Discovering the otherness of different peoples, cultures and countries is one of the utter joys of life. The only issue is that to grind the white sand of Seychelles’s beaches under our feet, to play hide and seek in the shadows of a Moroccan souk, or to invest our taste buds in fried fiori di zucca and agrodolce fish, we first have to travel. And that means suffering hours of queuing up to check-in, delays, dreadful airport food and endless security checks. Once on board, we then discover that we’ll be sharing our row on a long-haul flight with a noisy family. But that could be all in the past. The ET3 open consortium has patented the Evacuated Tube Transport – this is a maglev transportation system that, by moving a series of pressurised capsules through a vacuum environment with minimal air friction, can transport people and cargo at speeds of over 4000mph.

The result? Travelling time from New York to Los Angeles could be reduced to 45 minutes and from New York to Beijing to just two hours.

And that’s not all, because for once the future doesn’t come with a hefty price tag – ET3 claims that the infrastructure for the Evacuated Tube Transport can be built at one-tenth the cost of a high-speed rail and would operate fifty times more efficiently that current trains.

Moreover, the technology already exists – in fact, ET3 says that it has already sold more than a dozen ET3 licences in China alone, and that the Evacuated Tube Transport could be operational in India and China within the next 10 years. Such efficient travel comes with added perks. Commuting to work will be a doddle, and you could even work in a different country, but return home in time for a hot dinner. And if you feel like a Chinese take-away, you could just pop over to China.