Re: Pure Genius
"I'm crossing my fingers that his next project will be either flying cars...."
If Hyperloop can be made to work, then there won't be much of a market for flying cars, nor for overland passenger aircraft. That could do wonders for reducing emissions (for those that care), and for reducing fossil fuel demand, which has very tangible impacts on energy prices and resource use. I would imagine aircraft makers will soon be busy lobbying against this with all the resources they can muster.
Sadly, here in Britain the government is busy apeing the state of California, with an unfeasibly expensive, unproductive and largely unnecessary high speed rail line which will cost many tens of billions, yet is essentially being designed on the basis of giving the British taxpayer by 2030 a short length of line built to standards that were high tech in 1980. If HS2 were either maglev or Hyperloop I think it would have far more to commend it, but I think that Musk demonstrates the point: Governments cannot and will not innovate, always preferring the obsolete, the expensive, and the vested interest every time.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
