Hyperloop Progress

The Hyperloop is of course one of those ideas that is very uncertain. Will it ever turn into a reality? Maybe?!

But things suddenly seem to be heating up -- this week a picture showed up with 20 or so massive tubes sitting out in the desert, ready to be assembled into a test track. Word is that they want to have a prototype track (3 km?) setup by late 2016 or into 2017. That's coming up fast.

That photo for me, I think, was the inflection point. It's when I went from feeling hopeful but skeptical to feeling even a little bit confident that, yes, this thing is going to happen.

And that's a bit startling, because... well, this is the Hyperloop, and it's a very wild and crazy thing to be real.

I'm trying to imagine this miles-long tube, with something whizzing through it at 500+ miles per hour. It feels so imaginary! Time will tell, I guess.