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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#121

Post by naravara »

pnathan wrote: post #85

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 significan…

Hilariously so even. This is basically a subway system, except you have to provide your own seats. All this is succeeding in doing is making Musk look hilariously out of touch.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#122

Post by gsnedders »

_coldfire wrote: post #87
brosky117 wrote: post #47

The tracks were surprising until I thought about all the idiots I encounter on regulars roads. Then it made perfect sense.

Metal on metal also has a fraction of the rolling resistance.

Though it looks like they're still rubber-wheeled with a guide-rail down the centre rather than steel-wheel on a pair of running rails.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#123

Post by astrodust »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #98
astrodust wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You could change... > And concrete production? And underground hazard detection? And coordination with city infrastructure? And... to... > And battery production, and driving hazard detection, and coordinating with the FAA and NASA, and rockets, and... It's not guaranteed success (not even remotely) but if I had to bet on anyone... You act like Musk does all the work himself. If he wanted to he could hire the best an…

I think he's gone one step too far on this project. Concrete is something that's necessarily expensive to produce, there's inescapable costs in the production cycle, so while he could probably make it 80% cheaper, he can't make it 99.9% cheaper.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#125

Post by wvenable »

buzzybee wrote: post #16

If you go and do something like that, why have the car at all? Edit: To be a little less snarky, multi-modal transport of this form has been considered; it's one of the ways in which PRT systems have been proposed. But those systems don't also say "and now we build the highway underground."

It solves the last mile problem -- same problem we have fiber installation. You can build fast transport hubs but you can't get right from door to door.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#126

Post by ben_w »

The whole thing is sufficiently bizarre that I just have to assume it's an excuse to develop something more useful.

If that something is cheap autonomous mining that can be sent to Mars to build a colony before anyone arrives, or a sneaky way to make very large underground nuclear bunkers that always have a surprisingly large number of random ordinary people in them, or just that Elon knows about a major valuable mineral deposit that nobody else is aware if yet, great. But if this really is just some self-driving pods that attach to your car and take you around at relatively high speeds, I don't see the "while underground" doing much for the congestion.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#127

Post by mmanfrin »

pnathan wrote: post #85

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 significan…

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

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#128

Post by hackuser »

jrockway wrote: post #12
AlexandrB wrote: post #2

I don't get it. Much of the USA is faced with crumbling infrastructure and a lack of money for maintaining that infrastructure. How is creating a network of powered tunnels - which are much more expensive to maintain than surface roads - going to interact with this economic reality? This seems like technology that addresses mostly fun, theoretical problems - like traffic optimization, not ugly, practical ones like ti…

I am not sure the poor state of existing infrastructure precludes someone from building their own new infrastructure. Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money. Even in the US, passenger rail is typically run by the government or government-like bodies, while freight rail is just private companies. I don't think there's an intrinsic reason for that, it's…

> Public transportation outside of the US is often run by private companies, and they make plenty of money.

It would be interesting to learn details: How often? Who is making how much? And in what circumstances does it tend to work and not work?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#130

Post by astrodust »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #107
astrodust wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperloop at least has the right idea: Building above-ground is vastly less expensive than tunnelling.

My thought process was... Hyperloops are round + tunnels are round = Boring Company Putting cars through the tunnels is not what I first expected.

It's the sort of thing a guy who owns a car company would do, not someone who's actually trying to solve a transportation problem.
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