Since June, the Drexel Hyperloop team has made great strides to prove the feasibility of their pod design. At the end of the last academic year, the team lost over 80 members to graduation, leaving 15 members to regroup and recruit. And they were successful, with over 60 members joining over the summer, most of whom are sophomores and pre-juniors. These students have proven themselves above and beyond over the last 2 months with a strong commitment to maintaining a higher level of efficiency and production than was expected.
Challenges over the summer included redesigns, changes in personnel, and additional project information made newly available about the competition. The team was not deterred, however, and has stayed on schedule. Efficiency has actually improved as a result of all team members working towards one unified goal, instead of individual groups contributing as a function of their senior design projects. Coming out of these redesigns, the team has made the pod lighter and stronger, increasing its capability to move at higher speeds and to brake at shorter distances. With the help of advisers and sponsors, they are hard at work to produce a prototype to use as a test bed for the competition currently scheduled for late January.
In addition to the project work, the team continues to fundraise in order to see the project through to completion. In addition to the fabrication costs for the pod, they have determined that getting the pod transported to the competition alone will carry a hefty price tag of $40K. This and a few other new cost calculations resulting from the newly improved design, has placed a high priority on fundraising if the team is to see the project through.
In January 2016, Drexel, along with 122 other universities, presented their original design concept to participate in the competition. Elon Musk’s SpaceX challenged the teams to design a new mode of high-speed ground transportation that would travel at 700+ miles an hour, levitating on a small pocket of air. The Drexel team became one of 31 teams invited to the final competition.
In the coming weeks, the team will start revealing the actual parts of the pod that have resulted from their diligent design revisions and tests that have taken place over the course of the last year. The excitement and motivation remain high as the team closes in on the competition.