SpaceX announces design competition for Hyperloop

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Elon Musk's rocket-building company, SpaceX, announced Monday that it plans to build a 1-mile test track next to its headquarters in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne and will hold a competition there next year to test designs for passenger-carrying Hyperloop pods. The competition aims to attract independent and university engineering teams who will design and test half-scale models of the pods. The submission deadline is Sept. 15 and the competition is roughly scheduled for next June. 

"While we are not developing a commercial Hyperloop ourselves, we are interested in helping to accelerate development of a functional Hyperloop prototype,"

 

 

There was no immediate word on the nature of the prize. Full rules and other details will be released in August.

Next January, entrants will meet for a design weekend at Texas A&M University. The designs will be presented before an evaluation panel composed mainly of engineers from SpaceX and Musk's luxury electric-car company, Tesla Motors, and university professors.

Private companies will be able to use the weekend to choose teams to sponsor and fund.

SpaceX said it also probably will build its own pod for demonstration purposes but its team won't be eligible to win the competition. The company also will have the final say on who actually gets to use the test track.

There's no word yet on the cost of that track.

Musk has suggested that building an actual Hyperloop system would cost $6 billion, although others suggest the figure will be much higher.

 

Source: http://www.spacex.com/hyperloop