December 16, 2024 10:17 am iStockphoto Count Elon Musk among those who would like to see a 3,400-mile-long tunnel built between New York and London that would be used by trains traveling speeds of more than 3,000 mph. Such a thing would cut travel time between the two cities from an 8 hours on a airplane to just under one hour on a train. This transatlantic underwater tunnel wouldn’t be cheap to build. Several reports have pegged it at a price of $20 trillion. Then again, Elon Musk said on X (Twitter) last week, “The @boringcompany could do it for 1000X less money.” The Boring Company, owned by Musk, “creates safe, fast-to-dig, and low-cost transportation, utility, and freight tunnels.” The idea for the tunnel is that it could use vacuum tube technology where pressurized trains having no air resistance inside the tunnel could theoretically travel more than 3,000 mph. It’s what is often referred to as a hyperloop. While such a concept would drastically reduce travel time and be more environmentally friendly, it would more than likely take decades, if not centuries to actually build. Newsweek, for comparison, said it would take 782 years based on how long it took the 23.5-mile-long Channel Tunnel linking France to the United Kingdom to be constructed (and it isn’t pressurized). Then there is the small matter of how would such a tunnel deal with things like immense water pressure, soft sea beds, tectonic shifts, earthquakes, volcanic zones, and just general maintenance. Another issue is determining the proper way to construct it. Some have suggested submerging it beneath the ocean floor. Other have suggested building a tube-like tunnel on stilts. Another idea that’s been put forth is to make it a floating tunnel anchored to the sea floor by cables. All of that means that we’re probably more likely to see Elon Musk colonize Mars before a tunnel is ever built between the United States and the U.K.