A closer look
Shooting a pod at Mach speeds through a steel pipe in the desert turns basic thermodynamics into a deadly obstacle. The now-dismantled DevLoop facility in Nevada had to constantly battle thermal expansion, where the blazing sun would cause the metal tubes to grow and warp. Engineers used continuously monitored laser alignment systems and custom slip joints to allow the massive steel segments to slide past one another. If the tubes were misaligned by even a few millimeters, the low-pressure vacuum would fail, or worse, the pod would hit a microscopic steel ridge and instantly disintegrate.
