RLOOP - THE TEAM OF TOMORROW

For years, Californian political and business leaders had discussed the merits of a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Frustrated by the debate, and alarmed by the costs, environmental impact, and energy requirements for this new rail line, Elon Musk proposed a radical new solution: create a fifth mode of transportation. He called it the Hyperloop. ¹

The idea behind Hyperloop was simple: Build a 300-mile long pneumatic tube running between the two cities. Inside the tube, reduce the air pressure to 0.001 atmospheres. With less air resistance, a pod could reach and maintain a speed of 700 miles per hour while solar energy could power the entire system, getting you from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just 30 minutes.^1,2

While the idea was simple, the engineering wasn’t. So, in June of 2015, SpaceX announced an open competition for independent and university engineering teams to design a half-scale pod for the Hyperloop and have it tested on a track at SpaceX.^3,4 Within hours of the announcement, a post on Reddit encouraged the community to form a team for the competition. The hope was that strangers would come together and share their expertise to reach a common goal. It would be an experiment in open collaboration based on the passion and will of engineers.

From this suggestion, the world’s first crowdsourced engineering team was born: rLoop. The team grew organically through social media. They met daily using online tools like Slack and Google Hangouts. Visions and concepts for subsystems thrived in a non-hierarchical structure, while a lack of organizational obstacles enabled rapid iteration and accelerated progress. Eventually, the team consisted of 140 members from more than 14 countries—united by their desire to be part of a world-changing technology and to develop a design for the SpaceX Hyperloop competition.

As a global technology leader, TE Connectivity (TE) has provided rLoop with a home in the TE Silicon Valley campus, sensors and connectivity solutions to power the technology, and over 20 TE engineering advisors who have been sharing their expertise with rLoop. TE is proud to be a partner of a team that is not just inventing a new way to travel, but a new way to work as well.

The SpaceX Hyperloop Competition took place on January 27 to 29, 2017, and only three teams out of the 29 competing made it into the low-pressure tube. Although the rLoop team didn't make it onto the test track, the team was recognized for their revolutionary technology and honored with a prestigious SpaceX Innovation Award. The competition judges were very impressed with the complexity and comprehensiveness of rLoop's pod, specifically the battery system, which the team created from scratch. To see the team in action on competition weekend, watch the Project Fifth Mode series finale below.