Texas Monthly writes about a competition hosted at Texas A&M University over the weekend in which teams from around the country compared their designs for a pod that could travel at 760 mph in a tube based on air-hockey technology.
The event was inspired by Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s 2012 proposal for the new form of transportation. Building a network or tubes across the country to allow incredibly fast travel between cities is a ways off, but smart people are working on it and the federal government has signaled interest in funding it.
Now, go ahead and fantasize about how quickly you, your children, and grandchildren might flit about the state:
Austin to Dallas: 25 minutes
Dallas to Houston: 31 minutes
San Antonio to Austin: 10 minutes
El Paso to Houston: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Houston to New Orleans: 46 minutes
Dallas to Oklahoma City: 27 minutes
Austin to Houston: 21 minutes
Makes a 90-minute trip on a potential bullet train feel like an eternity.