These German students just smashed a hyperloop speed record
This is the students' third time winning the SpaceX hyperloop pod competition.
Hyperloop test in progress.
A student group in Munich just smashed the SpaceX hyperloop speed record.
WARR Hyperloop, a group of engineering students at the Technical University of Munich, won the SpaceX hyperloop pod competition on Sunday. WARR's pod set a competition record with a top speed of 284 miles per hour.
Team @WARR_Hyperloop’s official top speed was 284 mph – beating last year’s record!
— Hyperloop (@Hyperloop) July 22, 2018
We're excited to announce that our team WARR Hyperloop is the winner of the 2018 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition!!!!!
— WARR Hyperloop (@WARR_Hyperloop) July 23, 2018
We managed to go almost 50% faster than last year, reaching a final speed of 467 km/h (290 mph)!
We'd like to sincerely thank all our sponsors! pic.twitter.com/YpPTURnHp5
The victory marked the third time the group has won the competition. WARR's pod hit a top speed that was 50 percent faster than the record it set last year, according to TechCrunch.
"After the second competition, we realized we could build something that would run even faster than our previous pod in the tube," Gabriele Semino, the group's project leader, said in an email statement. "After many months of hard work yesterday we finally got a chance to test our new pod in the tube and show how fast we can go."
SpaceX, run by billionaire Elon Musk, held its first first hyperloop competition in January last year, where the winning pod reportedly traveled at 58 miles per hour. The competition had two main rules -- all pods must be self-propelled and the winner is solely judged on maximum speed without crashing.
Musk congratulated the team in a tweet.
Congratulations to all teams in the student @Hyperloop competition! To make high-speed pods that can operate in vacuum is very difficult. Was great to meet everyone!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2018
Last December, Richard Branson's Virgin Hyperloop One tested its own pod, hitting a speed of 240 miles per hour. When asked if WARR's pod is faster, Semino said that "it's rather hard to compare the records in the two facilities, as they are very different in length and propulsion system."
Hyperloop is a revolutionary transportation concept that can travel at nearly the speed of sound. Passengers sit in a pod inside a nearly airless tube that runs underground. The pod is powered by electric motors and levitated by powerful magnets in the tube.
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