The CU Hyperloop team is one of 12 groups in
the world competing to build a machine that will
chew through nearly 100 feet of earth to create a
tunnel as fast as possible.
The Not-A-Boring competition is hosted by The
Boring Company, founded by Elon Musk with the
goal of building tunnel infrastructure that allows
for rapid transit like high-speed trains.
The contest is cloaked in secrecy, and team
project manager Wagner, who graduated from
CU Boulder in May, is allowed to say only that the
competition is happening soon.
The goal — to dig a tunnel and be able to drive
a remote-controlled car through it — sounds
deceptively simple.
How do you dig through solid earth? How are
you going to power the machine? Where’s the
dirt going to go? How do you keep the tunnel
from collapsing?
CU Hyperloop team members have spent more
than a year trying to answer those questions and
are now in the process of building a more than
2,000-pound, 15-foot-long machine to put their
answers to the test.
Beyond the experience of competing in an
international competition sponsored by Musk
— and the acclaim that brings — joining the
CU Hyperloop team also gives students high-
stakes, hands-on experience they don’t get in
the classroom.
“The buck stops with us, so if one of us screws
up, the whole team has to come around them
and figure out how to fix it,” Wagner said. “It’s
totally different from a classroom setting,
where a teacher is either looking over your