LA TIMES,
JUNE 11, 1972
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"L.A. to N.Y. in Half an Hour?
10,000 - M.P.H. Tunnel Train Plan Developed
By: Times Science Writer -
George Getz
A
Rand corporation physicist has
devised a rapid transit system to get you from Los Angeles to NY
in half an hour for a $50 fair. He said existing technology made
such a system feasible and so does a cost analysis. The essence
of the idea is to dig a tunnel more or less along the present
routes of U.S. highways 66 and thirty. The tunnel would contain
several large tubes for East West travel of trains that float on
magnetic fields, moving at top speeds of 10,000 mph. Passengers
would faced forwarded during acceleration, backward during deceleration. According to R. M. Salter Jr. head of the physical
sciences department at Rand, the idea of high-speed train travel
using electromagnetic suspension was first put forward in 1905
and actually patented in 1912. The trains he suggested now would
be single cars rather than actual trains, and would be big enough
to carry both passengers and freight, including large containers
and automobiles.
Could Carry
Automobiles
The cars, or gondolas, would leave
the New York and Los Angeles terminals at one minute or even 30
second intervals. On the main line their would be intermediate stops at Amarillo and Chicago. Feeder lines would meet the main
lines at both locations. Their would also be subsidiary lines
coming into the two main terminals from such cities as San
Francisco, Boston and Washington. The main idea of VHST, or Very High Speed
Transit, developed originally in thinking about
the satellite program and hyper sonic aircraft speeds."
Salter said in an interview at Rand. "The underground tubes
were for suggested as alternatives, perhaps not quite seriously,
but it was soon apparent that the idea of a tunnel containing
such tubes had a lot of real advantages." he said.
Conservation of
Energy
In the first place, he explained
there is the extremely important matter of the use and
conservation of immense amounts of energy needed to move the
vehicles at such great speed. "An airplane that travels
faster than sound uses up a large part of its available energy
supply just in climbing to an altitude where the speeds for which
it is designed are possible." Salter said. "That's true
of rockets to. Much of their energy is spent and lost forever and
getting above the atmosphere." This would not be true for
the VHST gondolas traveling on their electromagnetic rail beds,
according to Salter. The tubes would be emptied of air, almost to
the point of vacuum, so the trains would not need much power to
overcome air resistance. They would not even have to be
streamlined. In addition to an electromagnetic roadbeds, the
opposing electromagnetic loops of wires in the floors of the
gondolas would be super cooled with liquid Helium to further
eliminate electrical resistance.
Breaking
Generates Power
Just as important, the gondolas
would, like old-fashioned trolley cars, generate power as they
break to a stop. "Since the trains would be leaving New York and Los Angeles simultaneously every minute, the
power
generated by cars breaking coming into the terminal would be
transferred to the power lines propelling the cars going the
other way." "For example, there will be halfway points
between each stop. Trains would use power and getting to that
halfway point, and generate power going the other half of the way
to the stop. Each would use power generated by trains going in
the other direction." That is the way trolley cars have
operated for eighty years - taking power from the overhead lines
while accelerating or running along at a steady speed, and
putting power back into the lines while breaking or coasting. The
big drawback to the Salter scheme is the cost of tunneling across
the nation. He admitted that it would be expensive but it does
not daunt him. "After the tunneling was finished, everything
else would be practically free." He said. Even at the low
fair he proposes, the enormous debt created by the tunneling
would be amortized within a reasonable period if the number of
passengers and the amount of freight came up to Salter's
expectations. He figures the tunnel's would carry seven or 8
million tons of freight a day and that passengers would take to
traveling back and forth between the Eastern West Coast has
readily as they now fly between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"The technology of this is much easier than was developed
for the space program."
Salter said. And tunnels, he added,
need not be so expensive to dig is people think. The most
expensive thing about surface routes is the acquiring
right-of-way and removing buildings that stand on the chosen
route. The tunnel would not incur this expense. The tunnel,
besides carrying tubes for passenger and freight gondolas, would
carry many of the utilities now strung across the countryside on
high wires. Salter said these underground power "lines"
could be super-cooled with helium, like the electromagnetic loops
in the floors of the gondolas. He said this would so reduce
resistance that power could be transferred from one end of the
country to the other without appreciable loss. At the present
time long distance transportation of power is difficult because
of the amount of energy wasted. He said laser beams could be
carried in the tunnel for the instantaneous transmission of
messages. Even the mail could go cross-country in pneumatic tubes
carried in the tunnel. All this would save money and speed
amortization, thus cutting the overall cost of tunneling. Salter
said approximately 8000 miles of tunnel were dug in America and
Western Europe in the 1960s. That includes mine shafts. But he
said existing tunneling technology could be vastly improved.
Salter said many tunnels are dug nowadays almost as they would
have been in the dark ages. Drilling holes in tunnel faces, and
using machines with rotary bits are methods of tunneling that can
be improved, according to him. He said the tunnel could be worked
on from a great many "faces," for instance. Salter
suggested, too, that electronic beams or even water be used to
drill holes for blasting. The high-powered electrons would drill
blasting holes almost instantaneously.
Travel by
Airplane
Projections of future airplane and
automobile travels in the United States, and the future train and
truck transfer of freight, show that Salter's tunnel idea is not
a science fiction fantasy. There will be more room in the tunnels
for all the necessary transport than there will be over any
feasible number of Airways and freeways and tracks. Salter's
suggestion, according to the experts who have had a look at it,
is an eminently practical one for handling all the necessary
traffic cleanly and without clogging up the air and surface
pathways. But it will such a system ever be developed? Salter
himself is not optimistic. "Perhaps" is how he puts it.
"I am not nearly so optimistic about the political aspects
of the problem as I am about our technical capability of doing
the job." He said. "History shows that some obviously
feasible and practical projects, such as the tunnel proposed over
and over again for connecting England and France under the
English channel, can be put off for centuries because of
political pressure. On the other hand, societies with relatively
primitive technology can perform such engineering feats as the
erection of impairments." Is the VHS T too far out? Salter
suggested that to get the right perspective we should look back
100 years.
Comparison Made
By comparing transportation a
century ago and transportation today, one gets a better feel for
just how practical VHST is. It appears to be a logical next step,
and much more practical than its alternatives of filling the
highways and Airways with more and more individually guided
vehicles. "This alone is a compelling reason for the
high-speed system." Salter said. There are others, according
to him. "We can't afford any longer to continue indefinitely
to pollute the skies with heat, chemicals, not to mention noise,
or to carve up the land with pavement." He said. "We
also need to get the trucks and many of the cars off the highway
to make the roads available to drivers who drive the family car
for fun and convenience."
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