College teams to compete in the SpaceX Hyperloop contest

The Official SpaceX Hyperloop Competition will be held this weekend (Jan.27-29, 2017) at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California.

Alan Boyle reports on the unveiling of the Univ. of Washington team’s pod racer last week: UW Hyperloop team unveils its purple pod racer – Geekwire –

In the beginning, 1,200 teams applied. The field was trimmed down to 150, and then to 30. A week from now, UW’s team and the other finalists will send their three-quarter-scale pods through a 1-mile-long tube track that’s been constructed next to SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

The winner will be determined on the basis of speed as well as design elegance and safety. These test pods aren’t expected to go supersonic, but they could hit 300 mph or more.