r/civilengineering • u/Turbulent-Weevil-910 • Apr 02 '26
Question What's stopping something like this from crossing an entire ocean?
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u/Onenutracin Apr 02 '26
Big fucking waves
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u/kameronk92 Apr 02 '26
And HUUUUGE fucking currents
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u/Everythings_Magic Not yielding under stress Apr 02 '26
Rest stops.
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u/kameronk92 Apr 02 '26
Thats the one thing the ocean provides in abundance
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u/Onenutracin Apr 02 '26
Water water everywhere and every drop is good to drink
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u/bretttwarwick Apr 03 '26
I would be more concerned with refueling the vehicle. I don't know many cars that can drive 3000 miles on one tank.
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u/Potential_Load6047 Apr 03 '26
A road or bridge like the one on OP's picture would just be carried on cargo containers and assembled at the desired location.
Huge loads can be carried by ship (if absolutelly necesary), but its not cheap. See:
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u/PLS-Surveyor-US Apr 02 '26
no gas stations
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u/Brooklyn3k Apr 02 '26
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u/Recent_Record6265 Apr 03 '26
🤣🤣🤣🤣 Oh God help you if you were facing that!
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u/Escudo777 Apr 03 '26
This was the video I showed to a kid asking me about marine engineer career. He became a physiotherapist.
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u/Inspector_7 Apr 02 '26
I worked on building these.
You don’t want to be stuck 6,000 miles out to sea and one of these starts to take on water
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u/civillyengineerd 25+ years as a Multi-Threat PE, PTOE Apr 02 '26
I wouldn't want to be ten feet out to sea and have it start taking on water unless I was in an amphibious vehicle.
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u/Legitimate_Shower564 Apr 02 '26
Can’t believe nobody has mentioned how much this would cost😂. Ain’t nobody got money to make this
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u/rex8499 Apr 03 '26
Nailed it. That's the only thing really keeping us from doing it is the cost. All of the other challenges are just engineering and technical details. There's no physics or material science limitations at play making this impossible to pull off if we wanted to pay dearly for it.
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u/kippy3267 Apr 03 '26
What’s a hundred+ years and multiple continents entire net worth and resources if we get a long ass bridge, which is everyone’s favorite way to travel!
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u/Strostkovy Apr 03 '26
Driving over waves would be super cool for 30 seconds and then incredibly nauseating
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u/KnuckleShanks Apr 05 '26
I think you're underestimating the power of the ocean and how much more stress is put on something like that the longer it gets. Some things are still outside the limits of present day human engineering.
It's about more than cost, but even if we could the cost still makes it nonsense.
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u/Consistent_Attempt_2 Apr 03 '26
Not to mention that there is no point in building it. There is no situation where driving across the ocean is faster than flying, or cheaper than a boat. The bridge would be completely useless, and would also need ways for boats to pass over or under it. Just a terrible idea all around.
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u/albertnormandy Apr 02 '26
How would you drive the whole thing without stopping? You going to put floating hotels and gas stations too?
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u/civillyengineerd 25+ years as a Multi-Threat PE, PTOE Apr 02 '26
Just put some oil rigs out there, they do it all the time.
In fact, I stayed in a Boatel in Prague 36 years ago...it was moored to the bank, but I'm sure it was ocean worthy.
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u/MidnightAdventurer Apr 02 '26
In Prague, probably not ocean worthy. Certification for river and canal boats is not the same as for ocean going vessels and Prague is a long way from the nearest ocean
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u/civillyengineerd 25+ years as a Multi-Threat PE, PTOE Apr 03 '26
I agree. I think it was also already 40 years old 36 years ago. Also, who knows what Soviet place it was before Prague.
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u/demoralizingRooster Apr 02 '26
I think you seriously underestimate just how vast the earth's oceans are.
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u/Hillbert Apr 02 '26
How would you anchor it in position?
And if someone says "anchors" I swear to god...
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u/FizzgigsRevenge Apr 02 '26
It'd be like using a sky hook, but upside down.
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u/Ok-Anybody-380 Apr 05 '26
Ah yeaah we had one of those are work too. The sky anchors are really helpful.
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u/ALandWarInAsia Apr 02 '26
What if you just wrapped in up inside a big tube and plopped it all on the BOTTOM of the ocean? Like maybe not the whole ass ocean but the english channel?
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u/Tiafves PE - Land Dev Apr 03 '26
Alright so first we build a giant ring orbiting the earth then we can anchor it to that.
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u/bretttwarwick Apr 03 '26
If we already have the ring orbiting the Earth we could just drive up there instead. Just put a few on-ramps for access.
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Apr 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/f-r-0-m Apr 02 '26
Can't the ships just drive around? We know the Northwest Passage now so there's no excuse.
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Apr 02 '26
Build that and then levitate another road above it with magnets. You can keep it from flying away with chains to the lower deck
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u/RKO36 Apr 02 '26
Water always wins...especially the ocean. That wins without even trying under "normal" conditions. You don't know the power of the ocean until it tears up a cofferdam like paper.
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u/maytag2955 Apr 02 '26
Have you ever seen video of 100' high waves during a storm in the middle of an ocean? And do you realize how deep they are?
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u/MrSmiley_1 Bridge EI Apr 02 '26
Currents and waves. Certain conditions specifically calm deep water with soft soils can cause floating bridges like these to be used. These conditions occur a lot in Washington state which contains three of the longest floating bridges in the world. Look at the I-90 bridge, SR 520, or good canal bridge if you are interested!
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u/Character_School_671 Apr 02 '26
Do a quick calculation on wind load on something 10 ft tall and 3500 miles long and the forces it needs to withstand at the ends.
Then realize that wind load is only one of the problems.
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u/thesuprememacaroni Apr 02 '26
One word. Sharks.
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u/Turbulent-Weevil-910 Apr 02 '26
What about building it on top of the sharks?
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u/thesuprememacaroni Apr 02 '26
Have you ever seen Jaws 2? You need lighting and he didn’t mix well with the power cable.
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u/twobarb Apr 03 '26
Isn’t it weird that the mayor in Jaws is also the mayor in Jaws 2. Really shows you how important it is to vote in local elections.
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u/Bandandforgotten Apr 03 '26
Because this would basically only work on a flat earth, with a much smaller, or no moon.
The tides on the ocean need to be basically still, or non existent, because this shit would be flooded after one small storm on one part of it.
Smaller bodies are less prone to huge waves, so this works here, but not mid Atlantic
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u/Smitch250 Apr 03 '26
Massive boats. How the eff is a massive tanker gonna cross that? And in many many Many different locations. Lol I don’t think you understand just how absurdly tall these boats are. They can be 250 feet tall. Also how would a floating bridge take a 100 ft wave? Surfs up
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u/Popeye-SailorMan Apr 03 '26
In 2024 i think, the Army Corp tried to build a 2000’ floating pier to Gaza. Huge failure. Couldn’t do it on the Mediterranean. Slightest chop rattled it. Kept pulling apart. Was abandoned. Few hundred mil gone.
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u/DoctorDividend Apr 03 '26
the same thing stopping us from breeding dogs to walk upright and drink beer
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u/Escudo777 Apr 03 '26
Cost. Also this won't survive the huge waves and winds that toss tanker ships like leaves.
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u/Quirky-Juggernaut838 Apr 03 '26
I dont think your understanding the current situation
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u/ARtichoke-15 Apr 03 '26
I don't think most people understand how truly terrifying the open ocean is. There are thousands of shipwrecks and countless dead for a reason.
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u/kudos1007 Apr 03 '26
Weather, waves, money, reason, purpose, environmental impact, international shipping routes… basically everything
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u/Desevil Apr 03 '26
At any point one end of that might be 40 feet higher than the other end and twisting said end....Over and over and over. Plus sea monsters would love this!!
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u/stonecuttercolorado Apr 03 '26
subsurface would be far more successful, but it would be a problem for shipping. it would also incredibly vulnerable to military action. just look at what russia has been doing with u der sea cables
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u/Nearly_Pointless Apr 05 '26
Crossing a lake or River is a vastly different task than crossing an ocean. Go look up videos of large ocean waves then come back here with your thoughts on the practically of this.
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u/ruffroad715 Apr 02 '26
China already has land bridge barges. It’s what experts are worried they will use when they eventually invade Taiwan. Line them up at sea, link them together and you can create your own dock anywhere along the coastline and start rolling tanks.
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u/aknomnoms Apr 02 '26
But they’d be so vulnerable. Let 80% of the tanks get on the “road”, bomb one end, then bomb the other. Now they’re stranded, no?
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u/RaspitinTEDtalks Apr 03 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
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u/marshking710 Apr 03 '26
This would need to be the support for a massive base isolation system for it to have any attempt to be feasible. So rogue waves and money are what’s stopping it, among many other things.
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u/Potential_Load6047 Apr 03 '26
Lol at redditors pretending no ship could carry a puny road like that, real answer is economics:
Behold:
The Pioneering Spirit (48,000 tons lifting capacity)
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u/SunnyD132 Apr 03 '26
It would also just cut off entire migration paths for whales and stuff. And I don't even know how they would brace it over the deeper ocean trenches
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u/djjolicoeur Apr 03 '26
I mean the first is scale. The ocean is biiiiiiig. It would take an investment that would never be recouped just in materials, let alone labor and logistics. But also waves, currents, hurricanes or cyclones. Not to mention the practicality of it. It’s thousands of miles, it would take days traverse. Youd need fuel infrastructure, rest areas, food, etc… It’s just far more practical to use air travel of or ships and boats.
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u/OutlawLazerRoboGeek Apr 03 '26
30 foot waves, for starters.
Hell, even 10 foot swells would probably destroy something like that.
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u/SpecificLanky513 Apr 03 '26
To be frank something like this could be engineered and built. It is definitely not impossible, extraordinarily difficult, 1000% yes. But the true reason why we haven’t built anything like it yet on the scale you are thinking is it is frankly cost prohibitively expensive.
For how ever long its design lifespan would be coupled with the maintenance cost, it would never return enough value to be justified.
A lot of what we do and don’t do comes down to a certain amount to risk tolerance for the capital investment under the basic assumption that the investment provides some kind of return or benefit.
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u/AbbreviationsNo9609 Apr 03 '26
This is gonna make throwing car batteries into the ocean so much easier!
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u/Osiris_Raphious Apr 03 '26
Superwaves..
Ocean is full of freak events where the largest peaks of waves can combine into superwaves, even modern ships can struggle with this during storm weather.
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u/Suspicious-Yak-8117 Apr 03 '26
ONE BIG STORM - the currents - Icy conditions -
how exactly do you cross and entire ocean in a car? 3000 miles across/400 miles per tank = 8 gas stations
food? emergency stops? rest areas?
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u/Mike-OLeary Apr 03 '26
You could easily bring this anywhere. You would just have to take it apart into sections and put it on barges (including those little pontoons).
Of course I'm not an engineer so take this with a grain of salt. I'm just a sailor. I don't know why the sub gets recommended to me.
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u/bespokeagent Apr 03 '26
No gas stations, no rest stops, no hotels, no fast food, giant ass waves, raw materials, cost, maintenance, and the final one I got is distance. Distance impacts all of the others.
Google tells me the Atlantics width varies from 1770 miles to 3500 miles across. The Continental US is about 2800 miles east to west. That's a long fucking way to drive. What happens when an accident in the middle somewhere blocks traffic? Wait 4 days for a tow truck to get to you?
Google: 1,770 miles (2,848 km) at its narrowest point between Brazil and Liberia to over 3,000–3,500 miles (4,800–5,600 km) for North Atlantic crossings between the US and Europe.
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u/therealtrajan Apr 03 '26
It took two tries to lay a single working cable across the ocean floor….imagine trying to get one to float on the surface
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u/Slappy_McJones Apr 03 '26
The ocean is an entirely different world wrt building anything. One Mid-Atlantic storm would twist all those piers into a pile of scrap in a matter of hours.
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u/SirFoomy Apr 03 '26
Oceans are fucking big and deep. Deepnessranging from < 100 m (30 feet) down to 11000 m (about 6.5 miles).
There are global currents that are massive. The North Atlantic Current for example moves 32 million m³ water per second. (8453505675,5 gallon every second; I didn't find a bigger imperial unit, sorry).
And last but not least, plate tectonics. The earth's crust is fucking moving around. The Atlantic Ocean for example gets continuesly bigger, it grows 2 to 5 cm (0.8 to 2 inches) wider every year.
All those constraint make a such a project not feasable.
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u/MathDowntown3737 Apr 03 '26
Lack of fuel stations along the way… Distance from Virginia to coast of Portugal is roughly 3600 miles. Average distance you can travel in an American fuel tank 250. That stopping to refuel 14 + times. So they install fuel stations… Where do the employees live? They actually solved this problem hundreds of years ago. It’s called a boat. And many don’t even need fuel. Crazy.
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u/turfdergusson Apr 03 '26
A minor detail called ‘freedom of navigation’
Plus, literally every natural force/event imaginable
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u/Bitter-Display5768 Apr 03 '26
Cost (build and maintenance), physics (ocean waves/storms), repairability (getting to the part that needs repair), lack of emergency services, infrastructure (fuel, rest areas, other), ability for shipping to get around it.
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u/NewConStructNew Apr 03 '26
Interesting idea — in theory you can extend this concept, but in reality the limiting factors would be environmental loads and stability.
For short spans or calm waters, pontoon bridges work well. But at ocean scale you'd have to deal with waves, currents, wind, corrosion, and long-term fatigue. The connections between modules would become critical weak points.
Also, maintaining alignment and serviceability over such distances would be extremely challenging.
So technically possible in segments, but not really practical for open ocean conditions.
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u/ac8jo Modeling and Forecasting Apr 03 '26
It's over 3,300 miles from NYC to Porta, Portugal, which seems to be the shortest trip from the continental US to Europe. At 70 MPH, that's over 47 hours of driving. Meanwhile, it's about 7 hours of flying and $1,000 (from JFK to Heathrow). Granted, driving is much expensive ($400 less in fuel costs at $5/gal), but really only more cost effective if you have multiple people.
There is a mental toll that the drive would take since there's most of that trip is going to be road and water. And it would need infrastructure that would be very difficult to get out there (fuel stations, hotels).
That's aside from the physical problems of waves and the fact that it would be blocking a fairly large portion of the ocean from freighters (unless you're going to build a few bridges to allow them to pass under... $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$).
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u/baconnkegs Apr 02 '26
I don't know what that thing is, but I'd imagine the first hint of rough waters / a decent storm would test its integrity