The 5th Mode of Transportation
Modern travel is anything but convenient; Long delays sitting in airports, traffic that sits at a standstill, and trains that make endless stops on their way to the next big city. Hyperloop aims to eliminate all of that. Through Magnetic levitation, Hyperloop pods are able to move through a vacuumed out tube at speeds nearing the speed of sound over both short and long distances.
What is UMD Loop doing?
The final test for the first pod, Prometheus, was on SpaceX’s mile long test track in Hawthorne, California during January of 2017. The team won the Performance in Operations Award and placed 5th in the world in overall Design and Construction at the first ever SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. UMD Loop returned to California for Competition Weekend 2, August 25-27 2017, where 24 teams put their pods against each other in a competition judged purely on speed. After returning to Hawthorne for Competition Four in 2019, UMD Loop is now preparing for the first ever Not-a-Boring Competition, run by The Boring Company. Through rapid prototyping, dedication to the fundamentals of design, and a whole lot of late nights, UMD Loop team members will continue a 5-year tradition of engineering excellence as the University of Maryland’s first TBM competition team!