SpaceX Hypertube test track

The Hyperloop Pod Competition is an incentive prize competition sponsored by SpaceX that is being held in 2015–2018 where a number of student and non-student teams are participating to design—and for some, build—a subscale prototype transport vehicle to demonstrate technical feasibility of various aspects of the Hyperloop concept. The competitions have been open to participants globally, although all competitions and judging has occurred in the United States.

There were three judging phases in the 2015–2017 competition: a design competition that was held in January 2016, and two on-track competitions. The first was held 27–29 January 2017, and the second, Competition Weekend II, was held 25–27 August 2017. The on-track portion of the competition is run on the SpaceX Hyperloop test track—or Hypertube—a mile-long, partial-vacuum, 1.83-meter (72.0 in)-diameter steel tube purpose-built in Hawthorne, California for the competition.

30 of the 115 teams that submitted designs in January 2016 were selected to build hardware to compete on a sponsored Hyperloop test track in January 2017. There were more than 1,000 applicants at earlier stages of the competition. The first competition completed in January 2017. WARR Hyperloop, from the Technical University of Munich won top honors. In April 2017, 24 teams were selected to compete in Competition Weekend II held in August; WARR Hyperloop won top honors with a 323 kilometres per hour (201 mph) top speed in the mile-long test track.

In January 2016, SpaceX announced they would sponsor additional competitions in future years, and have continued that with a third competition planned for the third quarter of 2018, in which new student teams may be formed to compete.

The outline of the original Hyperloop concept was made public in August 2013 by the release of a preliminary—or alpha level—design document by Elon Musk, with substantial design assistance from an informal group of engineers at both Tesla Motors and SpaceX who worked on the conceptual foundation and modelling of Hyperloop. The preliminary design called for a 2.3–3.4-meter-diameter (90–132 in) steel tube, operating in partial vacuum (nearly airless), utilizing pressurized vehicle "pods" to carry passengers or cargo that would ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. The alpha design included a notional route running from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, paralleling the Interstate 5 corridor for most of its length, so that preliminary economic analysis might be done on the concept. Responses to the design paper release included: "a flash of brilliance" and "hypercool" to "nothing new here" to "hype", "another science-fiction dream," and "completely impractical."

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Wikipedia