If everything goes according to plan—and we mean everything—a Hyperloop system will open up for business in 2018. And Elon Musk won't be the one behind it.

In 2013, Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla Motors chief, famously proposed the pneumatic tube transportation system as a way to ferry passengers between cities at speeds of many hundreds of miles per hour—fast enough to travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in a half-hour and change. But Musk himself had no interest in building it, just in putting the idea out into the world and letting someone else to take the reigns.

In recent months, two similar-sounding companies have stepped up to take on the challenge. One, Hyperloop Technologies, has deep-pocketed founders and board members such as Shervin Pishevar of Sherpa Ventures, Peter H. Diamandis of the X Prize foundation, and former Obama re-election campaign chief Jim Messina. It's also got a first round of VC funding and a former SpaceX engineer, Brogan BamBrogan, at the helm.

Then there's Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, where CEO Dirk Ahlborn has taken an entirely different tack: a grassroots way to fund and build the hyperloop. Ahlborn and a team of volunteers are invested in the goal of building a $100 million, five-mile test track that would prove the technology. They also have a location picked out: Quay Valley, the would-be city of the future in California's Central Valley.

"We want the people who believe in this and want it to happen to have a chance to participate in it"

To say a lot has to fall into place for this to work would be an understatement. The group hasn't funded the five-mile test track yet, much less a full-sized hyperloop. And the city it would serve? It hasn't been built yet. But that isn't deterring HTT and Ahlborn from their hyperloop dreams.

Where's the money?

Ahlborn isn't looking to raise Series A funding, that magic round of first venture capital bids, quite yet. Instead, he's trying to build the project through crowdfunding and crowdsourcing.

Ahlborn runs JumpStartFund, a Kickstarter-like site that tries to garner support for high-concept projects like Oculus tours through the International Space Station, HIV & AIDS cure bonds, solar-powered phones, and Korean unification. Really. Like JumpStartFund's other projects, HTT takes its cues from the world of social entrepreneurship, a weird inter-zone between non- and for-profit where idealism meets the need for cold hard cash.

Ahlborn wants to build a community that's excited for the project and get their input during the planning stages. They would help with the design, the technology used, the project funding, budgeting, and more. When Ahlborn is ready to pursue funding at the end of 2015, aiming to bring in $100 million, he'll draw from the same community in what's called a direct public offering.

Unlike an initial public offering, DPOs often draw money into internal shares in a company. He hopes Hyperloop ticketing prices can also help return that investment to internal shareholders. The DPO will be largely solicited through JumpStartFund.

"We will do a public offering toward the end of the year. We want to give our community the opportunity to be a part of it," Ahlborn says. "We want the people who believe in this and want it to happen to have a chance to participate in it."

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It's a model typically used for non-profit ventures and hippie companies. For instance, Ben and Jerry's used the model when it was just two deadheads hoping to make ice cream. Or there's the People's Community Market in West Oakland, which solicited community funds to open a healthy food oriented grocery store and community space.

Ahlborn says he has a hungry group of stakeholders at the ready who are willing to put in time and resources for the promise of those internal shares. Included among them are investor Douglas Ellenoff of Ellenoff, Grossman & Schole LLP, a business law firm. Ellenoff works as a securities attorney and partner at the firm, and has done some consultation for Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. He explains the unusual funding model is meant to bring as many people as possible into the fold, without the need for brokers and investment firms in the middle.

"By doing the DPO, you can go to both rich people and people of lesser means," Ellenoff says. "It's bold and it's a statement of confidence."

Only once the company reaches its direct public offering that it will search out other investors, funders, and venture capital, to work alongside the crowdfunded internal shares. They'll need to get that $100 million to build the Hyperloop by the projected goal of 2018.

What about the city?

Building the transportation system itself is just half the battle. Remember that city of the future mentioned earlier? Well, there is no Quay Valley. Not yet, anyway.

Quay Valley was a brand new city proposed in 2008. It would sit on a 20-square-mile stretch of land on the I-5 corridor roughly at the midway point between San Francisco and Los Angeles, where there's not a whole lot of anything. Its founder, Quay Hays, says he wants to have a walkable, organic community powered by renewable energy—a sort of ecotopia where Silicon Valley-types could make their exodus to quieter pastures as housing prices skyrocket.

The new town didn't get off the ground before the economic crisis sent the idea into hibernation for a few years. When it was ready to emerge, the parent company, GROW Holdings, had to fight for the water rights to the parcel of land they'd purchased, which only was (successfully) resolved last April.

There is no Quay Valley. Not yet, anyway

Hays still believes in his dream, even though today there's not much of anything in Quay Valley yet aside from a few structures built as a test las. In 2016, he says, his group will begin to work on the infrastructure of the intentional community, like roads, walkways, and public commons. In 2017, construction on the buildings will start. There are 25,000 planned housing units, with hopes for an initial population of around 75,000.

They're hoping to attract businesses, educational institutions, museums, and more to bolster employment in the area so that it doesn't become just a bedroom community for folks working in Silicon Valley 200 miles away. He hopes to attract server farms, the clean tech industry, small scale manufacturing, and other businesses that align with the eco-tech-topia ethos of the not-quite-yet community. Hays says Quay Valley is also likely to be the future home of the California Institute of Sustainability and Innovation, a new satellite campus of Fresno State University which was trademarked by GROW in 2009, though details online are scant. (The university is part of the Quay Valley planning team.)

What's next?

A techno-utopian community that doesn't yet exist seems like the perfect match for a techno-utopian transporation system that doesn't yet exist. "When we heard about the Hyperloop, it was interesting to us," Hays says. "Then when we heard there might be a intra-community use for it with HTT, we set up talks with them."

A five-mile length of track that serves as a public transporation system for the new town probably doesn't need the proposed 760 mph speeds that a hyperloop could potentially travel. But even at 200 mph or so, it's still a speedy means to get around. "We're trying to build something that people will use every single day several times a day," Ahlborn says.

Like we said, a lot has to go right. Another economic shift could put GROW Holdings and Quay Valley into a holding pattern. Money needs to be raised for both the Hyperloop and its city. But Ahlborn's says he's undaunted, and his volunteer army is 200 deep—all people invested in seeing a big idea come to life. If a hyperloop really is built by 2018, alongside a growing Quay Valley, it will be a vibrant test track to the future. "We'll be able to get our money back instead of putting it somewhere in the desert where it will only get rusty," Ahlborn says.

Now they just need the money. And the community. And the loop itself. And then the riders.

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John Wenz
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John Wenz is a Popular Mechanics writer and space obsessive based in Philadelphia. He tweets @johnwenz.