Elon Musk’s hyperloop competition brings new mass-transit technology to life in Southern California

A new mass transit system that sounded like a crazy futuristic idea a few years ago was brought to three-dimensional life in Hawthorne on Sunday, as young engineering teams from around the world tested prototype pod-vehicles in the first Hyperloop competition. The technology, introduced to the world in a research paper written by SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk in 2013 that described the basic principles of thrusting a passenger pod through a vacuum-sealed tube at supersonic speeds, was re-imagined by teams who trekked to Hawthorne with their complex homemade vehicles in tow.

http://www.mercurynews.com