Stupid naive question. If Musk cares so much about environment and all that, why not just build proper public transport for the bay area?
The Boring Company [video]
351–360 of 800 posts
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#352I 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…
This crazy theory has to die, it just doesn't make any sense. I've seen this several times on reddit and hn usually with a bunch of upvotes and perhaps the most perplexing thing is how so many presumably smart people don't see how obviously little sense it makes. Musks starts a healthcare company? Mars-related of course, he wants to solve the cosmic radiation problem on route to Mars. Buys Netflix? Heh, that's pretty…
It's a joke :p
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
By the time we've learned how to live on a planet as inhospitable as Mars, maybe we'll know how to make a home on Earth.
I thought we already knew how to make a home on Earth. What is this in reference to? That our current methods are unsustainable? There are plenty of ideas for solutions. That the current state of human cooperation is below the necessary threshold to achieve a self-sustaining society on Mars? Maybe, but I'm optimistic that we'll find the inspirational leaders that are required.
I think the key difference in Elon's approach is that he snatches the most viable pie out of the sky and figures out how to make it happen today.
In my opinion that's part of "knowing how" - knowing how to make something actually happen outside of theories. Hopefully we'll get there soon.
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#354[deleted]
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is the main radiation danger the Sun or the background "cosmic" radiation? I've been assuming the latter, but I realize now that I don't actually know.
Doesn't matter too much for the rocks: if a few metre of rock won't absorb the radiation, neither will your body.
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Re: The Boring Company [video]
#356This 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?
I bet this tunnel boring idea was inspired by the lack of an economical path for hyperloop to get to downtown LA. The hyperloop concept took a lot of heat for that.
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#357Curious: how many solar panels do you need to drive a tunnel boring machine?
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#358It would be interesting if TBC commercialized a subterrene [1], and drove down costs of building underground structures to a tenth or hundredth of current. But commercial mobile nuclear power is unfortunately not available.
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#359This 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…
The video shows some sort of shuttle using the track. Those could be small busses or even public transport. http://imgur.com/a/Wv8YD In effect, this is a subway system. It's an underground rail system. The major difference is that you have a mixture of public and private passenger vehicles and smaller vehicles.
This is still completely ridiculous and wasteful.
Re: The Boring Company [video]
#360Earlier 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.
>Concrete is something that's necessarily expensive to produce
That's true. But techniques like compressed stabilized earth blocks can reduce the required percentage of concrete from ~30% to 4%.[1] For example, recently a 4% concrete and 8% ash CSEB was shown to be as strong as class 30 concrete.[2] Fly ash can also be used. Obviously considerations like longevity and manufacturability need to be validated, but the strength is there.
Essentially you're mechanically squeezing all the air out of the concrete, thus reducing the cement requirement. Since TBM tunnels are made from precast formed concrete currently, it seems like a natural cost (and CO2) saving improvement.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267637559_Effect_Of...