If Elon Musk's Hyperloop gets built, it may just be because a crowd-sourced community dedicated to making the futuristic transport project a reality is on the case.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is the newly named and incorporated company currently recruiting those interested in realizing Musk's dream of a next-generation ground transportation system costing $6 billion, which could theoretically reduce the travel time from San Francisco to Los Angeles to just 30 minutes.

Late last month, JumpStartFund, a crowd-powered online incubator, announced the formation of a Hyperloop project led by Dr. Marco Villa, former director of mission operations at SpaceX, and Dr. Patricia Galloway, first woman president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

That initiative was kicked off just a few weeks after Musk, co-founder of SpaceX and Tesla, proposed an ultra-high speed, tube-based transportation system using capsules propelled by electric compressor fans which he dubbed a Hyperloop. Musk, who is not involved with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, put forth his idea as a cheaper, faster alternative to the high-speed rail connection between San Francisco and L.A. currently being built at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.

In just a month since kicking off its Hyperloop project, JumpStartFund has built a lively community and brought a number of impressive partners on board. These include Ansys, a computer-aided systems modeling and simulation firm which has conducted an independent study on the feasibility of the Hyperloop project, GloCal Network Corporation (Glocal), an expert in materials science and procurement, and the UCLA Architecture and Urban Design department's SUPRASTUDIO program, which is investigating the urban planning and traveler experience aspects of the proposed transportation system.

"The Hyperloop is a unique, unprecedented concept, which will need rapid development and evaluation of numerous design concepts for all subsystemsa task greatly facilitated by simulation technology," Dr. Sandeep Sovani, director of automotive and ground transportation industry at Ansys, said in a statement.

"At Ansys, we have already virtually tested an initial concept of the Hyperloop, using our highly mature simulation technology that is used today by major manufacturers of aircraft, rockets, trains, and automobiles. We are excited about the Hyperloop project and are planning to make our software available to the development team at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies."

Impressive talk, but how realistic is the actual building of a transport system which seems like something straight out of science fiction?

Dirk Ahlborn, founder and CEO of JumpStartFund, is confident enough that he's projecting the construction of a working scale model of the Hyperloop in just over a year.

"Right now, we just want input from the community and elsewhere to see if we're missing anything in our planning. There are a lot of people out there who are smarter than us," Ahlborn told PCMag this week.

"Then, the next milestone will be presenting a white paper ... [a]nd by the beginning of 2015, we want to have a scale model."

Musk, as noted, is not involved in the projecthis contribution so far has been to get the ball rolling by exciting people about the possibility of a true paradigm shift in how we think about transportation.

And while the famous entrepreneur and technologist first proposed his Hyperloop as a transport system traversing the two main cities in California, it may be that such a system initially gets built somewhere else entirely.

"We've already been contacted by people from all over the world who are interested in the Hyperloop," Ahlborn said. "Their pitch is, 'If you want to do the first one, why not do it here?' So it's very likely that the first implementation is not going to be between L.A. and San Francisco.

"Our feeling right now is that wherever we can do it, we will do it."

For more, check out PCMag Live from today in the video below, where PCMag's Sascha Segan and special guest Coco Rocha discuss plans for the Hyperloop.

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