Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 1 No. 3 | Page 18

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VhyperHyperloop
is born
team unveils competition pod
Virginia Tech’s Hyperloop team, unveiled their test
pod, 'Vhyper' Sept. 12. The pod is the team's entry
for the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, which
will take place in January.
Hyperloop is a high-speed transportation system
using a passenger-carrying pod in a near-vacuum
tube that is envisioned to reach speeds in excess of
700 mph. The brainchild of Tesla founder Elon Musk,
Hyperloop took a step closer to reality in 2016 when
more than 120 teams participated in an international design competition at Texas A&M University.
The Virginia Tech team placed fourth and received
an invitation to build its pod and test it at a 1-mile
testing track at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California in
January 2017.
Shayan Malik, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering from Leesburg, Virginia, is the Vhyper lead
for 2016-17. Currently, 33 undergraduate students
comprise the Hyperloop team. “We have mechanical, aerospace, computer, electrical, industrial, and
materials engineers,” Malik said. “We also have
representation from the Pamplin College of Business.
Each person plays a very specific role in the integration of our team.”
While the original design team got together to

“give it a shot,” the mood within the build space is
more serious and focused now.
“For lack of a better term, it’s more ‘real,’” said
Malik who was not a member of the original design
team. “We’ve shifted from an idea on paper to a
tangible Hyperloop pod. The fast-paced progression
from design to build shaped the attitude of the
team from ‘this is a cool idea’ to ‘we are working on
something larger than ourselves’.”
The team’s success, despite competing against
larger teams made up primarily of graduate students,
comes from a foundation of basic research discipline
— modeling, analytics, computer design, and individual component testing.
“Designing, testing, and manufacturing any product in six months isn’t easy,” Malik said, “let alone
a Hyperloop pod. But one important lesson we’ve
learned is we have the ability to overcome obstacles
and get the most out of the potential of each member of the team. The design competition validated
the direction of our design and allowed us to scope
out what was next – so we knew where we excelled
and what we needed to work on. The nature of manufacturing is that things don’t quite go to plan, and
we come up with solutions to solve these issues.”

Articles - Rosaire Bushey