Except much scarier.

Accelerating from a standing stop to 5,000 miles per hour would only take about 4 minutes if you limit the acceleration to 1 gravity. So basically for 4 minutes at the beginning and end of the trip you'd feel like you were lying on your back.

How long would it be till the tunnel collapses. Some other country would have to build it, and keep it safe.

Maintaining that vacuum would require enormous amounts of energy. Plus, the risk of a catastrophic accident if the tube sprung a leak would be immense.

Interesting science fiction, though. We can easily create a vacuum. There are very good reasons why this has not been done already.

-Laelth

The technology is actually so basic that the idea has been around for more than 100 years. And it's not even so much the cost of the vacuum, but the cost of drilling the tunnel and creating the mag-lev line. The estimated cost of a NY to LA line back in the '70s was $1 trillion dollars, or $3.6 trillion adjusted for inflation. Probably a lot less now, since we're better at drilling and tunneling, but it would still be a metric shitload of money.

As an aside, hey, I just hit my 24,000th post.

Plus, how to properly put on the diapers for when you shit your pants. (We don't want any free floating feces, do we?)

I'd rather ride a space elevator. (But don't let me get started about terrorist targets with that fixed target.)