The Boring Company FAQ
boringcompany.com
The Boring Company FAQ
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Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#2>What do you do with all that dirt?
>... The Boring Company is investigating technologies that will recycle the earth into useful bricks to be used to build structures... These bricks can potentially be used as a portion of the tunnel lining itself, which is typically built from concrete. Since concrete production accounts for 4.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, earth bricks would reduce both environmental impact and tunneling costs.
I called it. :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14224261
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#3I'd like to see more details about edge case scenarios.
What happens if a sled gets stuck? What would be the procedure and response time for getting the right personnel down there?
What failsafes are in place for disasters? What if the power grid went offline or there was a flood?
How do you prevent human error? What if people left their gas vehicles on and there was a toxic level of carbon monoxide in the tunnels? What if people jumped or accidentally fell onto a sled while it was descending?
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#4This does not answer the most obvious and important question: why not invest in public transport? It's boring but it will work.
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#5This does not answer the most obvious and important question: why not invest in public transport? It's boring but it will work.
Indeed, strange how that's not mentioned at all. Or whether any transportation engineers have evaluated what kind of traffic reduction would occur from using all these tunnels for a subway system instead of just moving a few cars around.
Edit: The more I think about it, the worse it seems. Compare how much space is eaten out of the road above for a few cars... per minute?...to go up/down to this tunnel vs. how many a stairwell could take up/down to the subway. Even if the car's were relatively crammed close together in the tunnel, I can't imagine it would be anywhere near the density you could fit on subway trains. The economics of this make no sense.... unless you consider that this will be something that only the incredibly elite will be able to afford. The majority of people in rush hour LA traffic will remain stuck there, the rich will go down I guess.
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#6I'd like to see more details about edge case scenarios. What happens if a sled gets stuck? What would be the procedure and response time for getting the right personnel down there? What failsafes are in place for disasters? What if the power grid went offline or there was a flood? How do you prevent human error? What if people left their gas vehicles on and there was a toxic level of carbon monoxide in the tunnels? W…
You can have the sleds equipped with oxygen and a mask, similar to what airplanes have for cabin depressurization.
As for point B you can have doors or what not around the sled. But if people really want to commit suicide by sled there's nothing stopping them. What stops someone from jumping off a bridge with a highway below?
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#7This does not answer the most obvious and important question: why not invest in public transport? It's boring but it will work.
I am not being facetious when I say "it won't help establish humanity on Mars".
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#8This does not answer the most obvious and important question: why not invest in public transport? It's boring but it will work.
If this technology truly can reduce the cost of tunnel boring by a factor of ten, subway systems can be created in many more cities and existing systems updated with a thicker network.
I also wonder if, because of the smaller diameter of the tunnels, a network of self-driving buses doesn't make more sense to deploy in these tunnel networks.
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#9Doesn't a tunnel under a building significantly increase the chances of the building falling down?
What about flooding?
Re: The Boring Company FAQ
#10Then he will figure out that he can produce electricity with the geothermal vertical tunnels! And will merge the Boring Company with Tesla like he did with Solar City!