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comment by StephenBuckley
StephenBuckley  ·  4337 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Travel times across the US from 1800 onwards

I anticipate we could see a small scale much sooner than 2050. Intrastate it seems like it could happen before 2030. Granted, I think that getting support for it (because of how scary it is as an idea) will be the hardest part of getting it "off the ground" so to speak. There are definitely some things I wonder about. For instance, it works because it's air tight, but for the distances involved, that would be difficult to monitor and maintain, and unless I'm wrong, allowing air into the tubes would a) strand some people in them and b) lead to very, very high speed crashes. Fun though that might be, it would be no fun. Then again, it has had some great PR already!