Swissloop: Rocket-fast on the Horizontal Plane

Swissloop Launches Rocket-Fast Transport Pods

It looks like a bathtub. On rails. Five young men stand around it, under a tent that protects them from the scorching sun on the airfield. Wearing thick red rubber gloves, one of them carefully inserts the battery. The bathtub is, of course not an actual one, but the pod from Swissloop, a student focus team from ETH Zurich working on the idea that people and goods might eventually be transported at supersonic speed. This is achieved by overcoming two key forces that hinder physical movement: rolling resistance and air resistance. The pod, or transport capsule, hovers above the steel rail using magnets and will eventually travel through a tube that is almost a vacuum. This concept, known as Hyperloop, is based on the White Paper “Hyperloop Alpha” from 2013, developed by Elon Musk together with engineers from Tesla and SpaceX.

The battery is wired, and a student brings a bag of croissants; between bites, the checklist is worked through: “"Connect the Harting cable to the AP" — "Yup." "Make sure the BMS is in idle state" — "Check." More students arrive on scooters, keeping a safe distance while joking around—because even the brightest minds still call each other "Bro" and "Dude." Finally, a student at the laptop clicks the crucial button. A whirring sound begins, the tub jerks back a few centimeters, then moves forward, and the noise abruptly stops. The core team huddles for a quick discussion, makes a few adjustments, and within minutes, they’re ready for another try. The familiar whirring sound starts again, but—nothing. Yet, there’s no frustration. They joke, consult, tweak, and move on to the next attempt. The whirring begins, and this time the pod hovers forward silently. A few cheers erupt, followed by more jokes, as the students on scooters head back into the hangar. The Swissloop team still has plenty of work ahead of them.