In the h+ piece “Hyperloop on Mars?” Leon Vanstone argues that Elon Musk realizes his proposed transportation system costs too much to be feasible on Earth and actually has planned all along to use it on Mars. I doubt that. I think Musk fully intends for the Hyperloop to be built on his home planet, but that doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t actually work better in other far-flung atmospheres. From Vanstone:

There’s certainly a niche market for faster travel between certain locations. For instance, theConcorde supersonic airlinerwould cruise at 1,354 mph, almost twice the speed of the proposed Hyperloop train. Passengers could make it from New York to London in under three hours. But the Concorde project was retired in 2003 because there wasn’t enough of a market to sustain it – and it didn’t have a $6 billion price tag.

In short, it would be tough to get the hyperloop project to work on a national scale. Maybe there’s enough of a market to build it between a few select cities. Some riders might appreciate the environmental advantages of a self-powering mode of transport. But if you want fast and safe travel with minimal carbon footprint, investing hundreds of billions of dollars into developingbiofuels for aircraft makes much more sense to me. Planes are already fast and relatively safe. They can go anywhere with ease, including over oceans. The only real hurdle is making them more renewable, an avenue toward which many are working.

Hyperloop goals further afield?

So why bother with the Hyperloop?

Well, Elon Musk is no idiot, and he certainly has the money to hire some of the best and the brightest. Either he really thinks he can drive the costs down on the Hyperloop project… or perhaps he has a different plan?

The Hyperloop project has its challenges in places that have air. But in places with little air and no fossil fuels, where you can’t fly and there’s little drag, it makes a lot more sense.

Places like Mars.•