Airplanes and Tube Trains

Modified 2 Dec 2001

ecause of the great distance between cities in the United States, I have not proposed any change to our present system of transportation, which is the airplane. There is a possible alternative, and that is the evacuated magneto-levitation tube train, or "tube" for short. Magneto-levitation eliminates rolling friction; evacuating the air from the tube eliminates air friction. The next limit to velocity is going orbital, so such tube trains could reach a velocity of 17,000 mph, at least on straight stretches. And the arrangement of the continents in our present epoch makes it possible to connect every coastal city to the tube, on every continent, without ever needing to place the tube in water deeper than about 600 feet. It is important to note that the tube mainly lies on continental shelf, for its flatness, and the great circle routes it allows. And it makes getting right-of-ways much simpler. There are no pre-existing buildings that must be purchased and demolished.

f we look at a globe which exposes the ocean bottom, we can see that the continental coast surrounding the Arctic Ocean can serve as a "roundabout" or traffic circle, connecting all of the continents. Suppose we start at New York City. A northern branch of the tube goes through the fabled Northwest Passage (only a seafloor tube can freely use this route) and divides off Point Barrow, with the West Coast tube dropping Southeast, cutting through a tunnel through the Aleutian peninsula, and then down the West side of the Americas. A SouthWest branch takes the continental shelf to the once fabled Orient, to Tokyo and Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney (having to bridge deep water in one place). This Oriental tube might be buried in the bottom of the Suez Canal to take it into the Mediterranean.

ow go back to the three-way split at Point Barrow. One branch would simply continue around the edge of the Arctic Ocean, having stations at the mouth of each of the major rivers in Russia which feed into the Arctic, and cutting a trench to wind up at St. Petersburg, or Petrograd, or whatever they call it this month. This branch gains access to the Baltic, with stops at all the major cities on the edge of the Baltic. This branch of the tube might meet up with the Oriental branch at Amsterdam.

uilding the tube would be a colossal construction project. I propose using voidless concrete, with micro-fibers to stop crack propagation. A tube of such stuff would have nearly the tensile strength of steel, and a much greater compressive strength. Of course, the weight of the water would provide mostly compressive forces on it, however, the rare earthquake might provide tensile forces. Riding the tube in airtight cars should be a pleasure. No need for any sudden accelerations, so no need to buckle into seat belts. No worry about weather or season. With a double tube, where trains run in opposite directions, it should be possible to travel from one sea-side city to another anywhere in the world in half an hour, far faster than any airplane on the drawing boards, with no pollution or noise, no danger from terrorists or weather or birds or pilot error or the breakdown of the air controller's system. Sounds pretty utopian, doesn't it? Well, utopian dreaming is my greatest pleasure.