In the world of science fiction, the flight of the author's thoughts is limitless. You can create a new civilization, an unusual animal world and super-powerful machines. The writer was lucky.
But what about an engineer? What difficulties does the developer of a new project face? After all, it is difficult to come up with, but to implement it is hundreds of thousands of times more difficult.
Let's consider all the complexity of the implementation of a fantastic project using the example of the creation of the Miracle Yudo underground machine with the terrifying name "battle mole".
Such a mechanism can be useful to mankind for digging sewer tunnels, geological exploration, mining, etc. But the true purpose of creation is military. To deliver an accurate and sudden blow to the enemy.
This unusual military transport is called differently: an underground boat (Latin Subterrina), an underground tunnel, a geo-tunnel. The element of fantasy is that such a unit moves underground, independently paving its way with the help of a huge drill. This can only be found in science fiction books ("Journey to the Center of the Earth" in 1864) or in horror films about huge underground worms ("Tremors" in 1990, well, or "Starship Troopers" in 1997), you think, but no … For several years, geokhod projects have been developed in many countries by leading engineers and inventors.
One of the main difficulties in creating "armored moles": the need for tremendous power and the colossal energy consumption, which is necessary to destroy solid rocks at speed. We must not forget about the safety of the crew. The problem of cooling the power plant is generally a headache for an underground boat developer.
A halo of mysticism surrounds the history of the creation and testing of underground machines. And there are not enough reliable sources to shed the light of truth on her. But it is known that for the first time Pyotr Rasskazov sketched the subway, which in 1918 fell at the hands of a German intelligence officer; his blueprints were stolen.
In the 1930s, inventor A. Trebelev, in collaboration with designers A. Baskin and A. Kirillov, developed a project for an underground boat. They were helped to design such a complex unit by observing an ordinary earthen mole. The animal was placed in a box visible through an X-ray machine, and a diagram of the movements of its skeleton was displayed on the screen.
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Thus, in the front of the machine, Trebelev placed a drill (the head of the mole), and in the back, four jacks (pushing the paws of the mole). The subway was tested in the Urals (the soil is harder there), but it turned out to be rather unreliable and the project was closed. Traces of long-standing tests are impressive.
There is a claim that the Soviet "war mole" was nevertheless created and even equipped with a nuclear power plant. And then the "operation-conspiracy" turns on. All files are strictly classified until now and there are only assumptions of various specialists that have no scientific justification.
They even describe the characteristics of the Soviet mechanical monster: the speed of movement is 7 km / h, 35 meters in length, 3 meters in diameter, and that he could bite into the ground with fifteen paratroopers on board, not counting the five crew members. The project was closed in 1964 due to the disappearance of a Soviet submarine in the bowels of the earth and the death of the entire crew. Science fiction, and only …
So we were convinced by an illustrative example - how difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to transfer an ingenious, but still fantastic idea into real life.
To date, the question still remains open: Will humanity be able to surf underground seas in the future? Or maybe the brave crew is already making their way deep underground … After all, the status of "Top Secret" has not been canceled.
