Time to USA

[SA80]

If it was possible to either dig a tunnel from the west coast of the UK to the East coast of the USA or to build a trans atlantic bridge how long would it take me to drive from the UK to America going to a steady 70 MPH?. I know that such an undertaking would be impossile due to 'continental drift' but I would be curious to know TIA

[kempie]

If you are limiting this exercise to linking mainland USA (i.e. ignoring islands along the coastline) to mainland UK (which would include Northern Ireland and sort of contradicts the first proviso) then the two closest points (Belleek, Fermanagh and Hamlin, Maine - neither of which are actually on a coast) are around 2,580 miles apart.

Thus your journey would take a shade under 37 hours non-stop.

Coastline to coastline, such as Scottish Highlands to Bay of Fundy, is around 2,680 miles.

[mjd]

However, if you were to bore a tunnel in a straight line from London to New York and you could arrange for the tunnel to be evacuated of all air and you could arrange for some form of transport with zero rolling resistance: then if you got on the "machine" and let gravity do it's work then you would pop up in New York after 42.25 minutes.

[Rollo]

The tunnel would have to have the ability to expand lengthways - due to sea floor spreading - otherwise it would eventually "tear apart".

Nasty!!!!

[Muppit]

Discovery Channel did an extreme engineering programme on the proposed transatlantic tunnel... its an evacuated buoyant tunnel that is tethered to the seabed with controlable tensioning cables. As there is no air in the tunnel, there is no air resistance. They've proposed a maglev (magnetically levitated and propelled train, therefore no frictional resistance, which will travel at 3 times the speed of sound (from memory). 20 minutes acceleration, 20 minute cruising and 20 minutes of heavy breaking! The biggest threat to the tunnel is submarines that have lost power (and therefore the ability to navigate around the tunnel) and giant octopusses.

I found it to be a really interesting watch! Not likely to happen though, would take all of the steel mills in the world, working at 100% capacity for 135 years to produce the steel required and goodness knows what else!

Nice idea though.