Ok I undersold it. A team from Tech entered against 120 other teams, most comprised of college students, to get the chance to test prototypes at Elon Musk's future Nevada desert mini loop. MIT won, but the good guys took fourth! For those unfamiliar with the Hyperloop, Musk, and Tesla, basically if those tubes that bank drive-throughs use to sling deposits and a subway had a baby, you would get Hyperloop. It is a transportation concept that has people in pods inside a vacuum tube moving about 700 mph, floating by magnetic repulsion or an air blanket. Full list of winners and link below, but excellent company to be amongst in a very trendy concept with arguably the biggest name in science and technology at the moment.
Best Overall Design Award: MIT Hyperloop Team, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Pod Innovation Award: Delft Hyperloop, Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands)
Pod Technical Excellence Award: Badgerloop, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Pod Technical Excellence Award: Hyperloop at Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech
Pod Technical Excellence Award: HyperXite, University of California Irvine
Comments
Watch this video of the results being announced:
Thoughts that are going through my head:
That music is terrible.
I'd love to have seen Johnny Football announcing the winners.
It's a little unfair that UC-Irvine had Harry Potter on their team. I feel like this should be a "muggle-only competition"
It's fucking "Virginia Tech" or "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University". Get your shit together.
Whoever accepted the award for VT: Carbombs at Rivermall if I come back to campus and see you downtown.
The guys from Wisconsin seem like the most normal people there.
Do they not have deodorant in the Netherlands?
That kid from MIT is going to be working for Goldman Sachs in five years and will figure out a way to screw over the American economy.
Those nerds lost their shit for Elon Musk. I don't blame them, he's a fucking boss.
Elon Musk is surprisingly awkward. Isn't he supposed to be real life Tony Stark?
A kilometer? THIS IS AMERICA ELON, WHEN IN AMERICA, DO AS AMERICANS DO.
My 2 favorite schools doing big things first and foremost go hokies! I knew we were that good at these things so no shocker there
Never realized how good the badgers engineering program was those! Dayum
Why didn't those people in front sit down? Someone needs to get those VT Hyperloop people bigger logos on their shirts.
Absent from the list of roughly 22 teams that will proceed to testing: that other Tech and anyone else from the ACC. So suck it GIT! Just like football! Just like basketball!
We placed above both Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley, tough to be disappointed by not outdoing MIT.
Happy to see the engineers recognized for this, keep it up kids.
Hooray for the good guys!
But must we be called Virginia Tech University...smdh! You'd think in a competition like this that they'd get it right...just saying