Two years ago, when Mumbai University mechanical engineering graduate Aditi Bhide got selected for her Masters from the Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle, she had no clue she would get the opportunity to create history. Ms. Bhide (25), is part of a team of engineering students from her university — one of 30 finalists from around the world — who are competing in a challenge to design a ‘Hyperloop’ pod.
The Hyperloop, a project dreamed up by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, is a theoretical ground transportation system in which people ride pods inside vacuum tubes at speeds of over 700 mph. It aims to drastically cut down travel time; a few years ago, Musk proposed a 35-minute one-way trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco (a nearly six-hour drive). His Hyperloop idea: two massive tubes between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Magnetic accelerators placed along the tube will propel the pods forward. The tubes contain a low-pressure environment, surrounding the pod with a cushion of air that permits it to move safely at high speeds. Musk’s white paper for the Hyperloop estimates the total cost at less than $6 billion.
In July 2015, SpaceX, one of Musk’s companies, announced a competition for student teams the world over, inviting them to work through the Hyperloop concept from design to fabrication. The competition attracted 1,200 team registrations. The three competition stages were Preliminary Design Round, Design Weekend (125 qualified) and Competition Weekend (which will see just 30 teams).
The University of Washington team, UWashington Hyperloop, has been in from the start. In January 2016, it won the Safety Subsystem Technical Excellence Award and moved to the next stage of the competition, where they will test their pod on SpaceX’s one-mile track this January.
For Ms. Bhide, one of the founding members — beginning with 13, the team currently has 32 members — the experience has been “just out of the world”. Since July 2015, she has worked 10-15 hours a week for Hyperloop, and sometimes even more. Weekday evenings and weekends are mostly devoted to Hyperloop. “I was lucky that a majority of my coursework was completed when the project began but it was definitely tricky balancing schoolwork, Master’s thesis work and Hyperloop work. I think, though, that having a genuine interest in all these things has kept me going.”
For her, the project is a ‘litmus test’, considering how much effort has gone into it. “I am a mechanical, not aeronautical engineer by training, and this project is a perfect amalgamation of both streams. For me, the competition is more about getting to meet more people and the opportunities this opens up.”
Learning about the lunar mission Apollo 13 inspired Ms. Bhide to pursue aeronautical engineering: “It was the sheer technical excellence and resourcefulness of every single member of the mission team that saved the lives of the three astronauts.” She is a believer in teamwork and collaboration, and feels blessed to be a part of a multidisciplinary project whose team members come from “almost every engineering field possible.” “I have got to enhance my technical capability, be it the various engineering software or machine shop skills as also refine my interpersonal skills and the ability to manage time, budgets and projects.” The thrill is now is in the anticipation. “This is getting more serious by the day, and there have been two to three more competitions since, including one on the project’s business opportunity.”
Work on the project has come with its fair share of challenges. When the team began, it had to struggle for sponsorship; they were perceived as just college students doing a project. They now have, however, some materials and manufacturing sponsors — companies are making parts and have looked through their designs – besides support from professors in other departments. For instance, the contest mandates a crash test. In that quarter, Ms. Bhide was taking a subject with a certain professor, and it involved learning a new software. She talked to him about the project, and he was happy to help. The team met him over six to seven times, each meeting lasting several hours. This eventually helped them win the safety award, she says. Together, the project has up to nine sponsors, and the team is working to get more.
Struggle notwithstanding, the learning has been worth it. “It’s a tremendous feeling. Last year, we were so unsure about everything we were doing. On the flight to Texas [the first part of the competition was held at Texas A&M University], we were like, “Why are we even doing this?”, feeling embarrassed and so under-prepared. But once we got there we saw a lot of people feeling the same way.”
The most inspirational part was to see some of the competing designs, and to get to meet people with different approaches. “Maybe they’ll find our subsystem good and end up using it. It will be used for years. This is more than anything I’ve felt till now,” she says, sighing deeply.
Could such a project work in a city like Mumbai? “The city might be a very small area to run the pod at a high speed. But a Mumbai to Delhi or Chennai is definitely do-able”, even if it may take a while. “This is something the Railways should look at as a form of mass transportation. It is eco-friendly as it doesn’t consume fuel, and is self-sustaining.” (Musk’s plan is to use solar power to drive the system and the extra energy to run the lighting.) A one-way ticket from Los Angeles to San Francisco will cost barely $20, “which is nothing compared to renting a car.” It will also reduce congestion on the roads.
While the project has helped her imagine endless possibilities, it took a great deal of hard work for her to get to this point. Like adapt to a change in engineering streams, and to a system different from the one she knew in Mumbai: UW has a quarter system, with six lectures three times a week, two mid-terms, and seven to eight finals packed into two-and-a-half months. “Especially after a relaxed semester system in Mumbai University, the first quarter was a blur,” she says. Her interests in eating out, reading and swimming help her keep her balance. Some things though, are comfortingly the same. Like last-minute cramming. The next few days are crucial: testing needs to be done for the event on January 27 on the actual track, and the pod needs to be shipped from Seattle. “It’s always last-minute,” she says, recalling last year’s event, when the team practised well into the night before the actual presentation, doing dry runs and re-runs. “That never ends,” she says, laughing. “We’re finally students, what do you expect?”
