Elon Musk's Super-Fast Train Is The Future – But He's Too Busy To Build It

Billionaire inventor Elon Musk laid out plans on Tuesday for a $6bn train — the Hyperloop — that can go from LA to San Francisco in half an hour.

It might look something like this.

Musk laid out the plans in full on the Tesla Motors website.

It will shoot passengers through a tube at twice the speed of the fastest train on earth, using air.

Musk ruled out other plans, including magnets and pneumatic tubes.

The pods would float inside of the tube on 'air skis', like an air hockey puck.

And will go on a direct route from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

That would avoid the planned $70bn-$100bn California high-speed rail project. Musk said the Hyperlink will cost around a tenth of that – with most of the money being spent on buying the land.

It will built on pylons, so it doesn't take up too much space, and they will be pre-fabricated so they can drop into place.

The tubes could also be powered by solar panels, Musk said.

The plans will be open source, which Musk hopes will encourage someone else to build the design. He's too busy designing the rest of the future, like electric cars.

Stephen Lam / Reuters

And building rockets, with SpaceX.

(Though Musk seemed to be getting more and more convinced as he talked to reporters about it on a conference call this afternoon.)

But even billionaire geniuses are not immune from the pain of all-nighters, it seems.

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Pulled all nighter working on Hyperloop (as did others). Hopefully not too many mistakes. Will publish link at 1:30 PDT.

04:48 PM - 12 Aug 2013

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

Pulled all nighter working on Hyperloop (as did others). Hopefully not too many mistakes. Will publish link at 1:30 PDT.

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