if there was an Olympics for engineering this would be it
we're just outside Los Angeles California at the Hyperloop pod
competition some of the brightest minds from around the world are here to
impress this guy Elon Musk for the teams at the Hyperloop competition Elon Musk
is the man he's the visionary behind the Hyperloop and the leader of some of the
most innovative companies in existence Tesla SpaceX and most recently the
boring company which is anything but Elon Musk's futuristic transportation
system could change the way we travel the Hyperloop intends to propel
passengers through a low pressure vacuum tube at speeds up to 700 miles per hour
so you'll be able to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 30
minutes which is faster than a plane ride we're capable of doing this this is
not you know just a pipe dream no pun intended
Johnny is a member of Bajor loop which is named after University of Wisconsin's
mascot the team was one of the youngest that competed in the first Hyperloop pod
competition Elon Musk launched the competition to encourage citizen
engineers and students to design and build their own prototype pods so in
2016 hundreds of teams from universities and private institutions around the
world submitted their pod designs SpaceX selected 30 designs to be built and
tested at the competition we proved ourselves that in competition
one that we could hang with these extremely impressive programs from
around the world Badger loop had a goal of getting their pod into hyper loops
3/4 of a mile vacuum chamber test track there's a very rigorous series of tests
that you need to pass before you can get into the full vacuum chamber and we were
extremely close on the last one but some electrical issues kept us from getting
in well the Badgers fell short they did
make an impression our earth innovation award goes to badger Lube SpaceX gave
their pod an Innovation Award proving their design had potential so as all
good underdog stories go the team is back in there looking for redemption we
are getting that too this time we're not taking no for an answer and we got to
make sure that we do everything we can now to prepare and to get in that to
the rebooted Badgers are young scrappy and yes hungry in more ways than one
johnny is the team's operations director overseeing the team leads who are in
charge of building the different parts of the pie Arjun is our breaking lead
and he's in charge of a small team that's designing our break system that's
gonna have the incredibly fun task of stopping within a matter of seconds
ongoing you know well over 200 miles per hour and not blowing up SpaceX's 12 and
a half a million dollar tubes so good luck with that Arjun yes Janu yeah clay
is new to the team the semester he's our propulsion lead and he took on this
challenge knowing very little about thermal dynamics then there's Justin
leading structural analysis Nathan on composites max on batteries Ryan is on
controls Vaughn is the electrical and software director Ben is on stability
chris is on structural design ends up as the team's president and that's not even
all the team leads there are about 30 people working to make this pot a
success
Hyperloop pods for competition - are designed with the same goal in mind
speed in order for their pod to reach over 200 miles per hour in the low
pressure vacuum tube the Badgers are going to need a powerful propulsion
system so the system that we have for propulsion is coal gas thruster which
employs basic jet propulsion principles by accelerating gas across a nozzle
it works like this two high-pressure tanks filled with
nitrogen gas empty about 90% of their mass over the course of 3 seconds as the
gas exits it converts thermal and pressure energy into kinetic energy the
challenge is who can go the fastest and still stop arjen's team designed a
primary and secondary braking system that will hopefully do just that and
then the badger's electrical team created code that will enable the pod to
operate autonomously in the tube but the crazy thing is after seven months of
non-stop work in Wisconsin the team won't be able to fully test their pod
until they get here the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne California for
the Hyperloop pod competition the week before competition weekend we call a
testing week I believe there's around 60 or so tests that SpaceX has for us to
pass the end of the tube after a week of pulling all-nighters at a local garage
getting the pod competition ready the team needs to wrap up because it's time
to roll literally in the ultimate display of teamwork the Badgers push
their 500 pound pod half a mile down the street to the SpaceX campus to undergo
the final round of tests there are 24 teams competing this year
made up of members representing more than 30 different countries and only the
teams that pass all of spacex tests get approved to go in the low-pressure
vacuum tube but it's a race against the clock even if you pass all your tests if
you aren't one of the first to do so there's a good chance you won't get into
the tube there just isn't enough time for all the teams to complete the final
test which is an open-air run being a few minutes late - one thing can add you
know four or five hours of us getting kicked back in line and waiting for
something and unfortunately that's exactly what happened to the Badgers a
series of small technical setbacks meant that they miss their window of time of
the six teams that completed open air run space extras through to race in the
main event on competition day paradigm Swiss loop in the returning speed champs
bar from Germany it was a bittersweet day for our team but when bar broke 200
miles per hour in the tube the Badgers were there cheering alone but it wasn't
all over for the Badgers SpaceX announced that it would give out three
Innovation Awards this year and winning one of them would give the team a slice
of redemption for their propulsion system which we hope to see next year in
the Hyperloop competition badger loop the University
we were over the moon I mean everyone was hugging and celebrating and it was a
perfect ending of this trip
you don't really believe that you can be amongst this company and be doing these
things until you find yourself here and like wow this is really happening here
and in the future if the Hyperloop does revolutionize transportation around the
world the Badgers will always be able to say they helped make it possible
if you're into engineering you should definitely check out our video about the
modern mega structure guarding Chernobyl from nuclear fallout thanks for watching
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