Thursday, September 26, 2013

JumpStartFund Taps SpaceX Vet, Engineering Expert For Hyperloop Effort

There's been a lot of buzz about tech mogul Elon Musks's idea behind "Hyperloop"--a concept to make transit between Los Angeles and San Francisco in only minutes, using 800 mph, aluminum pods. However, Musk's idea has only been that--an idea--with no plans to actually implement the transportation system. Los Angeles-based JumpStartFund wants to change that, and said today that it has tapped two notable engineers to head up crowd-sourcing on its site for the concept. JumpStartFund said it has tapped Dr. Marco Villa, the former Director of Mission Operations at SpaceX, and Dr. Patricia Galloway, who was the first woman President of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), to manage the effort on its site.

JumpStartFund's crowdfunding and crowd development site taps the collective knowledge of its community to vote on and suggest ideas to make new companies a reality. The company said Villa was Director of Mission Operations at SpaceX, and was repsonsible for selection and training of operators, ground segment architecture, mission planning, and the final integration, on-orbit operations and recovery of the Dragon spacecraft. Galloway was on the U.S. National Science Board, appointed by President Bush, among other positions.

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