Students set sights on SpaceX Hyperloop Pod competition in California
Posted on: 06 April 2018
Three Trinity students are among a 45-strong collaborative team (Eirloop) – the first of its kind from Ireland – that will compete in front of Elon Musk in the Hyperloop Pod Competition at SpaceX HQ in California this summer. The competition has earned itself the moniker of “the Olympics for Engineering and Innovation.”
From 700 applicants, the Eirloop team is one of just 20 to have made the cut for the finals, which will showcase next-gen Hyperloop research. Billed as the ‘fifth’ mode of transportation, hyperloop technology will one day see people transported safely at speeds of up to 1,200 km/h on bullet trains moving in low pressure tubes.
Such advances could – in theory — make the Dublin to Galway journey a mere 11-minute short-hop.
Eirloop’s prototype developments are moving apace, but the team still needs to raise significant funding support before the competition on July 22.
Arthaud Mesnard, an undergraduate student in Business and French at Trinity, is Head of Sponsorship at Eirloop. He said: “We are working on a moonshot that is the future of transportation. Hyperloop will redefine our relationship with time and distance.”
The other Trinity representatives are Cillian Bisset and Luc Bellintani, while students from Dublin City University, University College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, Institute of Technology Tallaght, Maynooth University, Carlow Institute of Technology, and the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology, are also part of the team.
Looking further ahead, the Eirloop team plans to take part in the competition next year as well, building on the 2018 experience, and with the eventual goal of leading development into Hyperloop transportation in Ireland.
Luc Bellintani added: “Based on the 2016 Irish Census, two-thirds of Irish commuters travel by car and spend, on average, 28.2 minutes travelling to work each day. Over a lifetime of using our future Hyperloop system five days a week for their daily commute, such a person would save 11,388 hours. That’s an astonishing 474 days’ worth of extra time – and we’d be gaining that while utilising a clean form of transportation.”
Every year, SpaceX organises the Hyperloop Pod Competition where student teams from around the world compete for the right to present and test their pod on the 1.5 km Hyperloop test track in SpaceX HQ.
More information about the competition is available here, while more information about Eirloop, and the team’s gofundme page, where funding donations are gratefully received, is available here.