Transportation Designs For a Future That Never Came 120
An anonymous reader writes "The recently unveiled plans for the Hyperloop have raised a lot of eyebrows, but this is not the first time someone has proposed an idea for mass transit that seemed too good to be true. Here's a look at a few other ideas over the years that never seemed to get off the ground. 'In 1930, the magazine Modern Mechanix presented a plan for a "unique bus of the future (that would) duplicate the speed of railroads. Recent developments in everything that moves has caused many flights of imagination," it wrote. "The bus between New York and San Francisco will be equipped with airplanes for (side trips). For diversion, billiard rooms, swimming pool, dancing floor and a bridle path would be available. The pilot would be 'enthroned' over his engines, with the radio above. Space for autos would be afforded by the deck." Not surprisingly, it never happened.'"
Bus Image (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Submerged floating tunnel (Score:5, Informative)
No. Ocean engineer here. Currents have a lot of power (not energy, but power), but unless you mean the whole Gulf Stream, or a very long time period, the energy of the world's nuclear weapons is greater still. But it's kind of hard to argue with someone that isn't consistent with units.
Two ACs arguing about the energy content of ocean currents vs energy content of nuclear weapons, with neither one putting up a single number to back themselves up. Tsk tsk.
Lets see: total world nuclear arsenal currently about 6400 megatons, or 2.7 x 10^18 J. Gulf stream volume 150 million cubic meters/sec at Newfoundland (1.5 x 10^11 kg/sec), speed 2 kt, or 4 m/sec. Kinetic power of stream = 1.2 x 10^12 J/sec. Number of seconds for the kinetic energy of the Gulf Stream to equal the nuclear arsenals = 2.25 million, or 26 days. Is that a "very long time"?
But wait, there's more! The heat transport of the Gulf Stream is 1.2 x 10^15 J/sec, a figure 1000 times larger than its kinetic energy, so the time for the Gulf Stream flow to transport a "world nuclear arsenal" worth of energy is only 2250 seconds, or 38 minutes.