we're just outside Los Angeles California at the Hyperloop pod

competition some of the brightest minds from around the world are here to

impress this guy Elon Musk for the teams at the Hyperloop competition Elon Musk

is the man he's the visionary behind the Hyperloop and the leader of some of the

most innovative companies in existence Tesla SpaceX and most recently the

boring company which is anything but Elon Musk's futuristic transportation

system could change the way we travel the Hyperloop intends to propel

passengers through a low pressure vacuum tube at speeds up to 700 miles per hour

so you'll be able to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in about 30

minutes which is faster than a plane ride we're capable of doing this this is

not you know just a pipe dream no pun intended

Johnny is a member of Bajor loop which is named after University of Wisconsin's

mascot the team was one of the youngest that competed in the first Hyperloop pod

competition Elon Musk launched the competition to encourage citizen

engineers and students to design and build their own prototype pods so in

2016 hundreds of teams from universities and private institutions around the

world submitted their pod designs SpaceX selected 30 designs to be built and

tested at the competition we proved ourselves that in competition

one that we could hang with these extremely impressive programs from

around the world Badger loop had a goal of getting their pod into hyper loops

3/4 of a mile vacuum chamber test track there's a very rigorous series of tests

that you need to pass before you can get into the full vacuum chamber and we were

extremely close on the last one but some electrical issues kept us from getting

in well the Badgers fell short they did

make an impression our earth innovation award goes to badger Lube SpaceX gave

their pod an Innovation Award proving their design had potential so as all

good underdog stories go the team is back in there looking for redemption we

are getting that too this time we're not taking no for an answer and we got to

make sure that we do everything we can now to prepare and to get in that to

the rebooted Badgers are young scrappy and yes hungry in more ways than one

johnny is the team's operations director overseeing the team leads who are in

charge of building the different parts of the pie Arjun is our breaking lead

and he's in charge of a small team that's designing our break system that's

gonna have the incredibly fun task of stopping within a matter of seconds

ongoing you know well over 200 miles per hour and not blowing up SpaceX's 12 and

a half a million dollar tubes so good luck with that Arjun yes Janu yeah clay

is new to the team the semester he's our propulsion lead and he took on this

challenge knowing very little about thermal dynamics then there's Justin

leading structural analysis Nathan on composites max on batteries Ryan is on

controls Vaughn is the electrical and software director Ben is on stability

chris is on structural design ends up as the team's president and that's not even

all the team leads there are about 30 people working to make this pot a

success

Hyperloop pods for competition - are designed with the same goal in mind

speed in order for their pod to reach over 200 miles per hour in the low

pressure vacuum tube the Badgers are going to need a powerful propulsion

system so the system that we have for propulsion is coal gas thruster which

employs basic jet propulsion principles by accelerating gas across a nozzle

it works like this two high-pressure tanks filled with

nitrogen gas empty about 90% of their mass over the course of 3 seconds as the

gas exits it converts thermal and pressure energy into kinetic energy the

challenge is who can go the fastest and still stop arjen's team designed a

primary and secondary braking system that will hopefully do just that and

then the badger's electrical team created code that will enable the pod to

operate autonomously in the tube but the crazy thing is after seven months of

non-stop work in Wisconsin the team won't be able to fully test their pod

until they get here the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne California for

the Hyperloop pod competition the week before competition weekend we call a

testing week I believe there's around 60 or so tests that SpaceX has for us to

pass the end of the tube after a week of pulling all-nighters at a local garage

getting the pod competition ready the team needs to wrap up because it's time

to roll literally in the ultimate display of teamwork the Badgers push

their 500 pound pod half a mile down the street to the SpaceX campus to undergo

the final round of tests there are 24 teams competing this year

made up of members representing more than 30 different countries and only the

teams that pass all of spacex tests get approved to go in the low-pressure

vacuum tube but it's a race against the clock even if you pass all your tests if

you aren't one of the first to do so there's a good chance you won't get into

the tube there just isn't enough time for all the teams to complete the final

test which is an open-air run being a few minutes late - one thing can add you

know four or five hours of us getting kicked back in line and waiting for

something and unfortunately that's exactly what happened to the Badgers a

series of small technical setbacks meant that they miss their window of time of

the six teams that completed open air run space extras through to race in the

main event on competition day paradigm Swiss loop in the returning speed champs

bar from Germany it was a bittersweet day for our team but when bar broke 200

miles per hour in the tube the Badgers were there cheering alone but it wasn't

all over for the Badgers SpaceX announced that it would give out three

Innovation Awards this year and winning one of them would give the team a slice

of redemption for their propulsion system which we hope to see next year in

the Hyperloop competition badger loop the University

we were over the moon I mean everyone was hugging and celebrating and it was a

perfect ending of this trip

you don't really believe that you can be amongst this company and be doing these

things until you find yourself here and like wow this is really happening here

and in the future if the Hyperloop does revolutionize transportation around the

world the Badgers will always be able to say they helped make it possible

if you're into engineering you should definitely check out our video about the

modern mega structure guarding Chernobyl from nuclear fallout thanks for watching

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