Elon Musk Releases Photos Of Hypothetical Hyperloop System

Remember when we posted about startup tycoon, billionaire entrepreneur and progressive transportation guru Elon Musk and his high-speed hyperloop transport system? There's been an update.

On Monday, the 42-year-old Musk, co-founder of Paypal, and current proprietor of electric carmaker Tesla Motors and space exploration firm SpaceX, unveiled a series of hypothetical photos of the transportation model, along with a thorough dissertation on the idea on his blog via Tesla Motors.

As previously reported, the large, neat and comfortable capsules would take riders from NY to LA in half hour, at 1,120 kilometres an hour, no less.

Musk, as always, is humble throughout the proposal, leaving two separate emails for anyone who'd like to provide feedback on the design. He notes, in order for this approximately $6 billion project to come to fruition, the system should ideally be:

• Safer

• Faster

• Lower cost

• More convenient

• Immune to weather

• Sustainably self-powering

• Resistant to Earthquakes

• Not disruptive to those along the route

"Short of figuring out real teleportation, which would of course be awesome (someone please do this), the only option for super-fast travel is to build a tube over or under the ground that contains a special environment," Musk writes.

Musk held a conference call Monday where he declared that, if everything goes as it should, it could take seven to ten years until the first set of passengers ride the hyperloop system.

Have a complete look at Musk's proposal and the photos that accompany it here.