Discussion on:

New York to London in an hour - by train

You are correct the US passenger rail is pathetic compared with Europe and Asia rail. And this is one reason the US economy is more favorable (witness the lower CPI, and greater GDP). The US has waisted less than $40B on train subsidy, while EU and Asia spend far more per passenger to subsidize train passengers.

Passenger trains in the US carried over 90% of intercity travel in 1910, now they carry less than 2%. In spite of much greater government subsidy for passenger trains in Europe and Asia, rails market share continues to shrink. Cars now are over 70% of passenger miles in EU, and 60% in Japan in spite of the governments spending over 50 times more per passenger mile for train travel than for road and air travel.

Private industry requires positive ROI (return on investment) to survive. Negative ROI is why passenger rail systems are not privately funded, built, and owned .(as they where 150 years ago when they offered better value than the alternative -- muscle power).

Government pays 100% of the construction cost, 100% of the vehicle cost, and typically from 1/3 to 2/3rds of the operating expense. The ONLY HSR (high speed rail) in the world recovering more than 100% of it's operating expense is in Japan (and this is only because the government wrote off 100s of billions in debt, AND punishes car owners with 100% vehicle tax, and 300% fuel tax and road tolls that recover more than the road cost (and still cars gain market share in Japan too).

The fact is that passenger trains only survive due to gross government subsidy, AND oppressive fees on cars, roads, and air travel.

ET3 offers much greater value than ships, trains, cars and jets for about 90% of passenger and cargo transportation. For this reason ET3 will displace cars and aircraft just as cars and jets have displaced passenger trains.

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Such ignorance. There are numerous trains in several countries which regularly go over 200 mph and they do so for sustained periods of time. Noting China (one of the several) and any flaws in their 'project' is completely irrelevant to the original point.

Talking about tax, standard of living, and comparing countries could also not be any more irrelevant and ignorant.

Since you began the discussion, lets clarify that the cost of living in the majority of European countries is far, far lower than that in the United States, I am assuming that's where you live since you have unbelievably unfounded and incorrect arrogance and make such false assumptions? Feel free to correct that if I'm wrong. To clarify, Norway, Switz, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, Netherlands, Iceland, Sweden, UK, Finland, France, Austria, Italy, Greece, and Germany all have a better Consumer Price Index than the USA - and most of them better than Canada too.

Now Cost of living, while being the primary factor, is clearly not the only factor in 'Standard of living' - which actually has no technical definition, but take any given European country that you've been travelling and 'thanking their tax payers' and the chances are they have a higher standard of life than you do.

Not quite.

Post WW II rail in Europe was dominated by express trains running between 90 and 110 mph. The legend of affordable, fast European rail was built on these trains.

The fastest and most widely used of the day were the A4s which ran until the mid 1960s. They had a top speed of 126 mph that left the record holding engine damaged. They could do 100 mph with a full train on a regular schedule. The last, the Perigrine, retired in 1966.

Many diesel/electrics built in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were capable of doing better than 120 mph, but none were verified faster than one that did 148 mph in 1987.

There was the electric French Jeumont-Schneider BB 9004 that did 206 mph in 1955 pulling only 3 cars. It was incapable of doing over 200 mph with a full size train. The 206 mph run was a publicity stunt. Only 2 were ever built.

200 mph was not broken by a train again until the first TVG in 1981 did 236 mph. It was the first train model that could do just over 200 mph on a regular basis.

The BB 9004 that reached 206mph was pulling 3 cars only, each with 50-100 people, true. The advertised 2,500mph train is actually a 6-person pod. More like a big car than a train really...

Not to mention the technical challenges to be expected (cf the difficulties to built the LHC ring). All this in less than 10 years for a tenth of current costs?? How could a train based on magnetic levitation and a vacuum tube be less expensive than normal magnetic trains, which are already a lot more expensive than "regular" trains ?? When it looks too good to be true, it probably is... very unfortunately I must say.

I'm sure that terrorists would find this a very inviting target. Security would be most difficult to monitor. No thanks, I'd rather fly.

A bomb on a plane is going to ruin your day just as much as a bomb on the vacuum train will.

a lot harder to bring a bomb aboard an aircraft then it would be to place one somewhere along the tube, it would not take that much of a charge to implode a tube that contains a vacuum.

Because airplanes don't have exactly the same pressure differential?

It doesn't take much of an explosion to cause the same havoc on an aircraft either. The difference is, an aircraft fuselage has to be lightweight - a tunnel like that being suggested would be substantially more robust.

Furthermore - the security checks in terms of bombs will certainly be at least as stringent as they are for planes.

A vacuum in a tube that has to pull a "car" across the Atlantic would have much greater outside force of pressure than an aircraft has inside "cabin" pressure. So of course the tunnel would be more robust, that does not change the fact that it is more vulnerable to hostile intentions than an aircraft. and I never said that the security at the stations would be less stringent that that of an airport! I was saying that that security pretty much ends after the station once the tube descents into the depths of the ocean.

Also we do NOT advocate crossing deep oceans with ET3. The best place to cross is the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia. It is less than 100 miles, and less than 100 m deep. ET3 will be underground at this point (just like the Chunnel, and the bigger tunnel from Japan to Hokido).

Steel wheel trains can be derailed by terrorists without explosives, for instance with a bar of thick steel cut into a wedge shape (placed on a curve), or a portable cutting torch -- no illegal explosives needed. Roads, tunnels, and bridges are all at similar risk to explosives as ET3. Fortunately over 99% of transportation death is NOT due to terror.

I wonder how many more times the 'BBC' could have been mentioned in the article.

This reminds of that Donald Fagen song IGY.
"90 minutes from New York to Paris"

With the federal regulations and everything...this will never leave the speculation stage...at least not for a hundred years or so!
And come-on folks...Here in the shadow of the Nation's capitol, we are trying to extend the Metro rail 8 miles....8 miles people...and already cost over-runs are going to push this out past 5 billion (that's BILLION...with a "B") dollars! By the time it is all said and done, there is speculation that this 8 mile over land low-speed commuter rail will cost in excess of 1 billion dollars per mile...
With this kind of cr@p, how the heck are we to take a story like this seriously? Impossible I say...

Getting to 2500 mph in 2 minutes, cruise at 2500 mph for about 56 minutes and then slowing down for another 2 minutes is reasonable. Electrically driven linear motors could do it. The vacuum can be created and maintained without too much trouble, just have a large turbine engine suck the air out. The tube would have to be pretty straight and very gently curved. My guess is that like the English tunnel it is 3 side-by-side two larger ones and one smaller service tunnel. Not sure what that buys you with the vacuum though.

the real question is what are the economics of building it and operating it compared to the next best thing, like airplances. Jets require no tube, rails and vacuum, only endpoint services like an airport. I am thinking an advanced semi-ballistic rocket flight up 20 miles or more and then gliding to a landing might be cheaper.

I like this discussion on cost, terrorism tunnel etc. while simple mecanic show that this project is unrealistic.
Distance NY to London 3475 miles. In 56 minutes you cross only 2333 miles at 2500m/h
To reach the speed of 2500 m/h in 2 minutes, the acceleration should be in the range of 1117m/s??, that is 113 times the earth acceleration. Who can stand that acceleration?
Form me this project is totaly unrealistic and it is good fun to read the discussions.
Jacques

We will do 1 G of acceleration for 120 seconds.
1 G = 32 feet/sec/sec
So 32 * 120 = a velocity of 3,840 ft/sec
or
13,824,000 ft /hour
or
2,618 MPH

Perhaps 1 G is too high an acceleration.
If we instead do 1/2 G then it takes 4 minutes to reach 2,618 MPH

I believe my calculations are correct

Yes, you are right about acceleration. To reach 2500m/h in 120 sec. the acceleration is 9.31m/s*s. When up tospeed, the train has crossed 41.66 miles.
However the distance from London to NY is 3475 miles. Obviously you cannot cover this distance in 56 minutes at 2500m/h. Right ?
Jacques

I read this story. It was by Jules Verne and was called "An Express of the Future". He came up with the idea of the transatlantic tunnel. Wikipedia has the details.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel

How can you patent an idea that belongs to Jules Verne's from 1888?

However, building Jules Verne's idea and being the owners and sellers of it makes sense. I just wouldn't give out a patent.

You ask how can he patent an idea of a transatlantic tunnel? The answer is he can't, which is why he didn't..

What he DID patent is the specific technology being suggested to make this idea a reality - one of several technological methods which could be used.

I remember this from an old sci-fi film - Genesis II by Gene Roddenberry. Any movement in the Earth's crust would move the tunnel. If the passenger compartment slams into the break, forget about it.

Thousands of roads and bridges cross fault lines. Occasionally an earthquake (plate tectonic movement) occurs that causes one to fail, and a few people to die. The amount of deaths is less than a 0.01% as much as annual automobile accident deaths. The major safety focus of ET3 is doing something about want kills 99.9% of people in transportation -- failure to control the vehicle, and failure to control the conditions of travel.

One of the experts on the ET3 design team is Dr. Kumada a top physicist in Japan. He has studied the ample quake data and concures that ET3 can be actively aligned faster than the earth is capable of moving, and that while crossing fault lines with ET3 will cost more, it will not represent great risk. (NOTE: the Alaska pipeline crosses the Danali fault, there was a major movement (over 1 meter) and no oil was spilled.

And just how do you handle seafloor spreading??

Systems like this have been proposed since the 1930's. This one will probably go down with the rest.

You can build a 6 person maglev for much less than a full size maglev train. The 5' tube is about the size of some neighborhood drainage pipes.

Someone understands scale cost factors! An $20k automobile with 5 seats = $4k/seat. HSR (high speed rail) costs $60k/seat. A 747 jet costs $462k/seat. The 6 seat ET3 capsules (not a train) can be mass produced using 1/8th as much material as an automobile, and cost even less. HSR must be elevated for safety and air-blast issues. Elevated double track must withstand the mass of two 100 ton locomotives passing each other. Elevated double tube ET3 infrastructure must bear the weight of two 1200lb capsules for only a little over a ton of live-load. For this reason ET3 guideway requires 1/35th as much material to build as HSR infrastructure. Tubes are produced using automated equipment for much less labor cost per mile than all the "false work" needed to assemble and unassembled forms for making HSR.

I am continually amazed at all the "experts" who comment about the impossibility of ET3 on online blogs (notice that very few of them use their real names). If they would just read the et3 websites (dot com and dot net) and or look up the first patent (US 5,950,543) they would be able to make credible arguments. I am also amazed at the poorly researched "reporting", and the dozens of "reporters" who have never talked with me (including the BBC "reporter" referenced in this article. et3 (at symbol) et3 (dot) com

i just wish there WAS a train here, i have to drive 109 miles every day, id gladly take an old steam train if it meant i didnt need to drive as much.

sure trains go through town all the time...carrying grain, or semi trailers, or livestock...no people.

as for this train, sounds nice but ocean pressures already pose the risk of implosion, increase the pressure differential and you increase the risk. add to that the need to keep this tube air-tight at all times (hence why they dont wanna go places that get hot and/or freeze bad on rubber o-rings) and the process of constantly pumping out the air (as an aside though subways have similar issues...constantly fighting against encroaching groundwater)

as for getting in and out of the train, probably have an air-lock.

overall kinda nice but a maintenance nightmare

O-rings in jet engines occasionally fail and have lead to explosions or fires resulting in crashed aircraft. This is one reason they will not likely be used for ET3 seals. Have you ever considered how the old style "picture tube" type of TV could maintain 10ee-7 Torr vacuum (a thousand times higher quality vacuum than needed for ET3) for 30-40 years with only rare failure?

Unless I missed it, no one seems to have considered what it would do to the human bodies in this train to be traveling at 2,500mph for an hour. This would go way beyond jet lag! I can't imagine anyone voluntarily signing up for this transport, or am I suffering from a lack of imagination?

Remember that what affects a body in motion is relative changes in motion. We're all travelling thousands of miles an hour already through space, and we're fine

In other words, it is acceleration or deceleration which we actually feel, not the constant speed we're travelling at. The only exception is when you can feel the consequences such as air resistance. So, if this train were to accelerate gradually, lets say at the same rate as a car would (but for longer) - it would expose you to forces no stronger than a car.

Also, Jet lag has nothing to do with how fast you travelled - jet lag refers to being exposed to the time difference when you go from one country to another (so what was your night becomes day - so you're tired).

This train idea sounds way more expensive than they are saying BUT it would be the perfect transport system if you are worried about terrorism. Right now, it is impossible to protect the thousands of miles of track a conventional train uses and it is prohibitively expensive to install anti-missle systems on every aircraft. This train would only have to be protected at the stations.

Ya, and the same TSA agents at our airports would be screening rail passengers in these train stations. Why the author brought mentions "and getting to, from and through airports is very time consuming" seems stupid. This technology offers nothing new ito solve those head aches.

With ET3, small access portals are distributed along the tubes like exits on a freeway. It is said that 90% of Americans reside within 15 minutes of a Walmart store. A typical international airport serves a population of about 5 million people. 100 ET3 access portals can be economically distributed over the same 5 million population for one access portal for 50k people (about like the frequency of Walmart stores).

A typical American is more than an hour from an airport, and the last airport built in the US was DIA at a cost of $4.8B

$4.8B could build as much as 1600 miles of double tube ET3 system with a 400mph design speed-- serving a larger area than the typical airport.

security would be a huge issue, not just around the stations, it is fairly easy and inexpensive to create a charge and take it down to a depth of 1000ft, remember that it will only take a detonation anywhere near the tube to cause a catastrophic implosion, it does not have to be so precise as to detonate it on the tube.

You're right but you forget that this tube wont just be sat on the ocean floor, it'd be 10's, 100's of meters underground, and probably reinforced with metres and metres of outer material to act as a shield against what you describe. It will probably also have constant surveillance.

to destroy than an airway route. However surveillance of a trans Atlantic tube would be nearly impossible and even if so trying to respond to a threat that is a 1000 miles from any shore is all but impossible, there is not enough manpower to respond to a threat, and I am not so sure about it being underground in the Atlantic ocean where depths can reach several thousand meters.

High Speed Rail (and super motorway and bridge) infrastructures are easier to target than ET3. For starters, a single 1200 passenger train has 200 times more people on it than a single ET3 capsule. At the same passenger/hour use factor, ET3 has less than 1/30th the concentration of passengers exposed to a localized event (like a bomb). A terrorist cannot target a specific capsule with a high-power rifle or SAM missile) (as they can a train or jet). All modes are exposed to terror, fortunately terror is responsible for less than 1% of transportation fatalities. All this has been discussed in detail by experts on the "International Maglev Board".

Hollow out a cannon projectile. Put live mouse inside. Shoot the the projectile 20 miles into a lake. Find the projectile. Open the projectile . Examine the mouse. Ha Ha Ha.

Okay, you say accelerate slowly... Fine. If the tube is not straight as a gun barrel, the passengers will be squeezed against the cabin walls by g-force during any bends in the tube.

Keep dreaming... Better yet... Buy their stock... Buy their licenses.

As you said - a train would accelerate slowly, so cannon example is irrelevant.

Chances are they WOULD build it straight too, so that eliminates g-force as a problem.

So what's the problem?

Don't open the window! If the car you're in starts leaking, say goodbye to your blood supply.

Think about building this train like any other train has ever been constructed. This will be a whole new animal. It will not be so far underwater that it will be crushed, but it will be deep enough to avoid surface disturbances. It will make use of simple bounacy compensators to maintain equalibrium.

The major problem will be economics and terrorism. How many people can they move with one tunnellvision even if it has two trains moving opposite directions 24/7. Will people pay? What will the ROI be even with full ridership and will it come close to the R.O.I? Sticky widget.

:

Money, money, money, makes the world go around.

I understand there is a hotel named London right in New York city. There must also be several "Londons" (towns and cities) in USA and
Canada (e.g. London, Ontario),

Hi,
GoogleEarth tell me the distance between thos 2 towns : 3475 miles.
How come a train running 2500 m/h can join the 2 cities in ONE hour ?
Did I miss something ?
Jacques

Needs to be train size tunnel - the capital cost is huge and you need to shift thousands of posteriors per hour to pay. And ideally it does freight containers too.

Will need aircraft standard safety engineering for leak detection, power failure, pressurisation on vehicle.
Speed - supersonic and complete vacuum could be stage 2 after 1psi and 600 mph which aerodynamic design easier and standard aircraft pressurisation kit.
And lets build one on land first for a few years testing.

What a great idea...I hate traveling...


http://www.freeinventions.info/

Will they also supply the TSA service that you get at the airports?? i like to get a nice feel up before my flight

Will i get the TSA service???????? at the airports you get a nice feel up before your trip

This article is poorly researched; ET3 is NOT a train (or vactrain). The article also improperly uses ET3 artwork to illustrate the work of others.

The focus of ET3 is on travel over distances of 200 to 600 miles. Only if all nations build ET3 to the same standard can it be networked together with a backbone built across the Bering Strait.

ET3 does not advocate deep water tubes to cross oceans. We suggest reading et3.com and et3.net and also look up US patent 5,960,543 BEFORE making comments about what ET3 is NOT.

A maglev train costs about 20% more than conventional HSR (high speed rail), and a "vactrain" (like swissmetro for instance) costs about three times more than a maglev train. ET3 by contrast costs less than 1/10th as much as conventional HSR, 1/13th the cost of maglev trains, and 1/35th the cost of a vactrain.

Donald Fagen's penned 'I.G.Y' (International Geophysical Year), describing a utopian view of the world from 1957. The lyrics:

On that train all graphite and glitter
Undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.

He was a few years off in the prediction (I'm still waiting for maglev cars myself), but he got the basics right.