My annoyance with the whole affair is that Elon Musk, entrepreneur, has been able to take cutting edge technologies, sprinkle them with money and further their development. I know guys at SpaceX. Before they were at SpaceX they were at competing rocket companies, and before they were at competing rocket companies they were both at NASA. I don't know anybody at Tesla but I used to build electric cars and what Tesla is doing is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

This "hyperloop" thing, though, is weapons-grade WTFery that can be solved by inspection: "We're going to create hard vacuum underneath the California desert and hurl people down it like bank tubes at 1200mph."

My ass you are.

If Elon Musk were Howard Hughes and Hyperloop was the Spruce Goose, this would be the equivalent of a rich recluse saying he was going to make a nuclear-powered flying boat out of leather and whalebone that would carry divisions of troops to Europe via orbital transection. It's so far out there in the land of "it's not that we haven't tried this, it's that we know it's fucking impossible" that I've been annoyed by the press it's getting.

Remember back when the Segway was "ginger?" OMFG greatest thing EVAR #supadope #revolutionary? And then we get a sideways scooter that needs a Celeron to stay vertical?

Yeah, like that, only at 1200mph involving hard vacuum and thousand-mile holes in the desert.