5. Hyperloop Pod Competition & Boring Tunnel
The most awaited day has arrived. The one for which a few weeks ago we embarked on a trip full of adventures in the United States.
I still remember that email I received more than half a year ago, and although it predicted a great adventure, thanks to BI-Geek has become an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life.
The day looks to be quite long as we have an appointment at 11:00 at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California to attend the Hyperloop Pod competition and another at 19:00 not far from there, to be the first people (outside the company) to go through the first and only tunnel of The Boring Company to date.
The Hyperloop Pod Competition is a competition created in 2015 by Elon Musk and managed by SpaceX, which brings together students and engineers from around the world with the purpose of accelerating the transportation of the future.
The goal: is to create a working prototype that can be used inside the tunnels of The Boring Company.
Participation is by teams and takes place in several tests throughout the year. The main test takes place on July 22 at the SpaceX facility in Los Angeles.
The test takes place inside a 1250-meter-long tunnel and requires the prototypes to reach the highest possible speed and brake inside the tunnel. The technical difficulty is enormous as the students not only have to develop a self-propelled prototype completely from scratch, but they must get it to work in a tunnel with a vacuum effect.
Although it is an international competition that includes some of the most prestigious universities in the United States, this year’s three finalists come from Europe: Delft Hyperloop (Delft University of Technology) from the Netherlands, EPFLoop (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) from Switzerland and WARR Hyperloop (Technical University of Munich) from Germany.
The Germans managed to win yet another year after achieving a top speed of 467 km/h, much faster than the other teams or their own record set last year (323 km/h).
The event is organized to detail and not only has tents where you can meet the participating teams and their prototypes but also has live music, food trucks, or free refreshments.
We could not miss the tents of Tesla, The Boring Company, or SpaceX where we can see such incredible things as the Dragon Capsule that will carry crew to the International Space Station, a Merlin engine that has 80% of its parts printed in 3D or even the helmet and the seat that astronauts will use for space travel.
We also have the privilege of meeting Gary, the snail that lives inside a pineapple and that is the rival to beat for The Boring Company since so far tunnel boring machines are 14 times slower than a snail.
Elon Musk also attends the event. He appears driving his Model X with his girlfriend Grimes and their 5 children who accompany him during his speech and visits to the finalist teams’ tents.
After the Hyperloop Pod Competition, we meet up with the rest of the people who, like me, were selected by The Boring Company after purchasing one of the 50,000 caps they put on sale.
The Boring Company is perhaps one of Elon Musk’s lesser-known companies as they are dedicated to the task of digging tunnels that connect cities' subways and allow them, in addition to relieving surface traffic, to reach destinations in a much faster way.
They have already won some of the biggest contracts in the industry, such as the tunnel to be built between New York and Washington, San Francisco, and Chicago, among others.
Once there, I am surprised by the fact that I am not only the only Spaniard but also the only European, as the rest come from different parts of the United States, Canada, and Australia.
We are welcomed by Jehn, the operations coordinator of the company, who is in charge of guiding us and telling us every detail, but she warns us that everything we see or hear will be ‘’off the record’’ because the company is still in a startup stage and besides being the first to go through the three-quarters of a mile of tunnel excavated and drive the tunnel boring machine, we will learn some things that have not yet come to public knowledge.
In the facilities outside the tunnel, you can see the molds where they shape the pieces that will form the walls of the tunnel, the workshop where they modify and manufacture the tunnel boring machines that they use in the tunnel, the area where they manufacture and store the bricks with the earth they remove and also the elevator that will introduce the vehicles that will transport passengers into the tunnels.
After a good walk inside the tunnel, we get to see some things that for the moment will remain Top Secret. Then, we left to discover that it has become night and that they have prepared some marshmallows for us to make ourselves with the fire of a flamethrower or a ‘’Not-a-flamethrower’’ as they call it.
We finish the visit and with it the trip, as soon the flight back to Spain awaits us, which will conclude the Boring Tour and one of the most incredible experiences I have lived.
This adventure would not have been possible without the help of BI-Geek, because thanks to them we have been able to make this Boring Tour, the least boring trip possible.
