Column: Tesla Motors' Elon Musk has a wild new idea: The 'Hyperloop'

Tesla Motors CEO and co-founder Elon Musk started off his week on Monday by tweeting an announcement that, from anyone else, would have sounded like a tease for a bad sci-fi movie: “Will publish Hyperloop alpha design by Aug 12. Critical feedback for improvements would be much appreciated.”

If you still think electric cars or rocket ships are cool, you haven’t been keeping up with Musk.

His “hyperloop” is a proposed “really rapid transit system” that he says will be able to get a passenger from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a half-hour.

That would mean travel at 800 miles per hour, or about twice the speed of conventional aircraft.