I'm most surprised by "Also thinking of having an annual student Hyperloop pod racer competition, like Formula SAE".
FSAE teams can run out of a spare room in an engineering dept's basement with a 5- to low-6-figure budget. I'm not intimately familiar with the hyperloop proposal, but hazarding a guess here, I can't really imagine a team putting together a hyperloop pod on less than a million dollar budget, and the facilities needs would be greatly increased as well. Getting any competitors would be really impressive and would require pretty heavy corporate sponsorship.
It's my understanding that the hyperloop test track that's planned for Texas is going to be a small-scale version. This surely means it'll be a short distance but it also likely means that it will be a smaller diameter tube. I think most schools could come up with a 1:3 scale concept with a budget in the realm of 5-figures.
I sort of agree, however most teams also build on the previous year's team. So the first team has a much larger task, but it does get incrementally cheaper and easier. And if there are some initial specs that people can follow, then it's even easier/cheaper.
Many universities participated in the Solar Decathlon housing project, which took up a lot of space (ours was just outside the engineering building): http://www.solardecathlon.gov/
FSAE teams can run out of a spare room in an engineering dept's basement with a 5- to low-6-figure budget. I'm not intimately familiar with the hyperloop proposal, but hazarding a guess here, I can't really imagine a team putting together a hyperloop pod on less than a million dollar budget, and the facilities needs would be greatly increased as well. Getting any competitors would be really impressive and would require pretty heavy corporate sponsorship.