"But, doctor, you are surely joking when you speak of dropping passengers through the tunnel?"
"I was never more serious in all my life."
"Still, you must admit that a man could not possibly breathe while he was falling at this frightful speed; and by the time he had fallen his eight thousand miles, and reached the opposite side of the earth, he would find himself—dead, so to speak."
"Not at all. You forget that every man upon this earth is continually moving at the rate of about sixty thousand miles an hour, this being the speed at which the earth revolves about the sun, and yet we find means to breathe comfortably."
"Yes, because our air travels with us."
"So it would with my passengers, for I should put them in a closed car, with plenty of air stored up for the trip."
"Even so, there is another point which I think you have not sufficiently considered. We have just spoken of the resistance of the air in the tube. At the velocity which your car would attain, the resistance of this air would be something enormous, and would suffice to stop the car long before it reached its destination."
