In August, Silicon Valley darling Elon Musk—CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors—unveiled his concept for the Hyperloop, a high-speed system of 28-person pods that would shoot through low-pressure tubes on air bearings. Musk’s published proposal calls for the Hyperloop to link San Francisco and Los Angeles; pods would blast down the I-5 corridor at 760 mph, reducing the journey from five and a half hours by car to just 35 minutes. 

Musk envisions the system connecting cities less than 900 miles apart—beyond that, he writes, “I suspect supersonic air travel ends up being faster and cheaper.” Using the 900-mile limit, we calculated other areas that could be connected by the Hyperloop. Theoretically, pairs such as Memphis and Chicago or Salt Lake City and Seattle could bridge the distance of a morning commute, blending economies and cultures, and reshaping the continent.