and the winner is?
MIT, and the competition was? the race to design a hyperloop transport pod, we mentioned this last week,
ever since seeing pods in tubes in a 1936 film called Things To Come I have always wondered why above ground tubes reducing wind resistance had not been built, but now it appears they are on the way,
and it appears they will look like this, now the technical bit, the MIT team's winning design details
a 250 kg (551 lb) passenger pod with an exterior crafted from carbon fiber and
polycarbonate sheets, with a passive magnetic levitation system comprising 20
neodymium magnets, the pod is designed to maintain a 15 mm (0.6 in) levitation
gap above the track, the team says with the lowest available tube pressure
available of 140 Pa, the pod should be accelerated at 2.4 G and have 2 N
aerodynamic drag when traveling at 110 m/s. the design also features a
fail-safe braking system that automatically brings the pod to a halt should the
actuators or computers fail, and low speed drive wheels that can move the pod
forwards or backwards at 1 m/s in an emergency situation, the winners will be
joined by 22 other teams, including groups from the University of Washington,
Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Waterloo, in the next stage of
the competition, this will involve building a working prototype to test on a
one-mile (1.6 km) track at SpaceX headquarters in California this coming US
summer, I wonder when we can look forward to travelling in the tube?
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