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This is theatrically possible mega watts of power.

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gary350

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The moon travels the same path every day, east/west around the earth. It is 24,875 miles around the earth the train travels 1036 miles every day. The train speed in only 43.18 mph this is slow enough to swap out cars on side tracks for maintenance. 200 foot wide floating railroad tracks need to be built for the oceans. 1/2 mile wide sections of the bridge can open up every day for ships to pass. The bridge can be GPS located and powered by electricity in the tracts to keep the track in place. A train several miles long can generate mega watts of power to the rails. Think outside the box.

**broken link removed**
 
Yes, great idea.

The downside is of course that the moon will slow down in its orbit around the earth.
Now comes the nasty part, as the moons angular velocity decreases, so the distance from the earth will decrease and eventually we will all have to duck as the moon passes overhead.
Could get quite comical with everyone bobbing up and down.

JimB

Posted at 00:07 1/4/15 :)
 
Yes, great idea.

The downside is of course that the moon will slow down in its orbit around the earth.
Now comes the nasty part, as the moons angular velocity decreases, so the distance from the earth will decrease and eventually we will all have to duck as the moon passes overhead.
Could get quite comical with everyone bobbing up and down.

JimB

Posted at 00:07 1/4/15 :)

but if a small generator was connected between the head and thorax of all people, think of the extra power that could be harvested by that bobbing movement.
 
The moon travels the same path every day, east/west around the earth. It is 24,875 miles around the earth the train travels 1036 miles every day. The train speed in only 43.18 mph

I am not too sure about that, I suggest you have a re-think. You may be a bit on the low side - by a factor of about 25.

JimB
 
My main concern is that if the moon can pull a large train, it can certainly pull people on roller skates too. I'd hate to be on roller skates and run into something at 1000 mph or even 43.18 ±1 mph.

John
 
My main concern is that if the moon can pull a large train, it can certainly pull people on roller skates too. I'd hate to be on roller skates and run into something at 1000 mph or even 43.18 ±1 mph.

John

When I was 40 years younger I us to wind sail on city streets on street skates. It was easy to do double the wind speed in a cross wind. On a windy day I had fun passing cars at 45 mile on roller skates, it sure did freak people out. It is a miricle I never got hurt.

 
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The moon travels the same path every day, east/west around the earth. It is 24,875 miles around the earth the train travels 1036 miles every day.

The circumference is about right, but how do you get 1036 miles/day?
 
The circumference is about right, but how do you get 1036 miles/day?

:eek: OH.....I see a math error.

It appears I forgot to account for the orbit of the moon being 28 days vs the rotation of the earth being 24 days. The earth rotates to the East every 24 hrs and the moon rotates to the East every 23 hrs 11.0556 minutes. The moon orbits on the earths magnetic equator. Moon vs earth, orbit vs rotation = 24,875/28= the train travels 888.3928571 miles per day. 888.3928571/24= 37.01636905 mph.

Double check my math. 37.01636905 mph times 24 hours for 28 days = 24,875 miles around the earth in 28 days.:)

The train travels about 37 mph.
 
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A point on the equator is moving 25,000/24 ~ 1000 mph due to earth's rotation. Being tied to something moving 1/28th as fast will still be an interesting ride.
 
~37 MPH? What math are you using? :facepalm:

The Earth is ~24,000 miles in circumference at the equator so that alone makes for a ~1000 MPH average ground speed right there. Subtract the lunar orbital speed and you still are at over 900 MPH average speed which is around Mach 1.2 at ground level.:wideyed:

Add in that the Earth has a elliptical wobble in relation to the moon and now your equatorial track will be seeing huge side loads being the Earth and Moon do not have a perfectly aligned set orbital planes.

Then there is the issue that the Earth and Moon do not have a fixed orbital distance either. It ranges from ~226,000 to 252,000 miles.

Power wise the world does not use megawatts (1,000,000's of watts) of power but rather multiple Terawatts 1,000,000,000,000's of watts) of power. Around 15 trillion (~15 million million watts) watts at any average point in time which is the equivalent of about 4.5 million 4000 HP locomotive engines. :arghh:

So I say no its not theoretically possible. :p

BTW 15 terawatts per hour may sound like a huge amount of energy but when compared to natures average planetary energy budgets at any one time we humans make up a very small fraction of 1% of it.
 
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