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Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

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Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#61

Post by stcredzero »

btilly wrote: post #41

It is worth noting that everything that Elon is doing here is part of his goal of colonizing Mars. One of the challenges will be building out underground habitats, and establishing mining for critical resources. Gaining experience with how to do that efficiently here on Earth will make it easier to set it up on Mars. Furthermore when you start colonizing Mars, you're going to want high speed transport between locatio…

Everything that Elon Musk is doing has a foundation on First Principles:

https://medium.com/the-mission/first-principles-and-the-art-...

tl;dr --

1) Reduce the problem to a question answerable by a hard science like physics, chemistry, or biology, and pay attention to the theoretical limits.

2) If you can, find data on related industries and see if you can find long term trends. (Example: http://rameznaam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Lithium-ion-... )

3) Extrapolate into the future.

4) Think of some way to exploit the information you've uncovered to gain a market advantage.

Other helpful techniques: Is there an industry which is subject to some form of bureaucracy which is distorting the market? How can technology be used to disrupt this?

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#62

Post by sqeaky »

dragonwriter wrote: post #48
simonh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about worthiness, it's about having a solution or not. If Musk has a solution for long distance but doesn't have one for commuters, should he not pursue the long distance solution because reasons? That seems absurd.

> If Musk has a solution for long distance but doesn't have one for commuters He doesn't, because long-distance solutions depend on integration with local network solutions; you can solve local without long distance but not vice versa.

They are related, but there is not a strict dependency. You can put a new airport into a place without worry about local transport significantly. (edited for grammar and post structure)

Most airports just put in parking and sometimes a shuttle bus to move people around their massive parking complex, but even as large as those systems are they peanuts compared to the Airports main concern, Air Travel.

Why are tunnels different?

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#63

Post by kbenson »

jws wrote: post #59
ProblemFactory wrote: post #21

Is technology really the slow and expensive part of boring tunnels? To me it has always seemed that tunnels are expensive because: * Planning the traffic impact and how it interacts with other transport lanes, all the above-ground building work to make the tunnel useful, * Emergency ventilation and escape routes, and all other infrastructure that goes into the hole, * Avoiding any building foundation piles, unmapped…

It may be time to legislate the concept of "tunnel space". This would be similar to air space. In the US a property owner doesn't control the air above their land (subject to details). Maybe Congress should declare the Earth below say 100' as not controlled by the land owner and allocated by some new agency, say the Federal Crust Administration. Remove all of this from state, county, and municipal jurisdiction. Centr…

Every mining company will lobby against that. It's probably easier to do it with easements and eminent domain.

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#64

Post by std_throwaway »

abalone wrote: post #60
ProblemFactory wrote: post #21

Is technology really the slow and expensive part of boring tunnels? To me it has always seemed that tunnels are expensive because: * Planning the traffic impact and how it interacts with other transport lanes, all the above-ground building work to make the tunnel useful, * Emergency ventilation and escape routes, and all other infrastructure that goes into the hole, * Avoiding any building foundation piles, unmapped…

I believe they're hoping to mitigate 3 and 4 by going deeper than most things. But wouldn't that make 2, emergency escape routes, a lot more expensive? How do you make a very long, very deep, narrow-diameter, elevator-accessed tunnel safe from fires and toxic gas releases? You can make it a vacuum but then what if you have to escape a vehicle? How does this thing not become a death trap in the event of a fire? Fire i…

You won't get fires if there is nothing that burns.

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#65

Post by dragonwriter »

sqeaky wrote: post #62
dragonwriter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Musk has a solution for long distance but doesn't have one for commuters He doesn't, because long-distance solutions depend on integration with local network solutions; you can solve local without long distance but not vice versa.

They are related, but there is not a strict dependency. You can put a new airport into a place without worry about local transport significantly. (edited for grammar and post structure) Most airports just put in parking and sometimes a shuttle bus to move people around their massive parking complex, but even as large as those systems are they peanuts compared to the Airports main concern, Air Travel. Why are tunnels…

> They are related, but there is not a strict dependency. You can put a new airport into a place without worry about local transport significantly.

No, you can't, which is why when commercial airports are actually built, they are either carefully sited near freeways with excess capacity or have new freeways built and/or capacity added to existing freeways, often have local rail connections built, involve major upgrades to local surface roads, and involve other extensions of local mass and individual transit capacity.

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#66

Post by stcredzero »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #21

Is technology really the slow and expensive part of boring tunnels? To me it has always seemed that tunnels are expensive because: * Planning the traffic impact and how it interacts with other transport lanes, all the above-ground building work to make the tunnel useful, * Emergency ventilation and escape routes, and all other infrastructure that goes into the hole, * Avoiding any building foundation piles, unmapped…

Planning the traffic impact

Solution: Do not connect the tunnel directly to the road network.

Emergency ventilation

Solution: Build a kind of infrastructure that only allows onboard backup as emergency ventilation.

Escape routes

Solution: Minimize escape shafts and provision emergency rescue vehicles capable of transporting an entire pod. Maximize reliability by exploiting the increased reliability of electric drivetrains and leveraging institutional knowledge from SpaceX and Tesla.

all other infrastructure that goes into the hole

Solution: Minimize "all other" which is not simply the hole.

Avoiding any building foundation piles,...archeological surveys

Solution: Go deep enough to avoid all of these.

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#68

Post by njarboe »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #21

Is technology really the slow and expensive part of boring tunnels? To me it has always seemed that tunnels are expensive because: * Planning the traffic impact and how it interacts with other transport lanes, all the above-ground building work to make the tunnel useful, * Emergency ventilation and escape routes, and all other infrastructure that goes into the hole, * Avoiding any building foundation piles, unmapped…

Of course Musk understands that this problem is hard. That's why there are not already hundreds of tunnels under cities when it is the obvious solution to the current problem with our wheel based, point-to-point transportation system. He has the ability and funds to gather and inspire the best-of-the-best to maybe make real progress on this problem. Check out the one minute Boring Company promo video[1] for some preliminarily ideas for solving some of your above issues. 1. On street elevators to interface with tunnels. 2. Electric carts to eliminate combustion in the tunnels. Much less ventilation needed. 3. Once below a certain depth there are few things to avoid. See 1 for why this is might be possible. 4. See 3.

It is easy to speculate on why something might not work. Most of the universe consists of nothing (by volume) or a random assortment of very fast moving hydrogen and helium ions (by mass) (not sure where black holes fit in). Interesting things are rare. They are very complex systems that have built-up and evolved over time. If you want to try and build such a system, a good way is to look at the problem from a fundamental physics and economic view (first principles, as Musk would say) to see if it is possible. If it is, then start thinking about it seriously, gather like-minded people, and start building things. It's impossible to plan all the necessary steps before starting a journey that never been done before.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#69

Post by sna1l »

sqeaky wrote: post #52
theseatoms wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it's not just good marketing?

Can't it be both? Honesty has phenomenal draw in marketing when the recipient agrees with the message. Even if one's disagrees, the product is harder to attack when everyone around it is honest.

I feel like this is one of Musk's greatest strengths. His bread and butter is taking slow moving industries (see: rockets and cars) and coming in with smart people with a framework to succeed. As a marketing ploy, he then sells his grand vision (going to Mars, all self driving cars). I don't mean to say that he won't succeed in these grand visions; I think he will, but fundamentally his success is based on taking outdated, slow moving industries and taking them to the next level.

Re: Elon Musk’s Tunnel Plan Isn’t as Crazy as SpaceX or Tesla

#70

Post by joekrill »

LurkingPresence wrote: post #18

Wouldn't it be smarter to start with a smaller project? Like maybe do the Chicago airport project before tearing up the east coast for a super tunnel. That seemed to work for Space X (start small, iterate).

Well in fairness I think they are doing just this. Aren't they building a tunnel at SpaceX HQ using the boring machine?
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