Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk was born with a name that sounds like a comic book villain and the wide-ranging genius of one, too. We should all be happy that he chose to aim his talents toward PayPal and SpaceX instead of hijacking the on-board navigation systems of all our cars and threatening to steer everyone toward one catastrophic crash unless we give him America's entire reserve of platinum. Yes, he is using his powers for good—at least for now—and part of that good involves his plan to build a rapid land transportation system dubbed the Hyperloop, which could theoretically zip passengers from Los Angeles to the Bay Area in a mind-boggling 35 minutes.

The Hyperloop idea has just been a dream until recently, when National Geographic announced that Musk and another entrepreneur had finalized plans to break ground on the first stretch of track along Interstate 5 in California. The project is obviously still in its infancy, but this is the first step toward turning Musk's futuristic and potentially-dangerous tubular bullet train idea into a reality.

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