Some day passengers might travel 700 mph underground thanks to UW students' efforts

MADISON – Some day, if billionaire inventor Elon Musk's idea comes to fruition, humans will travel from city to city via Hyperloop.

It would be similar to the vacuum tube devices at a bank drive-through. Though instead of money zipping from bank tellers to customers, it would be humans moving really fast from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Or Milwaukee to Madison.

And if that eventually happens, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison students could be instrumental in creating a new form of public transportation.

Last week, the UW Badgerloop team unveiled its third attempt at a passenger pod the students will take to SpaceX headquarters in California in July for the third annual Hyperloop Competition.

The elongated, egg-shaped pod features a mechanical wheel and 60-kilowatt motor powered by lithium batteries. There are no seats in the pod because it's built for speed.

Unlike the previous two Hyperloop competitions, pod entries this year must be entirely self-propelled, capable of accelerating from a complete stop to around one-third the speed of sound within seconds and slowing down without crashing.

"This is our first pod that won't have a seat in it," said Badgerloop president Kali Kinziger, a senior communications major. "That design choice was so we could be faster and have a more sleek pod." 

To transition from futuristic brainstorm to reality requires people actually figuring out how to build a Hyperloop system. Dozens of teams have competed the last couple years to design a sealed tube system for passenger pods to travel free of air resistance in underground tunnels.

Only the top teams submitting designs are selected to build their machines. UW has gotten that nod for all three competitions, plus fundraising to buy materials — this year's pod cost around $60,000 — with more than 50 students volunteering to design and build a pod.

In the 2016 and 2017 contests, Badgerloop earned innovation awards for its pod designs. However, only the top three teams get to test their pods on the SpaceX mile-long test track and UW students are hoping this year they'll finally get a chance to do that.

"When we started we didn't know anything about this and we've learned so much over a couple of years," said Justin Williams, Badgerloop mechanical director. "It's really exciting being a part of this cutting-edge technology."

Williams has volunteered on the project since he was a sophomore. A native of the small central Wisconsin community of Edgar, Williams is graduating next month with a degree in engineering physics and will attend UCLA graduate school to study mechanical engineering this fall.

"I dream of a future where there will be tunnels underground" and people traveling via Hyperloop, said Williams. "Some technology makes a splash and then fades away. But this technology has taken on a whole new life and just keeps getting bigger."

Because pods will travel in a vacuum, it will be very difficult to dissipate heat, so the Badgerloop team encased its lithium batteries in a carbon-fiber box. The motor is similar to those used in some drones, Williams said. 

When Musk announced his initial Hyperloop idea in 2013, the PayPal, SpaceX and Tesla founder envisioned an innovative and quicker way to move people without adding to road congestion and with far less emissions than planes and cars. Routes would consist of steel tubes roughly 11 feet in diameter that would be positioned either on the ground or in underground tunnels.

There are drawbacks. Hyperloop routes would have to be mostly straight to avoid turns that could be wrenching for passengers traveling as fast as 700 mph. Musk wants to build them underground but that means carving out large holes for many miles.

Aside from Musk's efforts, a couple of startup companies in California are also working on developing Hyperloop routes in North America, Europe and Asia.

"There hasn't been a revolution in transportation in 50 years. Something needs to change," said Kinziger. "There is a lot of traffic congestion and you can't get anywhere fast for an affordable price. Hyperloop would alleviate a lot of those problems."

The first pod built by UW students in 2016 weighed 1,000 pounds and traveled 200 mph. The pod unveiled last week weighs only 400 pounds thanks to its carbon-fiber shell and can hopefully zoom along at 300 mph if all goes according to plan.

Badgerloop is one of the first teams to unveil its pod for this summer's contest.

"We're just a bunch of undergrads trying to do something really hard," said Kinziger.

Among those undergrads is Ryan Castle, a junior electrical engineering and computer science major from Kenosha. He's the leader of the Badgerloop electrical team working on the pod's power systems.

Castle is averaging 30 to 50 hours of work each week on the pod since September. That's in addition to a full-time job this semester in his field but he doesn't mind volunteering a large portion of his week to Badgerloop.

"It's Elon Musk. You get to build cool things. You get to build new forms of transportation," Castle said while standing at a table filled with circuit boards and other equipment prior to Thursday's pod unveiling at Union South on the UW campus.

His dream job? Designing machines that end up on Mars.

"We can debate whether Hyperloop becomes a reality, but it's cool to think that many years from now I might be able to tell my grandkids I was a part of it," said Castle.