CINCINNATI -- It's the end of the road for Hyperloop UC, a team of University of Cincinnati students competing in a world contest to create a design concept for what could be the future of high-speed transportation.
The Bearcat delegation simply ran out of time Sunday to pass final testing to be approved for the mile-long Hypertube Competition at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. No shame in that though since only three of 29 finalists passed all the stringent tests to qualify for the final rounds.
"Everyone is disappointed right now," said UC team captain Dhaval Shiyani. "There was a lot of hope, but I'm very sad and sorry. I'm still very proud of all we have accomplished. We have learned a lot, but this is a tough problem to solve."
RELATED: UC team in the finals of world contest that could revolutionize high-speed travel
"We tried our best, and we'll keep going," he said.
Those three finalist teams to pass Sunday were from Delft University in the Netherlands, Technical University from Munich, Germany, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hailed as the future fifth form of transit – after planes, trains, boats and cars – Hyperloop is a concept developed by SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk in 2013 to transport 20 to 30 people via a pod propelled through a 12-foot diameter tube using solar energy and traveling at high subsonic speeds.
