Alright, safe for the fact that this may still turn out to be an impossible technology after all for something we're all missing and also for Musk being off by an order of magnitude (which I don't see to be that plausible).
Even if you worst-case Musks plan and best-case the traditional concept * , you end up in about the same cost bracket. Just that in the one case you get incredible space tech and in the other, you get a boring train that isn't even as great as it could be with 20 years old tech.
As for the "Future Work" section - I don't really see how they could explode the budget. Only two points (station design and comparison with traditional Maglev) seem concerned with R&D work - for station design, you're not really looking for any breakthroughs, just packaging and mentioning Maglev seems more like a "just make sure" point that isn't really about physical cost at all.
* This part is highly unlikely - government issued endeavors like a long distance train routes have a pathological tendency to run over budget (a few billion here and there, who's going to notice?!). Of course, the same applies to Musks concept, but starting at an order of magnitude lower means that the kind of petty "I'm going to carve a piece from that cake, too" budget overruns should be well within range.
Even if you worst-case Musks plan and best-case the traditional concept * , you end up in about the same cost bracket. Just that in the one case you get incredible space tech and in the other, you get a boring train that isn't even as great as it could be with 20 years old tech.
As for the "Future Work" section - I don't really see how they could explode the budget. Only two points (station design and comparison with traditional Maglev) seem concerned with R&D work - for station design, you're not really looking for any breakthroughs, just packaging and mentioning Maglev seems more like a "just make sure" point that isn't really about physical cost at all.
* This part is highly unlikely - government issued endeavors like a long distance train routes have a pathological tendency to run over budget (a few billion here and there, who's going to notice?!). Of course, the same applies to Musks concept, but starting at an order of magnitude lower means that the kind of petty "I'm going to carve a piece from that cake, too" budget overruns should be well within range.