Help Cornell Hyperloop Get Back to Competition

Covid-19 Ended Our SpaceX Competition

Cornell Hyperloop is an engineering student project team that designs and builds a hyperloop pod, a novel form of transportation in which pods are sent through vacuum-sealed tubes at hundreds of miles per hour. Prior to 2020, Cornell Hyperloop competed in the SpaceX Hyperloop Competition. Unfortunately, one of the many side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was the end of this competition. Within the past year, Cornell Hyperloop has gone through a major restructuring and is now ready to compete in new competitions.

Hope for Competing Again

We have identified potential alternate competitions for our team: The Canadian Hyperloop Competition at the University of Waterloo and European Hyperloop Week at University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Unfortunately for us, the costs of sending our team abroad are significantly higher than the domestic SpaceX competition

How Much Your Donation Means to Our Team

Your donation will help to fund the costs of flights, hotels, pod transportation, and pod research that is needed to send our pod to new competitions abroad. Without donations, our team would be unable to participate in competitions, a component of our design process that is crucial to our team's long-term objectives. Your contributions are greatly appreciated, and we would love to welcome you to the Cornell Hyperloop family and to update you on our success in these competitions! 

Our Amazing Team 

Cornell Hyperloop has over 60 undergraduate team members, organized into three teams.

The Cornell Hyperloop team is dedicated to investigating new technology for the general implementation of Hyperloop in addition to building a subscale Hyperloop pod to compete in competitions. We aim to innovate, design, and build a sustainable transportation pod from conceptualization that travels at speeds beyond those of conventional transportation modes. Our goal is to participate in the premier Hyperloop conferences and compete in track demonstrations and subsystem competitions. 

Electrical Team

The electrical team is responsible for constructing and maintaining the pod’s electrical system. The team is divided into 3 subteams. The power systems subteam is in charge of our pod’s electrical components. The computing subteam manages all of the embedded software. The user interface subteam maintains our electrical system’s GUI and is jointly-responsible for the website. The majority of the electrical team is electrical engineers and computer scientists.

Since the team works heavily with both software and hardware, they employ a variety of tools. On the software side, the team uses Python to develop our embedded systems and leverages the networking protocol called ZCM. On the hardware side, KiCAD and physical benches are used to develop the circuits. Currently, the electrical team is building a battery pack, sensor sets, and the internal pod network.

Mechanical Team

The mechanical team is responsible for developing all of the mechanical subsystems on the pod. This team is also divided into 3 subteams. The magnetics subteam works on our propulsion and levitation systems. The structures subteam focuses on the chassis, systems integration, and machining. The braking subteam specializes within frictional and magnetic braking systems. The overarching mechanical team is comprised of a variety of engineering majors, but mostly mechanical and civil engineers. 

The mechanical team’s primary design tools are SOLIDWORKS, ANSYS, and MATLAB. They employ a variety of manufacturing techniques, including traditional machining, welding, CNC, 3D printing, and carbon fiber composite structures. Currently, the mechanical team is building and testing our new pod prototype. 

Business Team

The business team is responsible for supporting the team’s business-related initiatives. The business team is divided into 2 subteams. The operations subteam manages budgeting, procurement, sponsorship outreach, and fundraising. The marketing subteam maintains our team’s social media presence and is also jointly responsible for the website. The business team is mostly made up of computer science and business students.

The business team uses Adobe Creative Cloud to produce marketing materials for the website and our social media. We also use Excel and spreadsheets to manage the team’s finances. This semester, our business team is leading multiple initiatives to fund the development of our pod.

Our Fundraising Goal

Throughout this fundraising campaign, we hope to raise money to continue funding the groundbreaking research our members are conducting. By contributing to our cause, you are helping to fund not only the tools and materials we continually use in our lab, research, and engineering teams, but you are also ensuring our labs are kept up-to-date with the most recent technology.

We are calling on you to become partners in our vision to revolutionize the transportation industry! As alumni, friends, and newcomers to the Hyperloop team, we hope that you will support our cause and help us expand our horizons.

We thank you for your support!

For more information about Cornell Hyperloop, visit us online at hyperloop.cornell.edu.