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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#81

Post by 27182818284 »

astrodust wrote: post #68
throwaway2016a wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless there are serious advances in rock boring techniques I'm pretty sure Elon Musk doesn't enter a market unless he intends to do just that. Edit: I got downvoted a bit but it is his MO. He takes things that are expensive and makes them cheaper. For what it's worth though, I do think the tunnels in that video are ridiculous.

And concrete production? And underground hazard detection? And coordination with city infrastructure? And...

Honestly though these same sentences came up around Teslas too.

And battery production? And crash test safety? And coordination with NHTSA?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#82

Post by pveierland »

loufe wrote: post #52

The costs of tunneling are like FAR more expensive than most think. Breaking, excavating, and supporting rock is slow, time and cost heavy, and precarious work. While this is an interesting concept, unless there are serious advances in rock boring techniques (personal opinion: there are none coming) this will never approach fruition. I would suggest anyone interested in further research look into the "Big Dig" of Bos…

Elon has stated that he believes it is possible to reduce tunnel creation speeds by 5 to 10 times, and that this is what they will work on doing:

https://youtu.be/FPzpugrbwBE?t=120

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#83

Post by tcoppi »

astrodust wrote: post #62
loufe wrote: post #52

The costs of tunneling are like FAR more expensive than most think. Breaking, excavating, and supporting rock is slow, time and cost heavy, and precarious work. While this is an interesting concept, unless there are serious advances in rock boring techniques (personal opinion: there are none coming) this will never approach fruition. I would suggest anyone interested in further research look into the "Big Dig" of Bos…

Seattle's Bigger Dig is also worth studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaskan_Way_Viaduct_replacemen... Sending rockets to another solar system would be cheaper than the tunnels depicted in this video. I'm not even kidding. Where is all that material going to go? There's so many tunnels there you could build a small mountain with it. Maybe he can team up with some sea-steading outfit and build a small continent…

Somehow I think Elon Musk has made it through the middlebrow dismissal phase of this if the concept has made it this far(to include actual digging in SpaceX's parking lot even).

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#85

Post by pnathan »

This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people.

If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network.

edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significant improvements there. No idea. But tunneling itself is not a reason to knock an idea beyond the cost and geoengineering involved.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#86

Post by nostromo »

loufe wrote: post #52

The costs of tunneling are like FAR more expensive than most think. Breaking, excavating, and supporting rock is slow, time and cost heavy, and precarious work. While this is an interesting concept, unless there are serious advances in rock boring techniques (personal opinion: there are none coming) this will never approach fruition. I would suggest anyone interested in further research look into the "Big Dig" of Bos…

> It'll be another moonshot company if you can pull it off.

Your phrasing is interesting given that SpaceX announced sending two people around the moon next year.

http://www.spacex.com/news/2017/02/27/spacex-send-privately-...

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#88

Post by droopyEyelids »

TillE wrote: post #30
andrewem wrote: post #20

I have to give Elon Musk credit - the average person would be hard-pressed to come up with even a single laughably impractical mode of transportation, but he's got two.

Hyperloop looks insanely good in comparison. Like ideally it's just an upgrade on trains. This is some bizarre daydream.

People said exactly the same thing about toilet paper when it was invented.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#89

Post by hkmurakami »

loufe wrote: post #52

The costs of tunneling are like FAR more expensive than most think. Breaking, excavating, and supporting rock is slow, time and cost heavy, and precarious work. While this is an interesting concept, unless there are serious advances in rock boring techniques (personal opinion: there are none coming) this will never approach fruition. I would suggest anyone interested in further research look into the "Big Dig" of Bos…

Anyone know what it's costing Tokyo Mwtro to keep digging tunnels at very large depths? They have great coverage yet they're still digging new lines.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#90

Post by _ph_ »

shouldbworking wrote: post #40

Did anyone else notice that cars being lowered leaves a giant fucking hole in the middle of the street?! This is a marketing fluff video untouched by engineers

Do you really think that no one, not even Elon did notice? I would rather assume, that for this concept video they considered this detail as non-essential and the actual entry points would look quite differently (and safer) than displayed. They most certainly would be different to those "parking spots" shown in the video.
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