's six-foot diameter steel tube will include a non-magnetic sub-track ... Cradled in place above ground, it will serve as a vacuum-sealed, high-speed proving ground for transport pod prototypes being developed as part of a SpaceX design competition.

Aecom is also reportedly not committing to any one Hyperloop company by partnering with SpaceX for the test track – they're also linked to Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the two hyperloop-happy startups based in L.A. (the other, Hyperloop Tech, is sponsoring the competition).

And here's Aecom's flashy teaser:

Keep up with the Hyperloop happenings:

Elon Musk launches Hyperloop Pod Competition to university students and engineers

2015-06-16T14:09:00-04:00

University students and engineers now have a chance to contribute to the ongoing development of Elon Musk's and SpaceX's high-speed ground transit system, the Hyperloop. As SpaceX works toward constructing a one-mile test track near their headquarters in Hawthorne, California, they launched a design-build competition open to university students and independent engineering teams to propose their own Hyperloop human-scale transit pod. Entrants will then be able to operate their pods on the test track during Competition Weekend, currently scheduled for June 2016. And in case you were wondering, no riders will be inside any of the pods during testing.

SpaceX launched the competition in effort to accelerate the development of a functional Hyperloop prototype and, as always, to foster and promote student innovation. In the current design guidelines, entrants will have to address the pod's essential technical design features including navigation sensors, ground-operator communication, and v...