posted on Mar, 28 2008 @ 07:01 AM
I have read through the whole thread, and there are some fairly basic problems that worry me about the practicality of building these tunnels..
1/ Where does all the removed material go ? Others have already asked this, but there has been no satisfactory answer. If this very long tunnel has
few entrances, as it must to remain secret, the problem of ventilation, power, staff access to operate the machinery, and a whole host of other
problems arises.
It is nice to think of thousands of miles per hour travel, but until the tunnel is completed and working under full vacuum, access along thousands of
miles of tunnel will be rather slow, presumably by wheeled vehicles. All the tunneled material will have to exit the same way. All the tunnel casing
material will need to enter this tunnel. How is that possible ? Under an ocean, obviously no alternative entrances to the tunnel along its length
would be possible.
2/ The earths core is just a very hot unstable molten blob, with a very thin crust of moving tectonic plates floating on the surface.
Any tunnel would suffer discontinuities, and it would gradually drift away from being dead straight due to constant earth movement. It is not
generally realized, but the moon not only sets up tides in the ocean, but also tides in the earths core.
Any deviation of this tunnel from being dead straight would set up massive shaking forces on a high speed vehicle, like being thrown around in an
aircraft in air turbulence, or a train on very old rail track. I believe linear G forces would be the least of your problems compared to shaking and
vibration at the speeds suggested.
3/ the idea of a nuclear powered tunnel boring machine to melt rock is interesting. The heat energy required would be enormous, and the molten rock
would probably take an extremely long time to cool back down.
But what interests me more, is what happens if you hit ground water at molten rock temperatures ? I doubt if you could cross a continent, or an ocean
at any subterranean depth and not encounter large pockets of underground water.
While a mechanical boring machine would be at high risk being flooded, a thermal boring machine would be extremely dangerous, and likely end up
causing violent steam explosions. I seriously doubt the existence of these nuclear powered rock melting tunnel boring machines.
Anyone that has worked in a steel foundry around molten metal knows how hot white hot metal is, and how dangerous steam explosions are. Rock requires
much higher temperatures still. I just cannot see this as being a practical way to bore a tunnel.
4/ Any underground miner will tell you that mines are very wet places, that need to be constantly pumped dry. Keeping the ground water out of a
tunnel running at near vacuum would be an extremely difficult task. Even a small leak would be catastrophic if your vehicle traveling at thousands of
miles per hour hit a deep puddle. So how do you keep this tunnel dry and under high vacuum without frequent pumping stations along it's entire
length ? Remember water at extreme depth is under enormous hydrostatic pressure. A tunnel at five hundred feet depth sees the same hydrostatic
pressure as a submarine at the same depth. It would take a lot more than a couple of inches of concrete to withstand such pressures.without leakage
or failure.
In places, the ocean is MILES deep, and your tunnel will need to go beneath the lowest ocean depths. I just cannot see that this is possible, the
water pressures are incredibly high at those depths.
The more I think about this, the less likely it sounds.