The Cleansing of the Midwest

I’ve been in Eugene the past week working on the new team.  So far it’s been a little depressing.  A number of bike companies are interested in us, but no luck with money sponsors.  I was hoping I could nail down a half million in the first week, but I think it might be a bit more difficult than I thought.  

Other then the team business, I’ve been having fun catching up with friends down here.  I’m currently chilling at Mike’s place on his roommate’s couch.  My search for a place to live only lasted a day.  I’m waiting for an opportunity to bring itself to me now, like waiting for the right break to go in.  I suspect Mike and his roommates may have a different opinion.

Here’s a quick blurb about an idea that has been coming up in conversations around here lately: If one was to fill the entire Midwest with water to make another ocean, how many giant helicopters would it take to complete the task?  We’re talking about filling everything between the Appalachians and the Rockies.  The reason for doing this is that we don’t want or need anything from those states other than corn.  And instead of eating so much corn we’ll eat more fish.  But there aren’t any fish left in the current oceans that exist.  So we’ll fill the new ocean with tons and tons of fish.  30-foot genetically modified sturgeons.  

The biggest helicopter can carry 28 tons.  To find out how many trips it would take an army of helicopters (say 187,023 helicopters), we need to figure out the area we need to fill.  It’s roughly 1,000 miles by 1,000 miles.  That’s 1,000,000 square miles.  And we need to have that ocean at least a mile deep.  So it will take one million cubic miles of water.  A cubic foot of water is 62 pounds.  there are 2,000 pounds in a ton.  that means there are 32 cubic feet of water in a ton.  Multiply that by 28 (the number of tons that one of these choppers can carry) and you get 896.  Round that sucker up to 1,000 because I’m guessing these choppers could carry a bit more weight if we gave them Nos. injectors.  There are 5,280 feet in a mile and 16,169,472,000 feet in a cubic mile.  Multiply that number by 1,000,000 cubic miles and you get 161,694,720,000,000,000 feet in a million cubic miles.  Multiply that by 62 for to get the pounds in a million cubic miles.  Then you get 10,025,072,640,000,000,000 pounds of water in a million cubic miles.  Divide that by 1,000 (the number of cubic feet a chopper can carry).  That equals 10,025,072,640,000,000.  Then divide that by 187,023 helicopters and you get 5,360,342,118 trips each chopper has to take.  That’s a lot of trips.  Costly. but do-able. and of course worthwhile.