Elon Musk has revealed his plans for the Hyperloop, a new form of high speed transport that sends people and cars in pods through elevated tubes.
Musk says it will cover the distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles in half an hour, so naturally it will have to account for the risk of earthquakes, thermal expansion/contraction, and large scale land movement.
To deal with the problem, the Hyperloop would be built on pylons, with two adjustable lateral dampers, so the tube would not be rigidly fixed to the ground.
That would allow it to absorb the force of movement, and not be shattered by it.
The neutral position of those dampers could be adjusted to deal with changing land position, and the end stations would come with telescoping tubes, to deal with length changes of the entire tube.