Only technology being worked on ? >> Digging.
What a coincidence, that's pretty useful for oil too.
The market uses money to burn oil to burn money to burn oil.
The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
251–260 of 397 posts
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#252I 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…
I see this point get made often, but I'm not sure it is an insightful way to look at the world. Tesla cars are only barely related to Mars colonization, and PayPal is not really at all, which is a product conveniently ignored in your post. Even the SpaceX internet satellite constellation looks almost nothing like what internet access on Mars will be anytime in the forseeable future. It seems like a similarly strong a…
Mars is going to need some kind of payment system! Also a method for rescuing children trapped in Mars caves.
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are electric trains—what pollution I suspect you've never been in a subway tunnel and noticed all the grime and dirt spewed all over the walls and ceiling by electric trains. Noise isn’t much higher once you’re even a block away Now I know you've never been in a city with an elevated train system. I once lived nine blocks away from an elevated train, and I could hear it all day and all night. And light and air…
> Now I know you've never been in a city with an elevated train system. I once lived nine blocks away from an elevated train, and I could hear it all day and all night. It is possible to build elevated rail that is much quieter than Chicago's and NYC's systems, so Chicago shouldn't be held up as an example of how noisy elevated systems have to be.
Plus Chicago's is super old. Use the newer Orange Line and it's much quieter. The high speed intercity/commuter rails in The Netherlands are also super quiet (and massive!). They move a lot of people too!
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#254Earlier 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
A good quote I can relate to: I'm perfectly happy with all the people who are walking around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying, "I want to go there."But I'm looking at the ground, and I want to fix the pothole that's right in front of me before I fall in. This is the kind of person I am. - Linus Torvalds
Sure-- I think it's fair to say that society & civilization as a whole is better off with both types of people.
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#255Earlier 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
The moon might have been seen as similarly silly. US might much more easily have focused on nearer space with a greater ROI on the project itself. But apart from the geopolitical bragging rights, the technical constraints of a moon shot meant the development of all kinds of technologies that rippled outward through society. We see some of the same effects with the LHC. Its direct uses have limited (immediate) practic…
Sorry, what's an innovation that came out of the moon program or the LHC that has broader social benefit?
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#256Earlier 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
Musk has said Mars is the backup plan for earth. What if one day there is a disease or meteor that wipes out the entire human population on Earth? (e.g., see the dinosaurs) Even if the only appeal was the wild wild west and uncharted territory, what's wrong with that? Look at what exploring the Moon has brought us, many unexpected innovations and inventions useful for life on earth.
What did exploring the Moon bring us?
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think nobody will bring their faith with them?
Precisely. Religions are in decline among the younger generations. By the time we go to Mars as a colonizing species, hopefully we won't bring "faith to a deity" with us.
There's plenty of other damaging ideologies to take their place. Look at the extremist 1% on either side of the left/right political divide for examples. Religion isn't a cause of negative ideological/extremism, it's a symptom of cognitive tendencies that give rise to it.
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
i really appreciate what elon musk is doing, but to be clear, he's not strictly trying to make tunneling cheaper for mass transit. as i understand it, the high costs of transportation projects are a political problem not an engineering one. well-run subway projects have been completed at $50-100 million per mile, while most such projects in the US are 5 to 10 times that. that's attributable not to sticter safety stan…
Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems. Won’t let me build a wire across your property—-no problem, I’ll go wireless...as an example
> "Sometimes technological solutions solve political problems."
sure, but what technology could be applied in this case?
for instance, projects are often underbid and then overcharged over time, whether it's fixed bid or time and materials. fixed bid incentivizes subcontractors to cut corners. time and materials billing incentivizes subcontractors to be inefficient. and subcontractors find ways to cheat.
people have tried complicated incentive systems to fix this issue (a kind of technological solution), but they seem to have mixed results (that is, not much better, for a lot more complexity in tracking and apportioning compensation).
even if you could build a machine to monitor all the workers and perfectly pay them based on quality and efficiency, such dystopian conditions would most certainly meet heavy resistance.
i mean, i love tech, but who'd want a machine controlling their lives?
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#259Earlier 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
Why am I not allowed to downvote this nonsense?
Because you have zero karma. The right to negatively impact someone else's comment is predicated on having first positively contributed to numerous discussions.
Re: The Boring Company will develop an underground “people mover” for Las Vegas
#260Yes, it is. With one that caveat that if it's built 10x cheaper than comparable tunnels, it is. Moving our roads underground is a vastly superior transportation system than we have today. It can be safer, better for the air, better for light and noise pollution, unlock vast amounts of land in our urban areas for parks, etc. I grew up near Boston during the big dig and the city is a drastically different place before…
This Boring Tunnel is all hype so far. The demo tunnel doesn't look to have sufficient ventilation or emergency exits in case of fire, car crash, etc. They haven't addressed the ingress and egress congestion problems into and out of the tunnel. How can a single elevator go up/down to handle 1000+ cars per hour (4400 passengers per hour)? Basic math gives you 3.6 seconds for the elevator to go down, wait for the car t…
It is totally fair that what they have shown isn't ready to change the world, but at least give them credit for thinking about those problems and having innovative solutions. Electric motors vastly reduce ventilation requirements, autonomous vehicles under the control of the central system make it possible to evacuate most riders rapidly in the event of an emergency without leaving the cars, and having small vehicles going straight to your destination means there can be many more stations, decreasing the traffic at each one. All of these are fundamentally new technologies that aren't part of traditional subways, and if they can get them all to work, it will be a system with new and novel capabilities.