Future of the Day: Elon Musk's Hyperloop Idea Will Probably Break Ground in 2016.

Remember the Hyperloop? Elon Musk's idea for vacuum tube-based land travel, capable of reaching speeds over 500 miles per hour? Of course you do. Well, it's coming.

In 2013, Musk released a concept for high-speed, public travel. Saying that he just didn't have time to see it to fruition, he made it public domain so other enterprising people could make it happen.

As Tech Insider reported Aug. 20, it's a little closer to actually happening.

On Thursday, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), a California-based company developing Hyperloop technology, said it would break ground on the futuristic railway in May 2016.

The company also announced that its team has grown to more than 400 members, and it has secured three key partnerships to assist with development of the Hyperloop.

...Earlier this year, HTT announced it had secured the land to build a 5-mile Hyperloop test track just north of Los Angeles in Quay Valley. But it didn't give a clear timeline of when they would begin construction. The company said it plans to have passengers using the system by 2018.

That's right, it's only going to be a test track, to provide a proof of concept for the future of travel. But each step points to an evolution in the field that has not been seen since the dawn of commercial flight.

Here's a rendering of what the track will look like:

The vision for the Hyperloop, of course, is to drastically reduce travel in between cities. Instead of the six-hour car ride it would take to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, a conceivable vacuum tube could take a passenger from city to city in 30 minutes.

So. Cool.