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Conant students win award at Hyperloop contest

Conant senior Nick Pope of Elk Grove Village digs astronomy and exploring our place in the cosmos, but what really drives him is another Space Age idea conceived by millionaire inventor Elon Musk.

Musk and his SpaceX corporation unveiled a vision of a new, high-speed ground transportation system - the Hyperloop - in 2013 that is picking up steam. Essentially, it would shoot people across vast distances at high speeds through a giant network of tubes.

"It sounds like something straight out of science fiction," Pope concedes, "yet, when I came across (Musk's) Hyperloop Alpha document, there was 57 pages showing that it could be made into reality."

The document became so real to Pope that he organized a Hyperloop Club at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates, and students spent last semester researching their designs at the Schaumburg Township Public Library.

They convinced organizers of the first SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition - held last month at Texas A&M University in Austin - to let them enter. They were one of three high school teams to compete - out of 124 teams total - and the only one to win a prize.

"The Hyperloop has the potential to completely revolutionize the way we live, work, and connect with other people," Pope says. "To have the opportunity to help come up with ideas for a brand new transportation system - from the ground floor - is a once in a lifetime chance.

"I think our team really took that to heart," he adds, "when we were working on the project."

The competition was aimed at recruiting student engineers to submit designs for a prototype capsule, or pod, that would carry passengers through these tubes. The winning design team - who now will have the chance to test drive their design on the SpaceX track in June in California - came from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Knowing they were up against some of the top engineering students in the country, the Conant teens chose to enter the subsystem category and focus their presentation on the safety issues the first Hyperloop system from San Francisco to Los Angeles may face.

In making their case to the judges, they described existing technologies that could be used to combat issues related to wildfires, earthquakes and passenger health and safety.

Conant's team won the Subsystem Technical Excellence award, which emphasized the uniqueness of the design, as well as its applicability and economics, level of detail and strength of supporting analysis and tests.

All of which impressed Dan Cates, superintendent of Palatine-Schaumburg High School District 211, who met with the team on Friday.

Nick Pope accepts the Subsystem Technical Excellence award on behalf of the Conant Hyperloop Club at an engineering competition in Austin, Texas. Courtesy of Nick Pope
The Subsystem Technical Excellence Award earned by the Hyperloop Club at Conant High School. Courtesy of Nick Pope
Thomas Moore and Nick Pope present ideas of the Hyperloop Club at Conant High School to a SpaceX engineer. Courtesy of Nick Pope
Hyperloop Club members Thomas Moore, left, Nick Pope and Kyle Nelli present their engineering ideas to Steve Davis, the SpaceX director and head of the competition. Courtesy of Nick Pope
The Hyperloop Club at Conant High School in Hoffman Estates - Jason Logerquist, Tamara Ford, Thomas Moore, Nick Pope, Ashley Sachdeva, Dhruv Patel and Kyle Nelli - won an award at a recent engineering design competition in Austin, Texas Courtesy of Nick Pope
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