Vast Engineering Schemes “Fantasy”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29192, 30 April 1960, Page 10

Vast Engineering Schemes “Fantasy”

[By

GEOFFREY TAYLOR]

So a £2OO million bridge has been suggested to span the English Channel between Britain and France? Forget it. It has as much chance of materialising as any of the other head-line-catching engineering “projects” of recent years.

It wasn’t so long ago that we were hearing of Russian plans to melt the Arctic. That particular fantasy involved the building of a dam somewhere on the perimeter of the Arctic ocean. After that, gigantic nuclear power stations were to pump water from the warm oceans into the Arctic. Then the Arctic would melt and lots of cold, barren, inhospitable countries would warm up and blossom like the rose. The cost? Oh, no-one bothered about that. But it subsequently turned out that any such project would also entail the drowning of London, all of Holland and parts of South America to mention but a few of the low lying areas as the water level rose.

Was it even feasible? Who knows? With all their undoubted technical know-how, the Russians also have an inexhaustible capacity for producing and absorbing science fiction. Remember the Soviet theory that Sodom and Gormorrah were devastated by nuclear bombs set off by visitors from space? In another preposterous plan, 9000 Americans are scheduled to say goodbye to the sun and live underground for the rest of their lives. The object: to carry on the American Way of Life after the nuclear holocaust.

The director of this "project” is said to be a Professor Frederick Edmondson, of Cornell University. He has it all worked out. The underground city is to be proof against nuclear bombs, missiles, radioactivity and bacterial and chemical warfare. Electronic Brains

Two thousand of the city’s 9000 inhabitants will serve the giant electronic brains which will regulate every aspect of life in the city. Remotely controlled machines will test radioactivity above ground, to decide when it will be safe for the troglodytes to return to the world.

Two-thirds of the inhabitants will be married. The average family size will be 3.8. Fifty per cent, of the citizens will be scientists, technicians and so on; the rest will be shopkeepers, and other professional men. There will be churches, even if there is nothing left to pray for. Technically, there's no reason why the job can’t be done. The immense cost might well be born by the American Government to ensure continuation of life on the North American continent. But even if the United States Government approves the plan, it is unlikely ever to materialise. The reason: just how many people, the right kind of people scientists, engineers, doctors—would be prepared to live below the earth with their wives and children, never to emerge? And if 9000 people were found, what about the rest of the citizens? Taking the population as around 180,000.000 that leaves 170,991,000 disgruntled Americans waiting for annihilation. Somehow it’s difficult to see the population of the United States agree-

ing that only 9000 of them are fit to survive. With this, the words “Outsiders” and “Insiders” take on an uglier connotation. Also from America is a plan to build a bridge between Alaska and Siberia. This is the brainchild of Professor T. Y. Lin, of the civil engineering side of the University of California, who proposes an immense concrete bridge to span the 52-mile wide Bering Strait.

The bridge would be prefabricated in 1000-foot lengths and towed in place by tugs. The job. he thinks, would take five years and cost “under a billion dollars.”

Professor Lin says it’s all perfectly possible, and no doubt it is. But what’s the point of it? Long Journey

To get from Washington to Moscow, using the professor's bridge, would entail a journey of several thousand miles up the United States, through Canada and Alaska along the Alcan Highway, then a journey of 52 miles across the bridge, often in bad weather, and then a long journey through Siberia, on Russian roads. Like all countries which have been catapulted into the technological age. Russia lacks roads and the Soviet government shows no interest in building them. Aircraft are what have opened up the Soviet Union, just as it has opened up Australia and will do for China. Like so many practical men, Professor Lin appears to be unaware of this fact, and he abviously has not studied the history of the English Channel Tunnel. First mooted in 1802, the Channel Tunnel is not with us yet. One reason is that in 1960 158 years rfter the project was proposed there are still many people who argue that it would open Britain to foreign attack. And if the British are still feeling like that about the French, what would be reactions to a road link with Russia?

The fact is that in the air age, all these schemes are absurd and those who propound them, engineering geniuses that they may be, invariably fail to take into account questions of national psychology, national solvency and national necessity.—Exclusive Press Features.—All Rights Reserved.