Re: ATM Mercury flats (OFF TOPIC)

[RDuvall@pixworks.com (Robert Duvall)]

At 4:36 PM 5/1/97, Spencer Roedder wrote:
>78 minutes.  E.g., drop an object down a hole through the earth and it will
>come back 78 minutes later (ignore collisions with the hole caused by
>earth's rotation).  Also e.g., drill a straight line tunnel from New York
>to Chicago (not just straight on its ground track, but straight like a
>needle piercing an apple), evacuate it, and put a train in it on
>frictionless tracks; and gravity will take the train from one end to the
>other and back in 78 minutes.


Apologies to all, this has nothing to do with ATM as far as I know, but
maybe it's interesting nonetheless. The above struck me as a nice idea for
cheap transportation. Unfortunately, I have calculated that the tunnel will
be 15.6 miles deep at the midway point, assuming the cities are 1000 miles
apart (simple trig). I guess that's why we don't see these being made!
You'd really be moving on these bullet trains! Sonic speeds!




Robert Duvall

Software Engineer, Amateur Astronomer (TN),
and General Scientist (according to my son)
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