Elon Musk reveals details of Hyperloop train plan

New York Times : Last year, Elon Musk—cofounder of PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors—gained attention for his claim that he had an idea for a high-speed railway that would be a fraction of the cost of the California High Speed Rail (HSR) project, which would run between San Francisco and Los Angeles. On 12 July, he published the basic details of the construction of what he has dubbed Hyperloop. The nearly 400-mile (643-km) train system would consist of a low-pressure pneumatic-style tube through which passengers would travel in an enclosed pod. A one-way trip between the two cities would take just 30 minutes. Musk’s proposal focuses mostly on the technical aspects, but suggests that construction costs would be only $6 billion. Because that is less than one-tenth the cost of the HSR, that value is considered unreasonably low by some critics. Although Musk has no plans to construct the project himself—he wants to focus instead on SpaceX and Tesla Motors—he hasn’t ruled out returning to the concept in the future.