Hyperloop

A team of students from Cohort 5 of the TSM-CDT have been shortlisted in the Hyperloop design competition. Amanda Diez tells their story

“I scroll down the newspaper and my attention is brought to a headline:  "Airplanes will only make sense for long distances"; I click. Really? An interview of Dirk Ahlborn comes up on the screen. We are told he is the founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. I learn Hyperloop is a fast train -a very fast train- that could in principle travel at 1100kph between cities. This means one could go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in half an hour or from Madrid to Paris in 45 minutes. And without lifting your feet from the ground! How? They bring the sky down to earth, instead of taking you up to the sky. How convenient. They built a tube and produce a very low pressure inside it such that the environment the shuttle feels is equivalent to the atmosphere 10km above the earth's surface. This tube is what is called Hyperloop. Surprisingly enough, they say they are already in the process of building one in California and that it could be ready in a couple of years! 

A few days later, over lunch, I mention the article to Farnaz and Premyuda, two other students in my TSM-CDT cohort. Needless to say they are equally enthused by the idea. We joke around and talk about the future – it all seems like science fiction- and after a while it comes up in the conversation that there is actually a competition in the US for students – hosted by SpaceX - to design and build a prototype of a Hyperloop. Since the moment we mention it, the idea of participating remains tempting while clearly not a good one. There is definitely enough going on for the three of us to add one more thing. Building one is completely discarded ... however designing a pod ... or even better a subsystem ... maybe that could be possible. First we register our interest, telling ourselves that we will decide later. In a few weeks we fill in and submit the corresponding forms. It is now becoming fully official ... indeed, without realising we are suddenly irrevocably participating. We incorporate James, a PhD from Mechanical Engineering and Mohammed from Civil Engineering.

Three weeks ago, we submitted a design briefing in which we proposed a lateral control mechanism and rail switching mechanism (the shuttle actually levitates using air bearings) in the context of enabling loop bifurcations and ultimately regiona