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The 1950 prediction of a vacuum tube train a little closer?

The Japanese started dreaming of "high speed trains" in the 1940's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%8Dkaid%C5%8D_Shinkansen

Their first "bullet trains" were started in 1959 and finished in 1964. A bullet train in those days was 130 mph (210 km/h).

I guess the world is a lot more complicated these days.

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Also from the design document: Another extreme is the approach, advocated by Rand and ET3, of drawing a hard or near hard vacuum in the tube and then using an electromagnetic suspension. The problem with this approach is that it is incredibly hard to maintain a near vacuum in a room, let alone 700 miles (round trip) of large tube with dozens of station gateways and thousands of pods entering and exiting every day. All it takes is one leaky seal or a small crack somewhere in the hundreds of miles of tube and the whole system stops working.

Right. The Hyperloop's technical innovations are twofold: a tube with low-pressure that can be maintained with industrial-grade pumps rather than vacuum, and an air bearing to support the vehicle rather than maglev.

My first thought is what happens if the airflow in the air bearings is disrupted? Could the turbulence lead to a crash?

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