Krishnadev Calamur Derision: It's what would usually greet plans for a futuristic transportation system that could take passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes. But when Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor behind PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX, unveils such a plan, the world pays attention (even if it draws skeptics). John Angelillo/UPI /Landov Actor Robert Downey Jr. promotes Iron Man 3 at the New York Stock Exchange on April 30. As far as we know, Musk is not in the Iron Man suit. John Angelillo/UPI /Landov 4. A Hacker Of Processes: Lost amid the media attention is the fact that what Musk wants to do is be disruptive. Kevin Roose, writing in New York magazine, calls the Hyperloop "a political statement aimed squarely at the Establishment." "Musk wants to train normal people to look to private enterprise, not government, for the innovations that will improve their lives, and he wants them to pressure lawmakers to get out of the way of technological progress. That's a far different project than moving people from San Francisco to L.A. in half an hour, but in many ways, it's the greater challenge." Sponsor Message In unveiling his plans for the Hyperloop, Musk called California's $70 billion plan to build a high-speed train between the two cities too expensive and too slow. "How could it be," he wrote, "that the home of Silicon Valley and JPL — doing incredible things like indexing all the world's knowledge and putting rovers on Mars — would build a bullet train that is both one of the most expensive per mile and one of the slowest in the world?" Those things may be true, but for now the Hyperloop lives in Musk's imagination. Still, if it's one thing we know about Musk, he's the man who can move it to the realm of reality.