Student Engineers Build Hyperloop Test Pods That Set a New Speed Record

Engineering students from the Technical University of Munich have won a hyperloop competition that aims to refine the technologies that could underpin the super-fast transport system. According to the BBC, "The team's pod hit 457km/h (290mph) on a 1.2km (0.75 mile) test track." This marks the third win in a row for the team. From the report: In the latest round of the competition, the Munich team, WARR Hyperloop, outpaced rival capsules, which could manage speeds of only 88mph (Delft University) and 55mph (EPF Loop, from Switzerland), to beat its own record speed, 323km/h, set in the second competition, in September 2017. In a change from earlier competitions, all the pods being tested this time had to be self-propelled. Previously, the pods could rely on a SpaceX-built "pusher" vehicle that helped them travel down the test tube.

Re:

[NettiWelho]

Go home Hillary you're drunk

Re: Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) This is a scale model. You cannot just do a simple comparison.
2) The track was only 1.2 km including the portion needed for deceleration. How many Kilometers does it take for a Maglev to reach top speed? You would have to go back to point #1 to calculate the comparison.

Re:

[f3rret]

...You gain nothing useful by build a rail gun

Except...you know..you get a railgun.

Re:

[gravewax]

maglev is artificially limited in acceleration and deceleration to protect the passengers. really it is a very big rail gun that could easily accelerate at speeds that are dangerous/deadly for the passengers. so getting to speed and back again is not a problem, getting to speed and down again with passengers intact is another matter.

Re:

[kiminator]

What's your point? Any transportation scheme will have the same limitations. Hyperloop is just a less efficient, more dangerous concept that doesn't have decades of proven engineering behind it.

Re:

[gravewax]

Wasn't making any particular point, just informing the deluded OP who seems to be under the mistaken impression that maglev is not capable of such acceleration.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Why would it have to be less efficient when it minimizes aerodynamic drag by design? Perhaps some other things compensate for it, but overall I don't see an inherent reason for it to be less efficient.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's no vacuum, only significantly decreased pressure. It's a little bit like the difference between metallurgic grade silicon and IC-grade silicon. The difference in silicon contents is rather small but still one of the two is significantly cheaper than the other. The hyperloop concept reminds me more of the high altitude test chambers for rocket engines like NASA's B-2 facility which maintains decreased pressure continuously even with a rocket engine inside the vacuum chamber spitting a hundred kilogra

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Careful with those aneurysms! ;)

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[kiminator]

The problem with air travel long-term is it really depends upon fossil fuels because of their power density.

Re:

[nasch]

It depends on high energy density fuel, but it doesn't have to come from fossil sources. There is currently no commercially viable source of renewable fuel for jet travel but that could change eventually.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

See my comment above.

Re:

[kiminator]

The inherent reason it's less efficient is that it's based off of the concept of pods, which carry a lot less than trains carry. Furthermore, maintaining the low-pressure tunnels is a massive (and expensive) engineering challenge fraught with risk.

When it comes to complex engineering projects, often times simpler is better. I doubt that the hyperloop concept will ever outpace high-speed trains in terms of cost or efficiency.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

The other big problem for all types of transport is noise. Current high speed rail is limited not by the technology but by the amount of noise it generates, especially when tunnels are involved. Maglev has the same issue.

Would be interesting to see the noise implications of Hyperloop. Obviously they have the partial vacuum, but it's still moving a lot of air and creating pressure waves. And you will need lots of them with such a low capacity.

Re:

[VeryFluffyBunny]

1) This is a scale model. You cannot just do a simple comparison. 2) The track was only 1.2 km including the portion needed for deceleration. How many Kilometers does it take for a Maglev to reach top speed? You would have to go back to point #1 to calculate the comparison.

Only a scale model you say? OK, how about this unmanned scale model? (Mach 8.5 or 6,416 mph) http://www.af.mil/News/Article... [af.mil]

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

290 mph is fucking pathetic. A regular maglev can do nearly 100 mph faster. [wikipedia.org]

And a commercial passenger jet can travel at double that speed. And doesn't require spending billions of dollars to build hundreds of miles of track.

The hyperloop makes as much sense as the Springfield Monrail.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

And none of those problems would be fixed by hyperloop. Security is going to be just as tight. The stops will be even more limited. Now scheduling might be improved. A smaller craft leaving every 10 minutes is going to make it easier to match people's schedules. If you ignore the ginormous capital costs, the per rider maintenance and operation costs may or may not be competitive with airlines.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

And a commercial passenger jet can travel at double that speed. And doesn't require spending billions of dollars to build hundreds of miles of track.

...and it can't run off of electricity. That's a bit of a bummer.

Re:

[EETech1]

Can it accelerate to that speed, and stop again in 1.2km

Look up how much distance it takes a supercar. World record 0-400-0 is 2.4 km.

So it only takes half the distance of the world record setting Koenigsegg Agera and it got another 50 km/h.

Lame

Re:Is this a joke?

[f3rret]

Can it accelerate to that speed, and stop again in 1.2km

No because competent engineers think about things like not killing their passengers.

Cowards...

Re:

[djinn6]

Super cars aren't even in the same league as the best dragsters. The quarter-mile (400 m) record was set by Sam Miller's Vanishing Point. It took just 3.58 seconds and reached a top speed of 386 mph (621 km/h).

As for maglevs, they're just really toned-down coil guns. In 1978, the USSR sent a 2-gram ring to 5000 m/s in just 1 cm of length. That's 250 times more acceleration than a regular gun, which produces muzzle velocities of 1200 m/s over a 60 cm long barrel. So if you want to get somewhere really rea

Re:

[cellocgw]

In more survivable applications, the US Navy is investigating electromagnetic catapults on their carriers:
The EMALS' 300-foot (91 m) LIM will accelerate a 100,000-pound (45,000 kg) aircraft to 130 kn (240 km/h; 150 mph).

If you extend its length to 600 m, it'll be able to reach 900 mph (400 m/s) while carrying the weight of a fully-loaded fighter jet.

Not arguing with the math there, but I rather doubt anyone ever wants to hit Mach 1.2 on the flight deck.

Re: Is this a joke?

[WindBourne]

Oddly, it was not using maglev, just electric motors and wheels.

Going about it backwards?

[Jerry]

Rather than pump the air out of the tube, treat the tube like a wind tunnel and blow air through the tube, or through injectors along the tube, at what ever speed you want the vehicle to go. For 100 - 500 Km stretches pumping tons of air out of the tube would take hours and maintaining the vacuum would take a lot of expensive energy. The inside of the tube could be dimpled or treated in some way to reduce the Reynolds Number. The positive pressure would keep the weather out and make leaks easy to find ... they'd whistle.

Re: Going about it backwards?

[WindBourne]

Just the opposite. Pushing air down the tube is very energy intensive to get it up to speeds. The air will drag on the tube, so no, that is not good. Finally, while it will take energy to drop the pressure, it will be little to no energy to maintain, assuming tight seals.

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[nukenerd]

OK, OK, it is not a perfect vacuum, we all know that; in fact nothing is a perfect vacuum, not even outer space. OP's point remains unanswered though.

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[nukenerd]

It will require a massive amount of energy to run pumps running 24/7 to maintain vacuum.

It would require even more massive amounts of energy to blow air at high speed, even if not the whole 24/7, down 100's of miles of tube at high speed.

Re:

[Agent0013]

Just like the professionals know that trying to land a rocket booster is stupid and will never work! It took an "idiot" to figure out how to do that.

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[pauljlucas]

If you get one seal failure anywhere along the line, it renders the entire stretch unusable. A tube going the length of, say, a state, would contain thousands of seals. The mean time to failure becomes way too small to make the system usable.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[110010001000]

" For 100 - 500 Km stretches pumping tons of air out of the tube would take hours and maintaining the vacuum would take a lot of expensive energy."

Of course. The hyperloop is an idiotic idea that goes back over 200 years. There is a reason it doesn't work. The idea of maintaining any kind of vacuum of any sort in such a system is preposterous.

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[oic0]

How would you moderate acceleration? You'd need a larger diameter tube to allow the excess air to bypass the pod otherwise it would be like being fired out of an air rifle.

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[ShanghaiBill]

Rather than pump the air out of the tube, treat the tube like a wind tunnel and blow air through the tube

That works for short distances and low speeds where airflow is laminar. At higher velocities, the airflow will become turbulent and drain energy.

Using air pressure for a long high speed tube like SF to LA would be insanely inefficient.

Pneumatic tubes have been around for centuries. There are good reasons that their applications are limited.

Let's All Sing Together

[labnet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
MonoRail... MonoRail.... MonoRail....

Finally!

[sunking2]

A fast and efficient way for kids to get to the Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good.

290 mph is impressive

[WindBourne]

I am curious about the full conditions of the track/tube that they do not tell us about. However, the average commercial jet cruises around 540 mph. So this is more than 1/2 of typical commercial jets. So, they are getting there. In addition, hyperloop should be cheaper to run than a jet. While tracks have to be put in, and pressure brought down, hyperloop should have much lower labor hours, lower drag (9000 meter vs 36000 meter ), and much lower energy costs.

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[110010001000]

You cannot be serious.

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[samwichse]

Cheaper than A jet? No.

Cheaper than a fleet of jets? Maybe. We'll see.

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[djinn6]

It's not that impressive honestly. The Shanghai maglev can run at 311 mph and it's a full-sized train that's been in commercial service since 2004.

Besides, just being fast doesn't cut it. An SF to LA plane ticket is $50 and it'll get you there in 2.5 hours, security line included. That's very hard to beat whether you're going with conventional high speed, maglev or hyperloop.

Re:290 mph is impressive

[serviscope_minor]

Even the TGV which is a normal rail train has hit 360mph in an experimental configuration.

Mixing units

[Anonymous Coward]

TFS mixes mph and km/h. Poor practice to report the slower ones in mph and the fastest in km/h; it makes the difference look larger. It's large enough that you don't need to exaggerate it.

China Trains

[balsy2001]

Normal high speed trains (CRH) in China travel at 300 kph. The maglev train from Shanghai to Pudong International travels at ~430 kph. I have been on both types at these speed (they conveniently put the current speed in every car). The maglev does always travel this fast, ostensibly due to energy demand during peak usage (couple of times I was on it we only broke 300 kph). The shanghai maglev is about 30km long. Hyper loop needs to be much faster to impress me given the existing in-service trains.

Re: China Trains

[bn-7bc]

Hmm either ypu ar joking or yor math is way off 300 kph is about 186mph I think your picupmtruck may have trouble reaching that speed unless it is drasticl modified

Footnote

[Translation Error]

To be fair, the Delft University entry possibly reached a speed greater than what was entered in the official record, but the judges were obligated to use the speed the pod had obtained when it inexplicably vanished, leaving behind only a trail of flames.*


*As an interesting coincidence, it should be noted that the Delft University pod most closely resembled the ones depicted in Elon Musk's initial concept drawings.