It was simple - the fastest pod wins.
And so WARR Hyperloop from the Technical University of Munich was crowned winner of SpaceX's second Hyperloop Pod competition with a pod which weighed in at a mere 80kg and ran on a 50kw motor.
Twenty-four teams took part in the event at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, where they had to send their prototype pod down the 1.2km tube as fast as possible.
Hyperloop pod run by team WARR pic.twitter.com/ntaMsoxkZE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2017
Team Warr's prototype reached an impressive 201mph (323kph) - more than triple the speed of the runner-up, Paradigm Hyperloop, from Northeastern University and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.
Elon Musk, the Hyperloop creator, later tweeted that he believes a pod could go supersonic in the test tube.
Might be possible to go supersonic in our test Hyperloop tube, even though it's only 0.8 miles long. Very high accel/decel needed …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2017
Hyperloop One is proposing a fast-transport link for the UAE, and claims it will achieve speeds of around 1,000 kph when fully operational.
This means a journey between Abu Dhabi and Dubai would take just 12 minutes.
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