HyperPod — SpaceX Hyperloop Competition
Working on the magnetic-levitation system of HyperPodX — a student-built pod for SpaceX’s Hyperloop competition, racing on the 1.2 km vacuum test track in Hawthorne, California.
Integration testing on the rail: levitation frames, braking, pneumatics, and the electronics that keep it all stable.
The finished pod and the ~50-student Oldenburg–Emden team at the competition weekend in California.
PROBLEM
SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition asked university teams to design and build, from the ground up, a vehicle that could run inside a 1.2 km depressurised steel tube. At near-vacuum, wheels and air bearings each carry hard trade-offs — HyperPodX bet on electromagnetic levitation: contactless, ultra-low-friction, and much harder to get right.
APPROACH
Inside a ~50-student team from the University of Oldenburg and the University of Applied Sciences Emden/Leer, I worked on the magnetic-levitation system of the XPod: the levitation concept and gap geometry, the supporting structural design in CAD, and the dynamic behaviour of a pod that must stay stable over the track while carrying its own braking and navigation systems. The design went through repeated simulate-test-iterate loops against the competition’s safety and performance reviews.
OUTCOME
HyperPodX reached the SpaceX finals in California and took the Innovation Award among 1,200+ registered teams — recognition for the pod’s levitation concept. It was my first taste of building a physical system where a control margin is measured in millimetres, years before I started measuring them in microseconds and megawatts.