I love Ray Kurzweil, but let’s say that he is a glass-half-full kind of futurist. Naturally, he’s drawn to the promise of Evacuated Tube Transport Technolgy (ET3), car-sized passenger capsules that travel via tubes. Space travel here on Earth! Someday, perhaps. From Kurzweil:

“The Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) system (U.S. Patent 5950543, assigned to ET3.com, Inc.) would take passengers from New York to Beijing in just two hours. Advocates of Evacuated Tube Transport (ETT) claim it is silent, cheaper than planes, trains, or cars and faster than jets.

How it would work: put a superconducting maglev train in evacuated tubes, then accelerate using linear electric motors until the design velocity is attained. Passive superconductors allow the capsules to float in the tube, while eddy currents induced in conducting materials drive the capsules. Efficiency of such a system would be high, as the electric energy required to accelerate a capsule could largely be recaptured as it slows.”

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ET3 promotional video: