Elon Musk recently claimed that his tunneling startup The Boring Company is working on “a simple precursor Hyperloop” between Austin and San Antonio that will reduce the journey between the two cities to less than 30 minutes.
The Boring Company account shared Musk’s statement and said it “would be excited and honored to build this massive infrastructure project.”
Many of The Boring Company’s announced projects — including tunnel systems in Chicago, Los Angeles, and between New York City and Washington, D.C. — have not materialized. However, it does operate a transportation system combining tunnels and surface routes in Las Vegas, and it recently raised a $3 billion round led by the United Arab Emirates.
Musk’s comments about a potential Austin-San Antonio Hyperloop were actually in reply to an AI-generated video depicting a generic science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds. Musk re-posted the video and declared, “This is the future we shall bring into being”.
Musk’s critics have argued that his vision of the future is apparently inspired by pulp science fiction and comic books; historian Jill Lepore recently told me that he seems to favor sci-fi that “completely defeats and defies all of his political beliefs.”