Texas Hyperloop Competition Showcases Future Transport

When Tesla chief and real-life Iron Man Elon Musk announced back in 2013 that he’d be setting the Hyperloop in motion — a high-speed transportation concept involving capsules shooting through tubes — not many took him for serious.

But, Texas played host last weekend in College Station to the engineering wunderkind from all around the world. Participants included folks from 20 countries (and 26 U.S. states), according to Popular Science. The intention is to mine the best ideas for a system of travel that will shoot people up and down the coasts of California at speeds in excess of 750 miles per hour.

Image courtesy of Texas A&M Engineering

Amazingly, four of the teams who competed over the weekend were high schoolers. But it was the team from Auburn University who won the Best Overall Subsystem Award.  According to the competition’s website, 22 teams are now headed to Southern California in the next phase of the competition.

“The teams presented their plans for the overall pod design and were judged on a variety of criteria including innovation and uniqueness of design; full Hyperloop system applicability and economics; level of design detail; strength of supporting analysis and tests; feasibility for test tract competition; and quality of documentation and presentation.”

In a surprise to all in attendance, Musk himself appeared at the awards ceremony in College Station. Musk has been known to lobby at the Texas Legislature for an update to state laws for a more seamless process of sales regarding his highly popular Tesla model electric vehicles, so he is no stranger to the state.