Hyperloop Mockup

By Camilo Sanchez – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43739482

Earlier today entrepreneur Elon Musk tweeted that he received “verbal government approval” to build an underground one tube train transit network. In a few tweets this morning he detailed that the system would connect passengers to city centers in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC. If the underground One tube train transit network were actually built, it would become the longest tunnel in the world. Such a project would combine two of Musk’s interests in the underground tunnels he’s currently digging with The Boring Company and the fast-moving rail system known as the One tube Hyperloop train. One of his later tweets promised that passengers would be to travel between New York and DC in just under a 1/2 hour.

Musk did not specify which agency had given its verbal approval apparently came from the White House, but later an administration spokesman has told Bloomberg it came from the Trump administration. Apparently, White House officials and Musk have had “promising conversations to date,” and it was made clear that the President was committed to transformational infrastructure projects. With that said it sounds like there is still a great deal of work ahead before so called verbal approval could be transformed to official approval in these days of government gridlock. On the other-hand it would seem like such an infrastructure project would be high on the Trump administrations priority list, which was recently reinforced by the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who perhaps not so coincidently mentioned building an “underground high-speed rail system” last month in a Vanity Fair story about the group’s efforts.

While they wait for approval the Boring Company has already broken ground near SpaceX HQ in California on some trial digging. The Hyperloop underwent its first public test last summer, successfully achieving the Phase 1 target speed of 70mph, using magnetic levitation. The company hopes to hit speeds of 250 mph in the next trail phase of testing in the track they have set up in the Nevada desert.