> So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading re

> So what about SpaceX and Tesla? To me those indicate that Musk must be a pretty decent engineer, and perhaps more importantly, must be excellent at leading real hardcore engineers in complex domains. Well, then, how do you explain the following? 1- Thermal expansion and contraction issues diametrically opposed to what happens in the real world 2- Proposing that an entire 300 or 400 mile tube be a single welded solid tube with no turns or incremental expansion gaps. Really? In the real world? Along the 5 freeway? 3- Grotesquely underestimating seismic effects 4- Estimating a cost at least one order of magnitude lower than what it will actually be in the real world 5- Not taking a drive down the Golden State highway before proposing that columns be installed every 100 feet to support the tubes. No, really, go on Google Maps and take the drive yourself. Start here: http://goo.gl/maps/zPPKa http://goo.gl/maps/zPPKa I think these guys thought it would be a cool and possibly marketing-worthy thing to put out something like this. They put a little time into it here and there and, per the paper, a short amount of full time effort. They were probably so focused on the tube transport physics that they neglected to connect to the real world. At some level I don't fault them for putting this out. They are obviously far more focused on building cars and rockets and that's exactly how it should be. If what came out was a fully engineered project it would have meant that they took valuable time away from Tesla and SpaceX to apply on this thing. That could border on being a breach of fiduciary duty. At this point I am going to mark this off as science fiction simply because I am now convinced it cannot be built outside of a super-expensive short range test installation.