MIT Students Win Elon Musk’s SpaceX Hyperloop Design Contest

Student engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have won a competition to design a Hyperloop system to transport people through high-speed vacuum tubes.

The Boston-based MIT Hyperloop Team beat 160 student teams from 16 countries in SpaceX’s first pod design competition, which was held at Texas A&M University on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.

The futuristic Hyperloop transportation system is championed by Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk. The new technology would move passengers through vacuum tubes at speeds up to 750 mph using solar power.

Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands finished second in the contest, with the University of Wisconsin third, Virginia Tech fourth and the University of California, Irvine, fifth, according to the AP.