In one of the stranger articles we’ve come across this week, the concept of the Evacuated Tube Transport system, from design group et3.com, will see 16ft long capsules of humans traveling at around 6,500km/h and around the world in less than six hours.
According to The Creators Project, the Evacuated Tube Transport features a range of different sized capsules that can carry cargo and people and uses maglev (magnetic levitation) tracks to whisk the human (and other) cargo along to their destination from speeds of 550km/h to 6,500km/h. In the video provided below they claim the tube system can be built for a tenth of the cost of a high-speed rail system, and can travel from the US’s East to West Coast in just 45 minutes.
Sounds like completely out of a science-fiction cartoon, but if it worked as it’s proposed it could be an amazing boon for transport and reducing the environmental impact of air and road travel.