To all of the current and previous years' sponsors and mentors of UCSB Hyperloop,

Hope all of you are doing well. For those of you who had not yet heard, we wanted to share the exciting news that the UCSB Hyperloop team took first place in this year's Hyperloop Levitation Competition at SpaceX! For the levitation competition, teams had to build a pod that would travel  >75 feet on SpaceX's open-air track, and then travel back in the opposite direction to at least the pod's starting position, all while levitating the entire time. Our team of 30+ undergraduate scientists and engineers was able to successfully run the course, and was the only team in the levitation competition that was actually able to successfully pass all of SpaceX's stringent safety and performance requirements in order to be able to race in the event finals. And even amongst the teams competing in SpaceX's high speed vacuum competition, only about 5 or 6 other teams were successful at qualifying their pods for testing on SpaceX's open air track.

Several of us faculty advisers were at SpaceX with the students during test week and competition last week, and it was truly thrilling to see them work through all the hurdles to get themselves into the finals, and to watch all of their test runs as they got their pod to the point where it was able to literally hover above the track and cover the entire course. We couldn't be more proud of this amazing team!

We'd also like to take this opportunity to offer our sincere gratitude to all of you for all of your support over the last 3 years. While the students deserve full credit for this amazing accomplishment, it takes a village to make something like this possible, and it certainly could not have happened without all of the financial resources and mentoring that all of you have provided.

We are still waiting for SpaceX to send us videos and photos from our competition (they were displayed on the big screen during the high speed competition on Sunday) and will share them with you as soon as we have them, but in the meanwhile here are a few photos. Also here’s a link to an article that included an interview with one of our team members:

https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/07/22/speed-thrills-germans-dominate-hyperloop-pod-competition-at-hawthornes-spacex-for-second-year-in-a-row/

Sincerely,

The UCSB Hyperloop advisers

Dear GauchoBoost Supporters,

The faculty advisers for UCSB Hyperloop would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to all of you for your generous support of this outstanding team. We're now in our 3rd year of development of the Hyperloop at UCSB, and the team has grown from 20 engineering undergraduates in the first year to now over 40 students from engineering, computer science, physics, and economics. The experience that the students receive on this project managing a large team and working on an incredibly difficult engineering challenge is unparalleled, and would not be possible without all of your support. Now let's go Break a Pod!

With much appreciation,

Ilan Ben-Yaacov, EE advisor

Tyler Susko, ME advisor

Yoga Isukapalli, CE advisor

Thanks to a generous supporter, the next $5,000 contributed toward our Hyperloop GauchoBoost campaign will be matched.

This means that if you donate now, your contributions impact will instantly be doubled! If you are considering making a gift to our ambitious and dedicated team of students, NOW is the perfect time!

Please help share the word and bring our campaign across the finish line!

Dear Donors and Supporters,

Thank you so much for your support of the UCSB Hyperloop GauchoBoost campaign.  Thanks to your efforts we are over 50% of the way there with 8 days to go.  We are still hopeful of reaching our goal of $20,000 and that has only been possible thanks to YOU!  As a thank you for your patronage we would like to invite you to our design review of our Hyperloop Pod here at UC Santa Barbara.  We will be unveiling our design on Friday, February 23rd, at 1pm.  We know that it can be difficult to make it during the work day but would love to show you what your donations have helped us create.

If you are interested in attending please email Jack Button at button@ucsb.edu to RSVP for the event and to receive more details.  If you are unable to attend, don't worry,  we will be filming highlights of the meeting and posting it to our GauchoBoost page so you can see what you are now a part of!

Thank you again and Go Gauchos!

- UCSB Hyperloop Team