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Elon Musk Says Hyperloop Hit a Top Speed of 463kph before Exploding

posted by martyb on Wednesday July 24 2019, @02:12AM   Printer-friendly

MrPlow writes in with a submission, via IRC, for FatPhil.

Elon Musk's vision for a futuristic form of transport has achieved a new milestone after a Hyperloop test pod hit a new top speed of 288mph (463kph) before it exploded.

At the 2019 edition of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, student teams launch their prototype pods through a 1.2 km vacuum tube beside the SpaceX headquarters in California.

Unfortunately for the winning team, their pod exploded shortly after reaching the top speed.

"We are happy to announce that we have reached a top speed of 463 km/h today," the team announced on Twitter.

"Although we lost some parts on the way, we were able to successful [sic] finish our run and are proud to be the winners of the 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition."

[...] After announcing the new speed record on Twitter, Mr Musk revealed that the 2020 edition of the Hyperloop competition will take place in a 10km vacuum tunnel "with a curve".

A longer test track should presumably lead to much faster speeds, while the curve will mean teams will have to prepare a pod that can cope with real-world routes.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-hyperloop-top-speed-record-virgin-hyperlooptt-a9015381.html

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @05:47AM (#870596)

    If you are interested in the competition, this link is much better,
        https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/21/team-tum-wins-spacex-hyperloop-pod-competition-with-record-288-mph-top-speed/ [techcrunch.com]

    SpaceX hosted its fourth annual SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition finals on Sunday at the test tube it built outside its Hawthorne HQ. We were on site for the competition, and watched as Team TUM, from the Technical University of Munich, took home the win thanks to achieving the top speed overall of any team to run in the finals.

    TUM (formerly known as team WARR Hyperloop in past competitions) is a repeat winner, and achieved a top speed of 288 mph in this year’s finals. That’s the fastest overall for a Hyperloop pod thus far — it beat its own record from last year of 284 mph set during the third SpaceX student run-off. It wasn’t without incident, however — near the end of its run, there was a spark and some debris appeared to fly off the craft, but it still survived the run mostly intact and satisfied SpaceX judges to qualify for the win.

    TUM beat out three other finalist competitors, including Delft Hyperloop, EPFL Hyperloop and Swissloop. Delft unfortunately had a communication error that cut their run short at just around 650 feet into the just over 3/4-mile SpaceX Hyperloop test track. EPFL managed a top speed of 148 mph and Swissloop topped out at 160 mph.
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