Hundreds of people jostle for a good view as engineers in matching t-shirts load a sleek capsule into what looks like a submarine hatch fixed to the end of a giant tube. Hundreds more have claimed seats in the bleachers, searching for a bit of shade from the Southern California sun, while Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti speaks about witnessing a moment in history.

In an odd juxtaposition, at one end of the mile-long tube, people line up to grab tacos or pizza from a fleet of food trucks. A live band sings out disco covers. Parents entertain kids with table tennis and giant Jenga games. It's a street carnival for techies, here to watch students from all over the world compete in one of the first tests of a technology that some believe could be the future of travel.

Without the fanfare, you might mistake the off-white steel pipe, six feet in diameter, for a sewer project waiting to be buried. You wouldn't know it's actually what Elon Musk, builder of electric cars and rockets, calls the hyperloop.

Half an hour after the capsule's loaded, a vacuum pump has removed nearly all the air inside the tube. The crowds watch on video screens as the capsule shoots forward, reaches highway speeds, then slows to a stop before the track runs out.

A New Way to Move

It's a slow start on a long road, but if realized, it the hyperloop would be a big step in the creation of a tech-driven dream world in which congestion and pollution are memories. Humans whiz around cities in electric, self-driving cars, and, if they want to go farther, hop in the tube to rocket from, say, LA to San Francisco, in a little over half an hour.

"You've got boats, planes, cars, trains," says Shayan Malik, who runs Virginia Tech's hyperloop team. He's one of 800 students who've spent the last week at the SpaceX's Los Angeles headquarters, testing on the track and fine-tuning their designs before the competition. "But this is the next big thing."

Back in 2013, Musk shared his technical thoughts on how a hyperloop could work, and encouraged others to give it a go, since he was already running two companies. A handful of companies formed to make it happen, but Musk couldn't stay away for long.