Dr. Anita Sengupta: Virgin Hyperloop One [live]

(recorded live) Speeding through tubes at nearly the speed of sound; a former NASA systems engineer is helping make the future of transportation a reality.

When Elon Musk first proposed the Hyperloop in 2012, most people fell into two camps: enthusiastic or skeptical. Imagine if you could accelerate pods to twice the speed of an airplane, using a technology that was immune to weather and collision free, with low power consumption, using near-vacuum-filled tubes and linear motors. The idea itself is actually more than two hundred years old, but it never made headway until Elon’s announcement, and since then, several startups have run with the idea. And contrary to common wisdom, he has no direct involvement in any of them.

One of these companies, headquartered in Downtown LA, attracted a huge investment from Richard Branson recently. They’re now called Virgin Hyperloop One, and they were the first to demonstrate the concept, on a test track near Las Vegas. And this week we’re talking with their Senior VP of Systems Engineering.

Dr. Anita Sengupta started her career working for NASA, on pioneering space projects like the Mars Rover and the Cold Atom Laboratory. And then, Hyperloop One tapped her to coordinate all of the pieces for their very complex engineering puzzle. This episode was recorded live at the ArtCenter College of Design’s BOLD conference.

I was curious to hear the variety of challenges she’s up against as they bring a once crazy idea to a full production system. I also wanted to learn what it was like to go from a very large, governmental organization like NASA, to a startup environment like Hyperloop. And we talk about what the innovator of the future might look like, and what we all should do to prepare.

For more information, photos, and links, check out the show notes at http://makeitinla.org/hyperloop.