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Conrad/Flanagan
Conrad/Flanagan
The first serious suggestion to build a gravity train wasnt put forward until the 1800s, presented to the Paris Academy of Sciences by a group of scientific optimists. Unsurprisingly, the Academy opted to defer the ambitious suggestion. The concept was lost to
[In] the 1960s, when physicist Paul Cooper published a paper in the American Journal of Physics suggesting that gravity trains be considered for a future transportation project. Though the article sparked some lively debate,The proposal was not taken very seriously. While Friction does put a damper on the gravity train concept, clearly The biggest technical hurdle would be in creating such massive tunnels in the first place. A hole with a ten foot radius which passed through the Earths center would displace over twelve billion cubic feet of rock, all of which would need to be hauled away somewhere. Furthermore, The Earths mantle and core writhe with extreme pressure and heat, so any tunnel would have to be lined with a protective shield to keep it intact . Unfortunately no currently
obscurity until
known materials can even withstand the hostile environment, let alone insulate the tunnel from the intense heat. Due to these extreme
technology would be extremely useful for rapid, unmanned cargo delivery between continents, essentially becoming a massive global dumbwaiter. Those who find sport in reflecting on such wild ideas have suggested that The tunnel could be evacuated of air to eliminate wind resistance, though such a feat would prove almost as challenging as the drilling itself. Some have also postulated that
such a train could be magnetically levitated to eliminate friction in situations where the tunnel does not pass through the Earths center; though if electromagnets were used, the amount of energy consumed by the apparatus would rise drastically. A more viable location for the gravity train would be on planets such as the moon, which are not troubled by an atmosphere, plate tectonics, and magma. The concept would be the same, though a
Though the Gravity Express may seem impossible or at best absurdly impractical it is appealing to consider the possibility of extremely rapid transit across the planet with very little expenditure of energy per trip. Certainly the creation and reinforcement of such tunnels is well beyond the reach of our current technology, but The future is full of surprises. Modern technology has
planet with a density different from that of Earth would also have a different standard trip length.
sufficient momentum that it might eventually carry us through to the other side of the problem, provided that we can reduce creative friction by opening our minds.
Conrad/Flanagan
hundred years ago sometime in the latter half of the 17th century Isaac Newton received a letter from the brilliant British scientist and inventor Robert Hooke. In this letter Hooke outlined the mathematics governing how objects might fall if dropped through hypothetical tunnels drilled through the Earth at varying angles. Though it seems that Hooke was mostly interested in the physics of the thought experiment, An improbable yet intriguing idea fell out of the data: a dizzyingly fast transportation system. Hookes calculations showed that If the technology could be developed to bore such holes through the Earth, a vehicle with sufficiently reduced friction could use such a tunnel to travel to another point anywhere on the Earth within three quarters of an hour, regardless of distance. Even more amazingly, the vehicle would require negligible fuel. The concept is known as the Gravity Train.
About Four
Conrad/Flanagan
The widespread and growing use of fossil fuel based fertilizers, engine and power plant emissions and fuel related water pollution all makes its way into humans through what they eat, drink or breathe. Your penalty: Higher state and local taxes, increased pollution clean up costs and higher medical costs for you and your family. The Hidden Costs of Air Pollution I don't know about you, but when I was a kid growing up
I never saw an inhaler (used for asthma and other respiratory problems in children and some adults) until I went to college. Now, I
Asthma cases have increased 160% over the past 15 years and over 5 million children in the U.S. now suffer from asthma. On some days have you ever heard the weatherman mention that it is "unsafe" to breathe the outside air? Or that air quality is "unacceptable"? So what should we do, NOT breathe? What could it be? What could be the cause
see 25% to 50% of the kids in my daughter's high school with inhalers. of this huge increase in respiratory problems? Well, to put it bluntly: "It is the air we breathe." What else could it be? Are you aware
A person living in a city downwind from a coal plant has a 16 percent greater chance of dying from lung cancer? You may not be able to see it, but The problem is there, in the air we breathe. Fossil fuel use produces huge amounts and different types of particulates, including dust, soot, smoke and other very fine suspended matter, much of which is not visible. These respiratory irritants may not seriously affect a fully developed mature adult, however, they do have serious and lasting effects on children and their developing respiratory and immune systems. Your penalty: Higher healthcare costs, sick kids and higher taxes. The Hidden Costs of Water and Land Pollution. Oil spills cause massive water pollution problems along our coasts and rivers. Fossil fuel based fertilizers are washed into the ground water and cause numerous health problems. Coal mining, especially strip-mining, destroys the landscape and the acid in coal causes huge water waste and pollution when the coal is washed in preparation for transportation and processing. Your penalty: Destruction of land, killing of aquatic life, increased water pollution cleanup costs and higher local taxes. The Hidden Costs of Thermal Pollution. When fossil fuels are burned, to produce electricity it also produces heat energy. Because much of the current processes are inefficient, much of the excess heat is released into the atmosphere or to nearby water sources. This increased heating of water, once returned to rivers or lakes can dramatically upset the aquatic ecosystem by raising the average temperature and adversely affecting fish and plant life. Your penalty: "Dead" lakes devoid of aquatic life, increased clean up costs, higher local taxes and destruction of our recreation areas.
that
Conrad/Flanagan
The United States will spend an estimated $23 trillion on fossil fuels between 2010 and 2030 should energy consumption and fossil fuel prices follow U.S. government projections an amount equivalent to three years worth of income for the entire American workforce at current earning rates. Fossil fuel expenditures will decline in the next several years due to the lingering effects of the economic recession, but annual expenditures of more than $1 trillion per year which proved devastating to the economy during early 2008 will become the new normal by the middle of the next decade. By 2030, the United States can expect to spend approximately $360 billion more per year on fossil fuels than we did in 2006. If fossil fuel prices are driven higher, faster, the U S could expect to spend more than $30 trillion on fossil fuels between 2010 and 2030. Fossil fuel expenditures would again surpass $1 trillion in 2011 and by 2030 we will be spending $750 billion more per year on fossil fuels than the nation did in 2006. Oil prices are a main driver of higher expenditures. If oil prices reach $200 per barrel by 2030 an event more likely to happen as world oil supplies become increasingly strained the United States will be spending $1.3 trillion out of $1.6 trillion total fossil fuel costs on oil alone. Rising fossil fuel expenditures will affect all 50 states, but states with a greater reliance on fossil fuels, particularly oil, will experience greater increases.
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3. More moronic politicians thought it would be a great idea to buy oil from radical Arab terroristic Islamist countries where they burn American flags on the streets for fun, while threatening to kill us for burning a fairytale book about a space fairy named Allah and his puppet Muhammad. Those politicians were wrong. Lynch in 2008, J. Peter Lynch, 33 years experience as independent analyst and investor in emerging technology companies, 17
May,12 2008, <http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2008/05/the-true-cost-of-fossil-fuels-52359> accessed June 2, 2012
years experience contributing editor to leading publication Photovoltaic Insider Report,
These "oil
shocks" result in the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars for our economy and the economies around the world. These problems can be politically driven or supply driven, but in either case it is the result of our excessive dependence on a non-renewable source of energy. This
repeated volatility of oil prices is a major "hidden" cost and a very significant risk factor for the stability of the world's economies. Currently the
U.S. is spending approximately $1.5 to $1.75 BILLION PER DAY on imported oil. This is a huge drain on our economy and on the confidence levels of consumers everywhere. Your penalty: Economic downturn, lower stock market, loss of jobs, higher taxes. The Hidden Costs of Nation Security. In these times of increasing political volatility It makes absolutely ZERO sense to have our country held hostage to the unstable oil countries in the Middle East and their constant turmoil. The annual cost to the American taxpayer of keeping our military forces protecting our oil supply runs in the tens of billions of dollars, if not hundreds of billions. This is NEVER reflected in any "cost" of using fossil fuels, but it is coming out of YOUR tax dollars.
Conrad/Flanagan
This situation will only get worse as the rest of the world advances economically and needs more oil. Over the past 35 years every single American President has promised to reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports. What have the results? of these "efforts" been to date? The amount of oil we import has NOT gone down at all, in fact, it has doubled as a percentage of the oil we use. This is a truly miserable track record and a growing nightmare for national security. Your penalty: Higher taxes to pay for the military, military causalities and less money devoted to domestic non-military uses in this country, like highways, urban infrastructure, education and health care.
Conrad/Flanagan
Conrad/Flanagan
external energy used at all. This train even saves millions of dollars that are spent on fossil fuels and other types of energy. This saves money, energy and time.
2. Gravity trains could create a transportation system without timetables. Time 66 Undisclosed author,
Fascinated By
"Mathematics: To Everywhere in 42 Minutes Time Magazine 11 Feb. 1966 Time.com <http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,842469-1,00.html> accessed 3 June 2012
[Coopers] initial calculation, Cooper worked out a formula for the time required for an object to fall through a no matter how close or far apart the two points were, the time turned out to be constant: 42.2 minutes. According to Cooper's equations, by "dropping" in airless, frictionless, straight-line tunnels, passenger vehicles powered only by the pull of gravity could theoretically travel between Washington and Moscow, which are 4,850 surface miles apart, in the same time it would take them to travel from Washington to Boston , only 400 miles away. "One can Envisage a transportation system without timetables," says Cooper, tongue in cheek, "with the world's cities linked by tunnels, the departure time universally on the hour, and the arrival time 42.2 minutes later."
straight-line tunnel bored between any two points on the surface of the earth. Surprisingly,
Conrad/Flanagan
Conrad/Flanagan
and even counterfeiting advanced foreign technology and products are typical strategies of firms located in an economically backward country. These activities are formally legal when the
imitating firms use their new knowledge only in those markets where the intellectual property rights of the original inventor are not protected like in Germany before 1877. These activities are clearly illegal when the imitating firms sell their replicas in markets where the intellectual property rights of the original inventor are established like in the case reported by the French periodical La Machine Moderen. The government of a backward country might tolerate or even foster this illegal behavior of the firms in its jurisdiction because imitating foreign know-how is one of the most promising ways to catch up to the economically and therefore politically leading nations. However, this kind of illegal imitation usually only takes place during a transitional period. On the longer run, both the firms and the government of the economically advancing country face strong incentives to change their behavior from violating to respecting international intellectual property rights. To elaborate this argument, we sub-divide the catching-up process into the three phases imitation, (adaptive) innovation and diffusion. During the
imitation phase, firms of the economically backward country use various imitation channels like reverse engineering, attending international exhibitions and foreign firms, analyzing patent specifications, or hiring foreign craftsmen and engineers to learn from their superior foreign competitors. This new knowledge can be profitably used in their home market because the government
of the imitating firms does not enforce the intellectual property rights of the foreign firms in its jurisdiction. In the following phase of innovation, the imitating firms adjust the imitated technologies and products to their own
technological capabilities and the demand of their home market . During this process of adaptation imitation is abating
because the formerly imitating firms gain step by step the competence to develop their own successful innovations. That is why these firms might now lobby for a functioning domestic patent law, which does not discriminate against foreign firms to make sure that, in return, their own intellectual property rights will be guaranteed abroad. Catching-up, however, is obviously not possible for every country. One of the necessary preconditions for both successful imitations and innovations is the availability of a sufficient stock and structure of human capital. Aghion supposes that during the imitation phase firms rely primarily on workers with secondary education while for innovation workers with tertiary education are needed. As a result, an economically backward country should concentrate first on the improvement of its education system on the primary and secondary levels. Not until then when the firms of the advancing country approach the technological frontier the improvement of higher education becomes the most important task of education policy. Besides human capital formation, other factors like secure property rights, an incorruptible administration, openness to competition, or financial institutions capable of mobilizing capital for individual firms seem to be also needed for catching-up successfully. Germany went through these institutional reforms in the second half of the 19th century and thereby supplied the domestic firms with the capabilities and resources necessary for imitating and innovating. During the diffusion phase, the competence to develop innovations spill-over to more and more domestic firms which increases both price and Schumpeterian competition between the growing number of efficient and
. Sometimes, the former backward firms might even take over the global technological leadership and thereby like the German machine tool makers change from ruthless imitators to campaigners for the worldwide enforcement of intellectual property rights. Note that the imitation, innovation and diffusion phases often overlap. Especially during the innovation phase, first, the (illegal) imitation of foreign technology might cease but not totally stop, and, second, the imitation activities between domestic firms might already increase speeding up the diffusion of knowledge.
innovative firms in the backward country considerably
This means we can expand our impacts to a global level. Any impacts that come about in the US, will also appear in countries that copy gravity train technology. 195 countries = 195x the impacts
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ADV: DEATH
Advantage 2: Death
The Gravity Train grills any onboard passengers Bellows 06, Alan Bellows, author, designer, and professional programmer, programmer, and managing editor at
damninteresting.com, The Gravity Express, 15, October 2006 http://www.damninteresting.com/contributors/alan-bellows/, accessed: June 1, 2012
The Earths mantle and core writhe with extreme pressure and heat, so any tunnel would have to be lined with a protective shield to keep it intact. Unfortunately no currently known materials can even withstand the hostile environment, let alone insulate the tunnel from the intense heat. Due to these extreme temperatures, the trip may never be survivable by humans.
People choosing their own behavior (in this case suicide, which will previously have been prohibited by law ) will result in greater happiness Kasser in 2009, Tim Kasser, Department of Psychology, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois,
December 2009 http://castor.oit.pdx.edu/sites/www.pdx.edu.sustainability/files/Kasser_Paper_2.pdf Accessed June 3, 2012 First, happiness requires feeling safe and secure, as worries about whether one will eat tomorrow or be shot, bombed, or otherwise rendered dead soon clearly interfere with optimal psychological health. Second, people need to feel competent and efficacious; unhappiness frequently results when people believe that they are either not able to successfully do the things they care about or that they are generally unworthy. The third need, for relatedness or connection with other people, stems from the fact that humans are social animals who require love and intimacy but struggle under conditions of loneliness, rejection, and exclusion. Finally, people have a need to feel free and autonomous, choosing their own behavior rather than feeling coerced or controlled by internal or external pressures.
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To maintain our Nation's competitive edge and ensure an economy built to last, the United States must have fast, reliable, resilient, and environmentally sound means of moving people, goods, energy, and information. In a global economy, we will compete for the world's investments based in significant part on the quality of our infrastructure. Investing in the Nation's infrastructure provides immediate and long-term economic benefits for local communities and the Nation as a whole. The quality of our Nation's infrastructure depends in critical part on Federal permitting and review processes, including planning, approval, and consultation processes.
Section 1. Policy. (a)
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MKCHS 2012-2013 Gravity Train Constructive New energy policy outweighs all other concerns
Conrad/Flanagan
Lynch in 2008, J. Peter Lynch, 33 years experience as independent analyst and investor in emerging
technology companies, 17 years experience contributing editor to leading publication Photovoltaic Insider Report, May,12 2008, <http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2008/05/the-true-cost-offossil-fuels-52359> accessed June 2, 2012 I think not. Everyone knows the posted price, but very few realize the true costs. There are a number of "hidden" costs that most of us do not realize. It may not be obvious but we are quietly paying these additional costs every day. These additional indirect costs actually make the "real" cost of the gasoline and all other fossil fuel related items many times higher than it seems at first glance. In my opinion, "Energy" is the number one problem facing the U.S and the world as we move forward in a global economy. All other problems health care, social security, housing crisis, credit crunch etc. are ALL "small change" compared to the looming worldwide energy crisis. Reasonably priced, available energy is what separates the U.S from third world countries. This problem must be addressed rapidly, with a detailed long term plan that MUST be based upon a comprehensive accurate evaluation and assessment. Unfortunately our government does not utilize all of the necessary cost components in order to arrive at an accurate "true cost" number. As a result, we are using a faulty equation, which, of course, will result, EVERY SINGLE TIME, in an incorrect answer. "Socialism collapsed because it did not allow prices to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow prices to tell the ecological truth." Oystein Dahle, retired VP of Esso Norway The Hidden Health-Related Costs.
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Kasser in 2009, Tim Kasser, Department of Psychology, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois,
December 2009 http://castor.oit.pdx.edu/sites/www.pdx.edu.sustainability/files/Kasser_Paper_2.pdf Accessed June 3, 2012 First, happiness requires feeling safe and secure, as worries about whether one will eat tomorrow or be shot, bombed, or otherwise rendered dead soon clearly interfere with optimal psychological health. Second, people need to feel competent and efficacious; unhappiness frequently results when people believe that they are either not able to successfully do the things they care about or that they are generally unworthy. The third need, for relatedness or connection with other people, stems from the fact that humans are social animals who require love and intimacy but struggle under conditions of loneliness, rejection, and exclusion. Finally, people have a need to feel free and autonomous, choosing their own behavior rather than feeling coerced or controlled by internal or external pressures.
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