Billionaire-genius extraordinaire Elon Musk, a.k.a. the dude who wants to colonize Mars, took to Twitter to announce some big news: he says he received “verbal” approval to build the world’s longest tunnel for an insanely fast train connecting Washington, D.C. and New York.
Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017
City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017
Musk’s ultra-high speed train, dubbed the ‘Hyperloop,’ can make the 220 mile trek from New York City to Washington D.C. in just 29 minutes.
Obviously, this high-speed train is not going to be an average locomotive. No, no. This is Elon Musk’s train, so naturally it’s going to be made with some serious sci-fi shit that will surely blow tiny minds all over the place.
First off, the tunnel is going to be a 220-mile tubular vacuum–the longest train tunnel on the planet–and it’s going to be completely suspended in the air and off the ground to ensure weather and natural disasters don’t fuck with this expensive method of transportation.
And when I say expensive, I mean expensive. Bloomberg points out that, considering a new two-mile subway in NYC costs $4.5 billion, this 220-mile Hyperloop will cost about $495 billion, give or take a couple billion dollars.
DAYUM.
Now, while it’s going to be hella convenient to get from city to city in a matter of minutes, it’s going to be a while before any of this actually happens, because nobody really knows what “verbal” approval even means, and Musk still needs to get actual approval from the government before he can start doing anything.
Still a lot of work needed to receive formal approval, but am optimistic that will occur rapidly
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017
So who knows whether this train will be zipping travelers around before Musk’s company Space-X starts dropping passengers off on Mars, but no matter what happens, the “real-life Tony Stark” is living the dream regardless. I mean, just dating Amber Heard is a victory in itself.