New Concept Brings Frictionless Space Travel To Earth | tech.li

[polaris93]

http://tech.li/2012/03/evacuated-tube-transport/

Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) is a concept created in the 90s by engineer Daryl Oster that would allow frictionless high speed travel. The main website of the proposed technology asks you to imagine traveling from New

Comments

[whitetail]

I hate being such a pessimist, but though the technology itself is very impressive, this whole system looks to me like it could be very vulnerable to sabotage.

[polaris93]

I don't know what their security specs are, so I can't comment. But it's a good point. Such a system would make an awfully tempting target to terrorists, and insofar as computers are part of the system, hackers could be a real worry.

[galadrion]

*Snort* The concept was certainly created well before the 90s. Heinlein wrote about it in several of his stories, and I don't know that the concept was original to him - just like I don't know that the concepts of waldos or waterbeds were original to him. I do know that the U.S. Patent Office usually credits him with initial publication in those two cases, however, and will not issue patents on those two items on that basis.

As far as how vulnerable the system may be, hackers wouldn't be the serious worry; cyber attacks can be made difficult enough that it wouldn't make the top ten list of worries. Sabotage of motor/generator elements; sabotage of power supply; cracking of the vacuum seal when the system is in use (say, with a crude fertilizer/fuel-oil charge - the Murrah Federal building was considerably less vulnerable, not having to hold a vacuum on a sizable volume of tunnel); cracking of the seals on the cars while in use; damage to the induction rail, possibly inducing enough lateral motion to put a car into the wall (at speeds

[polaris93]

Yes. A lovely but very impractical idea. The idea of somebody wearing a backpack bomb committing a suicide attack within one of those cars while it's traveling in speed, with all the consequences that would bring, is just too ghastly to chance, at least until suicide attacks go out of fashion.

[galadrion]

*Pales* Crud, I wasn't even considering suicide attacks - just putting together ideas I might be willing to use if putting the system out of commission was my goal! (I have the core mercenary attitude - my primary goal is to get out of the other side of the mission ready and able to spend my pay. Suicide is a last-ditch option for when the goal is just that important, and I have a high degree of certainty of my pay being distributed in accordance with my wishes in the event of my death. In other words, not bloody likely, mate!)

That estimate of when this might become deliverable probably needs to be moved out another fifteen years, in that case. Minimum.

[polaris93]

I agree. On the other hand, if we ever settle the Moon, where almost everyone would be a hand-picked scientist or the offspring of one, sabotage wouldn't be so likely. Maybe it would serve well there, or on Mars.