Here's what you get if you win Elon Musk's Hyperloop competition
Mike Nudelman/Business Insider
Elon Musk's Hyperloop competition just got more interesting.
Hyperloop Technologies, a startup working to develop Hyperloop systems, said on Friday that it is one of the sponsors for the SpaceX competition and will be offering up $150,000 in student prizes.
It's a two-part contest where students design and then build a pod prototype for a Hyperloop system.
The first part of the contest is Design Weekend, which will be hosted the last weekend of January at Texas A&M University.
Teams will showcase the Hyperloop pod designs to be judged by a SpaceX engineers and university professors.
Selected teams will then move onto the final phase of the competition where selected participants will have the opportunity to test their pods on a one-mile Hyperloop test track that will be built near the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.
Hyperloop Technologies, a California-based start-up, said that it will choose give $50,000 to some of the winning teams of Design Weekend in an effort to help them build the pods for the final round.
In addition, the start-up said that it will $20,000 to runner-up teams to help with their pods.
More than 100 teams and more than 1,000 students from around the world have been selected to compete in Design Weekend.
However, there's been no word on how many winners will be selected during the Design Weekend.
Musk first published a white paper on the Hyperloop in 2013 and opened it up so that others could use his idea to develop the system. However, Musk himself is not commercially pursuing building the Hyperloop.
Hyperloop Technologies is not associated with SpaceX, however, its head of research and development is a former SpaceX employee.
Late last year, the startup revealed that it would begin construction of its own Hyperloop test track in North Las Vegas, Nevada and said that it aims to complete a full-scale Hyperloop system within the next few years.
Whether or not it will be in the US, though, remains unclear.
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