Originally published at: How to transport a 17-ton, 50-foot wide magnet halfway across the country? | Boing Boing
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The sales pitch at the end, but physics shall win the day.
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And here I thought that getting the 200 inch mirror across the country to Palomar was difficult.
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… and in the process caused the James Webb Space Telescope being transported to Guyana to go off course (jk)
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How long will it take to remove all the vaccinated people from it?
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I kept wanting to correct the narrator when he said it was loaded onto a flatbed truck, when it was obviously a trailer. But that’s just my pedantic side acting up. 
Also, not how I pronounce muon, but I could be mistaken.
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I thought it was going to be about how to keep all the cars on the road from being inexorably drawn to it, flying through the air like the poster of The Lure of the Underground, and sticking tight to the magnet…
I mean, they tease with an image of a big horseshoe magnet, but I guess it’s an electromagnet, and wasn’t magnetized during transport—what’s the fun in that? 
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I was thinking giant rail gun, get it there in no time at all, but if you want to spend 35 days on a barge, then fine.
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Seems we’ve built a boat in our basement …
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I was kinda hoping to see a real-life Katamari Damacy. 
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Yeah, that guy was under paid.
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I reckon there must be heaps of similarly expensive scientific equipment out there that collects dust simply because trying to move it anywhere is just too much of a logistical nightmare.
That’s what I was thinking. I expect textbook authors would salivate over the exposition they could write about moving something like that too quickly through a steel tunnel, or something.
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Hey. Like they say: No bucks; no Buck Rogers
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Wouldn’t the Hall Effect prevent it from moving through a steel tunnel quickly?
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Transporting giant magnets? How the fuck does that work!?
*juggalo gif goes here
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Step 1: Avoid the 11-foot-8+8 bridge.
(Getting stuck sideways would be kind of unique.)
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I grew up next to I-80 in Iowa, and in 1979 I remember very well the passing of the huge superconducting magnet on its way from Argonne, IL to San Francisco, CA. Late one night in early November they closed the freeway to let the magnet go through at an excruciatingly slow pace. We were very excited and had made signs that said things like “WELCOME MAGNET! GODSPEED” and such (I was 8 years old and it was a big deal to be allowed to stay up so late). Apparently (according to the article I unearthed about it here) it was 18.5 feet wide and weighed 107 tons.
Considering the vast improvements in shipping capabilities these days, I’d argue that this was the greater Magnet Transport Achievement of the Post-Industrial Age.
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Say, there was a Red Green episode like that!
(Available on YT if you have nothing else to do these days.)
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