151–160 of 800 posts
https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/858022699112824832
You might not agree with all/any of it but I think it's hard to say this isn't thought-provoking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But he might succeed at something somewhere in between the tunnel he is boring in his parking lot and the video.
Context: I lived in Boston during much of the Big Dig. Large tunnel projects scare the heck out of me as a tax payer.
Someone is pointing to problems that seem obvious, I can see a lot too, but they've solved monetization.
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…
Well, unless you count damage to whatever happens to be in the way of the tunnel and buildings on top of tunnel. This might be more of a problem in Europe than in the U.S. though.
I feel like everything Elon Musk undertakes with his companies is just one huge Mars Beta Test. - SpaceX: Obvious, got to get to space somehow - Tesla: Build cars/machines to run on something that is guaranteed to exist on Mars (the sun) vs. Oil - Gigafactory: How to build batteries 101 - Solar roof: While Earths environment may not be as harsh as Mars you still learn something, and improve solar panel production in…
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…
And, hell, the fact that many cities aren't built on rock (e.g., London, Berlin, Moscow), so even if you can bore through solid rock you're probably not actually that well off: can you also bore through clay and gravel?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. Like Hyperloop?
This is to subways like hyperloop is to high-speed rail. A stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea.
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…
That's the entire point of The Boring Company. It's way more expensive than anyone expects. That's the problem they are trying to solve. The entire goal is "serious advances in rock boring techniques". That may be a lofty goal, but at least the message I got is that it is the one they want to reach.
Actually in some ways it bears a resemblance to the spaceflight industry (expensive, custom-made, few players). Coincidence?
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…
Toronto really needs this. We have a raised express way that's right in front of our harbourfront and it makes the whole area noisy and ugly, blocking what should be a great view towards (great) Lake Ontario. Most importantly it takes up a ton of very valuable real estate. A huge amount of condo development has been done right next to it and having lived in one the noise is a real problem. Living on the south-end of…
Toronto is one of the most dysfunctional cities in NA. They can't even add a new subway line or additional stops. They have no problem closing down every major high way in the City for a marathon every weekend during the summer or the Molson Indy causing massive traffic issues. The City Council is inept so good luck hoping they could ever have the insight to agree to something like this. , so I really doubt they will…
Even GO could cut down a lot of traffic if they'd just add more parking lots on the edge of the city and make it all day two way. When I use to live north of the city there were 3 trains into Toronto in the morning on the Stouffville line and 3 trains back at the end of the day and if your schedule didn't fit them exactly then you had to drive to Finch and hope for a parking spot or drive in.