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Elon Musk Says He Has a Green Light To Build a NY-Philly-Baltimore-DC Hyperloop (theverge.com)

Posted by msmash on from the Going-forward dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report:Elon Musk just tweeted that his Boring Company tunnel project has just received "verbal [government] approval" to build a hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. While we work to verify his claim, Musk is continuing to tweet more details about the project. The hyperloop, an ultrafast method of travel first developed by Musk in 2013, would only take 29 minutes to travel between New York City and DC, he claims. And it would feature "up to a dozen or more" access points via elevator in each city. Update: Eric Phillips, press secretary for the New York City mayor, tweeted, "This is news to City Hall," adding "The entirety of what we know about this proposal is what's in Mr. Musk's tweet. That is not how we evaluate projects of any scale."

6 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. Never going to happen by danbert8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I doubt anyone in the government verbally approved a project that is likely in the hundred of billions...

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    Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
    1. Re: Never going to happen by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ^^ This.

      Show me a continuous, buildable line between those three cities and I'll show you more governing bodies (not to mention NIMBY NGOs and regulators) than you had kids your high school class.

  2. Many miles of solid rock. by swell · · Score: 3, Insightful

    New York City is built upon the North Atlantic Plate, a mass of solid rock extending from Canada and whose nearest boundary is in the mid Atlantic. The skyscrapers of the city have their foundations on that rock. It is difficult to imagine how the Boring machine would penetrate that mass. Certainly not at the affordable cost that has been mentioned here.

    While there have been smallish earthquakes in the area, a tunnel through solid rock should be relatively immune to such disturbances. Tunneling through California might be more of a risky venture.

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    ...omphaloskepsis often...
  3. Re:Really? by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Innovation is very little about having completely new ideas. It's about execution. Many people might have fantasised about vacuum tube transport, but Musk is the one to actually get people started on doing it for real. That's the real achievement.

    Completely new ideas are very, very rare.

  4. Re: This sounds like nothing by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Tesla was a good idea because the market wanted it and Musk capitalized on it."

    Absolutely not true. Musk essentially created the successful EV market. Previously electric vehicles were thought of as slow and heavy and ugly. OK for commercial vehicles and for cars for rich environmentalists. And that's it. Very small niches.

    Musk created the perception with the Roadster and then the Model S, that electric cars could be very fast and luxurious. It's almost totally down to him showing the way that nearly every other manufacturer has now gone all out to produce electric cars.

    You may not remember now, but the idea of packing a sports car with lithium-ion laptop batteries was novel when the Tesla Roadster was launched.

  5. DC to NY needs more approvals than going to Mars by jfdavis668 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is easier to get approval to send men to Mars than it does to build a tunnel from DC to NY.