It’s D-day for Hyperloop India. After overcoming several challenges to build its dream OrcaPod and transporting it to the Spacex Hyperloop pod competition, it is all set to race it this weekend. All the races will take place on August 27.

It is indeed a busy weekend at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California as 25 teams from across the world have gathered for the Spacex Hyperloop pod competition to race the pods they have built.

The competition is all about which pod can achieve the maximum speed in the Hyperloop system built by SpaceX, which is approximately one mile in length with a six feet outer diameter.

This is Elon Musk’s idea to create a fifth mode of transportation eliminating air resistance and contact friction to increase the speed of travel up to over 700 km/hr.

Hyperloop India has been working tirelessly for one-and-a-half years since Elon Musk threw open the challenge in 2015 and having made it through several rounds of design reviews and making it to the finals.

And the journey hasn’t been easy. Hyperloop India overcame one challenge after the other to get to California this weekend.

For starters, the time the team had was much lesser than rivals as they had to first finish college and only then get to building the OrcaPod.

Funds were another major challenge. The entire cost of building and transporting the OrcaPod was one crore rupees. Of this, the team managed to raise about Rs 60-70 lakh through corporate and strategic tie ups and the rest of the Rs 20-30 lakh from crowd funding, something which materialized literally a few days before they were to transport it to California on August 7.

Engineering and design challenges were an entirely different story, from having the tweak the design of the nose of the pod, thanks to a vendor messing up the design.

But with everything behind them, the team is now at the SpaceX headquarters. Come this weekend, we will know if Hyperloop India’s dream of creating a fifth mode of transportation for India can be realised.