Terrific historical overview. Thanks very much for the link, Hans! But this article doesn't really answer the question about whether such a plan would be feasible today for -- say Santa Barbara -- whose water needs are much more modest than those of San Diego (which is already spending > $1 billion on a desal plant which will cost a bundle to actually operate). You could construct an historical list considerably longer than the Atlantic's about various schemes for getting to the Moon or Mars, but in both of these cases, we finally succeeded because we finally got serious. The Chinese are planning to build a new Atlantic2Pacific canal in Central America, which was contemplated >100 years ago; the only real issue is $$$$$$. Since $1 billion is starting to get serious (Captain Kirk's scheme will cost > $1 billion, as well), it makes sense to dust off some of these older plans to see what has changed & how we could utilize more modern technology to overcome some of the issues. The "rope" problem can be eliminated by not using ropes at all. A number of computer-synchronized "tugboats" _pushing_ (and possibly also pulling with carbon-fiber-based ropes) might be capable of doing the job. So the first new idea is the use of computer-synchronized tugs -- something similar is already in use on long trains for both propulsion & braking to keep the train from flying apart due to non-uniform accelerations. Carbon-fiber ropes are already in use in high-rise building elevators. Due to winds, the tugboats might not be able to keep the iceberg on course. It might be necessary to sculpt the top surface of the iceberg in advance in order to reduce the wind loads. The fact that the vast majority of the iceberg is underwater will help. Currents are another problem, but we have to take a cue from the modern commercial aircraft industry by mapping out these currents, and using sophisticated programming to figure out the optimum feasible path through the various currents. Of course, we don't have the advantage of an airplane which can move to a different altitude to avoid certain headwinds. At 10:54 AM 4/22/2015, Hans Havermann wrote:
Here, from a few years ago, is a decent historical overview:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/the-many-failures-and-...
On Apr 22, 2015, at 11:43 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
One suggestion (Popular Mechanics??) from my childhood: towing an iceberg (assuming we can still find one) to San Diego/Long Beach/San Francisco harbor and harvest it into the water supply.