Charles Bombardier, a Montreal-based innovator, has unveiled a concept for a hypothetical space train called Solar Express that can shuttle passengers and payloads between planets faster than any existing systems.

If ever a reality, Bombardier and his team envision Solar Express travelling at roughly 1 percent the speed of light - about 3,000 kilometres per second (1,864 miles per second) - dropping the travel time between Earth and Mars to less than two days.

"In space, the most expensive portions of travel are the acceleration and deceleration phases. The energy required for those portions is tremendous, especially for something as heavy as a space train. In addition, if you were to start hauling cargo, it would become very expensive," he said on Solar Express' site.