Musk’s $20 trillion tunnel vision: New York to London in an hour
Billionaire Elon Musk has stated that his company is capable of building a transatlantic tunnel between New York and London. How long would the journey take using vacuum tube technology?
Elon Musk wrote on the platform X that The Boring Company, his infrastructure and tunnel construction firm, could build a transatlantic tunnel. This structure would connect New York and London, reducing travel time between continents to one hour.
Will Elon Musk build a tunnel between New York and London?
Elon Musk responded to a post by the Daily Loud account, which reported that experts estimate the construction of an intercontinental tunnel would cost 20 trillion dollars. The owner of X wrote: "The Boring Company could do it for 1,000 times less money." Although it seems improbable, the development of vacuum tube technology has brought the concept of a transatlantic tunnel closer to reality.
Vacuum tube technology is already used in transportation
Similar principles are used in the Eurostar infrastructure, which already connects France and the United Kingdom. The tunnel built under the English Channel in six years runs from Folkestone in Kent, England, to Coquelles in France. Here lies the main issue with the ambitious plan of the American billionaire—assuming a similar construction pace, the transatlantic tunnel would be completed in 782 years.
Vacuum tube technology, combined with the already functioning magnetic train technology in China, is also being used by Chinese engineers and scientists from Southeast University, who are currently working on the fastest ground transportation in the world. This work is advanced, and the new trains are expected to travel at speeds of 1,000 kilometres per hour. However, they will travel on the surface, not under the ocean floor. The Hyperloop in California, a high-speed transport project proposed and later abandoned by Elon Musk, was expected to operate on a similar principle.
Source: timeout.com, thecooldown.com
