Futuristic tunnel costing $20,000,000,000,000 would get you from the US to UK in just 54 minutes
Plans have been floating around a futuristic tunnel linking the UK and US, and if commissioned it's estimated to cost around $20,000,000,000,000 to build.
We've heard plenty of stories about the shortest flight in the world, and Elon Musk has revealed his plans to create flights across the world in under an hour, but this newly proposed tunnel would change the world of travel completely.
Currently a direct London to New York flight would take you just over eight hours, but what if that could be cut down significantly to just 54 minutes in total?
That's where plans for a new transatlantic tunnel come in, operating similarly to the channel tunnel between England and France but 145 times longer - and a whole lot more expensive too.
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Plans would have the tunnel stretching around 3,400 miles in total, and costing around $19.8 trillion - which is quite the considerable investment for even the richest countries in the world.
Current theories on the build process are split between the tunnel existing underneath the ocean floor, whereas some others think that suspending it above the sea itself would be the best course of action.
In terms of the travel process itself, vacuum technology could allow trains to travel at speeds beyond 3,000mph through the tunnel, cutting the otherwise herculean journey down by a significant amount.
Some on social media have raised their own concerns about the speed of this journey though, wondering if it would be too much for the average person to sustain - even in a 'short' journey.
One comment in a post regarding the tunnel on the r/uknews subreddit explains that the trains "would go nearly 7 times the speed of sound," continuing to reveal that "even in theory passengers would be subject to 1.5 G for the entire trip, half as acceleration, then half as deceleration. Some people would struggle with G-forces for that long."
Typical commercial flights, for example, allow passengers to experience no more than 1.3 Gs of force, and that's only within specific extreme maneuvers, so it's safe to assume that many would struggle with sustained G-force for almost the entire trip.
There's also the rather glaring issue of funds, which is likely why neither the UK or US government are currently tabling plans for the tunnel to start construction.
Saying that $20 trillion is a lot of money is still quite the understatement, and it's hard to see how the tunnel would break even, let alone be profitable especially if you take into consideration the yearly maintenance required to keep it up and running.
Some remain worried that this would then be placed on the lap of the consumer with extortionate ticket prices, as one commenter explains: "Perhaps more relevant than any technical issues, at the cost the price of a ticket would be sky high (ironically perhaps) to get any return in a reasonable timescale."
This magic tunnel might just then have to remain a pipe dream for the time being, but maybe one day we could see such transport links created, letting you hop to and from New York or London for dinner.