Because in real life (as opposed to, say, Star Trek), aerospace engineering and civil engineering ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league, and ain't even the same flipping sport. [1]
Neither are online payments, electric cars and aerospace engineering similar sports. His core competence seems to be learning new sports very quickly.
He may strike out, he may not. If he fails it's not going to be because his first paper over-reached or because he's unable to gather smart-enough experts with better civeng software.
So far, its not clear that he is attempting anything with Hyperloop other than what he is demonstrated to be very good at: selling ideas.
Its particularly clear, though, that the one thing he isn't trying to sell Hyperloop as yet (and may not be at all) is an actual project/business, as opposed to just a reason to not support CA HSR.
Why the CEO of a company selling currently selling high-end electric cars and working to expand the reach of electric cars in the market might want to sell an alternative to a project designed primarily to reduce automobile road trips (which incidentally reduces the need for automobiles) in California by improving mass transit on both the major intrastate long-distance corridor and the connecting regional/commuter mass transit systems -- either as a real system that doesn't do as much to reduce automobile demand (and even relies on transporting autos to provide door-to-door connectivity) or as a phantom system to derail the existing proposal -- is pretty obvious.
Hyperloop doesn't need to be successful as mass transit -- or even ever have $1 spent toward building it -- to succeed for Musk.
> its not clear that he is attempting anything with Hyperloop other than what he is demonstrated to be very good at: selling ideas.
While selling ideas isn't a bad skill I think you're underselling his ability to execute, somewhat.
Personally, I feel that Musk's "list of biggest risks to Tesla" has many items before "CA HSR". By the time it's built Tesla will either be (at least) a countrywide success, or not.
> While selling ideas isn't a bad skill I think you're underselling his ability to execute, somewhat.
Not my intent; I think SpaceX and Tesla both show Musk can execute in engineering quite well when his energy is behind it (or, equivalently, that he is good at putting his energy in places where he can execute.)
Part of that is the ability to sell ideas to (among others) investors, without which he wouldn't have the ability to execute.
With regard to hyperloop, Musk has been very visibly not putting the kind of intent-to-execute behind it that he has with other endeavors, making his selling ideas skill the most relevant part of his ability to execute, but I certainly did not mean to fail to recognize his ability to execute.
> Personally, I feel that Musk's "list of biggest risks to Tesla" has many items before "CA HSR".
Probably. But tossing out a "I don't plan to build this, but it would be better" diversion is a pretty low-cost way of derailing the threat. It doesn't have to be the biggest or most immediate threat to be worthy of that, from a rational viewpoint.
> By the time it's built Tesla will either be (at least) a countrywide success, or not.
This presumes HSR (including the regional/commuter transit improvements that go with that project, and are some of the earlier investments) has no effect on the market for electric cars until its fully built out. I'd question that assumption.
No, but a lot of the same types of problems surface even in all these different fields, engineering does have some rather uniquely diversified fields, but at their core they still follow ...a lot of... the same laws of physics.
Because in real life (as opposed to, say, Star Trek), aerospace engineering and civil engineering ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league, and ain't even the same flipping sport. [1]
[1] with apologies to Pulp Fiction.