Saturday, January 5, 2013

A hypersonic burrito tunnel???


On Thursday I put up a post about a 'burrito bomber' that attracted a fair number of comments.  Among them was one from Dave H., who pointed us to an article from 2007 titled 'The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel'.  I read it, and it's magnificent!  It's a wonderful spoof on technology and history.  Here's a very brief excerpt.

The launch tube for the burritos lies just under the tunnel mouth and looks like what it is: an enormous gun. Every four seconds a ‘slug’ of ten burritos, white with frost, ratchets into the breech. A moment later it flies into the tunnel with a loud hiss of compressed gas, and the lights dim briefly as banks of powerful electromagnets accelerate the burritos to over two hundred miles an hour. By the time they pass Stockton three minutes later the burritos will be traveling faster than the Concorde, floating on an invisible magnetic cushion as they plunge into the lithosphere.

There's much more at the link.  Very funny, and highly recommended reading.  Thanks, Dave!



Peter

1 comment:

trailbee said...

Is this really for REAL??? This is a man with a great brain.