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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#411

Post by ryanwaggoner »

simplehuman wrote: post #351

Stupid naive question. If Musk cares so much about environment and all that, why not just build proper public transport for the bay area?

I think he's motivated by the idea of building systems that enable other systems that wouldn't be possible otherwise.

Examples would be the gigafactory, his comments about how Tesla is not learning how to build cars, but learning how to build car factories, etc. The approach with SpaceX wasn't "OK, let's build a rocket system that can get to Mars." Instead it was "OK, let's build a company that has a repeatable and sustainable launch business that can drive down cost and drive up efficiency over time, so that getting to Mars won't be a near-impossible problem anymore."

Building a one-off public transit system in the Bay Area, with all the current technological, regulatory, and social headaches, doesn't really offer many opportunities to improve things, does it? Elon isn't God; he can't magically overcome all the factors that cause the Bay Area to have bad transit today, just like he couldn't magically start colonizing Mars in 2004.

So building a new class of technologies to bore tunnels much more quickly, safely, and cheaply seems like it enables a whole new set of opportunities to make the current transit problems more tractable. It creates a whole new set of opportunities for transportation that simply don't exist today.

I'm tired, so forgive me if that isn't clear, just what's running through my head.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#412

Post by edpichler »

My opinion: moving a problem to other place you do not solve the problem.

We have too much cars, millions of people, each driving a ton of steel to move from place to place alone. Cars on the underground is not a good solution.

What world needs is automated and intelligent transport, and for the masses.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#413

Post by ryanbrunner »

bb88 wrote: post #274
gsnedders wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But ultimately you aren't going to have tunnels dug by the Boring Company out into the extensive suburbs either. The question ultimately becomes whether it makes sense to give up large amounts of space (even if underground) in the centre for parking (for everyone commuting from the suburbs), or give up space further out where land is cheaper and less dense for large car parks at stations. (Obviously there's a cost in…

> But ultimately you aren't going to have tunnels dug by the Boring Company out into the extensive suburbs either. The point of the boring company is to make excavation of tunnels an order of magnitude cheaper. [1] And if he succeeds, I suspect demand for the tunnels will push them out to the burbs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company

But if you can make tunnel digging orders of magnitude cheaper, why not just run subways to the suburbs?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#414

Post by Xcelerate »

Anderkent wrote: post #397
Xcelerate wrote: post #377

It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on HN, but at least on general news websites). I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack…

>I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct. The latter are also aware of survivorship bias

> The latter are also aware of survivorship bias

While that may be true, it would be interesting to compare the frequencies with which successful founders bring up the topic of survivorship bias vs the rate at which those who never found anything bring it up.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#415

Post by jnicholasp »

namlem wrote: post #309
bmmayer1 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or he just hates LA traffic. Nope that's the main one. You obviously haven't lived in LA :)

I assume this is part of his motivation. The cost of LA's perpetual traffic clusterfuck must be immense. The car tunnels in the video were silly, but being able to build subway tunnels faster and for cheap would be a huge boon for everyone. I'm sure he's fully cognizant of the utility of tunnel boring technology on Mars though. There's no way he hasn't thought about it.

By the time a significant tunnel boring project gets planned, approved and built, cars will be self driving and the Uber model of rides on demand will be extremely prevalent. Traffic will be massively reduced and existing roads will be much more efficiently used.

I agree with the theory that Musk is aiming these boring machines at Mars. That makes more sense than using them to attack the traffic problem when that problem is already being solved by one of his other companies.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#416

Post by [deleted] »

haberman wrote: post #407
aaron-lebo wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: don't feel like arguing. Best of luck to Musk.

> The fact that people feel the need to defend unfinished (and very unproven) projects of a billionaire says a lot. The fact that people think they can spend two seconds evaluating and dismissing an engineering idea from someone who literally sends things into space is hilarious. > If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering. If putting cars on the road and rockets on the launchpad doesn't count as "…

[deleted]

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#417

Post by imron »

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…

> tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow

And now Musk is trying to solve for those three factors

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#418

Post by elif »

_jal wrote: post #391
nostromo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But... a subway for cars? This strikes me as significantly less efficient use of resources than everyone switching over to printing out their emails/IMs/photothings and faxing them to each other. Edit: I mean, sure, great science fiction fun to think about!

yeah, the disparity in cross-sectional air displacement per capita is quite substantial. It is kind of funny to think about as an inefficient train. However, it does not need to replace trains or train commuters in any way. It only needs to contend with normal car travel.

The drag:person inefficiency is a price we still consider worth paying presently, even when it also requires an inefficient decentralized gas-burning energy conversion.

Add in reduced vehicle wear, and of course the time advantage, and with some of the efficiency gains like centralized power/reduced friction/huge electromagnetic actuators/maybe partially evacuated tunnel, it could still conceivably be profitable at a bargain on gas travel.

However, i think the advantages permit it to be sold for more than we are paying for gas travel. People already pay daily just to use a special lane which is nearly the same hassle with only slightly reduced traffic.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#419

Post by aianus »

p0nce wrote: post #303
avn2109 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "(personal opinion: there are none coming)" Former tunnel boring engineer here. There is a ton of room for innovation around tunnel boring machines built by the major manufacturers (primarily Herrenknecht and Robbins), around reliability, durability, ease of serviceability etc. I cannot emphasize enough how modern TBM's require an unbelievable amount of engineering attention, repair labor, spare parts infrastructu…

Fantastic post, thanks. I have a naïve question about subterrean _housing_. With the real estate skyrocketing in some cities, and scarcity of terrain, I wonder why there is not much more underground liveable habitations (for example, near an expensive city center with no space left).

In my city that's where they put parking spots which are even more profitable than housing per square foot. Over $60k a spot.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#420

Post by BurningFrog »

marze wrote: post #282
BurningFrog wrote: post #217

Earlier 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.

Both are significant dangers, but radiation from the sun can be shielded fairly easily. Not so high energy cosmic rays.

You can for example put an entire planet between you and the sun radiation by going out at night.
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