[escoz]

He does mention luggage would be 1) handled by hyperloop employees 2) removed from the pod all at once to be handled at a different time. Probably more like these pods, which are mostly "blast resistant" http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6918501.html

[XorNot]

The big benefit of being "not a plane" is that your emergency measures can be built around that concept. There's also a big benefit to only moving 30 people at once - terrorism looks for mass casualties or mass hostages. Blowing up a hyperloop is basically like bombing a bus - no one really bothers to try.

The big benefit of hyperloops over planes would all depend on how quickly you could brake those pods and re-pressurize the tube to let people escape. Because that's something you definitely can't do on a plane and it governs most of our thinking about them - if anything happens, you're possibly over an hour from being able to land anywhere and no one is able to get off quickly.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Blowing up a hyperloop is basically like bombing a bus - no one really bothers to try.

Oh, bus-bombing happens; mostly in the middle-east, but it did happen in London once. You can google it.

I also expect that an explosion inside a depressurised pipe would shut the whole thing down in a way that an explosion above a road surface would not.