Holy Crap, Futurama’s Tube Transports Will Soon Be Real
Futurama originally hit boob tubes in 1999 and was set in the year 2999, but the tubes you see people and other species flying around in could be a reality sooner that we think.
Evacuated Tube Transport is an airless, frictionless form of transportation which is safer, cheaper and quieter than trains or airplanes.
Six-person capsules travel in the tubes and can reach a maximum speed of 6,500 km/h. They can be built for 1/10th the cost of a high speed rail and 1/4th the cost of a freeway. A tube can travel from New York to Los Angeles in 45 minutes, to Beijing in two hours, and make a round-the-world trip in just six hours.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard of these tubes. This video is from April 2009, so let’s just hope it doesn’t take until the 30th Century for these things to become a reality.
Sources: ET3.com, Discovery News via Reddit