ET3 Tube System Wants to Take You From New York to Beijing in 2 Hours

If you're claustrophobic, then travelling on any kind of vehicle for transportation is probably pretty rough. Especially an airplane, where you're sitting right next to a lot of people, in a relatively small space (depending on how you fly, of course). So maybe a giant tube system wouldn't be to your liking. But, if you've got to get somewhere, even somewhere around the world, in a hurry, the ET3 system could be just what the world has been waiting for.

The designers behind the ET3 tube system believe that transportation should be green, affordable, and quick. In their efforts to make this happen, they've managed to dream up "space travel on Earth." The result of that dream is giant tubes that would criss-cross not just over a country, but over the entire globe like a highway system. They say that the "speed in initial ET3 systems is 600km/h (370 mph) for in state trips, and will be developed to 6,500 km/h (4,000 mph) for international travel that will allow passenger or cargo travel from New York to Beijing in 2 hours." The ET3 stands for Evacuated Tube Transport Technologies.

As of right now, the designers are building an immersive 3D Virtual Ride for their tube system, and they have a sign-up site that you can put your name down for a chance to access it, when they release it. Anyone else think that this is the future of transportation?

[via Oobject]