Elon Musk certainly has his fans, but the folks at Hyperloop Transportation Technologies are on a whole other level. They have drawn up plans for the first phase of the project and are looking to break ground on it next year. This won't be the full 400-mile, 800 mph version of the mass transit city which Musk had suggested, but rather a 5-mile test loop located about midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the cities it will theoretically eventually link together.

We call it a test track, but CEO Dirk Ahlborn has very specifically said this isn't what it is. The facility will be used to test station setup, boarding procedure and pod design. That still sounds like a test track to us, but whatever. The pods obviously won't be reaching top speed, as they will require a full 100 miles of track to reach 800 mph, but the company understandably has some other priorities to master before top speed. Now the company just needs the money to do it, so the whole project will depend on being able to raise $100 million from a public offering, slated for the third quarter of this year.