Inside Elon Musk's Superspeed Vision

Hyperloop Would Connect Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – The Smith School’s David A. Kirsch describes Elon Musk as an expert in manipulating time. As the serial entrepreneur and Boring Company founder receives preliminary approval to dig a 10-mile tunnel to build a hyperloop between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, the description seems particularly apt.

"He kind of works in the distant future and in what the French call the ‘futur proche,’ or near future," Kirsch says. "And he moves seamlessly between these two future states, in a way that connects them to each other, making the distant future feel like it’s not so distant, and making the near future feel like an enactment of the distant future."

The idea of a hyperloop certainly seems like the fodder of the distant future — a super high-speed underground transport that would use magnetic levitation technology and an electric motor to connect D.C. and New York City in just 29 minutes or to link D.C. and Baltimore faster than it takes to walk a city block. Of course, the project will undoubtedly encounter unexpected problems along the way, Smith School professor Brent Goldfarb says. Read more at WAMU...