The cost of the hyperloop is equivalent to the sum of every single VC investment (including life sciences, cleantech etc. not just software) made in the last quarter.
There's nowhere near enough money in the VC world to justify the kind of investment it would require. As it happens the biggest VC rounds in recent history have gone to transportation companies like Fisker and Better Place, but even those are in the hundreds of millions rather than the billions something like Hyperloop would require.
Yes and no. Even if you're accelerating at 1 g (~10 m/s), which for a car is pretty darn fast, even if it's not test-pilot fast, you're still looking at 35 seconds to get up to Mach 1 (~350 m/s). That's going to be a distance of 1/2at^2 = ~6km/4mi as the minimum length of track for acceleration, and the same again for deceleration. Add in margins for overrun and you might be looking at 10 miles, which is not something you could just plop down in Mountain View.
Admittedly if you didn't care about human comfort and were going for 3 g (which is apparently the force of the Gravitron thrill ride I remember from my youth) it would be a lot less (2km each way). It would be unpleasant, but not hazardous, and it would certainly show a margin of safety as the stresses of acceleration would be much greater than encountered in ordinary operation.
There's nowhere near enough money in the VC world to justify the kind of investment it would require. As it happens the biggest VC rounds in recent history have gone to transportation companies like Fisker and Better Place, but even those are in the hundreds of millions rather than the billions something like Hyperloop would require.