ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a number of interesting alternatives exist for improved high-speed travel between distant points on the globe. These include electromagnetic levitation trains in vacuum tubes, laser-powered air-craft, hypersonic flighty suborbital rocket-powered vehicles, and orbital transport. The chapter provides an assessment of one particular technological extension of the global transportation system, the development and commercial implementation of hypersonic flight. The global transportation network has also facilitated major international development programs aimed at alleviation of human misery in the most impoverished parts of the world. The difficulties of surface land vehicles can be overcome by going underground to develop a novel transportation system. Transportation by waterways and by sea has been used extensively all through history. The principal advantage of aquatic and marine transportation is the fact that open water provides a level surface: little or no effort must be expended in carrying the cargo up and down the terrain.
