Purdue students participate in high-speed pod competition

Purdue University students joined teams from around the world at last month’s SpaceX Hyperloop competition, held Aug. 25-27 at SpaceX headquarters in Los Angeles.

The competition involves teams designing and building high-speed pods that can travel as fast as possible on SpaceX’s test track.

The winning team was from the Technical University of Munich in Germany, whose pod achieved a top speed of 201 miles per hour.

Purdue students teamed up with students from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia in Spain.

SpaceX, a private company founded by Elon Musk in 2002, designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. Musk introduced the Hyperloop concept in 2013 with the goal of developing high-speed trains that can travel more than 700 miles per hour.•