Daniel Bartchouk for NP-UN.
Student members from the Engineering faculty at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario have taken on Elon Musk’s (CEO of SpaceX, Tesla) hyperloop design contest.
The Design Team is set to travel to Hawthorne, California in July to compete with other prototypes in the final stage of the competition.
The objective of the competition is to create a high speed pod that utilizes a low pressure underground tunnel space for transportation.
The competition has inspired international minds to cultivate their abilities to design the most efficient, safe methods of pod-loop engineering (originally to mitigate road-traffic problems).
The system also has the potential to revolutionize transportation with its high-speed, low travel time design goals.
The Design Team is part of the only all-Canadian university to make it to the final round.
The judgement will be focused on the maximum speed and deceleration of the competing pods.
The process involves a preliminary design, which goes through a round of judgement.
If successful, the team is required to submit a final design report a few months after, which is then followed by a video interview with members of SpaceX.
21 teams from around the world have made it into the final round.
This involves a strict safety inspection stage, which only four teams from the previous competition have made past.
Even the Queen’s Design Team did not make it past the preliminary stage last year.
But, after a complete redesign, they are determined to get their pod through and tested.
Most of the team agrees that while the technology is possible, the idea of travelling over 500 km/h is still to be won over by the public.
However, there is hope that people will soon recognize the advantage of the technology, and if successful, the utility it would bring to many lives.
The team is excited to confront the possibility of creating something that will revolutionize the transportation industry, and maybe even — the world.
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