# The Transatlantic Tunnel **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 18, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925 "2006-03-18T19:42:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![homeskillet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/7ba0ec/32.png) [@homeskillet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/homeskillet)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/41 "2006-03-21T15:20:55Z")
Your boyfriend seems to be confusing two different shows it seems, one about a real life completed tunnel, the other in question was an episode of Extreme Engineering. The theoretical Trans-Atlantic tunnel is a pneumatic tunnel with a passenger Mag-Lev train that would travel between NYC and London in something under 2 hours. While they say the technology in theory should work for this, the cost of the project is at something like $100,000,000,000,000 and would take over 100 years to construct. Obviously, not the most practical of projects and unlikely to ever turn a profit. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/42 "2006-03-21T15:24:30Z")
> [@Carnac the Magnificent!](#): > > Engineers could easily negate the tidal forces you cite, by simply moving the Moon from Earth to Mars. But think of what effect this would have on horoscopes, not to mention all those loveless singles who are so earnestly seeking someone with whom to walk down a moonlit beach. One must not discount the impact of esthetics. > [@Carnac the Magnificent!](#): > > Words well in Brit advertising jingles: “Don’t be a rube, take the koo koo ka chube.” 😉 For that, we’ll release the hounds. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/43 "2006-03-21T15:44:34Z")
Time for a new boyfriend? ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/44 "2006-03-21T15:46:46Z")
> [@Ponder Stibbons](#): > > Hmmm. So if one wants to drive from NYC to London, just wait! Once one space elevator is built, I assume others will be built, for convenience. Then, using the same technology, one can string them together using an orbital tether that goes all the way round the earth. Once that is complete, just drive from NYC down to Ecuador (I assume the Pan American Highway will go through by then), pack your car aboard a space cargo pod (or whatever they’ll call it), have it transported to orbit, across the Atlantic to an African elevator, then drive up through Egypt to Turkey and across Europe to London. > > Simple! It’d be easier to just catapult your car across… ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/45 "2006-03-21T16:02:32Z")
I’ll tell you what kind of transatlantic tunnel I want to see built: a giant pneumatic tube. At either end, you check in. They take your luggage and put it in a capsule, then fire it down the tube. (You see them do this, so your know your luggage isn’t going off to Tokyo.) Then they give you a shot of something to make you go to sleep, you climb in the capsule and buckle yourself in, and as you doze off you get shot to the other side of the ocean. When you arrive, they give you a shot with the antidote; you wake up and there you are, with your luggage waiting for you. Painless. The person who figures out how to do this will make a fortune and become a hero to hundreds of thousands of frustrated travellers 😃 Unfortunately it’s just as much a pipe dream as all the other transatlantic tunnel projects. Drat. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/46 "2006-03-21T16:22:09Z")
> [@Carnac the Magnificent!](#): > > Engineers could easily negate the tidal forces you cite, by simply moving the Moon from Earth to Mars. Nah, it’d be MUCH easier to just blow the Moon to smithereens. This would have the added benefit of giving Earth an attractive ring system. To pull this off, we need some kind of powerful energy weapon, perhaps from a couple decades after the turn of the previous century… ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/47 "2006-03-21T16:47:02Z")
Tunnels, PAH! There’s a bridge over the Atlantic already. It just needs a bit of extra length, that’s all. 🙂 pic [Cross the Bridge over the Atlantic near Oban, to the Isle of Seil and explore from the Tigh na Truish Inn to Balvicar, then to Cuan and Luing and finally on to Easdale island through Ellenabeich](http://www.innish.com/seil.html) Re. “Chunnel”, I know that when the thing was only a twinkle in engineers’ eyes, (I’m thinking early-mid 1970s here) the newspapers and television would often call it “Chunnel”, as an attempt at cutesieness. I’m not convinced that many actual people in Britian call it anything other than the “Channel Tunnel” now though. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/48 "2006-03-21T17:54:10Z")
> [@Q.E.D.](#): > > Hurrah! (props to anyone who gets that.) > > I’m pretty sure there is not now, nor will there ever be a transatlantic tunnel; the engineering obstacles are just too great. If nothing else, the fact that the Atlantic spans at least two continental plates which are in motion relative to one another would make it nearly impossible. Additionally, the deep water in the midocean means fantastically huge pressures that any putative tunnel would have to support. Nah, I just can’t see it happening with current technology. Yes I get that although the only thing I remember about is that the engineer was named Washington and he was a descendent of George. What are props? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/49 "2006-03-21T17:59:01Z")
> [@Hari Seldon](#): > > What are props? Those things that make the plane go. Duh. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/50 "2006-03-21T21:37:12Z")
> [@](#): > > It’d be easier to just catapult your car across… Well, I don’t know too much about catapult technology, but in a well-designed and implemented space elevator system, the biggest costs would be getting your car from New York to Equador and from Kenya to London. The cost of lifting things into orbit, sending them around to the other elevator, and lowering them back down can, in principle, be made arbitrarily low. ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/51 "2006-03-21T22:33:10Z")
I have actually met people in Britain who firmly believed that the Mormons built a tunnel under the Atlantic in the 1850s so that they could steal the young girls away to Utah and make them polygamous wives. Usually these were the same people who believe that all Mormons have horns on their heads. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/52 "2006-03-21T22:34:32Z")
Make it reasonable fast (say 45 knots), and you can go from NYC to Cork in about 50 hours! Then you disembark, and take the tunnel under the Irish Sea (TBB), and then rail car under the English Channel. ---
**Author:** ![Ponder\_Stibbons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponder_stibbons/32/343_2.png) [@Ponder\_Stibbons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponder_Stibbons)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2006, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/53 "2006-03-21T22:45:56Z")
> [@FatBaldGuy](#): > > Usually these were the same people who believe that all Mormons have horns on their heads. So they considered [this](http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0167190/Ss/0167190/R255-34-34Ao.jpg?path=gallery&path_key=0167190) to be a documentary? 😃 Oh, and **ralph124c** , I like the ferry idea, but could we go to Portugal instead? I hate driving on the left hand side of the road. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/54 "2006-03-22T00:15:43Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Well, I don’t know too much about catapult technology, but in a well-designed and implemented space elevator system, the biggest costs would be getting your car from New York to Equador and from Kenya to London. The cost of lifting things into orbit, sending them around to the other elevator, and lowering them back down can, in principle, be made arbitrarily low. You neglect, however, to note that the transport distance has now gone from being roughly 8,000 miles to almost 52,000 miles (not counting all the up and down time). Never mind the engineering complexities of building this dual-elevator and tether transport system; it just doesn’t sound all that efficient. How about a material transporter that beams matter as data between to distant points? It’s almost as technically feasible as a transAtlantic tunnel and more flexible to boot. (I presume you can move the transmitter and receiver about with only modest effort.) Just don’t make too large a change in lattitude… Stranger ---
**Author:** ![\_tretch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/_/ac91a4/32.png) [@\_tretch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/_tretch)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/55 "2006-03-22T00:47:18Z")
Thanks for all the answers and discussions! I showed my boy this thread and his initial response was “Naw, I know what I saw, these people just aren’t believers!” :smack: But then I talked to him some more and I managed to pry from him that the two shows he saw were indeed about different tunnels. One about the chunnel 😛 and another about the theory of the transatlantic tunnel. Because he has incredibly bad memory, he thought the construction and such of the chunnel that he saw was of the transatlantic tunnel. Now, he’s pretty much seen the evidence that no such thing exists and I revel in my chanting of “told you so” to him. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/56 "2006-03-22T01:11:49Z")
> [@](#): > > You neglect, however, to note that the transport distance has now gone from being roughly 8,000 miles to almost 52,000 miles (not counting all the up and down time). Never mind the engineering complexities of building this dual-elevator and tether transport system; it just doesn’t sound all that efficient. I don’t think I neglected to note the ground transport distance, seeing as I said that was the most significant part. And the part in orbit is both far quicker and far cheaper than any current technology for moving cars long-distance: You could reasonably expect the above-Ecuador - above-Kenya leg of the trip to take only a few hours or less. Now, it may be that giant catapults or other technologies could be even cheaper, without the need for the long ground legs, but I already admitted I wasn’t up on those techs. And while the Space Elevators themselves are technologically daunting, they’re probably no more so than the Trans-Atlantic Tunnel (probably significantly less so; the cost estimates I’ve seen for the first Space Elevator are only in the tens of billions of dollars, not the hundreds of trillions, and any subsequent ones would be cheaper yet), and certainly more practical, in that they have a much greater payoff. ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/57 "2006-03-22T03:19:02Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > Well, ‘channel tunnel’ wins a UK-specific Googlefight by a ratio of about 12:1. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in conversation, and given the way it stood out to me in this thread I’d have thought it would have jarred if I’d heard it, too. > > Also, googling turned up the use of the name in an episode of Seinfeld, which might explain a greater popularity in the USA. Another subtler populizer may have been a _60 Minutes_ piece that aired sometime around late 1989-early 1990. It concerned the various parallel efforts to get the Channel Tunnel started … fundraising, politicking, engineering, and so forth. In any event, the news crew filmed a band playing in a small pub playing somewhere in England. The band wrote and performed a (politically charged, IIRC) song about the “Chunnel” and referred to it as such throughout the song. _60 Minutes_ aired a bit of this performance. I remember the song bit clearly in this particular episode of _60 Minutes_. I also think I recall some quoted residents of Great Britain calling it the “Chunnel” here and there throughout the piece … but I’m not 100% certain of that memory. It wouldn’t prove anything anyway – lots of things get “renamed” in the public conciousness shortly after going live. “Chunnel” just didn’t seem to stick over there (excepting possible regionalisms). ---
**Author:** ![Eleusis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Eleusis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleusis)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/58 "2006-03-22T03:49:26Z")
> [@$tretch](#): > > But then I talked to him some more and I managed to pry from him that the two shows he saw were indeed about different tunnels. One about the chunnel 😛 and another about the theory of the transatlantic tunnel. Because he has incredibly bad memory, he thought the construction and such of the chunnel that he saw was of the transatlantic tunnel. I saw the episode of extreme engineering about the transatlantic tunnel, followed by another episode which described a new tunnel under the Alps, which is being built. I think it’s more likely that’s the one he’s thinking of. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/59 "2006-03-22T06:17:14Z")
More on the geology of the mid-Atlantic divergent plate boundary. In rift zones where the sea floor is [spreading apart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafloor_spreading), where the earth’s crust is thinnest and opens up, magma from beneath is welling up and hardening to form new sea floor to replace the rock that has moved away from there in both directions. When they put the tunnel across the plate boundary, can they guard against damage from the heat? For an especially exuberant example of the Mid-Atlantic plate boundary’s geologic activity, remember the volcanic island of Surtsey that suddenly sprang up out of the waves in 1963. One cubic kilometer of lava came out during the series of eruptions that formed Surtsey. It gets really really got down there. There’s a brief seafloor spreading video by NOAA at that link [http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03fire/logs/ridge.html](http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03fire/logs/ridge.html) ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2006, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925/60 "2006-03-22T09:14:09Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > You neglect, however, to note that the transport distance has now gone from being roughly 8,000 miles to almost 52,000 miles (not counting all the up and down time). Never mind the engineering complexities of building this dual-elevator and tether transport system; it just doesn’t sound all that efficient. > > How about a material transporter that beams matter as data between to distant points? It’s almost as technically feasible as a transAtlantic tunnel and more flexible to boot. (I presume you can move the transmitter and receiver about with only modest effort.) **Just don’t make too large a change in lattitude…** > > Stranger Assuming you’re talking about conservation of momentum (and why not, if it affects Puppeteer stepping discs then why shouldn’t it affect any human teleportation device?) a radical change in longitude is just as bad. Your speed is the same but the direction of travel is substantially different… something never brought out in Anne McCaffrey’s _Dragonriders_ series. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-transatlantic-tunnel/348925.md?page=4)