There is still no concrete answer to as to when Elon Musk’s Hyperloop dream will become a reality. However, thanks to the SpaceX’s annual Hyperloop Pod Competition that took place recently; a group of designers was able to offer a conceptual look at the high-speed system of the future under the name of Atlas 02.
The annual Hyperloop Pod Competition has teams from colleges and universities all over the world compete with prototypes of their high-speed transportation pods. A group hailing from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has unveiled its vision for Hyperloop pods known as Atlas 02 along with the stations that might one day be utilized for transportation of passengers over long distances.
The team not only showed a panoramic video of the concept but also shared concept images that depict a station where pods were arriving and leaving. It also displayed the interior of an eventual Hyperloop pod that featured stylish seats along with digital screens that display the weather and the date. The Atlas 02 pods will be moving through the tubes at speeds of hundreds of miles per hours.
Musk first unveiled his plans for a multi-billion dollar Hyperloop concept back in 2013. He had a singular goal; to cut down the travel time as significantly as possible for major cities. Musk had claimed that the project would eventually make a trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles as short as 30 minutes. SpaceX has already built a test track close to its Hawthorne, California headquarters. SpaceX has been looking for open source solution as well with its annual Hyperloop Pod Competition that kicked off in 2015.
The team behind Atlas 02 had a total of forty students that worked to come up with the design of a self-propelled pod that will be competing against twenty other teams from all over the world with prototype test runs on the SpaceX track. The goal of the team behind Atlas 02 is to reach a top speed of 620 mph.
