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The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

citylab.com

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Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#131

Post by zaroth »

spraak wrote: post #95
calgoo wrote: post #67

I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization. 1. Electric cars for transport, Check. 2. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check. 3. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport, check. 4. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check. 5. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there. Hopefully he will cont…

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

Little Elon had a dream that he will one day walk on Mars. He thought to himself, well why can’t I? All I need is billions of dollars, and rockets (lots of rockets), and space ships, and renewable energy, and tunnels, and,...

And then Little Elon started a little company during the dot com boom called Zip2 and sold it to Compaq for $300 million. Then X.com which led to PayPal. Then SpaceX, Tesla, and all the rest.

It’s anything but “silly”. It’s incredible, it’s aspirational, it’s undeniably impressive. I love that his goal is so audacious as to be entirely implausible, and he keeps taking step by tiny step toward to realization of his mission.

And even though the goal may be entirely pointless to 99.999% of humanity, the steps taken along the way are reaping tremendous benefits to our lives and those of future generations.

Back to TFA, again I think they are missing the significance of what Boring will be doing here. An underground autonomous system which otherwise would have cost hundreds of millions for $50 million risk free is a perfect win-win for Boring and Vegas. Boring gets a beautiful test bed for a whole array of new tech, and a marketing demonstration of what they can accomplish if all goes well. Vegas saved a boat load of money, and gets a tourist attraction to boot.

It’s sad hearing/reading all the comments that this is stupid, just build a train, etc. Because that misses entirely the point that while this deployment could be served by a train the bigger vision is not one that could be served by trains, and the whole point, like everything Elon does, is to take a step on the path toward the Big Vision in a way that provides incremental value that can be monetized in order to fund and drive future R&D.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#132

Post by cycrutchfield »

pesfandiar wrote: post #108
spraak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

Agreed. Let's first try and "colonize" places like Nevada. Getting safe drinking water to many major urban centres could become a challenging engineering problem in the upcoming decades, much more worthwhile to solve than living on Mars.

Why not both?

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#133

Post by netzone »

_Microft wrote: post #104
ncallaway wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think he's mentioned it specifically for each of the things in the checklist. I'm pretty sure I recall him mentioning electric vehicles and solar cells being important for mars, but I don't remember the interview. Elon and SpaceX have been pretty explicit about Starlink as a system for funding the development of Mars transit vehicles and initial colony, though I'm sure a mini-Starlink around Mars would be in…

It's not just that. The Boring Company wants to automate tunneling as much as possible (manual labour would be highly impractical in a spacesuit), speed it up and make it a continuous process. It also wants to power the boring machine by Tesla PowerPacks to remove the need for kilometers of cables. All of that seems suited not just for cheap tunneling but for Mars as well.

I guess mobile PowerPacks with solar panels? Just deploy a few thousand outside the tunneling area and then automate the battery switching. Could run it 24/7 without anyone ever going to Mars even.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#134

Post by whatshisface »

spookware wrote: post #127
spraak wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

For me its to get away from religion.

You think nobody will bring their faith with them?

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#135

Post by bluGill »

stcredzero wrote: post #121
duxup wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure rider number experiments are really needed. At least in MN rider predictions were on the conservative side, but reasonable as far as predictors. Granted that doesn't mean your idea is bad or anything. I do wonder how many people would change their routine for a "temporary" bus line... not sure they would.

I think it was Portland (it was somewhere in the Pacific NW) in the 90's had a "custom bus" running late at night. If you lived within 2 miles of a regular bus route, you could phone in a request, and a dispatcher would make up a new bus line for that night that would pick up everyone who called in.

For public transit to work this is important. In the early hours of the morning few people want to get around typically. However the fear that you cannot get around if you need to holds people back. However if I know that should I need to there is an option that isn't too expensive I'm likely try it.

Minneapolis used to have a guaranteed ride home (might still do, I don't live there anymore) to cover people who took the bus somewhere, but had to work last.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#136

Post by not_real_acct »

kelnos wrote: post #94
snazz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has he specifically called out the connection or is this your pet conspiracy theory? It doesn’t seem too far off, to be honest.

There's a series of posts on WaitButWhy[0] about Elon Musk and his various companies and strategies. The level of Musk worship there generally rubs me the wrong way, but I think the conclusions are valid: the author also interviewed Musk one-on-one in 2015 and took a deep-dive into his businesses, so I would trust the author's conclusions. Essentially, Musk expects/worries that an extinction event (whether as a resul…

Over a decade ago, when Amazon wasn't the powerhouse it is today, I dated someone who routinely interacted with Jeff Bezos.

According to them, Bezos feels the same way. Amazon is basically a means-to-an-end, and that "end" is to get humanity into outer space, as an insurance policy in the event of a catastrophe on earth.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#137

Post by cygx »

spraak wrote: post #95
calgoo wrote: post #67

I love watching all of Musk's projects, as every single one can be connected to Mars colonization. 1. Electric cars for transport, Check. 2. Solar panels and batteries for power generation and storage, check. 3. Tunnel digging equipment for making underground bases and transport, check. 4. Satellite communications for an entire planet, check. 5. Then finally, the actual rockets to get us there. Hopefully he will cont…

The goal of Mars to me is silly. Mars is already worse off in terms of climate than Earth. Why not work to improve what we have? The only appeal I see is "uncharted territory" / wild west

And people are free to work on that. If Musk wants to take a shot at colonizing other planets, more power to him. We're blowing trillions of dollars on pointless wars or 'frivolous' entertainment, so even if you don't agree with his vision, Musk's efforts should be pretty far down on the list of things to criticise...

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#138

Post by duxup »

stcredzero wrote: post #121
duxup wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure rider number experiments are really needed. At least in MN rider predictions were on the conservative side, but reasonable as far as predictors. Granted that doesn't mean your idea is bad or anything. I do wonder how many people would change their routine for a "temporary" bus line... not sure they would.

I think it was Portland (it was somewhere in the Pacific NW) in the 90's had a "custom bus" running late at night. If you lived within 2 miles of a regular bus route, you could phone in a request, and a dispatcher would make up a new bus line for that night that would pick up everyone who called in.

That's a cool idea to cover those fringe events that aren't worth full time service, but you want to be there to help.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#139

Post by rayiner »

r3bl wrote: post #101
michaelleslie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a less-scalable metro system, a technology that predates this "innovation" by a century or so.

Musk seems to really dislike the idea of public transport. There's an appeal in moving a large number of people from one side of the city to the other really fast, but with their cars!? The amount of trouble people in the US are willing to through to avoid the solution every other developed country enjoys is really mind-blowing to me. Dig a tunnel, put some rails in it, and add some sort of a vehicle on top of those…

We try to avoid it in the US because it costs us 5-10x as much money to do it. If it cost Madrid $4.5 billion to build a two mile subway extension they wouldn’t do it either.

Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas

#140

Post by jcranmer »

ncallaway wrote: post #116
jcranmer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Boring Company's main plans aren't to create new and novel tunnels. The Boring Company's goal is to create _cheaper_ tunnels. The Boring Company's main plans, as can be evidenced by their communications (such as their FAQ) and their commitments and attempted commitments to build actual projects, is to pitch a radically new, 21st century mode of mass transit that is really just a variation of personal rapid tran…

> The Boring Company's main plans, as can be evidenced by their communications (such as their FAQ) and their commitments and attempted commitments to build actual projects Agree that this evidences their short-term plans (1-5 years), but I actually think it's a poor-proxy of evidence of their long-term (5+ years) plans. I mostly agree with you about their short-term plans, but my understanding (which could be wrong!)…

I mostly follow mass transit and railway projects, so that's where my numbers are derived from. Considering that Loop is pitched as a new mass transit system, it makes sense to compare it to costs. Especially because Musk loves comparing it to the obscenely overpriced NYC Second Avenue Subway extension, so it helps to understand how much it actually cost.

The Boring Company claims in its FAQ that the Second Avenue Subway cost "more than $1 billion per mile" (it doesn't mention it by name, but it's the only thing it could be referring to). The actual cost (from http://web.mta.info/capitaldashboard/CPDMega.html) is $415 million for 2 miles of 2 pairs of tunnel, with track work being another $364 million. The three new stations cost $649 million, $802 million, and $821 million--each more than the cost of all of the tunnel work.

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