Oct. 15, 2010
Tunnel under Swiss Alps to become a stage of the famed Tour de France bicycle race
Basel, Switzerland
After 15 grueling years, the loss of several lives, the disappearance of several nations, and the expenditure of more than six billion Euros, not counting taxes and gratuities, engineers rejoiced when a giant drilling machine cut through the final, mammoth slab of rock separating Switzerland from: Germany, Austria, Italy or maybe just East Switzerland.
When work on the tunnel first began, in 1995, George W. Bush had not yet been picked by the U.S.Supreme Court to take the place of the true winner of the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Al Gore. Mr. Gore, thoroughly demoralized by the perverted decision, visited a massage therapist in Washington state and caused quite a ruckus.
The tunnel, which will not be opened for public use until 2017, was started by a small group of miners using ordinary pick axes and an occasional stick of dynamite. After 3 years of onerous toil the mine shaft had only advanced by 30 millimeters, about one foot. At that rate it would have taken 105,000 years to complete the tunnel. A proposal to triple the work force would only have reduced the time to 35,000 years and was abandoned as impractical. It only took 800 years to build the French cathedral at Chartres, for Chrisake.
The project was abandoned until the invention and construction of a giant drilling machine, capable of doing the work of an army of miners, who only would have been stepping on each other, in 2008. A prototype of the giant drill, which cost $1.3 billion Euros, was shipped to Switzerland in September, 2008. It shortened the time of construction of the tunnel from 105,000 years to a little more than 24 months, a substantial time saving.
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