Boreing problem

[Daniel Cougar]

I noticed two slight complications on the map display Jack was showing Galore. One was the fact that they'll be drilling a longer route than needed, the second was that they'll be drilling right though an active volcanic region.

First the route, take some string and a roll of tape with you to the library and find their globe. If you tape one end to France and pull the string taut to, say, NY, you'll notice it cuts up near the arctic circle. This is a Great Circle Route and is the shortest route between two points on a globe.

The second is moderated by solving the first, but there is still seafloor spreading north of Iceland. The solution it to surface in Iceland and cross the spreading section someplace where a crack in the roadway won't allow a few million tons of water under several tons of force to get in the way of your trains. That would be bad.

So, did I get the consulting job?

[Katra]

So how does one ventilate a tunnel that's under two miles or more of seawater? Even surfacing in Iceland. The best route would still leave several hundred mile sections underwater. (I'm thinking Canada to Greenland, Greenland to Iceland, and Iceland to Ireland, England, or France.)

[Kellogg]

Morning!

The Map... Well... This is the sales brocheure that Jack's showing.
It contains a few inaccuracies for the sake of making the concept more
simple and... um... Okay, so I was a bit lazy.

The route does go farther north, more or less parallelling the route of
the old Transatlantic Cable. (But, I don't have a map of the cable route.)
If you for maps of transatlantic cables, the few I found had the same
problem as Jack's Mercator projection with straight lines on them.)

However, the tunnel technology is a bit more advanced than the current
Tunnel Boring Machines that can install prefab sections of concrete liners
behind them as they drill. The TBM grows the tunnel as it goes, leaving
a cylindrical trail of buckytubes behind it.

To go across a continental plate line, the tunnel will be allowed to grow
slowly at the join. (I think it's something like... what? <1cm a year?)

(Actually, I'll should admit that I hadn't thought of surfacing in Iceland.
that's a pretty cool idea!)

As for the problem of tunnel ventilation, well, it's actually the opposite
problem. The tunnel is partially evacuated to allow the electric trains
to travel at higher speeds.

[Hortmage]

(Actually, I'll should admit that I hadn't thought of surfacing in Iceland. that's a pretty cool idea!)

Well, when you get right down to it, EVERYTHING is cool in Iceland!

[Daniel Cougar]

However, the tunnel technology is a bit more advanced than the current Tunnel Boring Machines that can install prefab sections of concrete liners behind them as they drill. The TBM grows the tunnel as it goes, leaving a cylindrical trail of buckytubes behind it.

To go across a continental plate line, the tunnel will be allowed to grow
slowly at the join. (I think it's something like... what? <1cm a year?)

Buckytubes are still carbon, and the mid-oceanic ridge is still lava.

(Actually, I'll should admit that I hadn't thought of surfacing in Iceland. That's a pretty cool idea!)

When can I expect my consulting pay?

[Nebulous Rikulau]

Morning!

The Map... Well... This is the sales brocheure that Jack's showing.
It contains a few inaccuracies for the sake of making the concept more
simple and... um... Okay, so I was a bit lazy.

The route does go farther north, more or less parallelling the route of
the old Transatlantic Cable. (But, I don't have a map of the cable route.)
If you for maps of transatlantic cables, the few I found had the same
problem as Jack's Mercator projection with straight lines on them.)

Well, here's a map of the route from JFK in New York to ORY near Paris. Try other airports or lat/longs for fun. 8)

[Batty den]

Morning!

As for the problem of tunnel ventilation, well, it's actually the opposite
problem. The tunnel is partially evacuated to allow the electric trains
to travel at higher speeds.

If the tunnel is in straight sections (and I mean Straight straight, not straight following the curve of the earth) the train would receive an assist by Gravity until it reached the middle of the section then begin to slow as it heads "up" to the top of the section.

I read (somewhere, can't find it ) that it would take about 11 minutes to fall from one end of such a tunnel to the other - faster if the train powers through. You'd have a brief WHOA! moment as the train passes over the hump to the next section.

batty

[Nebulous Rikulau]

If the tunnel is in straight sections (and I mean Straight straight, not straight following the curve of the earth) the train would receive an assist by Gravity until it reached the middle of the section then begin to slow as it heads "up" to the top of the section.

I read (somewhere, can't find it ) that it would take about 11 minutes to fall from one end of such a tunnel to the other - faster if the train powers through. You'd have a brief WHOA! moment as the train passes over the hump to the next section.

batty

The actual time for the transit of such a tunnel is about 42 minutes. At first I had remembered about 90 minutes, but it turns out that that is roughly the time for a round (straight?) trip; the same time as a Very Low Earth Orbit( like, surface orbit).

Someone will likely ask, "What length of tunnel does that time apply to?"
And the answer is: Any length up to the diameter of the earth. So it's not much use for short trips, but lengthy ones would all have the same duration.

[Katra]

Those 'super straight' tunnels are very interesting in theory; but impossible to build. They would hit rock hot enough to melt just a few miles deep.

[Legene]

[quote="Daniel Cougar]
Buckytubes are still carbon, and the mid-oceanic ridge is still lava.

When can I expect my consulting pay?[/quote]

Isn't diamond a terrific conductor of heat? Maybe grown diamonds running from the tunnel up to seawater would keep the tunnel below trouble temperature. They'd be in some kind of intermediate layer of course, maybe ceramic.

The cars themselves shouldn't suffer from heat problems, and they zoom through magnetically suspended (I assume) in a partially evacuated tube travelling faster than a Blackbird being chased by a taxman, so they won't be radiated at by the tube walls very quickly.

Though that would mean magnets in the tunnel, which would have to be kept cool enough to be magnets. They might have really high-temp superconductors by then of course.

Playing with the tech that might be there (More-than-Modern Marvels ?) is just way too much fun.

[ZOMBIE USER 8511]

Going through Halifax,NS; Gander, NF; Nanortalik, GL; Reykjavik, IS, Dublin EI; and London the route isn't a great circle, but it does make the longest stretch about 1500 km.

[Mako]

Well, here's a map of the route from JFK in New York to ORY near Paris. Try other airports or lat/longs for fun. 8)

An Excellent web tool!

Best find was the Engines Turn Or Passenges Swim part though

CYa!
Mako

[Daniel Cougar]

Buckytubes are still carbon, and the mid-oceanic ridge is still lava.

When can I expect my consulting pay?

Isn't diamond a terrific conductor of heat? Maybe grown diamonds running from the tunnel up to seawater would keep the tunnel below trouble temperature. They'd be in some kind of intermediate layer of course, maybe ceramic.

Every system you add to deal with a problem is another system who's failure will compound your problem.

First rule of design:

[size=large]K[/size]eep
[size=large]I[/size]t
[size=large]S[/size]imple,
[size=large]S[/size]tupid

The cars themselves shouldn't suffer from heat problems, and they zoom through magnetically suspended (I assume) in a partially evacuated tube travelling faster than a Blackbird being chased by a taxman, so they won't be radiated at by the tube walls very quickly.

Though that would mean magnets in the tunnel, which would have to be kept cool enough to be magnets. They might have really high-temp superconductors by then of course.

Actually, you don't need magnets in the tunnels. Magnetic induction levitation only require an efficient conductor looped into a series of coils placed along the lenght of the track. The trains mount permenant magnets into arrays along their undersides. I can't remeber the name of the type of array, but I can describe how to make one. Take a bar magnet that's been cut into a cube. Place it on a table so that north is pointing off to one side (not up or down). Cut it into 4 pieces, corner to corner. You should have four pieces that have north oriented 90 degrees to each other. Take the two that have north oriented towards/away from their long sides and place them long side down. Take one of the remaining pieces and place it between the other two, long side up (it will only go in one way). The other piece fits on either sloped surface. Repeat the exact procedure again, and move the two pieces end to end. If they don't fit together automaticly, you did something wrong.

[Kellogg]

The buckytube tunnel liner has heat conduction properties similar to
diamond. If one point on the tube is subjected to heat, the entire tube
conducts the heat away from that point. This is why it should work
well as a heat conductor for the geothermal plant Jack suggested.

By selectively doping the buckytubes in the floor of the tunnel, they
can be made superconductive to levitate the train. Firing certain
superconductive sections of the track in sequence should provide
propulsion like a mass driver or rail gun.

Going via Iceland means you'd have to deal with volcanic rock
anyway, exept that you'd be doing it in an atmosphere which
is a poor conductor of heat, rather than under a blanket of very
cold water, which is a good one. As Archer said, we don't have
to tunnel so deeply that we're near the magma. Jack indicated that
main need for the buckytubes in the tunnel is to conduct heat away,
so they're not going to go any deeper than necessary.

Yeep? Hailstorm? Ouch!

Scott

[Quill]

What kind of environmental impact would the heat generated by this device have? Would it be significant?

[Kellogg]

What kind of environmental impact would the heat generated by this device have? Would it be significant?

I assume you mean the Trans Atlantic Tunnel, rather than the
gold extraction process. Either way the results should be
similar.

Hadn't really thought about it, but I doubt that it would be
significant. After all, the heat is dissipated through the Earth's
crust anyway. You're not generating heat, only releasing it
from the Earth's core. Pollution-wise, the release would probably
just be warm water.

For comparison, I would say that the heat released to the environment
would be less than the underwater volcanos and lava floes around
Hawaii's big island.

Scott

[Icefox]

Okay, lemme dredge up a few things from my Marine Geology book...

Well, first thing, I believe the seperation at the Mid Atlantic Ridge is something between 0.5 and 10 cm per year. It depends a lot on where you are. I don't think that would pose an enormous problem.

Second... well, "just warm water" can have a <i>big</i> environmental impact, especially if you're going through warm Arctic ocean. If you have a big area of the sea floor radiating enough heat, it could create all sorts of long-term convection currents. That could carry nutrients from the sea floor up to the surface, which would affect algae population, which could affect fish that eat the algae, and so forth. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, and I don't know how much heat would actually be released, but...

Well, two things:
1) Whenever you measure your project in kilometers, it's gonna have <i>some</i> kind of big effect on local life, and
2) Whenever the ocean's involved, <b>everything changes everything.</b>


You can't do just one thing.
-Campbell's Law of Everything

[Kellogg]

Okay, lemme dredge up a few things from my Marine Geology book...

Cool! Source material!

Second... well, "just warm water" can have a <i>big</i> environmental impact, especially if you're going through warm Arctic ocean. If you have a big area of the sea floor radiating enough heat, it could create all sorts of long-term convection currents. That could carry nutrients from the sea floor up to the surface, which would affect algae population, which could affect fish that eat the algae, and so forth. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, and I don't know how much heat would actually be released, but...

Well, two things:
1) Whenever you measure your project in kilometers, it's gonna have <i>some</i> kind of big effect on local life, and
2) Whenever the ocean's involved, <b>everything changes everything.</b>

The independantly funded polls of the algae, fish and marine mammal
communities, conducted in 2063 all were in favor of increased nutrients.
However, the same poll indicated that fish were in favor of banning the
color green, so it's sometimes difficult to communicate with fish.

The Spokesshark for the Oceanic Department of Homewater Security
was generally in favor, though they did express some concern about
the possible illegal immigration of red tide algae.

Interviews with the cartoonist have been characterized as "No comment". Speculation is that he's afraid he'll give stuff away. He went away looking for a Japanese Translator and chocolate chip cookies.

And that's all from the news desk...

[Quill]

The Spokesshark for the Oceanic Department of Homewater Security
was generally in favor, though they did express some concern about
the possible illegal immigration of red tide algae.

Ed'rashtekaresket!!

Bonus points if you recognize the reference.

[ZOMBIE USER 10915]

Kellogg

He went away looking for a Japanese Translator and chocolate chip cookies.

Mmmm, cooookies!