When Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk revealed the plans for his futuristic Hyperloop transportation system, he said he didn’t have time to build it himself. Of course it didn’t take much convincing to get him agree to at least build the first prototype. Now there’s a crowd-funding effort underway to get the actual thing built, and two of the world’s top engineers are backing it.
Engineers sign up to build Musk’s Hyperloop
David Knowles of the New York Daily News reports a couple of the world’s top engineers have signed up to lend their expertise for the Hyperloop to be built. One is Dr. Marco Villa, who once headed up mission operations at Musk’s other other other (besides Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SolarCityCorp (NASDAQ:SCTY) endeavor, SpaceX. The other is Dr. Patricia Galloway, who was the American Society of Civil Engineers’ first female president.
Both of them have said they will manage and lead development of the Hyperloop, which could one day become a popular, quick way to travel between San Francisco to Los Angeles. According to Musk, the transportation system can make that trip in just half an hour.
JumpStartFund handles Hyperloop crowd-funding
The crowd-funding site JumpStartFund is taking care of the details for crowd-funding the Hyperloop. The site released a statement from the two engineers.
“There does not seem to be any technical issues on this project that we can’t solve,” Villa said in the statement released by JumpStartFund. “Even if we do not know right away, we will figure it out.”
JumpStartFund’s founder and CEO told the Daily News that they are planning to begin running scale tests of Musk’s Hyperloop by the end of next year. At this point over 20,000 people have gone to the crowd-funding site to look at the Hyperloop funding plans. The site hopes that in addition to offering money, more experts will come forward to offer their abilities in building the system.
Musk developed it after being unimpressed with the plans for a high-speed rail running between Los Angeles and California. The plans face numerous legal challenges and keep getting more and more expensive. At this point the cost for the rail is $42 billion, but the Hyperloop is expected to cost closer to $10 billion.
