UCI engineering students place in top 5 in SpaceX competition

UCI’s HyperXite team beat out nearly 100 others to finish fifth in the international Hyperloop Pod Design competition Jan. 29-30 at Texas A&M University. The Hyperloop is a concept first proposed by Elon Musk and SpaceX to design and build extreme high speed, energy-efficient transportation. University students and independent engineering teams competed in event, vying for the chance to build and test their pod design on a Hyperloop track this summer. Roger Rangel, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and HyperXite’s advisor, traveled to Texas with 13 undergraduates. “I was very proud of our students and their professionalism. Their understanding of the requirements and attention to detail paid off.” The teams hosted booth displays, showed videos, gave a 20-minute presentation and took questions from four judges