The Fast and the Frictionless: NYU Team Advances in Hyperloop Competition

The Hyperloop is a ground transportation system conceived by Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. He envisioned a system of low-pressure tubes elevated high above the ground, through which passenger and cargo pods would travel at more than 700 miles an hour. 

To speed the system’s development, he recruited industry partners and announced the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, inviting university teams to design and build working pods. Last January, more than 120 teams from schools around the world converged on Texas A&M University to display their designs and attempt to move on to the next level.

It surprised few people at NYU Tandon when the school’s team, NYU Hyperloop, was one of a small percentage of entrants tapped by judges to refine and build their prototype. Now, a year later, they’re headed to the track that’s been erected near SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to display their pod to the public and get feedback from SpaceX engineers.

The Tandon team, led by recent grad Benjamin High, will be joined by students from NYU Shanghai, who will be there to lend support, and upon returning from the West Coast, they will continue to develop their pod — an imminently practical, modular platform that can be configured and customized according to varying needs. They hope to travel back to Hawthorne later in the year for on-track testing and potential racing against other pods.

The entire university community wishes them well at this stage of their journey and has high hopes that their pod will one day be speeding through a fully realized Hyperloop.

How to Get Involved

The Hyperloop Pod is just one of the multidisciplinary projects that make up Tandon’s VIP (Vertically Integrated Projects) program, which allows students to collaborate on an ongoing project for up to three years, earning a credit each semester. Find out more