Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Los Angeles, announced a partnership with the Los Angeles design firm AECOM for help constructing a five-mile prototype track to test the principle of the hyperloop: a transit system that shoots passenger-filled capsules at hundreds of miles an hour over long distances through low-pressure tubes.
AECOM won’t be paid in the same way as on its other jobs, but will instead operate like HTT’s 400 other team members, all of whom are unpaid and work on a part-time basis in exchange for stock in the company while keeping their day jobs, said HTT CEO Dirk Ahlborn in a Business Insider article. He added that HTT secured land for the test track in Quay Valley, Calif.
HTT also announced it signed a partnership with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum, Cologne, Germany.
Born from the mind of Elon Musk, CEO SpaceX and Tesla Motors, the hyperloop got media attention when Musk released a 57-page white paper detailing the idea in August 2013. Though officially unaffiliated with companies planning to build a working model of the hyperloop, Musk and SpaceX are hosting a hyperloop-pod-design competition on their website. Submissions are due before 5 p.m. PDT on Sept. 15, 2015.
