May 22, 2018
What starts here ends up in Dallas in thirty minutes, at least, that’s what Texas Guadaloop is trying to accomplish with their latest Hyperloop design. The team is headed to Hawthorne, California this July to compete among other student teams from across the world at the third ever SpaceX Hyperloop competition.
Aside from building an eight-foot long, three-foot wide aluminum and carbon fiber pod and planning the next great innovation in public transport, Guadaloop president Christopher Mann, an aerospace engineering senior said the motley crew of majors is what makes the team unique from any other engineering organization. While aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering students make up nearly 70% of the 40 active members, students ranging from psychology to international relations majors are all considered integral parts of the team.
“We’re very interdisciplinary,” Mann said. “It gives us a lot of diversity in ideas, personality and background. We’re very inclusive partially because we need people to get everything right, but I genuinely think it helps the organization as a whole, getting different perspectives and experiences. We have master’s and Ph.D. students who are on our team. We also have freshmen. Being so open allows us to expand our horizons.”
The SpaceX Hyperloop competition was introduced two years ago, when the company challenged universities from across the globe to create an innovative Hyperloop pod capable of levitation through means of magnetics or an air-bearing design. Texas Guadaloop was one of twenty-four teams that advanced to the final stages of the competition and returned to the Forty Acres with an Innovation Award. This year, SpaceX is asking teams to develop a more complicated design – a pod that can propel itself down the Hyperloop tube without any assistance.
“We’re incorporating our propulsion on board, making everything self-contained, the electronics, the computer, the levitation, our propulsion and our battery are all on board which is more or less how the future of the Hyperloop would be,” Mann said. “Basically, everything that you need to sustain the travel and the cargo onboard or the people is all internally contained. You don’t have to rely on any stops throughout the middle. You just load up at each station and then you’re good to go for the duration of the trip. We’re trying to make sure that everything runs autonomously on its own from the get-go.”
Mann said the work pays off when the team sees their design perform. “Seeing something that works is the most exciting part,” Mann said. “Since we already have a working product we know where we are coming from and so just getting the new version finished and seeing it run at the last phase is more or less what motivates everyone.”
Regardless of what happens in July, Mann said the main goal is to demonstrate that fast, affordable, and clean energy transportation is possible and that more importantly, it could soon be an accessible reality.
“The last great travel innovation started over 50 years ago with the space race. Before that, it was 50 years before that with airplanes. We’re now at that 50 year period in which we need a new innovation,” Mann said. “The next step to move forward is making travel faster, safer and more economic. And that’s the cutting edge that we are on with the Hyperloop as a concept.”
