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Hell! Since Kickstarter's a bitch, and on the offchance that I know someone rich I'll just try this here.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases:

1- It's completely impossible!
2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing!
3- I said it was a good idea all along!"

-Arthur C. Clarke

Imagine an undersea road on the seafloor of the Atlantic. Now imagine that from this road rise a lot of air bubbles, then visualize a large submarine carrying freight goods between America and Europe, along this line of bubbles (New York/Rotterdam).
The general idea is that by keeping a steady amount of bubbles around an undersea vessel, you in a sense reduce the density of the water. This means that the submarine will be working against less force, so really it's a road of thin water. Less friction means that the vessel can increase its speed, and do this without the need to burn more fuel. Sailing under water also has the added benefits of not being effected by any storm or weather on the surface. It would always be the same smooth sailing, thus making it easier to stay on course and keep a schedule. Neither is there any pirates’ undersea and illegal trade could be controlled. And why not sail under the Icecap, to open up new trade routes not possible before?!

The project (other than being highly ambitious) is currently facing an issue with what to do in regards to wildlife, such as jellyfish and krill that would treat a wall of bubbles as solid. At this stage I'm thinking that a, segmentation of the road, which amid bubbles as the vessel moves along it, could minimize the effects on sea life and ecosystems. Perhaps it could even bring much needed air to the sea life, where this is scarce. The project, I am afraid, is in a theoretical fase at the moment, and in order to even begin testing its viability I would have to ally myself with some engineers. Kick me off and I might be able to produce a miniature of the principle in function, and connect land over smaller bodies of water in this way. Once the testing is done, and the kinks worked out, I see no reason why we couldn't build an underwater road system that will do for nautical freighting what the railroad did for freight on land. Maybe in time people would take the sea buss, or private submarine owners would pay to use the road, and the military could reach conflicted areas faster. Furthermore this could even bring life back into the ship construction industry, since new freight submarines would be needed to take advantage of this new faster and cheaper way of getting to and from destinations.

If you sit now and wonder how to spend your fortune, doing something that would put you amongst histories great pioneers. Why not come and split the waters with me, and grand upon the world ”the underwater road system”? An infrastructure that would bring fame, fortune and power to your name!

Sincerely: Simon M. Nielsen.

The amount I need to get started... well check the link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l91ISfcuzDw

Yes, let's distort the oceans more, it's not like we need them to survive right.

So why is it this is better than normal ships?

Because if they are submarines, there is such a massive loss of cargo capacity that they would need to be, oh hell let's just do the math.

The closest thing I could find to a "cargo" submarine has a capacity of 700 tons. For the sake of argument, let's say we can double that and then some. Make it a nice, even 1500 tons of cargo per boat.

Now let's compare it to the gross tonnage of a large cargo ship today. This is not the largest on record, but a pretty good example. It's cargo capacity for weight is 158000 tons. Well over 100 times the capacity as even our fictional large cargo submarine.

(and I should note that tonnage is not usually the standard of shipping measurement, normally it uses TEUs, or the size equivalent of a shipping container. Don't even want to get into that, since I can't see a submarine managing more than few of those)

Now for the crossing itself. It is difficult to say as there is a great deal of unpredictability in the ocean for travel, but the common routes for a cargo ship to cross the Atlantic (using the Atlantic here since you did) is roughly a week. Some can be as short as 6 days, others closer to 10. I'll use a week since it is a nice, even number that we can work with easily. In order for your underwater road to gain a transport advantage over regular shipping, this underwater road would need to move cargo across the Atlantic in a little more than an hour and a half, given the massively smaller amount of cargo. Another bit of quick and dirty math later, to pull that off, your road needs to propel submarines at speeds of (using some quick math here again) 1942 miles per hour, or roughly Mach 2.5.

Can you promise that?

I am not willing to add that many miles on my vehicle in one shot. Let alone find out what a gallon of gas is going to cost along the way

Please elaborate!

I'm open to all the critique I can get; to me it is only a practical problem that can be overcome. Traffic at sea will only rise along with trade coming out of i.e. BRIC countries, and the current way of transportation is not exactly clean.

The ecological effect of such an enterprise is one that concerns me a great deal, hell it’s what spawned it in the first place. But in order to figure out the impact, thorough data through experimentation is needed, it is for this I need funding. But I admit it sounds Evil

Be that as it may, I am not ready to scrap the project based upon technology fear, but rather on the facts weighing the pros vs. the cons thank you very much. But forgive my arrogance, and please tell me what your concern might be? How do you think this could disturb the ocean in a negative way?

How is this superior to regular transport per ship for airplane? Not to mention that this is extremely easy to attack for all sorts of terrorists and can cause far more severe damage than attacking a regular road.

Why come to a gaming forum instead of a more suitable establishment?

I don't believe you need as much data as you claim.

Determining the speed of an underwater object through aerated (i.e. bubbly) water can be done on a pretty small scale. One avenue of research is similar to your basic idea. Supercavitation, Instead of a long pipeline of gas bubbles, this projects one around a vessel for upwards of an hour.

http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=node/1281

What they've found is a 60-70% reduction in drag on vessels using the system. Which is pretty darn impressive actually, allowing a substantial increase in speed, but only for an hour or so. However, the principle is quite the same between supercavitation and your pipeline theory. But, as my former post goes, what is the actual mathematical effect on efficiency? Luckily, we can find that out.

The fastest submarines now are military ones and thus, their actual speeds are not available or classified. But the common knowledge can put their top speed underwater 43-45 knots, which converts to right around 50 miles per hour. Just because I'm going fast and loose, let's say that a reduction in drag is a direct improvement of speed on a perfect scale, which really isn't the case, but let's just roll with it. We have 50 miles per hour, improved by 60-70% because of bubbles, giving us a speed of 80-85 miles per hour. Unfortunately, that is pretty short of the 1942 mph to make a submarine as efficient as a traditional cargo ship in tons carried over time. Even if we can improve that speed tenfold, it is still well, well short of the goal.

 curran12 wrote:
So why is it this is better than normal ships?

Because if they are submarines, there is such a massive loss of cargo capacity that they would need to be, oh hell let's just do the math.

The closest thing I could find to a "cargo" submarine has a capacity of 700 tons. For the sake of argument, let's say we can double that and then some. Make it a nice, even 1500 tons of cargo per boat.

Now let's compare it to the gross tonnage of a large cargo ship today. This is not the largest on record, but a pretty good example. It's cargo capacity for weight is 158000 tons. Well over 100 times the capacity as even our fictional large cargo submarine.

(and I should note that tonnage is not usually the standard of shipping measurement, normally it uses TEUs, or the size equivalent of a shipping container. Don't even want to get into that, since I can't see a submarine managing more than few of those)

Now for the crossing itself. It is difficult to say as there is a great deal of unpredictability in the ocean for travel, but the common routes for a cargo ship to cross the Atlantic (using the Atlantic here since you did) is roughly a week. Some can be as short as 6 days, others closer to 10. I'll use a week since it is a nice, even number that we can work with easily. In order for your underwater road to gain a transport advantage over regular shipping, this underwater road would need to move cargo across the Atlantic in a little more than an hour and a half, given the massively smaller amount of cargo. Another bit of quick and dirty math later, to pull that off, your road needs to propel submarines at speeds of (using some quick math here again) 1942 miles per hour, or roughly Mach 2.5.

Can you promise that?

Thanks for the quick outline of problems I face, I don’t need to tell you that the first plane hardly could cross the Atlantic in one go… but I did anyways huh, sorry about that. I appreciate this mathematical approach, (quick as it may be). But considering a whale don’t you suppose that being surrounded by water would allow for larger girth in structure? We aren’t hiding from enemies here or transporting nukes, so we can think wide in girth. I would be hard pressed to give you a straight answer here and now, but you did not succeed in crushing an idea yet

Ships: technology that travels in a relatively straight line between two points with the added benefit of not killing everyone on board if there are system failures of the engine or generators, they operate in ways that have unfortunate but relatively minimal side effects on local wildlife..

Your way: involves a tremendous amount of additional power, the relative lack of safety to passengers, the fact that you have to travel to the freaking bottom of the ocean to even begin travelling in the direction you ACTUALLY want to go, and also impacts wildlife in probably even ways your current caveat doesn't really account for. You also need to bake additional time into the trip to allow for decompression sickness.

Seriously, I hate to claim there are stupid ideas. I want to be open minded about crazy new things people come up with, because you never know. This one is just bad though.

Edit: removed snark

Of course you can build it larger, after all I allowed the cargo submarine to be twice as large and then some as the nearest analogue I could find. That said, it does not address any of the issues of speed or efficiency until you are building to levels that are so staggering as to make it unreasonable versus conventional shipping.

Let's say we manage a way to make this underwater roadway as efficient as a normal cargo ship. Look at the cost of maintaining and operating tens of thousands of miles of pipeline (after all, you can't just have a single road if this is to work) that conventional shipping doesn't have. Even if it is a 1:1 ratio of shipping efficiency, the underwater road has such a huge level of additional costs that you actually need it to be considerably MORE efficient and effective.

You can do with the math what you will, but throwing out lines about planes and pioneering does not remove the barriers you face.

I also don't know how you're generating this stream of continual air bubbles to move in, and if physics would actually work out the way that you think it would to a point in which that you would receive any nontrivial reduction in power use to move down your 'road'. If this is a fixed system like a literal road, how do you account for tectonic shift?

Also, you still wouldn't be able to transport more via this method than boat. Ever.

Also, which part of the world would benefit from trade routes running under the ice cap? Northern Russia? That's not exactly a locale known for being prosperous, commercial, logically advantageous, or inhabited.

 Sigvatr wrote:
How is this superior to regular transport per ship for airplane? Not to mention that this is extremely easy to attack for all sorts of terrorists and can cause far more severe damage than attacking a regular road.

Would you say an infant compares to a mature elephant? Air; has speed, but lacks in fuel consumption and amount to carry. Normal freight ships; lacks speed, but has amount and (to an extent) fuel consumption in its bag. This idea could; ad greater speed while reducing fuel consumption. If terrorists stops you pioneering... they win!

Why not put a underground base on the moon.....

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Why come to a gaming forum instead of a more suitable establishment?

Wargamers is the most critically minded people I know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jihadin wrote:
Why not put a underground base on the moon.....

I'm in

SimsAlaBim wrote:

Would you say an infant compares to a mature elephant? Air; has speed, but lacks in fuel consumption and amount to carry. Normal freight ships; lacks speed, but has amount and (to an extent) fuel consumption in its bag. This idea could; ad greater speed while reducing fuel consumption. If terrorists stops you pioneering... they win!

That's fun and all, but none of that is science. You sound like you're speculating things without doing even a little research into the viability of it.

 daedalus wrote:
I also don't know how you're generating this stream of continual air bubbles to move in, and if physics would actually work out the way that you think it would to a point in which that you would receive any nontrivial reduction in power use to move down your 'road'. If this is a fixed system like a literal road, how do you account for tectonic shift?

Also, you still wouldn't be able to transport more via this method than boat. Ever.

Also, which part of the world would benefit from trade routes running under the ice cap? Northern Russia? That's not exactly a locale known for being prosperous, commercial, logically advantageous, or inhabited.

Areas blocked from trade only appears barren, bring trade and you bring those areas a lifeline! I have considered the air pressure as an obstacle, but calling it a ‘road’ is more for a visual aid. In this case it’s more like a hose in my mind really. The exploration of a principle in function is never a bad idea, I resent this.

I can see a VBIED going off inside the underwater tunnel

SimsAlaBim wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Why come to a gaming forum instead of a more suitable establishment?

Wargamers is the most critically minded people I know.

You said you need funding, not critical thinking. Why not present your ideas to people who have the scientific understanding and engineering skills required, and also the money to fund it? 99.9% Of the people here don't have a clue what you're talking about, so I don't see the point in asking us about anything. The best ideas you're going to get are "put more skulls on it" and "paint it red so it goes faster".

Dakka is not a site for this sort of thing. At the very, very least use indiegogo, or even better, present it to corporations who know what the hell you're going to be talking about.

Yes, I think so too.

Something seems...off about this one.

So...



But please also feel free to hit the Mod Alert button is it gets especially....weird and I happen to be asleep at the time.

Or something.

Silly Alpharius, everyone knows mods don't sleep.

Hey..its Ole One Eye...

Maybe speak to makers of bubble tea?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28640188

Although they use tapioca and oversize straws. Maybe an over size straw would be the solution to carriage of goods across international waters?

 daedalus wrote:
Ships: technology that travels in a relatively straight line between two points with the added benefit of not killing everyone on board if there are system failures of the engine or generators, they operate in ways that have unfortunate but relatively minimal side effects on local wildlife..

Your way: involves a tremendous amount of additional power, the relative lack of safety to passengers, the fact that you have to travel to the freaking bottom of the ocean to even begin travelling in the direction you ACTUALLY want to go, and also impacts wildlife in probably even ways your current caveat doesn't really account for. You also need to bake additional time into the trip to allow for decompression sickness.

Seriously, I hate to claim there are stupid ideas. I want to be open minded about crazy new things people come up with, because you never know. This one is just bad though.

Edit: removed snark

Look an Airbus A380-800F carries aprox 150 t of cargo burning 14 kg jet fuel pr km. If it travels its maximum range which is 10.000 km, it burns 1400 t of jetfuel. That is close to 9.5 tons of jetfuel pr ton of cargo, if we assume we fly full capacity. Fuel ranches around 3 USD pr gallon (nice round numbers here) so it is close to 70.000 USD to move one t of cargo 10.000 km, needless to say they aren’t making a lot these days (forgive my metric mind). I’m not going to crunch the fuel consumption pr ton of a nautical freighter now, but I will risk the humiliation and say that it’s alot greater than the airways. Assumable this is why freight on water still dominates airfreight. Addressing your concern on safety; of course it’s a risk, and great measures should be taken into account. But a plane falling from 5000 f, or a submarine with an engine stop is dooming both crews, to choose a fate between the two is a choice between burning and drowning, roughly speaking.

In regards to pressure sickness… this is not a diver! This is a submarine! Cabin pressure is adjusted as it dives and rises, that is why sailors never cough up their lungs once a sub resurfaces. Sorry to be graphic here, but if you’re a fisher you know this image

You do however bring up a good point on the drop of the vessel, but as far as I know the seafloor also drops gradually and the sub can still propel itself while dropping altitude. Kind of like a plane will have to go up and down again in a curve, it still goes faster than the straight line, because it doesn’t work against the surface tension. A normal ship works against similar surface tension, one a submarine doesn’t have to work against. Remember that air and water works in much the same way, not entirely but close enough. Still it is a point I will have to take into consideration; the seafloor can have some big drops thx.

Oh and by the way… an idea no matter how flawed and impractical, can still make great SciFi, just apply more imagination, what I’m saying is: you can’t bring me down

Eh... for humie travels? Hell no.

But something similar to Elon Musk's Hyperloop for commercial shipping?

Intriguing...

Why not just make a massive tunnel? And put a Mag Train on it that can go like 300mph? Surely that would be the answer?

I have no idea what the feth I just read, but i'm not nearly drunk enough for this gak.

Kronk's out.

 Deadshot wrote:
Why not just make a massive tunnel? And put a Mag Train on it that can go like 300mph? Surely that would be the answer?

If you pumped all the air out of the tunnel you could probably get it 10 times faster.

Imagine all the weight pushing down on the tunnel...

 Jihadin wrote:
Imagine all the weight pushing down on the tunnel...

Depends how far down it was and how wide. And the building matierials. Its hard to implement safely but much more effective and simple than a bubble generator for cargo Subs