Yes the future edges ever closer, here it comes now, it’s getting closer… there it goes! And what a lovely tube it has used to get here. A firm in Daytona, America has actually invented the transport we have been pining after for millennia. I didn’t imagine that it would look quite so much like Bioshock’s Rapture setting but hey-ho that gets it bonus points in my books.

You may have watched the video above by now and to be honest I was a little disappointed to see that it was still reliant on a platform actually lifting you into the air (at the pacey speed of 1 foot a second!). I had always imagined the tube of transportation – patent pending – would use anti-gravity and negate the need to be constrained but the pesky floor.

The technology behind this amazing contraption is still pretty good though – the companies website explains:

‘When the piston gear depressurizes the area inside the cylinder above the vacuum elevator cab, the cab is then lifted by higher atmospheric pressure below the cab. The inside of the vacuum elevator cab always remains at the atmospheric pressure. As air pressure is lowered above the cab, the cab is lifted. A valve regulating inflow of air in the upper part of the shaft controls the pneumatic depression and enables descent. When the valve lets in air (at atmospheric pressure) into the low pressure chamber, the vacuum elevator cab will safely lower to the desired level. This valve also controls the speed of the cab.’

Now I just have to get a house more than two stories high… ‘cos I can definitely afford this lift alternative!