Current plans involve using drills and atomic or conventional blasts to shatter the hot rock and then pump in water that somehow would be pumped back to the surface by quenching the hot rock with water. Two problems are it's tough to drill so deep and the water may be unpredictable to know where it would flow.
Atomic powered drill bits have been invented to solve this. The bit would be a tubular atomic power plant in the well that fits up say, 20 feet of the well. It might have heat at the tip of the bit that would also cut with sharp teeth both powered by the fission. This would operate by a sort of downward implosion by way of both the the weight of the U238, the melting powered by the Uranium using the heat of the bit to make it red or white hot, and cut of the drill bit, so pressure from above wouldn't be necessary. Another way to make the atomic bits weigh a lot in small volume would be to use hadron solids like protons in the right density to make it via the optimal amount. To drill economically the machine would also have collectors that would store the heat from the sides and charge up supercapacitors or flywheels, and after the stop this would be used to aid the atomic power and go for more depth than otherwise, or indefinitely. At the top of the bit (near us) a modular uranium pack has also been invented, so if the power goes low, one pack would go up and then another would descend to continue the drilling, each one half width of the well, or two cylinders, one inside the other would be used, so the operation would be continous of the drill. (While one goes up the other can go down by passage since they fit in the width of the drilled conduit.) The pipe to connect with us up here would be more flexible if it didn't have to be solid and so could be in large round wheels of the tube (like a lawn hose) that could be set up at the site by helicopter. This would make it so they could drill deeper, just set up the drill, bit and pipes, and the drilling is automatic.
With the problem of digging deep solved, to make the water flow well, seperate shafts would be dug and then a blast at both wells would shatter the rock, and the shafts would be close enough the zone of shattered rock would be continous between the blasts, forming a shattered zone of oval or tubular geometry. If 3 or more shatter zones were lined up, the water would just be pumped from the blast zones on each end of the zone continously along the tube of shattered rock. The area of the zone to the outside would have no circulation of the water so it would use a more continuous zone of many blasts than just one or two, more or much more of the water flows from the injection well at one side to the extraction well. There would be at least some rock in the earth at that depth without layers (strata) so the long zone of shattered rock would hold the pressure to pump out the heat without leaks. This would solve the problem for the most, of not being able to make the water flow well.
Another way would be to use concentric wells, the inner would would be for water in and the outside well would absorb the heat and return it to the surface. This machine (the atomic drill bit) would pay for itself as soon as the first depth was reached also in this plan. When the depth was reached and the water was pumped from this main conduit, the atomic bit could branch out by going in and out and these would make more and more profit with time.
Please remember in the following, I'm speaking of simple machines and the more distant years ahead, perhaps 200 years, but much of the same science may be used for both the above and the following plan used, with no discontinuity between the as we reach deeper and deeper via the plan above and this for geothermal power;
If just one larger atomic bit like just one of perhaps 20 used to desalinate the water of a big port city was used to make a wider tunnel, concievably a train well could be built all the way from the US to Japan in a mostly linear path. You may say if a submarine can just go to 1000 feet below the ocean waves it would take a superstrong material, and I think this would be the proton solid a solid made of protons (stronger in compression than the strong nuclear force, which is only attractive, or its attraction would cause indefinite implosion because the strong force is only attractive). It may seem no material would be this strong about the conduit, but obviously there is at least one other common material that is easy to find that is strong enough-and that's the rock itself, it doesn't collapse. The protons would always out achieve the maximum pressure of the outside atoms because they are much denser than this, and proton solids would be a good insulator because heat would be at a much longer wavelength, and with no holes, the heat of more usual thermodynamics couldn't pass through the protons. The earth's pressure is at most 42 million pounds per square inch and the density of a proton is much higher, a thousand trillion times that of usual matter. And machines that use the pressure from heavy masses on collecters would generate power to improve efficiency at lifting the load or for other useful labor like the earth using the pressure of weight to continuously squeeze out the heat. In my Gravity Powered Machines (GPM) this pressure may be used to generate electric power by such as electric collectors, and this would be used to strengthen the arch by way of electro "flexors", sort of like a how a bicycle motor reuses part of the downward spin to go up the hill after, the same with much of the flow of the heat. (GPMs would also be of use for making high rise buildings safer by using them to collect some of downward force and putting it into good use strengthening beams. And the large weights they have in many high rises to add stability if there was a quake would be even better with big computerized motors that would stabilize more. This is because the average motion overall would be at random and so even if the big weight averaged most of the motion, at random there would be usually extra motion left to one side or the other so the building that just had a passive weight and no machines too could be unweildy in a quake. While there may be many other uses of this invention, GPMs of which the power of the pressure to collect with the atomic drill bit via the water pipes may be of most import.)
For our advanced world civilization to eventually drill all the way from one side of the earth to the other would use cassions, since they would be of more width and wouldn't be as easily moved to the site in a roll to achieve more strength. The drill bit would extend its reach as usual with digging like water conduits and then the cassion made of proton solids would shore up the progress. Once the machine was launched it would just repeat the same lengthening processs over and over, the drilling with heat, then the tube, so it would be simple. Another way, since protons are simple, would be for the drill which is made of protons to continously extrude the well as it would dig, the outside of the machine would support the pressure as it was extruded, perhaps in strong layers. Other than the drill and the mills to make the proton solids, which would be simple, the only other cost would be transport of the cassions to the drill site, but protons are easy to reach, and the proton solids would be with much higher strength to weight than other materials for transport. Since weight would of the bit be a help, the tubes would be sunk from both sides of the earth to meet in the core, to make a continuous metro!
When you were in the train you would fall half the way and no doubt some of this motion would be used to make it up the other side. The radius of the solid iron core is just 800 miles but the earth's total diameter is about 8000 miles, so just a slight arch of the passage would bypass the solid iron core (above is fluid iron, and higher up is more solid mantel). The spin of the core might be of use to accelerate the trains in the tunnel as they would pass by it by way of electric machines. Since the outer core is liquid, all the drilling would be in the mantle, and a bit in the crust. The tunnels below the mantel would go through the fluid to reach the other well in the opposite mantle to one day build this the metro underground of the world village using the super solids and good machines.
In the bestseller Cosmos, Carl Sagan says more advanced civilizations may build space elevators Goddard and Tsiolokovsky invented in the early 20th century to reach a wheel in orbit circling the earth. But the September 11th attacks on the US in 2001 imply that this may not be politically viable because of risk of terrorist attack, at least if overpopulation is causing increased Competition for decreasing Resources, and the strain is causing social pathology. If the overpopulation continues so will the social problems, if my explanation about Supply and Demand holds. So digging a metro in perhaps 100 years like this may be more sustainable than the spoked wheel or the tower, since it would be fortified more easily. It would use just the known atomic science for the drill, and the proton solid simple to make in large volume because it's just protons that are self assembling since of simple stuff, and the gravity power would be the only three types of science needed other than cooling machines, these may use the pressure to collectors to coolers. If the proton solid turns out to be a good conductor, it's bad, but the pressure could also be used to cool it well.
If this were ever achieved the world would have a much safer cheaper way to ship from West to East, and East to West, the train would be super linear so super high speed. It wouldn't increase risk of war like the tower wheel, and with the gravity free fall, research into 0 gravity would be achieved without having to go up in the shuttle. 0 gravity has been the main hope of payoff for the International Space Station. A much cheaper source of gravity modulation for us now (without the WEIGHT!) may be by way of centrifugal force.
And by way of this atomic drill and the proton solid, voyages in the future may have a special "iron" submarine to go in the outer core of the earth's magma. They say the core of the earth on it's outer surface has a canyon much huger than the grand canyon, this would be explored in the sub. By the atomic drill, small robots might be sent if the main metro was still to expensive at that time.
Another use would be to blast out spheres in the center or to the sides of the solid core and use this as a waste dump, dropping stuff in and collecting the power from it's fall before it would be forever sealed away by gravity, a sort of afterlife for radium. Or this would just be in boxes that would be injected to melt in the liquid core. At the bottom of the passage, a sort of one way valve for the boxes could be used to make sure no lava flows up. This would be if power sources like the atomic motor turn out to be unfeasable. (The atomic motor is a wire of protons held in tension by their opposite magnetic fields; a collection beam at right angles to the protons spin, goes inside the proton's field and out changing the beams wavelength and power, this is then collected and rewired around to the source of the beam, completing the curcuit, these machines would be small, super strong and cheap if assembled by the usual chemical motifs.) The atomic motor could also be used for better recycling and as a power source. If the atomic motor or other fusion machines are viable geothermal heat would not be necessary, and the super metro would be the plan of most import about the atomic drill bit. If fusion is achieved many more materials could be recycled including Uranium and other radioactive waste, or, with more power, just boosted safely out of earth orbit. This is not considered feasable now with the necessity of high speed (and explosive) boosters to overcome the earth's gravity, the risk of explosion on a launch of like a Titan booster is about 1 in 250. As I say in my post about the space tower the armys idea of lightcraft, boosted by beams from the ground, would be much safer and cheaper than chemical booster per pound of payload, they would be more safe because no fuel is onboard the ships so if the beam goes out the lightcraft just coasts lazily to the earth. It will be interesting to see what happens when the army builds more than the small prototype of these they have.
If proton solids are viable they would so dense the right weight combined with perhaps the optimal amount of heat or drilling would make it so it would be used as a probe through the mantel in our own 21st century.
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Thanks to divorce laws, the odds are 5 to 1 you'll leave Reno with your wife!
It was so hot last summer, I went to buy some pistachio, and when I returned my chrome, hubcaps, and wheels had melted! So Hot, it's when you go out at 11 and the rocks and houses are all radiant!
R:"Where's the cashbox where you win the most?"
D: "The slot machines?"
R: "No, the fizz machine, more options!"
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