Posted on 05/13/2014 3:03:13 AM PDT by Reaganite Republican
***PING***
The logistics are completely preposterous.
What's next? A pony express over the Bering Strait to replace airmail?
I hope you are right
There was talk years ago about a high-tech bridge over the Bering Straight with ice-breaking towers that would withstand the migration of ice floes up to 10 meters thick. Apparently it was scrapped.
Why? Because there are multiple daily flights to London, New York and LA from Beijing.
You don’t understand treasury debt markets very well.
Evlybody to get from stleet?
I know.
Like that other proposal to build a tunnel from the UK to France .
Sheesh
People can dream though.
The idiots are anyone who honestly thinks this bizarre scheme would ever come to pass.
The focus of this isn’t personal travel, as it is freight, and freight via air is quick but relatively inefficient. Can only pack so much into a plane.
The point of something like this would be to compete with boat, which is still relatively slow.
An underground tunnel, levitated train in a system with no atmosphere would allow insanely fast freight movement and virtually unlimited volume... just add another car.
This idea isn’t as far fetched as some think, but it is an very expensive proposition but very much could be commercially viable.
Not like that in the slightest.
London and Paris are only 200 miles apart, and the technology to join them by train existed as early as 1840.
It took 150 years to build because of the great expense, despite the fact that it was obviously extremely practical.
It is a 4.5 hour round trip, less than 2 hours longer than a roundtrip flight, and arguably far more convenient, since the train takes you to either city's center.
It is about 7,000 miles from Beijing to Seattle. If a speed train route were built, it would take at absolute minimum 40 hours compared to an 11 hour nonstop flight.
It would also require financing 7,000 miles of track for high speed purposes and building a 50 mile tunnel - 66% longer than the Chunnel - in permafrost conditions.
The technology's all there, just like the Chunnel's was over a century. Given unlimited time and unlimited money, this can all be done.
But it would be much, much cheaper to build a fleet for Concorde-style service that could reduce the flight to 5 hours.
TGV trains carry about 750 passengers maximum, for short runs (i.e. runs that do not have to carry food and water and toliet facilities for 750 people for two days).
A380s carry 850.
Air freight is only used for high value items for this reason: pharmaceuticals, small machined parts, electronics.
The point of something like this would be to compete with boat, which is still relatively slow.
For freight of ship size, time does not really matter that much, since there is continual ship traffic into the major ports.
Few projects that require large items like machinery, girders, etc. are conceived, planned, engineered and financed in less time than it takes a containership or a drybulker to go from Beijing to LA (15 - 20 days).
Also, TGV cars are generally 10 feet wide and 75ish feet long, even a train 200 cars long would be dwarfed by a drybulker - by the time the last train arrived to carry the full amount a drybulker would, the drybulker will have already arrived at port.
just add another car.
TGV trains have engine to passenger car ratios of 1:4, and those passenger cars are extremely light compared to a freight car.
You can't have a TGV train with much more than 20 cars that can maintain top TGV speeds.
Freight trains in the US move a lot more weight using a lot less fuel, but they move more slowly.
A railroad running through a tunnel is about as easy to block as anything I can imagine.
Who’s talking TGV? I was talking maglev in a vacuumed environment, absolutely no limit to length relative to speed. As to car width given they would be building system from scratch can make the cars to whatever dimensions are desired.
This is not something that is based on 40 year old tgv, at least not how I see it.
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When the Chunnel was proposed, some actually opposed it on the idea that it could be used as an avenue for invasion from the Continent. LOL
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