I’ve mentioned this idea previously in the weird theories thread, but I started a new thread because I wanted to get some help fleshing out the concept a bit more to determine whether this could or would ever actually be build and used for transportation of goods and passengers in the future… the general idea of the thread is if you have any ideas, concepts or renderings that contribute to the development effort, to share them here.
I became personally interested in the vehicle concept once I realized it has the potential to be both the fastest method to travel between different points on the globe while at the same time producing an excess of usable forms of energy, which is, as far as I know, unheard of with any other type of vehicle.
The fuels utilized by the vehicle to sustainably produce thrust are gravitational potential energy, geothermal and solar, and in addition to moving the vehicle excess electrical energy can be produced.
(Copied From Physics Forum Discussion - Source https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/land-based-oberth-manuever.974146/page-6)
Suppose we have a 10^5 kg passenger vehicle with a 20 kg trailer containing 200 kg of water, perched at the top of a vertical 30 second drop in a vacuum (2.5 mile vertical tunnel), with a curved section of track at the bottom leading to a flat section that leads to the destination where there is a second curved section leading to a second vertical section, and capacitors in the track store sufficient electrical energy to produce a 9.54 MJ mechanical impulse between the passenger vehicle and the trailer…
At the bottom of the ramp, the passenger vehicle exerts a mechanical impulse equivalent to 9.54 MJ, pushing off the 294 m/s trailer instead of the ground, which brings the trailer to a halt on the tracks…
^Assuming the passenger vehicle is using maglev in vacuum, and therefore does no work while coasting, the passenger vehicle is traveling 294 m/s in a straight line at the bottom of the ramp after the mechanical impulse.
Assuming regen braking of the passenger vehicle at its destination (after climbing a second vertical ramp to the surface) results in 70% kinetic to kinetic conversion efficiency, and that only the empty trailer is lifted, a factor of 130% as much usable energy is recovered from the vehicle after it climbs to the surface than was exerted in the mechanical impulse at the bottom of the ramp, a net surplus if the geothermal energy required to evaporate this water is ignored.
The surplus comes from the lowered gravitational potential energy of the 200 kg water at the bottom of the tunnel.
If the full trailer is lifted with the regen braking energy instead of geothermal, then only 40 % of the mechanical impulse energy is recoverable.
If the full trailer is lifted from the recovered regen braking energy, then a total of 5.71 M J energy was “unrecoverably” consumed accelerating and decelerating the 10^5 kg vehicle to 294 m/s.
If the 200 kg water is left at the bottom of the tunnel and allowed to evaporate naturally, then an “excess” of 2.88 MJ energy above and beyond the total mechanical impulse energy is obtained from regen braking the vehicle at 70 % conversion efficiency at the destination, even after some of the recovered energy is used to lift the empty trailer.
The kinetic energy of the passenger vehicle after the mechanical impulse at the bottom of the ramp is a factor of 760x greater than the total energy “unrecoverably” consumed after lifting the full (not empty) trailer all the way back to the surface, using the recovered kinetic energy via the regen braking after the journey.
Here is a calculator for calculating the vehicle parameters:
which is based on:
" In astronautics, the Oberth effect is where the use of a rocket engine when travelling at high speed generates much more useful energy than one at low speed. Oberth effect occurs because the propellant has more usable energy (due to its kinetic energy on top of its chemical potential energy) and it turns out that the vehicle is able to employ this kinetic energy to generate more mechanical power. It is named after Hermann Oberth, the Austro-Hungarian-born, German physicist and a founder of modern rocketry, who apparently first described the effect.[1]
*Oberth effect is used in a powered flyby or Oberth maneuver where the application of an impulse, typically from the use of a rocket engine, close to a gravitational body (where the gravity potential is low, and the speed is high) can give much more change in kinetic energy and final speed (i.e. higher specific energy) than the same impulse applied further from the body for the same initial orbit. *
Since the Oberth maneuver happens in a very limited time (while still at low altitude), to generate a high impulse the engine necessarily needs to achieve high thrust (impulse is by definition the time multiplied by thrust). Thus the Oberth effect is far less useful for low-thrust engines, such as ion thrusters.
Historically, a lack of understanding of this effect led investigators to conclude that interplanetary travel would require completely impractical amounts of propellant, as without it, enormous amounts of energy are needed.[1]"
So does anyone think it will ever be built? Does anyone have any ideas about ways to improve the system? Is anyone able to make any 3D renderings of a potential vehicle design?
Edit: I forgot to add,“wormhole” comes from W.ater O.berth R.amp M.over and the tunnel is the “hole.”
Oberth is a reference to an “Oberth Maneuver”
I don’t think the oberth effect works with ground vehicles since it depends on conservation of momentum when expelling a fuel out the back of the rocket as a means to accelerate it forward from what I can gather between reddit youtube and stackexchange posts trying to explain why it happens:
