hyperloop

The Japanese are already doing small scale tests with live animals...

Cheers

nounces-pod-6328283.php

It's a half-baked version of high-speed transport through evacuated tubes, which was proposed more than a decade or so ago. Scientific American wrote it up, with some speculation about 40 minute trips to any place on earth (i f your tunnels went deep enough).

The obvious propulsion system is linear induction motors (which can also le vitate the passenger capsules). If the speeds are fast enough and the range isn't extravagant, you don't need to provide toilet facilities on board.

Perhaps if the pod had a pointed nose, it could pressurise the thin air above atmospheric so it could exit the tube through simple non-return valves? IOW the pods themselves are the vacuum pump pistons.

Or maybe that's what's intended anyway.

Cheers

I don't think that'd work at hypersonic speeds.

in America perhaps.

The ISP is too low to be useful..