# New York to London in 30 minutes?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 6, 2003, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270 "2003-02-06T18:47:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Saltire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saltire)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/41 "2003-02-07T05:35:17Z")
Hey, if you could make the tunnel rigid enough and the train fast enough, it could effectively go into an underwater orbit during the crossing. Very speculative, but cool.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/42 "2003-02-07T05:49:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \*
> \*\*A freely falling object takes approximately 45 minutes to go through an evacuated tunnel directly through the center of the earth. And it also takes 45 minutes to go through such a tunnel from New York to London or anywhere to anywhere.
>
> Makes trip scheduling really simple and easy to remember. đ \*\*
Well `anywhere to anywhereâ as long as your anywheres are at antipodes, anyway. (You _do_ have to go through the center of the Earth in a straight line and not a parabola for that time to be correct, right?)
Which makes it pretty much useless.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/43 "2003-02-07T05:57:01Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Derleth \*
> \*\*Well `anywhere to anywhereâ as long as your anywheres are at antipodes, anyway. (You _do_ have to go through the center of the Earth in a straight line and not a parabola for that time to be correct, right?)
>
> Which makes it pretty much useless. \*\*
No, youâve missed the point entirely. It works for a tunnel connecting _any_ two points on the earthâs surface.
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### Author:  [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/44 "2003-02-07T06:03:54Z")
I havenât done the math, but as I heard it, the time was the same from anywhere to anywhere. If you dug a straight-line tunnel from New York City to London, it would cut through the Earth the way a chord line cuts through a circle. It would start out downhill at some angle, level off halfway, and momentum would carry it uphill to the end (all in a perfectly straight line, think about it). Barring trivialities like friction, youâd just have time to grab on to something before you started rolling backward into the tunnel again. The claim is that the downhill acceleration and the length of the tunnel cancel each other out, and the travel time is the same for any two points on the globe.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/45 "2003-02-07T06:10:08Z")
**Derleth** , take a look at [this.](http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF5/537.html)
> [@](#):
>
> What is difficult to grasp, and hard to believe, about this unlikely scenario is that the time required for the trip would be the same regardless of the length of the tunnel! Theoretically, it could be a few miles, a few thousand miles, or through the center of the earth. The time of transit in all cases would be just over forty-two minutes.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/46 "2003-02-07T06:57:22Z")
Heh. That makes sense. The difference in the lengths of the paths are offset _exactly_ by the difference in steepness (and, therefore, acceleration).
Neat. Thanks. đ
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### Author:  [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/47 "2003-02-07T07:39:54Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by micco \*
> **While it was probably a funding problem, conventional wisdom held that the project was primarily killed by the marketing departments**
45 posts and no one has mentioned how hard it is to find passengers for the Concorde?
How in hell are they ever gonna find a **thousand** people who are in **that** much of a rush to cross the Atlantic on a regular basis?
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### Author:  [@Apex\_Rogers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apex_Rogers)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/48 "2003-02-07T08:00:22Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Joe Mahma \*
> \*\*Thereâs a 5 hour time difference between N.Y. and London, isnât there? Doesnât that mean it takes 5 hours for the planet to rotate that distance? So you couldnât just go straight up and then straight back down and find youâd travelled from N.Y. to London, unless it took you 5 hours to go straight up and back down. \*\*
Not to mention if you went âstraight upâ and âstraight downâ this would mean in relation to the earthâs surface, and in reality youâd be carrying the horizontal component of the earthâs roation with your velocity. Relative to the earth, youâd come down at or near the spot you started (give or take wind speed and jet stream). Youâd need to launch at an angle anyways, not that this would be a practical form of traval anyways.
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### Author:  [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/49 "2003-02-07T10:40:41Z")
Well, according to **Donald Fagan** it will take 90 minutes from New York to Paris, under sea by rail.đ
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/50 "2003-02-07T11:05:01Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Keeve \*
> \*\*45 posts and no one has mentioned how hard it is to find passengers for the Concorde?
>
> How in hell are they ever gonna find a **thousand** people who are in **that** much of a rush to cross the Atlantic on a regular basis? \*\*
Yeah, but at something $2K+ for a ticket, itâs pretty easy to see _why_ theyâre having problems. Now, if they could get the ticket price down to something like $1K or less, theyâd see a lot more business. (Get the tunnel ticket prices down to around $50 and youâll have no end of people wanting to take a ride! Just think of that! Hordes of ugly Americans running all over Europe! :eek: Itâll be like WWII again, only without the shooting! đ )
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### Author:  [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 11:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/51 "2003-02-07T11:42:49Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Futile Gesture \*
> **Not to mention the fact that Ireland is inconveniently in the way.**
Naturally it will have to be demolished in the name of progress.
**Chekmate** : [Pneumatic](http://www.capsu.org/library/documents/0047.html) and [atmospheric](http://membres.lycos.fr/fdelaitre/Crystal.htm) railways have been around for over a hundred years. (Well, I say âbeen aroundâ, but Iâm not sure any still exist). They worked, but not terribly well for a variety of reasons.
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### Author:  [@BioHazard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BioHazard)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2003, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/52 "2003-02-07T21:35:01Z")
As for stopping the air from getting out of a vacuumed tunnel, see my previous post.
Also I think there never will be an underwater, transatlantic tunnel, by the time we have the tech to make, it it will be much safer and cheaper to take a sub orbital flight.
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [February 8, 2003, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-york-to-london-in-30-minutes/153270/53 "2003-02-08T03:23:36Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jr8 \*
> \*\*Naturally it will have to be demolished in the name of progress.
>
> \*\*
Of course, shortly after this will be announced a new high speed plane which will be able to complete the trip in seconds, thus making the tunnel obsolete!
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