I was watching this cool episode of Extreme Engineering on Discovery once...
It was the best episode of EE I've ever seen.
I was staring at the future.
The Translatlantic Tunnel (New York City - London- Paris)
Most of us here must be knowing about this, either because of e-mail forwards, TV shows,
news, etc.
* It would span the atlantic ocean over 5000 kms, submerged inside it.
* There would be vacuum inside the tunnel, practically offering no air resistance.
* The Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) technology trains would be used. They can travel at speeds up to 5,000 mph!! ( about 8000 km/h) (two tracks in the tunnel, up&down)
* There would be practically no resistance to the train, because of vacuum and no
friction since the train actually floats on the track, due to strong magnetic fields.
* At such a high speed of 5000 mph, the time taken to reach London from New York city would be around 54 minutes. This is even lesser than the time required
for most people to reach the airport from their homes. In the train, people would
have dinner on one continent and desserts on the another!!
* The tunnel would be fixed to the ocean floor using around a lakh fastened and strong steel cables, using pressure anchors at the bottom. At some earthquake-prone zones, the cables will be almost 5 miles long. These cables will minimise the effect of strong underwater currents, earthquakes and collisions of sea creatures like huge whales.
* The tunnel will be continously monitored using a state of the art communications and control centre. This will reduce the chances of collisions of trains.
* To reduce the vertigo due to high speed, caused to passengers, there will be rotating chairs with a well-designed mechanism.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
The Future
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2 comments:
ANd by the time that project gets done .. We shall still be discussing about a local train barely touching the 100kmph barrier. And the Bandra-Worli sea link still undergoing completion.And probably the Mumbai Metro plans wouldve got shelved by then.
No re..even i saw tht show but there were so many daunting challenges against the tunnel..the most major being the unsteady transatlantic seabed..extremely prone to earthquakes..and no amount of fibre glass steel reinforcing is gonna withstand the kind of pressures a quake generates.
Its good for a fantasy but dont think its viable..the return on investment just isnt too lucrative..already u have people travelling using jets.. the revival of a modified supersonic jet programme is much more feasible since we have airports already to deal with such situations..
BTW..ever saw the show MYTHBUSTERS on discovery...the show rocksss!
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