Global game-changing technology

[Drewbert]

Holy crap.

http://www.et3.com/

[JamesD]

You could commute from London to New York in 40 minutes. Or Grimsby to London in about the same...it'd cause havoc with property prices.

[sbe18]

Not sure if the LA to Vegas or the Guangzhou to Macau milk runs could handle selling thousands of G-suits for the incontinent ????

s/

[Clotho]

This is dead before it even gets started. The oil companies will never allow it.

[Rubber Duck]

Yeah, the big problem is that the American's will want to licence the technology to those that actually developed most of it.

[Drewbert]

This is dead before it even gets started. The oil companies will never allow it.

That's covered in the explanation.

[Clotho]

That's covered in the explanation.

By this?

Competition:
Will the oil companies resist ETT?
ETT system construction will require large amounts of plastics. If demand for transportation fuel is reduced, oil companies could modify existing refineries to manufacture plastics at much lower cost, while maintaining profits. Low cost plastic building products will replace the use of wood in building construction. Oil companies realize that oil reserves are limited. When ETT becomes the transportation system of choice; valuable oil resources can be used and recycled for many years instead of being converted into smog by cars. This will have a very beneficial effect on the environment. Oil companies will be seen as protectors of the forests, instead of contributors to pollution. It will also extend the amount of time oil companies may profit from known oil reserves.

Best of luck with that.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/us-oil-new-aramco-idUSTRE7AK1T520111121

ETT is a wonderful idea but it will never be allowed to be significant enough to displace the internal combustion engine.

You know how it works. Cui Bono.

[Avtal]

OK, I'm missing something here. The competitors to ETT are airlines and high-speed rail, not oil companies. The economic question is: how much are people willing to pay to get to their destination more quickly (a question the SST was never able to answer satisfactorily).

The ETT promoters get around the economics question by claiming that the cost of building ETT guideways is 12 times less than the cost of building conventional rail.

Really? They can build a maglev system surrounded by an airtight evacuated tube for 12 times less than conventional railroad tracks? That's where they lost me.

Avtal

[Drewbert]

I guess it's something to do with being a lighter construction and thus easier to pylon mount. Pylon mounting means less (expensive) ground realestate = significant saving. You can span it over roadways without extra bridging costs.

Plus if you need to you got a ready-made pipe shaped continuous billboard. :)

You can install it within the median barrier of many freeways with less width required, and no expensive security fencing to stop plebs wandering onto the tracks. Plus a two-way tube system can be mounted on the same pylon width as a single tube - unlike 2 railway tracks.

[blastfromthepast]

Confusingly similar to ЄТЭ.