Robert Salter has also attracted a lot of attention with his own unique proposals for a Very High Speed Transit (VHST) system. In a 1972 study for the RAND Corporation, Salter set out a continental-scale, deep underground concept that his study succinctly described as:

...electromagnetically levitated and propelled cars in an evacuated tunnel.

This study is especially noteworthy, in view of the role that the RAND Corporation has played over the last 60 years carrying out policy analysis and research at the highest levels for the American military, private industry, and now agencies and organizations in other countries as well. The Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation are drawn from the upper strata of the American corporate, military, academic and high finance sectors.

Salter stressed that his system would be very “conservative” of energy, in that the energy used to accelerate the train, riding on an electromagnetic field the way a surf boarder rides a cresting wave, would be stored in the train as kinetic energy, and then would be returned to the system as the train decelerated. When Salter described his system as a “Very High Speed Transit System” he was not kidding. He mentioned that:

Speeds as high as 14,000 mph have been examined in studies by the Rand Corporation (in an example case of a direct link between Los Angeles and New York requiring 21 minutes transit time). The speeds required will certainly be on the order of thousands of miles per hour on the long-haul links.

Shades of Hermann Kemper or Robert Goddard. Salter’s projected system incorporated elements of the earlier work of both men.

Salter’s system envisioned a network of VHST tubes crisscrossing the country. In his study, he strongly recommended placing the maglev system underground, where the trains would not be subject to interference with other environmental factors such as grade crossings, weather, or other infrastructure. He also advocated using the tunnel rights-of-way for other transportation, communications, industrial and utility systems.

Interestingly, Salter observed that it was not appreciably harder to tunnel at great depth underground than at shallower depths, and that it was therefore:

...possible to consider tunneling under deep water. A tunnel following the great circle route from Seattle to Paris would not require going under any ocean deeps, and in fact, would be under land masses most of the distance; the maximum depth requirement would be generally less than one mile.

Of course, this is a topic also covered later in this book, notably in the parts dealing with the U.S. Navy Rock-Site report – which proposed siting permanent, manned bases at great depth beneath the sea floor, connected to sub-sea-floor tunnel systems potentially extending for hundreds of miles out to sea. . . .