Elon's Doing it Again...

I'm gasping for breath just looking at it.....claustrophobic nightmare....If it stops you'll be broiled in no time....If somebody stops in front of you, you will become as one, in a most horrifying way....otherwise looks cool....

He'll have an easier time getting pigs to fly.

Maybe it's glandular?

Nah, the Skunk Works were 40 years ago.

"Thirty-five minutes later, the passengers pour out of the driverless pod, in Los Angeles, nearly 400 miles away from their launch point..."

for the rest of a 2.5 hour commute home through L.A.

This makes as much sense as package delivery by drone.

Is there really a need for this? That's only 168 people per hour, if you can unload and load the capsules in 10 minutes each.

No way they'll do this for $6 billion either. No way it can cost $20.00 to go 400 miles, either.

Who knows, maybe they can pull it off. They're launching stuff into space. Who'd have thought that was possible 20 years ago?

If he pulls it off, it probably won't be in CA.

They'll still be looking for a bailout on the $65+ billion high speed rail.

I'll contribute some money to either one of these projects, with one stipulation.

...I want to be there when the central planners realize that people don't commute between LA and SF for work; and never will.

Where would you need a single corridor to move people that fast? Maybe D.C. to Boston? $300.00+ for the train and $600.00+ for air fare.

I can't think of anywhere else. You'll certainly never do it for $20.00 a trip!

I don't think there are any two cities that need that kind of flow between them.

They keep saying these are for commuting workers, and if that's the case, they will need plenty of stops between point A and point B. So what they will have is a really expensive subway, that never has enough room between stops to reach full speed.

Did I miss something?

Are they expecting the real job market to turn around or would this be mostly just for those that need to sign up for unemployment?

Well there you have it!!!

All they have to do is put San Francisco's unemployment office in LA, and LA's unemployment office in San Francisco, and the entire project is justified.

All that's left is subsidizing the ticket price, and ridership will be heavy and steady.

Maybe they could fill the tube with a high speed liquid instead of a vacuum and just suck the people into the tube by the Venturi effect.

They could use California wine as the liquid.

runs on just a few solar panels huh? do you have any idea how much power would be consumed pulling (and keeping) a vacuum on a 400 mile long tube?????????

And if it works as good as some of the current transport tube system out today. Oh My!

Thought of before perhaps?

The_400 mph train

Or think really big:

rocket_train_faster_than_sound

"Unfortunately it would run out of fuel in about a minute."

Not to mention what it would do to property values miles around the track with the resulting sonic booms.

what sonic boom? its proposed to run in a partial vacuum, there isn't enough air left to collapse and generate a boom

I can't wait for the door seals to fail and the passengers to arrive asphixiated...

I don't see it ever working at the scale they envision. the pneumatic lifting pads(feet) work amazingly well at 2MPH, how they work at 500 MPH and how easily the leading edge can be disrupted are questions I haven't been able to get answers to. the oxygen supply can be solved with existing tech for enough time to reach help but the part of the dream that just doesn't hold up for me is pulling and holding a vacuum for 100's of miles. sure it's possible but that just explodes the costs. if it only traveled a mile I'd be a believer.

If this were economically feasible (which I doubt), travelling at 760 mph, I would much rather be in an aircraft with a mile of air around me

You mean those electric cars that burst into flame?

Anyone want to venture how much money the Federal Government, (OBAMA) has funded this guy, both with his Energy projects, and his Tesla car??? The truth is out there…Just look for it---(Also ask, how much money he has bundled for the same Administration)----Sorry to be a Grinch, but cronyism is rampant, yet this man gets all the business credit..

You might be right, but why not give understandable details rather than telling us to look for it? (Also cool the nonstandard capitalizations, which are too much like religion.)

And to think, it only took him one night to pound out the concept.

When I read that bit about him being the "pioneer of commercial space flight" I found myself pondering that last time I had been to the moon. It's been a while, and the spaceport is so close to my home, too.

Commercial space flight has changed the world.