A company in the US is developing a transportation system that could take capsules traveling through airless tubes at 4000mph, meaning that once the infrastructure was built, you could one day get from New York to Beijing in 2 hrs (over the Bering Strait, not across any big oceans). It would be 1/10th the cost of high speed rail, and a ticket would likely be 1/10th the cost of an airline ticket. This would obviously make world travel far more accessible to the masses.
Would you want to be a backpacker/world traveler in a world where it was this easy to get from one place to another? I would. It would take so much hassle out of travel. On the other hand though, it may also take some of the sense of adventure out of it. Overall though it would be a huge benefit to the world economy. What do you fellow Lonely Planeters think?
