Politico's and their crony buds and the crap they'll say when selling the goods.

If it was economically viable you wouldn't have to sell it to the government.
Transportation systems that WORK - planes, trains and automobiles (and ships - can't forget shipping) don't run at a loss, hence don't NEED to be run by the gov't.

And I don't believe that solar power angle - not for a second.
There's just NO WAY solar panels can produce THAT MUCH energy.

(Of course I'm often wrong. What the hell do I know?)
I know I'll believe it when I see it. Color me Skeptical.

Remember the giant solar "furnace"-type power plants that turned out to be huge consumers of fossil-fuels because it wasn't good for the furnace to cool down at night!

Ha!

I love technology and science - more than most.
But gawd-damn it I hate boondogglers - always snufflin' their way to the trough.

Who pays for it? If it's privately funded, I'm all for it. If government funded, not so much.

After considering the open illustration of the conveyance and its place of operation, two words immediately popped into old dino's head.
Those two words are "terrorist target."
"Juicy" now occurs to me as an adjective.

I'm not worried about terrorism. If we give in to that, humanity's progress is over. However, I'm wary about the politics involved. There is no doubt in my mind that it will cost two or three times the estimated cost and will take at least twice the time estimated to build it. Then, the touted indestructability issue. Tell me that there will never be a breakdown? Ha! I can hear it now: "How come you're two weeks late for dinner?" "I was caught in a damn Hyperloop breakdown."

Not sure I like the concept of sitting in a tube where I can't see or feel what's going on...if it has windows then maybe...I still prefer to be in the drivers seat...I'll wait for flying cars.

Way to go America! Great inventors and technology can no longer find a home here. Very sad.

Maybe we dont build them in countries that pander to terrorists. Immigration should offer something positive to a country. Accepting intellectually bankrupt and economically bankrupt refugees from statist countries seems to be a stupid thing to do, no matter what.

Maybe we should stop all foreign aid and foreign wars, and build these things here in the USA for a change. Forget helping all these other countries that just get used to handouts anyway. No more welfare here in the USA.

I can see some technical issues with something going that fast, particularly if things go wrong, but thats what engineers work on and fix.

The history of the tube train idea stretches back to 1864, with the Crystal Palace Atmospheric Railway in South London, which was pneumatic. The Hyperloop is just an update of Dr. Robert Goddard's vacuum train concept (1910). Right of way issues are usually the stumbling block for long distance tube transport, which is why most tunnel systems are located underground out of view.

Given the deteriorating state of most developed countries existing infrastructure, I suspect the idea has little chance for adoption. Spending priorities will be on repairing what exists now before chasing futurist rainbows.

Musk is not the only one pursuing this. There is another company called ET3 (Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies) that hopes to create a system based on similar technology, but far faster and far larger (global). As has been mentioned, the tech for this has been around for a decades, but it represents such a radical change that government and existing industries that will be negatively impacted by it (virtually all travel (airline, trucking, busing, long-distance automotive) could be completely wiped out by it as the horseless carriage was by the automobile. I love this idea and would love to see it come to pass. It will shrink the world by many factors, reduce pollution tremendously, and create great shifts in how humans live on the planet. It will virtually eliminate long commutes and globalize, truly, employment. Imagine "commuting" from SF to LA in minutes, or from coast-to-coast one way in less than an hour. These things become possible with ET3. Take a look at their site: http://www.et3.com/

we could always re-invigorate the concorde! -- j
.

Interesting. The top speed is said to be 760 mph, while the typical speed of sound is 768 mph. The speed of sound varies a bit based upon atmospheric density with variables such as temperature, pressure, etc. What if something affected the atmospheric pressure in the tube dropping the effective sound barrier to say, 758 mph? Could get even more interesting.

Sounds good. I'd like to see the tube arrangement before considering it's superiority. This may have the serious disadvantage of significantly more airflow losses than a conventional system. Perhaps made up for by the distributed power generation, but there are a lot of open questions regarding what it really is. I also don't really trust Elon Musk to clearly explain all the costs.

I had a kids book in 1980 saying this would be a technology of the future. I hope I see it in my lifetime.

Fantastic look at the possible future of transportation.

And a great target for terrorists.
Imagine a shoulder mounted missle fired at the tube out in the empty countryside. Not as easy to fix as a couple of rails.