beltenebros

i actually went to a classical music school for 10 years, followed by visual arts, followed by film, followed by motorcycle mechanics and, finally, mechanical engineering.

if i were to go back to school again, it would probably be for astrophysics.

we can have all the cakes.

the hyperloop concept actually arose out of dissatisfaction of the planned HSR in CA. to pull a quote from the Alpha Paper:

How could it be that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL – doing incredible things like indexing all the world’s knowledge and putting rovers on Mars – would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?

Hey /u/Senno_Ecto_Gammat , Brent here - project manager at rLoop. Thanks for the questions!

1 - tests are still being done to finalize the acceleration values, but the current generation of engines have something like .15g acceleration. for the competition we're relying on the mechanical pusher provided by SpaceX for the initial acceleration.

2 - there is a lot incorporated in to this design that would be translatable to an operational system, including a heavy focus on safety and redundancies. the eddy current brakes will bring us down to 5m/s, and we have auxiliary braking to bring us the rest of the way. rapid normalization was a concept discussed, but the shockwave would be immense. it's actually a safety aspect we have considered in to our design.

EDIT: 4 - Robert Goddard was mentioned in the initial Hyperloop Alpha Paper released by Elon Musk

luckily (planned), our head of engineering and our head of manufacturing are in CA. we also have a team who will be working on it full time, and others who will be working on it part time. we're using an approach we call micro manufacturing, with members who have access to specialized equipment or materials manufacturing as much as they can feasibly remotely. on site, we'll have our full timers wearing go pro cameras and receiving guidance from the remote team. we're excited!