[izzydata]

I find it quite surprising that they only fired half and not all of them. How can this conceptual vacuum tube pod system that has been shown to be incredibly inefficient and prohibitively expensive still have some kind of business model?

To be honest I thought this whole idea got scrapped 5+ years ago.

[bluGill]

They have got congress interested. It works just well enough to get them interested and funded. That it will always be prohibitively expensive is something they can hide.

Congress wants to fund the next big thing and make the US the best in the world. They don't want to hear that train technology is an almost completely solved problem and so we cannot get ahead of the rest of the world - the only thing left is buy and build the same thing as everyone else. Congress hates that idea.

[microtherion]

Musk's involvement appeared to have had some undercurrent of sabotaging investment in mass transit by generating a constant stream of overhyped futuristic schemes. Promise 'em monorails in the future so you can keep selling 'em Teslas now.

[yread]

You don't need business models when you have a reality distortion field and 450M investment

[dr_dshiv]

Where has it been shown to be incredibly inefficient and prohibitively expensive? I’d love to read about it.

[questiondev]

this idea will one day return, it’s never gone for good. just delayed

[kevin_thibedeau]

It's a bootstrap for Mars construction. Hence the undersized tunnels. Mass transit is just a cover story.

[anchpop]

TFA has nothing to do with the boring company or underground tunnels

[sslayer]

Underground habitats