Tunnels and the question of finance

My brother thought spending time in a library was a waste of time. (He never was very bookish.) Instead he whisked me off on a tour to demonstrate the practical business of tunnel-making. In the space of forty-eight hours I have been rattled through miles of concrete tubing:

and hurtled down a mine into a network of caverns stuffed full of minerals and stood at the mouth of a gaping hole watching men in hard hats grind their way noisily into the side of a hill.

If nothing else, it has made me aware that there is tunnel work of various kinds going on around us almost everywhere we go.

Even out in the woods yesterday when trying to get away from my brother’s crass use of his personal wealth, and his bouncy enthusiasm for all things engineering, came across this:

I have become convinced therefore that Paul’s project is perfectly feasible, and in many ways a quite normal expression of humanity’sneed to explore and... well... dig!

There is though the knotty problem of the sheer expense associated with engineering projects of this nature – both in terms of physical effort and in raw cash. I suspect that both Paul and his ancestor are/were well endowed with the former, but what of the latter?

Who is funding the Telectroscope?

Comments

[paul conneally]

Tim - all this has got me thinking about your own currently on hold quest to Play Golf on the Moon (with David Bowie).

I was wondering if it might be possible for us to explore building a tunnel to the moon rather than travelling by rocket?

The concept of digging through space might at first sound odd - in fact the first person I mentioned the idea of building a tunnel to the moon to said it was impossible to dig through space and that i was actually proposing a bridge - I'm not - i would really like to find out if it is possible to dig a tunnel through space - i'm sure that it's not an insurmountable task - any thoughts on this would be welcome.

all that's best,

paul