Hyperloop proposal: Bad joke or attempt to sabotage California HSR project?

This is an interesting proposal, and I'd be keen to read a constructive (and less 'emotional') breakdown of the possible things that Musk might have to gain from the HSR project being ditched.

However, I think it's worth pointing out that the science appears to be fairly good in the Hyperloop paper. Certainly from my brief read through, it appears plausible, and on top of that I have yet to see an attack on the actual mechanism, with most criticisms focussing on the 'politics' surrounding the idea.

So I'd like to raise a few points to think about on the politics and funding side of things.

1. Elon Musk seems to have a fairly good track record of massively optimising processes and re-inventing manufacturing methods. Tesla factories seem to be very well engineered themselves, but more importantly is SpaceX which has managed to reduce the cost of space travel by very significant amounts, I think it's down to about 25% of what it used to be to re-supply the ISS, and much of this saving comes from improved manufacturing and testing processes for the rockets.

2. Musk also appears to have a good track record of negotiations and dealings with councils, local authorities (or whatever they are called in the US) which would help him a lot with getting building permission. From what I can tell Tesla's network of superchargers will have been mostly a logistics and negotiation problem, rather than a technological one.

I'm not sure if just anyone could do this for $6bn, but if the science is shown to be sound, I'd bet that Musk could have a good attempt for under $10bn, which is still a massive reduction on the $60bn for the HSR project.

Bullet trains, maglev, airplanes were all a joke until they worked.