Absolutely fricking fascinating.
-XC
I don't know! It would be pretty cool if this got going at even a local level any time soon!
This part of the future makes me feel very claustrophobic. I honestly don't know if I could ever step foot into one of those capsules, and I don't have a diagnosed phobia* or anything. It's just... jeepers. That said, when I think of the dangers given the parameters set out on the page (e.g. NY <=> LA in 45 mins), one would be travelers suffering acute medical emergencies, such as a heart attack, en route. And then I compare same to air travel, which takes far longer than 45 minutes - even to make an emergency landing - and can't find any reason for this NOT to happen, given proper safety measures, etc. Do you anticipate we'll see this even at a small scale before, say, 2050? * and are phobias diagnosed? Never thought of it that way before. NHS suggests phobias can indeed be formally diagnosed.
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!
Well, with video skype you can kind of avoid the trip alltogether for most things.... I guess the other thing to consider is: what can you do on the journey. With in-air wifi the airline trip has dropped to only a few hours of non-work time. So in some ways the 8+ hours to go to the other coast only has a "cost" of two or three. -XC
Seems as if we'll take a similar path to space travel, given much of the talk of the past few weeks. Simulation and simulacra as opposed to The Real Thing. I think we're only at the beginning of the age of "authentic experience", and wonder what that'll mean for the value of same place/same time interaction.
Cool post. My hope is that the next leap is not in long distance travel but in commuter travel. I would like to be able to go from Detroit to Chicago in 3 hours via high-speed rail. Raleigh to Charlotte in 1 hour would be cool from where I sit.
While it is great that we have access to fast and cheap transport that allows us to travel to places that our great great grandparents could only dream of, it also makes me feel a little sad that I will never undertake a journey of such truly epic proportion. I would love to go back 200 years and travel across the states without the speed, safety, comfort and convenience of modern travel (assuming I was wealthy with a lot of time on my hands).
You should read Montaigne's travel journal from the 1600's - he did a 17 month loop of Europe and wrote about it. It's probably in your library, it has a famous translation by Frame and was a big seller in the 80's. -XC PS - If you want an epic journey, hike the App trail.
Same here, I would love to backpack across Europe at some point in my life, using only my feet and occasionally public transportation.