Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's public support for a transport system shooting passengers through tubes at ultra-high speeds has boosted interest in a Longmont company called Inc.

Musk laid out plans Monday for a "Hyperloop" system that would move pods long distances through tubes at more than 700 miles an hour.

The system Musk suggests is a variation of one that Daryl Oster, founder of ET3, has proposed using a hard vacuum and magnetic levitation.

On its website, the Longmont company says its systems could eventually move passengers on international routes at 4,000 mph, cutting the time to travel from New York to Beijing to two hours.

Costs for constructing a tube system would run one-tenth that of a high-speed rail line and a quarter of a highway covering the same distance, the company says.

Amid the interest in Musk's project Monday, CNBC and Bloomberg News did stories referring to ET3. The company, which was founded in 1997, told CNBC that it has investors from around the world.

Although the technology may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel, the support of Musk, who co-founded online-payment service PayPal, high-end electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. and rocket maker SpaceX, adds a higher level of credibility.

Musk, however, argues in a white paper posted on his blog Monday that the hard-vacuum system that ET3 proposes isn't technically feasible.


"All it takes is one leaky seal or a small crack somewhere in the hundreds of miles of tube and the whole system stops working," he said.

Musk instead advocates a low-pressure system that uses a fan to push air pressure at the front of a capsule to the rear. Solar panels on top of the tube and battery packs would make the system self-powering.

Linear electric motors would be needed every 70 miles to keep pods moving at high speed. Lower operating costs would make fares cheaper than taking a train or plane.

Musk suggests the Hyperloop would be best for city pairs within 900 miles, with supersonic flights eventually becoming the preferred technology for longer distances. Oster, by contrast, envisions thousands of miles of tubes stretching around the globe.

Efforts to reach Oster on Monday were unsuccessful.

Oster says on his website that he studied mechanical engineering at Walla Walla College in Washington and received a patent in 1999 for evacuated tube transfer technology, or ET3.

His career includes working as a farmer and a stockbroker, and serving on a local regional planning board.

To promote the technology, Oster is selling low-cost licenses that allow companies and individuals to use the company's intellectual property to bring systems to market.

Aldo Svaldi: 303-954-1410, or