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China May Build an Undersea Train To America
New submitter howtokilltime sends this news from the Washington Post: "China is planning to build a train line that would, in theory, connect Beijing to the United States. According to a report in the Beijing Times, citing an expert at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Chinese officials are considering a route that would start in the country's northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska."
The title makes it sound like it would be under water the whole way. Obviously that is wrong
Also, Russia has talked of doing this to move freight for YEARS, so its one of those 'see it to believe it' deals
About the same as with a shorter underwater tunnel, such as this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Not America proper. You had us worried for a minute there, guys.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
This project, a bridge tunnel between Alaska and either Russia or China, has been discussed for decades. It would be an awesome idea and a massive undertaking. To date, no one has actually done it because of the easy access to air travel, cheap ocean freight, and the expense of building a 100+ mile bridge in some of the harshest environment known to man.
The days of terrorists? Are you kidding me? Terrorism has always existed. The only way to combat it is to not let it scare or deter us from going about our lives.
The United States already lost a war against terrorism by instituting ridiculous laws, spying and harassment because the government was scared. That is exactly the goal of terrorism.
They've got the money and the manpower. Nationalism is the only resource that lack of may stop them. Projects such as these and their moon base plans are money well spent.
Terrorists use plate tectonics now ?
but it's just an accident waiting to happen
Over in Boston, they spent a decade on The Big Dig, a 'measly' 3.5 mile underground tunnel to try to deal with their traffic issue. The price tag was roughly 22 billion (when interest is factored in). It had several major lawsuits, mostly notably the epoxy used to hold up the ceiling tiles collapsing literally crushing a driver. In addition, it has some 400 leaks that will steadily destroy the tunnel.
And they want to make a tunnel 36 times longer? Take a country that isn't particularly concerned with safety and a trillion dollar project and tell me cutting corners isn't going to happen.
Both sides of the Bering strait are part of the north american plate.
Both sides of the Bering strait are part of the north american plate.
True, but if we're going by plate tectonics then a tunnel from China to northern Japan could be considered a tunnel to North America as well.
Are they building this tunnel to move cargo less efficiently than a cargo ship or to move people less efficiently than an airliner?
This was an actual thing on Seaquest DSV.
Though in practicality, the bering straight crossing gets proposed every year by Russia or some other billionaire in Asia-Pacific, but never from the US side.
There are plenty of technical problems but I think the founding problem is that we, as humans, have not mastered the sea, there's no undersea colonies, therefor there is no practical reason to have an undersea transportation network. You think oil spills are a bad idea, and derailments are a fact of life, imagine what would happen if there was a transpacific or transatlantic crossing that was treated exactly the same way. One fuckup and the entire line is destroyed. Ask the cities that have transport tunnels why they haven't built any more. A) Cost, B) in case of fire, die quietly.
We should build an underground train near the South Pole, 100 miles away on each side from it, and watch the terrorists show up. They'll be like, where are all the passengers? Why are these trains so empty? Because only morons would build them in the middle of fucking nowhere, like the South Pole, or the Behring Strait.
This is a ridiculous project and will never get build. There are far cheaper and far more practical ways to get people to and from China/America.
All that being said, if they do waste lots of money building this, I'll be one of the first on it. It sounds like it would be the best train ride on earth!
Is there any Chinese propaganda that Slashdot won't breathlessly repeat?
Newly compiled Russian and U.S. seismological data support an independent Bering block in motion relative to the North American plate. This motion is likely to be driven by the westward extrusion of southwestern Alaska, resulting from compression in southern Alaska due to subduction of the Pacific plate and terrane accretion. Seismicity extends from central Alaska, through the Bering Strait, and into Chukotka. In eastern Chukotka several southwest trends are evident, some of which continue through the Koryak Highlands to Kamchatka. The seismicity outlines the Bering block, which includes most of the Bering Sea, Chukchi Peninsula, Seward Peninsula, and parts of western Alaska. Focal mechanisms, young basaltic volcanism, and normal faults in western Alaska and Chukotka indicate that the Bering Strait is under northeast-southwest extension. This, in conjunction with thrust faulting in the Koryak Highlands, indicates that the Bering block is rotating clockwise relative to the North American plate.
http://geology.gsapubs.org/con...
Also the Aleutian islands are quite active, that entire area is active.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Facepalm! Good idea, let's build a tunnel on the sea floor that crosses tectonic plates, what could go wrong? http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media...
It seems like building the railroad to the Bering Strait, and then using a ferry to cross would be the more practical approach.
Shipping by sea is cheaper than rail. I you are going to put it on a ferry, then you might as well just put it on a container ship in Shanghai or Tianjin, and ship it by sea to Seattle or Long Beach. Which is exactly what we do now. There is no way that an eight thousand mile railroad, through some of the world's most rugged terrain and harshest weather, can compete with container ships, even without the cost of building the tunnel.
Please, extremely long tunnels already exist such as the one between Hokkaido and Honshu.
Because only morons would build them in the middle of fucking nowhere, like the South Pole, or the Behring Strait.
I would be careful tossing around words like "moron" if you don't even understand that the location of a route is secondary to the end points.
We send ships across the ocean too, and soon now, the Northwestern Corridor too.
My question is what purpose it would solve. By the time the route is finished, there won't be any way for the US to import anything from China. Food exports from USA to China, perhaps, as an attempt to pay the interest on what is owed?
There's also the minor problem of Mother Russia - they would not want this done for free, or without the US doing things in return. An oil line from Iran through Afghanistan without US intervention and a few other concessions, most likely.
No. That was Bush. Mission accomplished.
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/01/bush-mission-accomplished-iraq-thumbsup.jpg
For freight, you're absolutely right. When "the slow boat from China" is fast enough, cntainer ships are absolutely the most economical approach. For passengers though, a high-speed rail link between continents might make sense. For international business in 2050 it might be economical... although I am not sure how it might compete with the future versions of the Airbus A380 or Boeing 787...
That is one heck of a pipe they are talking about. I won't be using such a tunnel and I'll bet that it would be a financial blunder and practical nightmare. Does any American actually want such a tunnel?
Planes are faster, cheaper, and safer for passenger traffic at that distance.
Possibly they want the underwater tunnel for cargo trains? Then you're competing with container ships which are themselves very cheap though possibly not as fast.
The only way a train beats a plane is if the tunnel is a vacuum. And that radically complicates the engineering especially if you're putting it under the ocean.
And that doesn't even address the political problems.
Tensions with china are increasing and then you have this train going through Russian territory which has its own problems.
So... why would we build the train? Yes the chinese are saying they're paying for it. Great. But its going to go through our territory and give the Chinese physical access to the whole route. Why would we give them that for something which appears pointless and doomed?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
By what objective standard did the terrorists "win"? Their goal was to eject the US from the Mideast and unite the Muslim world under something like Sharia law. I see no progress on that front.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What is the point of a passenger train to Alaska? There is not even a pasenger train from LA to Anchorage. From what I have seen there is only bus/plane/ferry travel from USA to Alaska.
The concept of an overland connection crossing the Bering Strait goes back before the 20th century. William Gilpin, first governor of the Colorado Territory, envisioned a vast ''Cosmopolitan Railway'' in 1890 linking the entire world via a series of railways. Two years later, Joseph Strauss, who went on to design over 400 bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, put forward the first proposal for a Bering Strait railroad bridge in his senior thesis. The project was presented to the government of the Russian Empire, but it was rejected.
A syndicate of American railroad magnates proposed in 1904 (via a French spokesman) a Siberian-Alaskan railroad from Cape Prince Wales in Alaska through a tunnel under the Bering Strait and across northeastern Siberia to Irkutsk via Cape Deshnev, Verkhnekolymsk and Yakutsk. The proposal was for a 90-year lease, and exclusive mineral rights for 8 miles (13 km) each side of the right-of-way. It was debated by officials and finally turned down on March 20, 1907.
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Aside from the obvious technical challenges of building two 40-kilometre (25 mi) bridges or a more than 80-kilometre (50 mi) tunnel across the strait, another major challenge is that, as of 2011, there is nothing on either side of the Bering Strait to connect the bridge to.
The Russian side, in particular, is severely lacking in infrastructure, without any highways for almost 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) (the nearest is M56) and no railroads or paved highways for over 3,200 kilometres (2,000 mi) in any direction from the strait.
On the American side, at least 800 kilometres (500 mi) of highways or railways would have to be constructed in order to connect to the American transport network
Bering Strait crossing
http://emotibot.net/pix/459.gi...
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I rather like the status quo where they need a usable navy to get to resources that they will eventually want to take by force. They're about out of fresh water and other key resources aren't far behind.
This faces the same problem that a cross-Bering rail connection would have: "And then what?" Alaska doesn't have a particularly robust rail network (the tunnel would have to go all the way to Anchorage), and what it does have doesn't leave the state; there are no connections to Canada, let alone to the 48.
Anyone or anything that arrives by tunnel would immediately have to get onto a truck, bus, ship or plane. Unless China sees that much of an untapped market in Anchorage and Fairbanks.
All depends on the cost of oil... with cheap oil, the ships win. Trains move cargo for less energy expended per ton-mile, but cost in the infrastructure construction.
Could they build a tunnel as a long conduit on the sea floor, perhaps giving it some flexibility to deal with the seismic activity in that area?
If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.
military defeat: score 0
political breakup: Score 0.5 - our political polarization is damn close to a breakup.
ideological downfall: score 1 - yep conservative, liberal, everyone is disgusted
economic bankruptcy: score 0.5 - came damn close in '08
Well, so far Osama is 2 for 4.
Here's the sad part, we did it to ourselves. All he did was push the right buttons and showed what a stupid people we are.
Everyone who "feels" safer with DHS and our police state is at fault. As well as the actors - like the NSA - they are in Osama's plan.
Everyone who is clinging to political ideology is at fault.
And everyone who is in deep with our consumerist-oil guzzling society is at fault.
With well known, Chinese workmanship quality!
I wonder who, in a good mental health,
would ride in this train, bellow the ocean....
I don't.!!!!!!
Russia is interested, at least as much as China. This would massively increase trade between continents. Train freight is far cheaper than shipping. If I remember correctly, they have an offer for several billion USD for any entity that would agree to build such a tunnel.
Trains move cargo for less energy expended per ton-mile
Citation? All the information I can find says the opposite. For US freight transport, ships use less energy. Large ocean-going container ships should be even more efficient per ton-mile.
You're joking but a geospecialist could easily hold a government for randsom if they had an earthquake machine.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Not at all. Channel tunnel is over 50km, while Seikan tunnel is at 240m depth.
Engineering problems you're talking about have already been solved.
You just listed the long term goal. The immediate goals of a terrorist act is to cause terror and to provoke a disproportionate reprisal. The reprisals helps further radicalize people and help recruit more members. I think they succeed on all 3 short term goals. As for the long term goals, the war isn't over yet.
The last time we had a bridge up there, the USA was invaded by Siberians! Come on, Americans, get your heads out of your butts and fight back!
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Yeah i bet they sure are...
This is a really, really dumb idea...sort of like putting your mailbox on a 4000ft tall pole so it can get "air mail" better
Thank you Dave Raggett
funny how Deep Injections Fracking wells do essentially the same thing as a theoretical earthquake machine
remember the "US Navy Flood Map"?
http://earthshiftx.com/wp-cont...
Now correlate to where fracking has been alllowed...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Train freight is far cheaper than shipping.
No, water is always the cheapest way to ship things long distance. In fact it's not unusual for container ships from China to use NY harbor (just take a look from the Narrows) in spite of the much longer distance than shipping to the West Coast and then shipping cross-country by rail.
The problem is the proverbial "slow boat to China" (or from China these days). A trans-Pacific cargo ship generally takes around 3 weeks. You could steam faster, but the fuel consumption would rise dramatically.
If you want to talk short term, they have made no progress towards their long term goals. Radicals do undermine democracy, but they can strengthen a dictatorship as moderate people fear the radicals and side with the dictatorship. You see this right now in Egypt and Syria. The result of these dictatorships harms the cause of the terrorists. They probably have more representation in Turkey than they do in these other countries that they've been working so hard in, because their assumptions are flawed. They make temporary victories, capturing cities which quickly empty. But ultimately they make no long-term progress.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's even more complicated than that thre's gage breaks, a train that runs on Chinese tracks can't run on Trans-Siberian tracks, a train that runs on Trans-Siberian tracks can't run on North American tracks, so the trains either have to be off loaded-on loaded 3 times ot the cars have to have their axles changed. After all that you end up near Nome AK and Google says, "We could not calculate directions between Nome, AK and Edmonton, AB, Canada.", remember the bridge to nowhere, we'll have to build a lot of them because almost everywhere is nowhere in Alaska.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
No, they won't. Just because it can be done doesn't mean it should, or will. Alaska is too far away and it would cost too much. China won't build it, Russia won't build it and we won't build it.
If you believe that terrorists simply want to strike fear in our hearts, and have no larger goal in mind, well... let's just say that we disagree.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There are even elements within the Russian political scene who would like to 'take back' Alaska from the U.S.
Then they can go straight to Hell.
The U.S. did not "take" Alaska, they bought it, fair and square. Any contingent that wants to "take back" what they sold fairly for hard cash is a gaggle of criminals, by Russian, American, and international law.
>My question is what purpose it would solve. By the time the route is finished, there won't be any way for the US to import anything from China. Food exports from USA to China, perhaps, as an attempt to pay the interest on what is owed?
Your post displays a lack of knowledge of how the trade deficit works.
In a nutshell, we don't borrow money from China. We buy goods and services from China, and we use US Dollars for the transaction.
China can then spend those US dollars in the American economy - perhaps to buy American goods in exchange - but they choose instead to put those greenbacks into US treasuries, which is the single safest investment in the world. Other countries would sell those greenbacks on the currency markets to obtain their native currencies, causing currency prices to fluctuate accordingly, but China has decided to keep their exchange rates at artificial levels that advantage them and disadvantage the rest of the world, especially the United States. But I digress.
The US treasuries that China owns can't be all called in at once. They can be sold on the open market, which technically could cause US treasury rates to rise, making borrowing more expensive for the United States, but in all likelihood they would not impact those rates by very much. The important thing here is that China can't roll up to the US Treasury with a briefcase (well, okay - trucks) full of bonds that haven't matured yet and expect to cash in. It doesn't work that way. While the US does pay interest on those treasuries, the interest rates are quite low right now.
There's a lot more to this - but suffice to say, macroeconomics is not microeconomics - things you need to take care of at a household level often don't mesh with what governments have to do in order to keep the books balanced. It's a common misconception that the US national debt is necessarily a bad thing.
Ukraine didn't "take" Crimea either, it was assigned to their jurisdiction when both were completely subservient to the USSR, and then amicably* left with them when the republics separated. That doesn't seem to be stopping Putin now; neither does international law. Our missiles probably would, though.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Alaska is not for sale!
Of course it isn't - we already bought it.
I don't think the entire line needs to be a mag lev train but the connection between continents should be. The trip under the straight should be a short as possible with a little noise as possible.
Ukraine didn't "take" Crimea either, it was assigned to their jurisdiction when both were completely subservient to the USSR, and then amicably* left with them when the republics separated. That doesn't seem to be stopping Putin now; neither does international law. Our missiles probably would, though.
However (see my other comment in this thread), Crimea is close and accessible, while Alaska is remote and in fact on another continent. Crimea is relatively easy for them to take and then defend. Alaska would be very difficult for Russia to either take or defend; that was largely why they sold it in the first place.
The Bering Strait isn't "in the middle of fucking nowhere", it's the least water between two distinct and useful somewheres. The problem is you don't see the value of that location.
There has been talk of building bridges or tunnels across that span for at least a century.
Though ships are cheaper than planes, they are more expensive than trains. A railway across the Bering Strait would instantly become a big hit with shipping between North America and Eurasia. After all the USA gets a lot of products from China.
Come to think of it, I do believe that particular route by train would even be faster than the usual sea route by ship for the China-USA trade.
Although to be honest about it, I doubt anything will happen. This would probably be the most extensive and expensive engineering project ever attempted. Then there's a whole thing about China running the hype machine like usual. In exercising their control over the media, China sometimes forgets that the latest musings of a powerful or educated person is not the same thing as a realistic plan.
No, there is two track widths. China uses standard 1435 mm. US uses 1435 mm (or whatever you call that in your strange measurements). Russia uses wider 1524 mm.
It takes 6-8 weeks for products to come by ship from China to the US.
No it doesn't. A typical transit time is two weeks. The 6-8 week figure likely includes invoice processing, administrative overhead, and local delivery, which will be just as bad for a train, or possibly worse since it will cross more borders.
Also, sea isn't more energy efficient than rail. There's a lot less rolling resistance with rail, compared to water resistance with sea freight.
Nonsense. The containers aren't pushed through the water one-by-one. They are on large ships, where the efficiency goes up in proportion to the square root of the size. Container ships are far more efficient that rail, even when the rail is rolling on flat ground. Factor in the traversal of major mountain ranges in Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, and the rail is going to be far less efficient.
On one hand, you can look at this and wonder why anyone would want to undertake the incredible expense of a sub oceanic tunnel across the Bering Strait. What, with Anchorage already housing one of the world's busiest international airports, particularly for cargo aircraft.
However, completion of such a tunnel would have profound, long-reaching consequences, both negative and positive:
Chinese manufactured goods would presumably have shipping time cut in half. Even given the considerable distances, a 2km long freight train maintaining 110 km/h is a wee bit faster than a stacked & loaded Maersk container ship wallowing across the girth of the Pacific at a leisurely 20 km/h, and those trains can be run back to back separated only by a few km with basic logistics tools.
Rail and Trucking distribution arteries from Alaska down to the lower 48 would become among the busiest in the world.
American manufacturing jobs would be murdered. Already bled nearly to death, the ability to Skype an engineer in Guangdong, email schematics and have 14 boxcars of finished goods on your back dock in less than 2 weeks would be a deathblow to a lot of American jobs.
The economies of the U.S. and China would become increasingly tightly woven together, possibly creating a stabilizing effect diminishing the possibility of armed conflict - essentially the draft purpose of the European Union, after Germany went out on two world tours. The U.S. would be the loser in this scenario, as Chinas ascendancy would only continue on the world stage, while the U.S. ability to project and maintain power would suffer in the face of a diminished economy.
Americas incredible military would become unaffordable, and go through many rounds of contractions, until the U.S ends up a peer to countries like Russia or combined UK, FR and Germany - regionally powerful, globally insignificant.
So essentially this tunnel represents another step in a trade arrangement largely favoring only one partner, leading the other to contract, economy foundering, military eventually becoming unsustainable at current levels, heading into France-like levels of global insignificance excepting cultural impact.
Rome 2.0
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
China wants revenge on America? Problem solved.
It seems like building the railroad to the Berring Straight, and then using a ferry to cross would be the more practical approach.
Unless the ferry can carry trains there is going to be the time and expense of transfering cargo between ships and trains twice.
Possibly going to make more sense to use a ship between Port of Shanghai and Port of Los Angeles.
If it's needed faster then PVG to LAX on a plane is always an option.
Does that include the rising prices of liquid fossil fuels? If they keep rising, electrified railway might overtake shipping one day, unless you make those ships sail at a snail's pace. (Environmentally, it might be sound to try to get rid of bunker fuel long before that, though. All that sulphur can't be good, now can it?)
Ezekiel 23:20
How fast do you want it? Do you want to displace water, or air while you travel at that speed? If you're willing to cruise at lower speed, the oceangoing ships get more efficient, but I don't believe they run that way - they more or less go as fast as their engines are practically capable of, because that's what the customers are paying for - speed of delivery.
After all that you end up near Nome AK and Google says, "We could not calculate directions between Nome, AK and Edmonton, AB, Canada."
:)
I'm sure Airbus or Boeing FMS can manage PAOM to CYEG better than Google. But if you were air freighting anything to Edmonton from China the starting point would probably be something more like ZBAA
People pay for speed of delivery, but that doesn't necessarily mean fast.. just predictable.
It's that time-to-market that has gotten some companies in trouble when dealing with chinese suppliers (capital is tied up for the 3 month lead time when ordering from China and shipping via container ship .. if someone is in a highly cyclical market than that lag time can put you out of business if you are not careful.
I wonder how that will change the labor dynamics if we're just a 48 hour train ride to China? The best part is watching Ameicans labor on the train just like the Chinese did when we built the transcontinental railroad. :-) Payback? :-)
There's also the minor problem of Mother Russia - they would not want this done for free, or without the US doing things in return.
What? Russia wouldn't want a train line that allows them to passenger and freight access to/from the USA and the rest of the Americas - paid for by someone else? What are you smoking?
Oh, I didn't know that Alaska was bought from the Russians. I see on wiki that it was bought for $7.2 million. Which is $119 million in 2014. Which makes Alaska worth about 1/25th the value of Beats by Dr Dre.
Funny old world.
Come on now, it's not that remote. Putin said he could see Alaska from his house.
It might also overtake passenger air travel.
Although to be honest about it, I doubt anything will happen. This would probably be the most extensive and expensive engineering project ever attempted.
The Chinese built the Chinese Wall entirely by hand. And the US Transcontinental railway. This is bigger, but now machines do all the heavy lifting.
Russia uses wider 1524 mm.
Historical trivia: Russia chose an odd gauge to make logistics more difficult for an invading army. This worked to their advantage during both world wars.
sigh, the mission accomplished was a gaff in that the mission WAS accomplished, for that ship that he was on.
False. In the speech accompanying the picture Bush claimed "major combat operations" in Iraq were over. He was wrong. And that was the context of the banner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
on the other hand obama did in fact make a statement saying terrorism is over
Also false.
Who said that was their goal? The difference with these terrorists over most is that they didn't have any coherent objective.
And regular rail freight is far cheaper than maglev train freight.
The Trans-Siberian Raylway, the Northern Route, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... is almost reaching Yakutsk already http://osm.org/go/8_CbR-?m=
It is actively constructed.
Sorry I wasn't totally clear, there are no roads, railroads praved trails between Nome and Delta Junction Alaska, if you get from China to America via a rail tunnel across the Barring Straight to Alaska, your stuck. You can't drive from highly populated cities like Anchorage and Fairbanks to the state capital. If your going to load the cars onto a train ferry and ship the down to Vancouver or Seatle, you would have been better off just shipping via freighter.
You just don't realize how remote Alaska is, there are places where you literally can't get there from here.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
sorry if i dont trust wikipedia as a main source for that
but you are correct about obama and I was wrong, he stated that the war on terror is over, not that terrorism is over.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You don't have to trust Wikipedia. That's what their citations are for. Here's the text of the speech from the horses mouth. It is as Wiki says it is.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse....
[Ships] more or less go as fast as their engines are practically capable of, because that's what the customers are paying for - speed of delivery.
No, they go at a speed that maximises profit; ship owners are very keen on optimising for that parameter. As the price of oil goes up, the speed of ships decreases (because the losses due to friction/turbulence are related non-linearly to speed — a quick search indicates maybe it's quadratic, but I'm not sure) because the increase in income due to arriving earlier wouldn't pay for the increase in fuel costs required to get the ship there sooner.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
It was actually a fair price back then. At the time of purchase, Alaska was a frozen wasteland whose biggest known natural resources were fur pelts and hairy men.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
If building rail line from western Alaska to connect to the continental system, no significant mountain ranges need to be crossed. Assuming the rail lands at the closest point across the Bering Straight, there is an almost flat route following the Koyukuk and Yukon Rivers over to the Mackenzie River. The North American rail network reaches as far as Hay River, near the south end of the Mackenzie River.
For a shorter route, the Tanana River could be followed past Fairbanks, and the route could continue paralleling the Alaska Highway to Whitehorse. At Whitehorse it could travel next to Teslin Lake and over land to Dease Lake. While Dease Lake is not currently connected to the continental rail network, but the track bed had been fully prepared in the 1970's, and it would be easy to install the necessary bridges and rail.
Still, ships would be more efficient.
Be relentless!
So glad you're liking Obamacare.
This is what is known as "trolling". Just in case you didn't already know. I mean real trolling, not just "I disagree".
Or, I suppose depending on how you look at the comment, it might qualify as "flamebait" instead.
If you don't think so, then please explain to me what Obamacare has to do with (or is even supposed to have to do with) terrorism.
Come on now, it's not that remote. Putin said he could see Alaska from his house.
Haha! Now that was genuinely funny. Props.
Not according to this chart
They don't exactly buy software, they pirate it. They don't buy cars, since they manufacture their own and quality isn't actually better in USA cars. Food? There's only so much soy the USA can export to China at interesting prices. China is buying up the entire USA economy and buying shares in lots of companies.just like Japan and Arabian Oil states have been doing in the past. Sorry, but the USA doesn't really produce a lot of goods that other countries are interested in any more. If anything, China buys raw ores, fuel and such, not finished products.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Yes, it's important that we borrow from people who are aren't born yet 'in order to keep the books balanced'.
My other UID is three digits.
The free market value of real estate - back then that's how much people were willing to pay for it.
Too many Muslims use the Chunnel, it would be too much like attacking one of their own countries, so it's probably safe.
My other UID is three digits.
The market is down the west coast, Vancouver,Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. Not that much market up in Alaska or Canada. Alaska is the largest US state at 663,268 sq miles but 47th in population at 735,132. A train route going through the rugged terrain of North East Siberia and North West North America would cost huge amounts of money through very rugged terrain, often with iced/snowed over tracks, maintenance of the tracks and expensive tunnels would be extremely expensive, and it would take more fuel and to get from Shanghai to San Francisco than directly by a humongous cargo ship, per container load. Granted, even cargo ships go a bit up north on their tracks, as the geodesics, the shortest distances, on a sphere go that way. If you had a cheap way to blast vacuum tunnels through any kind of terrain, or at least near 0% longterm interest rates, you could have a vacuum tain transportation means that beats anything in speed and fuel cost, but that would be first constructed from NY to Boston, San Francisco to LA, Beijing to Shanghai. But Beijing to LA vacuum train would have to go through the Behring strait. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
However, locally sourced labor and goods most certainly can compete with shipping by sea.
That's exactly what's happening: a lot of goods are being returned to US manufacture right now. Companies are starting with their emerging products and building the R&D and facilities to do it here, instead of offshoring the 'expensive' production part to China. For instance, go and try to find a new household appliance - you'll be hard pressed to find a GE or Whirlpool appliance which isn't "Made in the USA" now. We're seeing this happen with small bin electronics and inexpensive tools, too. Why?
Competition. They've been able to slash their product costs markedly by doing so. We're not talking just the cost of shipping, we're also talking about product defects and overall quality, turnaround on even minor R&D revisions, and so on.
If China can turn the current "time to market" of a product revision from about 2-3 months (after all is said and done) down to a month to a month and a half (at least for select customers and/or producers), the cost of rail over sea shipping would be marginal to the big picture of retaining American income.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
It would still be a monumental task. Look at what it took to make the Channel Tunnel and that's barely 25 miles long and is in an area that's seismically a lot more stable than the gap between North America and Siberia.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I was wondering how this might get financed....
The answer is:
WALMART.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I'm certain that the idiots blowing themselves up don't have a sophisticated strategy, but the people recruiting, training, equipping, and financing them sure do have some goal in mind.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Again, that is just their strategy and not their end goal. Their strategy, while going according to plan, is not having the results that they expected. So while it is true to say that they have successfully executed their strategy, it is also true that their strategy appears to be failing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Exactly, people seem to ignore that ships may need a long time to get there, but they carry a MUCH larger load. It is like a network with high latency but also high bandwidth. Also the fuel they burn is practically useless for any other purpose.
What? Russia wouldn't want a train line that allows them to passenger and freight access to/from the USA and the rest of the Americas - paid for by someone else? What are you smoking?
Politics have never been about what you want, but what you can get. Look up Realpolitik.
Fair? Not really. For one thing, Russian Empire hasn't seen a cent from that payment. You see, it sank.
This is 100% right, but hardly anybody understands that. I don't really know why, but I suspect politicians are largely to blame - "Social security is like a cookie jar..."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
. Here's the text of the speech from the horses mouth.
I believe you mean "the monkey's mouth."
You've got Korea, which is sort of somewhere. Then you've got Kamchatks, which is nowhere. Then the strait. Than there's Alaska, which is another bunch of nowhere before you get to Seattle[1].
How is it not in the middle of nowhere? It's certainly a long way from anywhere that counts as somewhere.
[1] Well, there's that Canadian place that Heart come from.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
But that was built 20-25 ears ago. And this is probably a project for some time in the future yet. Technology moves on...
If you need a long tunnel, you just join two short ones together with duct tape. If you need a longer one, use three, and so on. Hence the mathematical term, proof by induction.
Kids today, with all their fancy-pants book-learnin'. If we'd listened to all the people who'd said it couldn't be done there's be no fusion power stations or cities on the moon.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Uh...don't know if you've noticed but Muslim terrorists have no problems attacking other Muslims. If we forget about the intrasect animosities....
In this corner of the WWF, we have the Shi'ite, rabid anti-Jew, chief country planning nuclear weapons in the hopes it will make their dicks look bigger, claim women have no souls, supporting Assad against his country.
In this other corner of the WWF, we have Sunni, rabid anti-Jew, chief country proud of stoning women for looking at men and holder of an annual Stone Satan Jamboree, able to take billions of oil wealth and still make it nothing more than sand.
In the other corner, we have the Al Qaeda wack-a-jews, willing to use any weapons to attack just about everyone else, dreams of a Grand Unified Sultanate stretching from one corner of Heaven to the other corner of Hell, creators of Hell on Earth.
In this other corner, we have the cowering masses of Muslims, also rabid anti-Jew, unable to raise a whimper to any atrocity as long as it was done in the name of Allah, worried to death their kids are going to wipe their toy governments off the map.
Who will win, who will raise the belt showing them the winner of solving Hitler's Jewish Problem?
And this deep analysis holds up until the terrorists get nukes, or chem weapons. Nice fairytale.
" It's a common misconception that the US national debt is necessarily a bad thing."
I am old enough to remember when it was a concern among serious people that if the US paid down too much of the national debt that the lack of Treasuries in circulation could have a destabilizing effect on the world economy.
Then again, I am also old enough to remember when is was a concern among unserious people that the Japanese might own everything in the US.
If you can borrow now at a rate less than inflation and productivity growth then you are already reducing future outlays, even before you consider the additional productivity growth from current additional spending.
Most displacement hull ships have a "hull speed" that does get higher with longer waterline - so the big cargo ships have that going for them, but, you're right, it's either linear or quadratic, up to a point, and then you hit the hull speed where turbulence makes it just about impossible to go much faster. Try it in a rowboat (small, low hull speed, easily attained with oars...)
Right after we build the Hyperloop, send people to Mars and 3D print a house with a car parked in the garage.
These terms do not make sense to me. Could you please reframe your comment in relation to the international norms for speculative appearance, specifically, in relation to either the commercial, wide scale application of cold fusion, or the time when we all have flying cars?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Bering Strait. One 'r', no 'gh'.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Hence the purchase was known as "Seward's Folly".
dude I am so entertained by this apk guy that follows you around
No, I'm not. You can use tactics that have nothing at all to do with your goals. You might even use tactics that you find unpalatable. Your tactics themselves can be quite successful without furthering your goals at all. Yes, terrorists want us to be afraid, and they wanted to damage us in various ways. And mission successful. But the Mideast has changed in a way that is not favorable to their ultimate cause. Thus, while they have been tactically effective, they have not advanced their goals at all - and in fact appear to have damaged their cause.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Good luck finding a cargo ship that can go at those speeds. Having high speed rail connections is one of those things that you don't realize how useful it is until you have it. I can go from Shanghai to Hong Kong easily because of it, and of course it is the norm in Europe. In the US it is hard to picture the benefit since Acela trains' top speed is restricted because of the old rails, so taking your car and driving still beats everything over there.
I was a little disappointed not getting to see apk's insult bot in action here.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Heart? Really? I'm guessing you aren't a USian or you might have said Pamela Anderson, but heart?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
What's wrong with you? Are you a paranoid jew?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I also thought they got exactly what they wanted, i.e., more control over the population, more surveillance, and less freedom of the population.
You seemed to be confusing terrorists with the freedom fighters trying to prevent evil capitalism from encroaching on their territories.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Terrorism was born in the US. None of the 'terrorist' groups have ever stated that their purpose is to terrorize. If you think about it, that's about the stupidest purpose anybody could ever have. Nobody is going to die for that, yet US Kool-aid is just soooooo sweet.
Terrorism is a pure fabrication of the US govt and media. They have terrorized you so they could take away your freedom and you would be glad to give it. What those countries actually want is just to have the US stop fucking with them. Most USians don't know it, but those 'terrorists', they're actually fighting for your freedom as well.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I wonder when the US will realize that it can actually survive without constantly needing a 'mortal enemy'.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Shipping by sea is cheaper than rail.
They aren't going to build a high speed rail for containers. It'll be for much more valuable goods like people.
So no it isn't cheaper. Shipping by sea is cheaper for time-insensitive goods like what travels in container ships and more expensive for time-sensitive goods like people. If you're getting off a train, slowly inching across the Bering Strait, and then loading on a train again, that's a considerable waste of your life that could have been spent doing other things, like working a job that requires a physical presence or sight-seeing.
that's a considerable waste of your life that could have been spent doing other things
If your time was worth anything, you would have taken a 10 hour flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, and not a week long train ride via Siberia and Alaska.
Every major tunnel like this will have some new interesting engineering challenges. I suspect that one will not be quite as difficult as previous ones.
This has been said about literally every major feat of engineering in human history, and every time, you guys were wrong.
And how many natives they were willing to kill for it.
Instructable? I could really use some favors at the federal level.
You're ignoring the problem that the two sides are on different continental plates..
No, they're not.
Some of that depends on what you're selling. If you're selling $700 smartphones that weigh 140g and depreciate $1/day then air makes a LOT more sense. If you're selling steel for $200/ton and its price doesn't fundamentally change on timescales measured in years, then sea makes sense.
Really sea makes sense for any product that you're not in a hurry to put on the market. Once the market is supplied you can always start your manufacturing runs a few months earlier and ship by sea. The problem is with stuff that depreciates fast like computers - you don't want to bring last month's computer to sell on this month's market.
Let me add to this with a reminder for readers.
China first started making things for other countries as a mode of defense thousands of years ago.
Instead of spending money on standing armies, resources are spent on supporting economic dependence from other countries. This is more efficient. It is also less open to abuse.
The USA points out that this defensive move can be abused. It can be - but at cost. At least it is skewed towards the defensive. I'm not saying to be complacent. China plans 100's years ahead while we only have rich families planning ahead. America is not a million miles away with the petrodollar.
Propaganda or not, the poetic image of literally building a bridge between east and west (which are currently in economic war over natural gas in Ukraine) should not be lost in this discussion.
My god, how can that be overlooked? What are we to miss that!?
A blog I run for the wealth
Alaska, Canada and the US did a feasibility study in 2007 for connecting Fairbanks and Anchorage to the US by rail:
http://alaskacanadarail.com/in...
The Phase I report there refers to a "Nominal US$11 billion investment". This is only for connecting Anchorage to the US by rail. There has been no followup on this since 2007 that I am aware of. There are 521 miles of utterly undeveloped and unpopulated terrain between Nome and Fairbanks that includes 65 miles of mountains, 185 miles of wetlands, and the Yukon river. Just building a road between Fairbanks and Nome was estimated to cost $27 billion in 2010.
My family's small business in Fairbanks would inevitably be very much involved in any project to build railroads anywhere in Western Alaska, and there has been absolutely no indication that either the Alaskan government or the US government has ever had the slightest interest in building so much as a dirt road in that direction, much less a multi-continental railroad.
I don't really care what we call these people, the point is they have a tactic that - while damaging to the US - is not working to further their cause.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Event he Alaska Railroad doesn't have a physical connection to the lower 48 states. Train cars to and from the Alaska Railroad are barged in via Seattle.
So, the underwater part would be across the Bering Strait, rather than the Pacific Ocean. Thus ends any chance of a quip about reality providing a sequel to Harry Harrison's alternate history, "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!".
Instead, a question: Is that near the part of Alaska that doesn't get big earthquakes, and is far far away from the part that does? If not, I'm not riding on that train.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
If your time was worth anything, you would have taken a 10 hour flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, and not a week long train ride via Siberia and Alaska.
There's that. It's not much of a case for high speed rail.
A technical "plausible" Channel Tunnel construction with a good chance to finish it was started three times. Construction of the first attempt, planned since 1866, was started in 1881, but halted in 1882 due to political/military reasons. The second attempt, planned since the 1950 started construction in 1974, but construction was stopped in 1975 after Euro-sceptic Labour won the British elections. Only the third attempt started in 1988 didn't snag on any political problems before it was finished.
The Channel Tunnel was technically feasible for at least a hundred years before it cleared all political hurdles. I think that is around in the same ballpark as any China->US Rail link.
ships move at around 15 knots (20mph, 30 km/h)
modern trains move above 80km/h
perhaps if you slow down trains to go for absolute lowest fuel consumption (perhaps 40km/h) wouldn't it compete well with ships ?
but yes, rail makes sense when you don't have a waterway link
the big advantage of rail is quicker delivery, due to significantly higher speeds, but air freight is slowly coming down in price with each subsequent more fuel efficient large aircraft (A350-1000 cost per tonXmile should be pretty cost to A380-800 or B747-8).
but this isn't just the challenge of the underwater tunnels, just keeping thousands of miles worth of rail snow free is big enough a challenge in the winter (half the year for alaska and the russian counterpart).
this looks like a big jobs program.
If it worked as Tesla said it did, which is unlikely. He made up so much nonsense during his final years it's no wonder people on the internet get all loved up for Tesla. If they were true, he'd have been a brilliantly wonderful scientist. As it stands, he was just a brilliant scientist.
No, the only way to combat it is for governments to listen to grievances from parties outside their borders, and to earnestly engage them with diplomacy. It's easier to talk to a concerned citizens' group and find a suitable solution than wait 20 years and talk to their children's terrorist organisation. Your solution isn't a solution but simply ignoring a problem and hoping it doesn't get any worse. We can look at Northern Ireland to see how diplomacy is the most powerful weapon against terrorism.
No, terrorism is defined as the use or threat of force against a population in order to coerce them politically. So if they're just doing it, then it's not terrorism, it's being a dick. If they have an agenda they wish to further through their attacks, then they are indeed terrorists. Words have meaning.
Terrorism is the use or threat of force against a people in order to coerce them. That is it. Any disproportionate response which might gain more supporters has nothing to do with it. In fact, if that was their aim, they are not engaged in terrorism, but provoking an attack. These words have meaning, and terrorism doesn't mean what you think it does.
That chart is incredibly wrong. The physics behind it all will always make waterborne shipping more energy efficient. Cost per mile is a poor metric because it can be easily manipulated by choosing basis areas with saturated/barren markets. In this case, the computations are done by the DoT and wouldn't include international shipping numbers, by far the most efficient, but would only include barge cargo which is the only way to ship domestically. To frame the comparison, that blog link compares domestic transport links like Chicago to New Orleans via barge, or NJ to Chicago via rail. In practice this is less than 10% of the transit, 90% is shipping it overseas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
It is important to note that while the ships listed are more energy efficient than rails, they are also the least efficient of all cargo transport ships. Barges are tiny and barely move anything in proportion to their dead weight. There are ships over 100 times the size with economies of scale to match.
Plus, ya know, these are the folks who managed this feat of construction prowess: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/13-...
It's a cost thing - pure and simple. Every time that you vote with your wallet by buying the cheaper of two otherwise similar products, you're supporting the use of bunker oil.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What is the "useful somewhere" on the Western side of the Bering Strait? Come to think of it, what of great use is there on the Eastern side of the Strait? Nome's last contribution to history was a diphtheria epidemic and the origin of the Iditarod race. By that point it was a failed gold rush town.
Yes, there is oil in Alaska. A long, long way away from the proposed line for this railway. And there's already a pipeline in place, which it will remain much cheaper to mainain and keep in use than to replace with tank cars on a railway. There's fair prospectivity of gas in the Chukchi sea ... which will require cross-country pipelines to bring it to this route too. At which point you really do have to look at the costs of pumping directly into a LNG tanker, and sailing that to Japan as an alternative.
It's not an impossible project. It doesn't strike me as being particularly useful though.
Incidentally, someone muttered about "plate tectonics. That's obviously one of those people who don't carry maps of plate boundaries around in their head. Which I do. no problem there.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
See, for example, http://www.iris.edu/seismon/zo...
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Heart rocks. I saw them a few years ago, and they've still got it. Also, early 70s Nancy was hot :)
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.