Another idea pinched

When I was a kid, about 11 years old, I had an idea. It seemed ridiculous to me that it took several hours to between most UK cities, when the whole island is only about 1000 miles long.

I had this idea. You have very precisely cut tunnels, very smooth, and capsules that go in them. Not on rails, just a snug low friction fit. Then you launch it at very high speed with its passengers in it, covering great distance in short time, with no disturbance above ground, no possibility of crashing because there's nowhere for it to fall off to, and if planned wisely, very little wind resistance.

I had this idea nearly 30 years ago.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23666173

 

Sorry Clueless, I'm not going for this idea. No crashes? If failure happens be it human or mechanical, one capsule could plough into another. You wouldn't get me in one, too claustrophobic!

 

Great idea Clue, his idea is not so smart though. Between L.A. & San Francisco ? They're not going to be there for much longer, that fault is well overdue.

 

Totally agree!!

Val

 

That would be as close to impossible as it gets. Certainly far less likely than a car or train crashing. Here's why. Apart from the fact that just like trains, they'd be carefully managed to ensure they don't collide, there's some simple laws of physics that come into play. An object moving through air compresses the air in front of it. In the open, that pressure wave can disperse through a massive area into what might as well be almost infinite volume, so wind resistance on a train on the surface of the ground is so low that it counts for very little if by some error, another train is on the same track heading straight at you. Inside a tube, where the capsule is an almost flush fit, that pressure wave can only go forward. It would need somewhere to escape to. It would escape via service ducts, ventilation shafts, and stations etc. If two of these capsules were heading straight towards each other in the same tube, as they close in on each other the surface area for the pressurised air to escape through decreases. Way before they meet each other, the air pressure between the two will have built up to the point that no motor or momentum is going to overcome it, so both capsules would naturally decelerate even if driver/controller took no action at all. In fact even if they both kept on full throttle, they air pressure would still be impossible to overcome, so both would just come to a controlled stop. Unless the air pressure built up enough to literally burst the tunnel then you'd have a problem.

Also, in the case of a train crash, it seems to me that it is almost always a derailment. In this tube/capsule system with a flush fit, there'd be no rails to come off.

 

I understand you're explanation Clueless, but I guarantee something will go wrong and human error will come into it somewhere.

 

In everything, there is risk. It is just a matter of balancing risk against reward.

Life is the biggest risk of all. Nobody has ever got out of it alive.

 

Would it not compress your insides like when people break their ribs on the seatbelt in a car crash. Or would the pressure build up so much that it would propel the capsule backwards?

 

The passengers would be oblivious. They'd just feel the capsule thing they were in decelerate gently to a stop.

 

Then what happens?

 

Then the passengers would have to wait for hours while a rescue team got to them and picked them up, and while waiting, the realisation would dawn that they were trapped several metres underground at coordinates unknown to them, without knowing when rescue would come, or what had happened, or even if anyone else knew they were stuck. Or the driver/controller could simply drive both capsules to the nearest station, let the passengers out, and then do the full investigation as to how come they ended up on a collision course.

 

ooh, exciting! I like it.

 

Had an another idea. How does the passenge get from the station platform to the capsule with regards to losing pressure?