One of the most annoying things while travelling from one part of the world to the other is undoubtedly the required time. To overcome the timing issue, earlier we have seen researchers making hypersonic aircrafts that could travel from New York to London in 1 hour. Recently, a company named Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies (ET3) has planned to make a high-speed tube train that could take us from New York (NY) to Los Angeles (LA) in 45 minutes!
Each Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) high-speed transportation tube would be 16 feet long, 5 feet in diameter and would weigh 183 kg (400 lbs). In each tube, a maximum number of 6 people or a maximum weight of 367 kg (800 lbs) would be able to fit. There will be a compartment in each tube where travelers would be able to keep their luggage.
The ETT will use magnetic levitation and it would be able to travel at speeds of up to 4,000 mph or 6,500 km/h. There would be no food or waiting service, like aviation, in the tube, but there would be TV for travelers to enjoy the ride.
Usually, a plane takes around 5 hours to travel from New York to Los Angeles. But as ETT would be airless and frictionless, so travelers would be able to cross that distance in 45 minutes just by paying $100 only. That’s not all. Travelers would be able to reach from New York to Beijing in two hours!
According to ET3, with automated passive switching, a pair of ET3 tubes would be able to exceed the capacity of a 32 lane freeway. Besides, ET3 can be built for 1/10th the cost of High Speed Rail, or 1/4th the cost of a freeway. The tube would cost about $2 million/mile. That means it would take around $5.5billion to make a tube spanning from NY to LA.
ET3 has mentioned, if ETT high-speed transportation tubes are really made in future, then it would be initially used to transport cargo, not people.