Elon Musk - The Boring Company

Yesterday Elon Musk held TED talk. His theme was Boring. He has founded a Company with the name Boring Company, proposing to dig tunnels under population centers and divert traffic into these tunnels. Plenty of them, he speaks of 40 levels of tunnels. Carriers with electric drive will pick up the car and deliver it at high speed to a destination.

It would require that tunneling gets at least 10 times cheaper and at least 5-10 times faster than it presently is. The proposal is as absurd and nonsensical as any other endeavour he has started so far, mostly succeding against the odds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b3t1-N3pAc

He is starting small though. He has purchased a tunnel boring machine and will build a pedestrian tunnel from his Hawthorne company to the companys car park.

His first announcement of the Boring Company came just hours after one of his employees was injuried by a crazy driver passing the street to the car park but that was likely coincidence.

Here the TBM shortly after arriving in Hawthorne.

https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2017/04/1911.jpg

https://www.wired.com/2017/04/elon-m...lling-tunnels/

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Elon Musk Layers on the Crazy With His Plan for Traffic-Killing Tunnels

“We’re trying to dig a hole under LA, and this is to create the beginning of what will hopefully be a 3-D network of tunnels to alleviate congestion,” Musk said from the stage at TED. Now before you argue that a few tunnels won’t help traffic in LA, or San Francisco, or Mumbai, or anywhere else, please know that Musk is not talking about a few tunnels. “There’s no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have,” he says.
Now you’re surely thinking, “What about induced demand?,” the idea that if you build it, commuters will fill it. Musk’s reply? Build as many as 40 layers of underground streets and you can clear up any amount of congestion. And he promises that using more efficient boring machines to create narrower tunnels will make tunneling orders of magnitude cheaper.
It’s an appealing vision, held back only by its lunacy.
“I would put what Mr. Musk is saying today in the bullshit category,” says Thom Neff, a civil engineer who runs consulting company OckhamKonsult.

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There is more in the linked article.


http://blog.ted.com/what-will-the-fu...ks-at-ted2017/

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What’s your motivation?

“The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question,” Musk says, “But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.”

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Of course tunnel boring fits well into his Mars plans as well. He has said before that tunnel boring would be the way to build much volume cheaply for Mars habitats.

If you create an alternative, traffic will divert to the easier path, until there is a balance.

We have an example in the Metro/Elevated railways in Dubai and Bangkok.

The naysayers came up with lots of excuses, locals won't use them, they are too expensive, etc. etc.

Now they are an essential part of the cities' public transport systems.

I hope he is taking into account rising seawaters

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Originally Posted by baldrick

I hope he is taking into account rising seawaters

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At a wild guess - yes.

Takeovers,

Thanks for this OP.

Musk is very unique.

The TED talk interview is now public.

https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_...ring#t-2430678


Not on YouTube yet but absolutely a MUST SEE for anyone with any curiosity and dreams for the future. Stunning revelations continuously over 40 minutes.

Just one item. He has built the largest factory for batteries in the world. His guess they need about 100 of them to shape the future of energy production and distribution and are already in planning for locations to build 5 more.

A second one I have not yet watched.

https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_...acex_solarcity

Edit: Just saw that the second one is old.

How much is this one going to cost the taxpayers? :)

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Originally Posted by SKkin

How much is this one going to cost the taxpayers?

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It is all privately funded. The first battery factory is only ~$5 billion. It will get even cheaper so 100 of them would be less than $500 billion. Not too much in terms of energy infrastructure spending.

ok....

Quote:

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The Boring Company has no full-time employees yet, nor does it have a clear business model, though government contracts will almost certainly play a role.

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...-really-boring

^ Cheers...Good link...But Boring as fook...

There was a Information Session on the progress of the Boring Company.

They have built a 2.7 mile proof-of-concept tunnel in the Hawthorne-LosAngeles area. Pending final regulatory approval they will soon offer free demo rides for the public. They plan to build a network of tunnels and serve them with pods for pedestrians and for transport of cars.

Presently they are working with a tunnel boring machine they have purchased second hand. For whatever reason tunnel boring machines are usually custom built for one project and then discarded. So they could get one at very low price. The named that machine Godot. They are designing and building their own tunnel boring machines. The first one will be 2-3 times faster and will have the name Line Storm. After that they will build a machine called Proof-Rock that is planned to reach 10-15 times the speed of present tunnel boring machines. They compare the speed with a snail. Present machines are 10% of the speed of a snail and they want to beat snails.

Boring faster is only a small part of the speed gain. Mostly it is a more efficient work flow. Present machines drill a bit then the debris is removed and the tunnel walls are lined. Only then boring resumes. They plan to be much more efficient by doing it all in parallel, boring, lining, transport. They use electric trains for transport, using Tesla motors and batteries. That reduces tunnel venting requirements a lot over usual diesel locomotives. They also use transport in both directions simultaneously, again speeding up the process by a lot, especially with long tunnels. Passenger pods will be from Tesla company as well.

https://teakdoor.com/attachment.php?a...id=13409&stc=1

This is how they envision the terminal at the Los Angeles Airport LAX.

Most will be very small though, many spread all over the city. Not like subway stations.

https://teakdoor.com/attachment.php?a...id=13410&stc=1

There is a number of projects they are in the process of getting approvals for.

One is a public project for a new fast connection of Chicago O'Hare airport with the city center. Selection process is now down from initially 4 offerors to 2 and the Boring Company is still in.

There are also a number of projects initiated by the Boring Company. They would build and finance these on their own and pay with the revenue from operations. This requires getting cost for tunneling way down to be profitable.

A network within LA/Hawthorne, mostly for pedestrians. Tunnels will be built to earthquake proof standards.

A connection DC to NewYork. Initially part of the line, beginning in DC. Later to extend to a network connecting all East Coast population centers, but that's more in the future.

A connection LA to San Francisco. This will be a Hyperloop system, moving at near the speed of sound. Feed lines from and to locations on the way will be possible.



Youtube from the presentation.

https://youtu.be/AwX9G38vdCE

BTW, the experience in tunnel boring will also be needed on Mars. Drilling tunnels will be the cheapest method to produce a very large pressurized volume. Elon said they will need to bring the weight of a tunnel boring machine way down for that purpose. Typical machines he is using will weigh 1000t, too much for Mars.