Transatlantic tunnel
Encyclopedia
A transatlantic tunnel is a theoretical tunnel
which would span the Atlantic Ocean
between North America
and Europe
and would carry mass transit of some type—train
s are envisioned in most proposals.
Using advanced technologies, speeds of 500 to 8000 km/h (310.7 to 4,971 ) are envisaged.
Plans for such a tunnel have not progressed beyond the conceptual stage, and no one is actively pursuing such a project.
Most conceptions of the tunnel have it between the United States
and the United Kingdom
, or more specifically, New York City
and London
. The main barriers to constructing such a tunnel are cost—from $175 billion to $12 trillion—and the limits of current materials science
.
Existing major tunnels, such as the Channel Tunnel
and Seikan Tunnel
, despite using less expensive technology than proposed for the transatlantic tunnel, struggle financially.
A transatlantic tunnel would be 88 times longer than the Gotthard Base Tunnel
and 36 times longer than the Delaware Aqueduct
. In 2003, the Discovery Channel's show Extreme Engineering
aired a program entitled "Transatlantic Tunnel" which discusses the proposed tunnel concept in detail.
, son of Jules Verne
, who wrote about it in 1888 in a story Un Express de l'avenir (An Express of the Future). This story was published in English in Strand Magazine
in 1895, where it was incorrectly attributed to Jules Verne, a mistake frequently repeated today.
In 1913, the novel Der Tunnel
was published by German
author Bernhard Kellermann
, which inspired four films of the same name: one in 1914 by William Wauer, and separate German, French, and English
versions released in 1933 and 1935. The German and French versions were by Curtis Bernhardt
and the English was written in part by science fiction
writer Curt Siodmak
. Suggesting contemporary interest, an original poster for the English version was estimated at auction for $2,000–3,000.
Robert H. Goddard
, the father of rocketry, was issued two of his 214 patents for the idea.
Arthur C. Clarke
mentions intercontinental tunnels in his 1956 novel, The City and the Stars
. The 1975 novel, A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!
, describes a vacuum/maglev system on the ocean floor.
The April 2004 issue of Popular Science
suggests a transatlantic tunnel is more feasible than previously thought and without major engineering challenges. It compares it favorably with laying transatlantic pipes and cables, but with a cost of 88 to 175 billion dollars.
, a tunnel beneath the ocean floor, or some combination.
A 1960s proposal has a 3100 miles (4,989 km) long near-vacuum
tube with vactrain
s, a theoretical type of maglev train, that could travel at speeds up to 5000 miles per hour (8,046.7 km/h). At this speed, the travel time between New York City
and London
would be less than one hour. Another modern variation intended to reduce cost is a submerged floating tunnel about 160 feet (48.8 m) below the ocean surface to avoid ships, bad weather, and high pressure (associated with a tunnel deeper at the sea bed). It would consist of 54,000 prefabricated sections held in place by 100,000 tethering cables. Each section would consist of a layer of foam sandwiched between steel. It too would have reduced air pressure. The cables would be anchored into the seafloor, and would have room to sway if a submerged object like a submarine were to hit the tunnel. If a breach were to occur in the tunnel, the trains would be going faster than the water and would be blocked off from the breached section by titanium pressure lock doors, unless, of course, the breach occurred somewhere in front of the train's path. The train would not have enough time to slow down to avoid the doors and/or the breach which would cause a major crash (at up to 5,000 mph) and most likely destroy those sections of the tunnel. Theories proposing rocket
, jet
, scramjet
, and air pressurized tunnels for train transportation have also been proposed. In the proposal described in the Extreme Engineering episode, it would take 18 minutes to reach top speed, and 18 minutes at the end to come to a halt. The resulting 0.2G would lead to an unpleasant feeling of tilting downward during the deceleration phase, and it was proposed that the seats would individually rotate to face backwards at the midpoint of the journey to make the deceleration more pleasant. However, spinning chairs would also cut down massively on passenger capacity, and would also be expensive, therefore raising the cost per ticket to a much higher level.
A proposed alternative route suggests an approximately 6000 km route mixing sea and surface, travelling north from Newfoundland over the ice sheet
of Greenland
and across Iceland
to the Faroe Islands
and then Scotland
. This route would be cheaper to build because it could have multiple tunnel heads, but more difficult to construct, due to adverse weather conditions in Greenland and the difficulty of maintaining the system near the ice sheet. Lessons learned from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
might mitigate such difficulties. Building a railway over an ice sheet has never been considered. Roads built on ice sheet do exist in a few places (Svalbard
and Antarctica), but there are problems at the edge of the sheet and due to ice stream
s. Unlike a roadway, a high-speed rail
way must be stable.
Tunnel
A tunnel is an underground passageway, completely enclosed except for openings for egress, commonly at each end.A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. Some tunnels are aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations or are sewers...
which would span the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
between North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and would carry mass transit of some type—train
Train
A train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track to transport cargo or passengers from one place to another place. The track usually consists of two rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway.Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate...
s are envisioned in most proposals.
Using advanced technologies, speeds of 500 to 8000 km/h (310.7 to 4,971 ) are envisaged.
Plans for such a tunnel have not progressed beyond the conceptual stage, and no one is actively pursuing such a project.
Most conceptions of the tunnel have it between the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, or more specifically, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. The main barriers to constructing such a tunnel are cost—from $175 billion to $12 trillion—and the limits of current materials science
Materials science
Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...
.
Existing major tunnels, such as the Channel Tunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
and Seikan Tunnel
Seikan Tunnel
The Seikan Tunnel is a railway tunnel in Japan, with a long portion under the seabed. Track level is about below seabed and below sea level. It travels beneath the Tsugaru Strait—connecting Aomori Prefecture on the Japanese island of Honshu and the island of Hokkaido—as part of the Kaikyo Line...
, despite using less expensive technology than proposed for the transatlantic tunnel, struggle financially.
A transatlantic tunnel would be 88 times longer than the Gotthard Base Tunnel
Gotthard Base Tunnel
The Gotthard Base Tunnel is a new railway tunnel beneath the Swiss Alps, expected to open in 2016. With a route length of and a total of of tunnels, shafts and passages, it is the world's longest rail tunnel, surpassing the Japanese Seikan Tunnel....
and 36 times longer than the Delaware Aqueduct
Delaware Aqueduct
The Delaware Aqueduct is the newest of the New York City aqueducts. It takes water from the Rondout Reservoir through the Chelsea Pump Station, the West Branch Reservoir, and the Kensico Reservoir, ending at the Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, New York....
. In 2003, the Discovery Channel's show Extreme Engineering
Extreme Engineering
Extreme Engineering is a documentary television series that airs on the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel. The program features futuristic and ongoing engineering projects. As of April 2011, the show is airing its ninth season. Danny Forster first hosted the series in season 4 and has been...
aired a program entitled "Transatlantic Tunnel" which discusses the proposed tunnel concept in detail.
History
Suggestions for such a structure go back to Michel VerneMichel Verne
Michel Jean Pierre Verne was a writer and the son of Jules Verne.Because of his wayward behaviour, Michel was sent by his father to Mettray Penal Colony for six months in 1876. By the age of 19, he caused a scandal by eloping with an actress despite his famous father's objections...
, son of Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
, who wrote about it in 1888 in a story Un Express de l'avenir (An Express of the Future). This story was published in English in Strand Magazine
Strand Magazine
The Strand Magazine was a monthly magazine composed of fictional stories and factual articles founded by George Newnes. It was first published in the United Kingdom from January 1891 to March 1950 running to 711 issues, though the first issue was on sale well before Christmas 1890.Its immediate...
in 1895, where it was incorrectly attributed to Jules Verne, a mistake frequently repeated today.
In 1913, the novel Der Tunnel
Der Tunnel (novel)
Der Tunnel is a novel by Bernhard Kellermann published in April 1913. The novel sold 100,000 copies in the six months after its publication, and it became one of the most successful books of the first half of the 20th Century. By 1939 its circulation had reached millions...
was published by German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
author Bernhard Kellermann
Bernhard Kellermann
Bernhard Kellermann was a well known German author and poet.- Life :Bernhard Kellermann enrolled in 1899 at Munich's Technical University initially in general studies, but later focused on German literature and painting....
, which inspired four films of the same name: one in 1914 by William Wauer, and separate German, French, and English
The Tunnel (1935 film)
The Tunnel, also known as Transatlantic Tunnel in the United States, is a 1935 British science fiction film based on the 1913 novel Der Tunnel by Bernhard Kellermann, about the building of a transatlantic tunnel. It was directed by Maurice Elvey and stars Richard Dix, Leslie Banks, Madge Evans,...
versions released in 1933 and 1935. The German and French versions were by Curtis Bernhardt
Curtis Bernhardt
Curtis Bernhardt was a German film director born in Worms, Germany, under the name Kurt Bernhardt. Some of his American films were called "woman's films" including the Joan Crawford film Possessed . Bernhardt trained as an actor in Germany, and performed on the stage, before starting as a film...
and the English was written in part by science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
writer Curt Siodmak
Curt Siodmak
Curt Siodmak was a novelist and screenwriter. He made a name for himself in Hollywood with horror and science fiction films, most notably The Wolf Man and Donovan's Brain...
. Suggesting contemporary interest, an original poster for the English version was estimated at auction for $2,000–3,000.
Robert H. Goddard
Robert H. Goddard
Robert Hutchings Goddard was an American professor, physicist and inventor who is credited with creating and building the world's first liquid-fueled rocket, which he successfully launched on March 16, 1926...
, the father of rocketry, was issued two of his 214 patents for the idea.
Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...
mentions intercontinental tunnels in his 1956 novel, The City and the Stars
The City and the Stars
The City and the Stars is a science fiction novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It is a complete rewrite of his earlier novella, Against the Fall of Night.-Overview:...
. The 1975 novel, A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!
Tunnel Through the Deeps
Tunnel Through the Deeps is a 1972 alternate history/science fiction novel by Harry Harrison...
, describes a vacuum/maglev system on the ocean floor.
The April 2004 issue of Popular Science
Popular Science
Popular Science is an American monthly magazine founded in 1872 carrying articles for the general reader on science and technology subjects. Popular Science has won over 58 awards, including the ASME awards for its journalistic excellence in both 2003 and 2004...
suggests a transatlantic tunnel is more feasible than previously thought and without major engineering challenges. It compares it favorably with laying transatlantic pipes and cables, but with a cost of 88 to 175 billion dollars.
Variations
Many variations of the concept exist, including a tube above the seabedSeabed
The seabed is the bottom of the ocean.- Ocean structure :Most of the oceans have a common structure, created by common physical phenomena, mainly from tectonic movement, and sediment from various sources...
, a tunnel beneath the ocean floor, or some combination.
A 1960s proposal has a 3100 miles (4,989 km) long near-vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...
tube with vactrain
Vactrain
A vactrain is a proposed, as-yet-unbuilt design for future high-speed railroad transportation. This would entail building maglev lines through evacuated or partly evacuated tubes or tunnels...
s, a theoretical type of maglev train, that could travel at speeds up to 5000 miles per hour (8,046.7 km/h). At this speed, the travel time between New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
would be less than one hour. Another modern variation intended to reduce cost is a submerged floating tunnel about 160 feet (48.8 m) below the ocean surface to avoid ships, bad weather, and high pressure (associated with a tunnel deeper at the sea bed). It would consist of 54,000 prefabricated sections held in place by 100,000 tethering cables. Each section would consist of a layer of foam sandwiched between steel. It too would have reduced air pressure. The cables would be anchored into the seafloor, and would have room to sway if a submerged object like a submarine were to hit the tunnel. If a breach were to occur in the tunnel, the trains would be going faster than the water and would be blocked off from the breached section by titanium pressure lock doors, unless, of course, the breach occurred somewhere in front of the train's path. The train would not have enough time to slow down to avoid the doors and/or the breach which would cause a major crash (at up to 5,000 mph) and most likely destroy those sections of the tunnel. Theories proposing rocket
Rocket
A rocket is a missile, spacecraft, aircraft or other vehicle which obtains thrust from a rocket engine. In all rockets, the exhaust is formed entirely from propellants carried within the rocket before use. Rocket engines work by action and reaction...
, jet
Jet engine
A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet to generate thrust by jet propulsion and in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets...
, scramjet
Scramjet
A scramjet is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow...
, and air pressurized tunnels for train transportation have also been proposed. In the proposal described in the Extreme Engineering episode, it would take 18 minutes to reach top speed, and 18 minutes at the end to come to a halt. The resulting 0.2G would lead to an unpleasant feeling of tilting downward during the deceleration phase, and it was proposed that the seats would individually rotate to face backwards at the midpoint of the journey to make the deceleration more pleasant. However, spinning chairs would also cut down massively on passenger capacity, and would also be expensive, therefore raising the cost per ticket to a much higher level.
A proposed alternative route suggests an approximately 6000 km route mixing sea and surface, travelling north from Newfoundland over the ice sheet
Ice sheet
An ice sheet is a mass of glacier ice that covers surrounding terrain and is greater than 50,000 km² , thus also known as continental glacier...
of Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
and across Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
to the Faroe Islands
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...
and then Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
. This route would be cheaper to build because it could have multiple tunnel heads, but more difficult to construct, due to adverse weather conditions in Greenland and the difficulty of maintaining the system near the ice sheet. Lessons learned from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
Trans-Alaska Pipeline System
The Trans Alaska Pipeline System , includes the Trans Alaska Pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one of the world's largest pipeline systems...
might mitigate such difficulties. Building a railway over an ice sheet has never been considered. Roads built on ice sheet do exist in a few places (Svalbard
Svalbard
Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...
and Antarctica), but there are problems at the edge of the sheet and due to ice stream
Ice stream
An ice stream is a region of an ice sheet that moves significantly faster than the surrounding ice. Ice streams are a type of glacier. They are significant features of the Antarctic where they account for 10% of the volume of the ice...
s. Unlike a roadway, a high-speed rail
High-speed rail
High-speed rail is a type of passenger rail transport that operates significantly faster than the normal speed of rail traffic. Specific definitions by the European Union include for upgraded track and or faster for new track, whilst in the United States, the U.S...
way must be stable.