ballistic subterranean trains

From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Sep 24 2001 - 23:27:56 MDT


A year or so back, there was a brief discussion on the list of the
sub-orbital dynamics of a vehicle connecting distant places via an
evacuated tube under the ground (maybe along a chord), impelled by
gravity
for a basically free ride. I'm putting this in an sf novel, but I had a
drive-crash months ago that obliterated the saved messages, and the exi
archive search engine isn't helping me (although I've tried 101 variants
of
topic and names).

I was under the impression that everyone here felt all such craft would
go
anywhere in about 80 minutes; the only net site I've found on the topic
gives an analysis arguing for 42 minutes and change.

http://www.math.purdue.edu/~eremenko/train.html

I'm wondering about the sensations of flying one of these babies.
Reduced
weight for the first half, a moment of free fall, then heavier? How much
of
either?

If anyone can find an url to the original thread, I'd be grateful. Or
maybe
we can do it all again now.

Damien Broderick



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:57 MDT