Introduction

Vacuum Tube Train: A 4,000-mph magnetically levitated train could allow you to have lunch ‎in Manhattan and still get to London in time for the theater, despite the 5-hour time ‎difference.‎But supersonic speeds require another critical step: eliminating the air—and therefore air ‎friction—from the train’s path. A vacuum would also save the tunnel from the destructive ‎effects of a sonic boom, which, unchecked, could potentially rip the tunnel apart." "As ‎envisioned by Frankel and Frank Davidson, a former MIT researcher and early member of the ‎first formal English Channel Tunnel study group, sections of neutrally buoyant tunnel ‎submerged 150 to 300 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic, then anchored to the seafloor–‎thereby avoiding the high pressures of the deep ocean. Then air would be pumped out, ‎creating a vacuum, and alternating magnetic pulses would propel a magnetically levitated ‎train capable of speeds up to 4,000 mph across the pond in an hour. As Frankel and Davidson ‎say, it's doable. "We lay pipes and cables across the ocean every day," says Frankel. "The ‎Norwegians recently investigated submerged, floating tunnels for crossing their deep fjords, ‎and were only held back by the costs."-Carl Hoffman ‎