Before spending tens of billions of dollars on high speed rail, which is only a baby step forward, why not give NASA $100 million to try out evacuated tube tran

Before spending tens of billions of dollars on high speed rail, which is only a baby step forward, why not give NASA $100 million to try out evacuated tube transportation? I believe ET3 (http://et3.com/ http://et3.com/) is planning to break ground for a proof of concept line in 2015.