Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has revealed his Hyperloop transportation system concept, a sort of pneumatic tube that promises to deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 35 minutes at speeds up to 760 mph.

While listening to the technical explanation of how the system would work as discussed by the financial media’s talking heads, I was stuck by the comment about how the machine was supposed to be floating on air “kind of like an air-hockey table where the air comes out of the puck.”

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