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The Dream of an Alpine Waterway
- drewcoo 2y ago> Newton’s apple fell from the tree for the same reason as water flows downwards For the sake of the narrative?
- nico_h 2y agoI thought the author meant gravity.
- AtlasBarfed 2y agoJohnny canal approves
- ur-whale 2y agoThis was back in the days when folks in Europe were still capable of doing really ambitious technical things. That particular project may have turned not to be economically viable, but it was at the very least thought of and studied seriously. That kind of burning flame has now died miserably, and all Europe is now capable of doing is keeping the lights on.
- bamboozled 2y agoPersonally glad they had the foresight not to do stupid things like this to beautiful natural environments...the only thing I find really sad about Europe is the lack of old growth forest.
- metabagel 2y agoHigh speed rail? The large hadron collider at CERN? Also, Rail Baltica… https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/16/the-high-speed-railway-thats-uncoupling-the-baltic-states-from-russia-and-their-soviet-pas https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/16/the-high-speed-rail...
- throw-the-towel 2y agoYou mean the same Rail Baltica that has been delayed since forever?
- supermatt 2y agoIm not familiar with that one. I think he must mean the other Rail Baltica that was scheduled for 2025 but is now delayed until 2030
- dredmorbius 2y agoAlso: Concorde. The Chunnel. The Gotthard Base Tunnel. The Øresund Bridge/Tunnel. Airbus A-380. Numerous flood barriers and barricades (Thames, Netherlands, Venice, ...). European Southern Observatory.[1] Proposals for bridging the Straits of Gibraltar, Norway's E39 project, the EU project as a whole, and Energiewende (and its various national counterparts) would also strike me as major forward-thinking endeavours. ________________________________ Notes: 1. My focus is on technical rather than economic success here, though each project mentioned here did go operational, and all but Concorde remain so. Economic viability is a challenge for most megaprojects.
- _dain_ 2y agoEnergiewende is a failure in both technical and economic senses: half a trillion euros spent to get a more expensive and less reliable power grid, and a fleet of perfectly functional nuclear power plants were spitefully binned.
- dredmorbius 2y agoThe claim I was answering was that Europe was no longer willing or capable to undertake "really ambitious technical things". Really ambitious technical things by their very nature have uncertain outcomes and may prove spectacular, or even slow-motion failures. Concorde was only very barely commercially viable (if that) and ultimately exhibited fatal engineering flaws, as well as susceptibility to alternative (though slower) private jets with more flexible scheduling; still, it flew commercially for 27 years. The Channel Tunnel would have bankrupted the corporation building and operating it (Eurotunnel) without government bailouts.[1] The Airbus A380 has similarly proved a commercial failure with production halted at 254 units built in 18 years, compare against Boeing's 747 with 1,574 units over 55 years.[2] Even accepting your characterisation of Energiewende as a failure, which I do not, it absolutely IS a "really ambitoius technical" project. And hence refutes the specious assertions of ur-whale. ________________________________ Notes: 1. "Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition" <http://www.josephcoates.com/pdf_files/268_Megaprojects_and_Risk.pdf http://www.josephcoates.com/pdf_files/268_Megaprojects_and_R...> (PDF) 2. Wikipedia provides both Airbus's and Boeing's production years and units.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y agoDon't know what you are talking about (in this specific context). The size of the pictured ships/boats/barges seems rather small. And thus would easily be matched or topped in capacity by anything rolling trough the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel , faster.
- kryptiskt 2y agoThe Fehmarn Belt fixed link[0] is under construction right now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link
- ano-ther 2y agoIs there a demonstration of the locks somewhere? From the patent it sounds like a tunnel that gets flooded which lifts the ship. The tunnel must be really large because it has to fit the ship at an angle and not just head on. https://patents.google.com/patent/US955317A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US955317A/en
- Taniwha 2y agoIt's really more a pipe than a tunnel, the whole pipe needs to be able to support the weight of the boat and all the water to the top of each step
- amelius 2y agoWhat is the difference between a pipe and a tunnel in this case?
- Taniwha 2y agoa tunnel is supporting some downward pressure above it while a pip is resisting an outwards pressure from inside - a brick/stone arch might work for downwards pressure, but will just come apart if pushed from the inside - unlike the illustration they'd more likely need some reinforced concrete structure to support the weight of the water/boat
- dredmorbius 2y agoI'm not an expert in this area, though the efficiencies of canal systems have interested me greatly in recent years. What's interesting to me is that even today, few canal systems seem to have elevation gains of more than a few metres. Among the greatest lifts I'm aware of are the Erie Canal (no longer commercially operated, though accessible by pleasure craft), which rises 174m (571 ft) above sea level. Canada's Trent-Severn Waterway origionates on Lake Ontario at 74m (243 ft) elevation. The Panama Canal rises only 26m (85 ft) to Lake Gatun. And the Suez Canal operates without locks. Which makes the 1,200 m gain of Caminada's proposal all the more audacious. And ... perhaps ... impractical.
- foota 2y agoMy guess is that this is more about practicality than anything. There's hardly a need for such high elevation locks I think, and where there is, tunneling is better.
- dredmorbius 2y agoOr freight modalities which can handle grades intrinsically: rail, trucks, tramways, conveyor belts, sluices (for bulk goods). I'm trying to think of regions where water-based high elevation gain might be at least within contemplation.
- dmurray 2y agoInland water-based transport has fallen out of favour these days, not because there's anything wrong with it but because road and rail have got so much better in the last 150 years. If canal technology had improved at the same rate and we had a magical economic way of building canals over huge mountains, like the one described in the article, of course we'd contemplate building more of them. Connect Denver to San Francisco, connect the Amazon to the Pacific via La Paz, connect Buenos Aires to Santiago, connect the Brahmaputra to the Pearl River over the Himalayas, connect Nagoya to the Sea of Japan via Kyoto.
- 2y ago
- Animats 2y agoThat thing is scary. If a boat on an uphill tunnel doesn't keep moving forward to keep up with the rising water, the boat is forced against the top of the tunnel and everybody drowns.
- nico_h 2y agoYou can probably put a catenary with wheels on top of your boat and alongside to forward sides to ensure pushing it against the roof pushes your boat forward.
- ajb 2y agoIt's for freight, though, and if I understand it correctly, the force of the upward movement is automatically converted to horizontal movement by the pulley/rail system. So there's potentially no need for anyone to be on the boat as it transits the tunnel. Not that that this looks practical - the tunnels would be huge, just for starters.
- Animats 2y agoNot that huge. This thing seems to have been scaled for narrowboats, like the old British canal system. Those have some tunnels, just barely big enough for the boats. Here's the longest canal tunnel in the UK.[1] That was built in 1803. The project in the article was proposed in 1907, which was way late to be getting into narrowboat canals. Railroads, both ordinary and cogwheel, were working just fine in Swizerland by then. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ETwZuu9yZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ETwZuu9yZ0
- ajb 2y agoWow yeah narrowboats were not the cutting edge of haulage in 1907. Interesting about the Stand edge tunnel. I admit, I'm not that keen to go through it
- K0balt 2y agoThere’s no violation of physics here, simply the energy transfer of potential energy from water moving downhill. Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel, this seems like a remarkably efficient system, if almost certainly not economically viable to construct or maintain. If we simplify a bit and assume that all tunnels are of the same size, with the volume of water needed to fill one tunnel plus the net displacement of the freight going up versus down, every barge in every tunnel is moved one tunnel forward on each slope, going up or down one side of the system. It’s interesting because there is automatic energy recovery “regenerative braking” because the displacement of the descending freight reduces the water consumption in proportion to the amount used to raise an equal amount of ascending freight. Pretty cool. It would probably be more cost effective to use that same water source to build a hydroelectric powered electric locomotive, but -theoretically- the canal system should be able to move more freight. In practice, i would bet on the railway, especially if descending trains fed energy back into the system to help power ascending ones. As for economics of construction and maintenance, the train would probably be orders of magnitude more cost effective. Nonetheless, an elegant idea with an idyllic implementation. Kind of has a “clever” code smell though lol.
- RajT88 2y ago> Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel I keep looking at this and coming back to this point. Where on earth can you get that volume of water that high up reliably year round?
- K0balt 2y agoIm assuming that the mountain pass must be at a lower altitude than lakes fed by the alpine watershed.
- johnea 2y agoThe article describes it as some kind of magical thginnking, but it is possible to cross Europe by boat. There are a couple of canal systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine-Main-Danube_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine-Main-Danube_Canal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi