[gji]

Regarding your first point: from my experience (working on physics experiments that depend on vacuum <10^-11 torr), the construction of the knife edge that seals against the gasket is fairly important - any chips or imperfections and the part is garbage. Also do people really use stainless for gaskets? I've always used (and seen other people use) copper, stainless sounds like a huge pain to torque down on.

I doubt UHV experience is relevant here though - at 100 torr you can probably get away with simple o-ring seals. And outgassing doesn't matter: even isopropanol has a vapor pressure of only 40 torr.

Edit: The hyperloop design is at ~1 torr, not 100. Still, I'd imagine outgassing is not a huge issue.