Elon Musk's future of transport Hyperloop design is coming Aug 12

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX, has been hyping up his upcoming "future of transport" service, what he calls "Hyperloop", a new way to travel long distances much faster than even airlines. He has called it a "cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table" and says distances between east coast and west coast in U.S. could be covered in 30 minutes or less.

Now, in a tweet, he says the initial alpha design will be launched on Aug 12.

Will publish Hyperloop alpha design by Aug 12. Critical feedback for improvements would be much appreciated.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2013

In a latter tweet, he says he will open-source the design and not patent it, in a bid to get as much feedback and adoption as possible:

@schadlu I really hate patents unless critical to company survival. Will publish Hyperloop as open source.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2013

He teased a bit about what Hyperloop will be at the D conference earlier this year: