It's essentially a long ad for the company that makes the machines, but this video (and some of the others they've put out) are fascinating and describe the whole process of tunnel making (with a very high production value):
The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
21–30 of 127 posts
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#22[dead]
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#23Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're talking about climate change, the number one threat is going to be food. Climate change is correlated with worse crops because it brings more droughts and harsher weather extremes and this will become a real problem.
yes crops will have to be included, as well as a, cohort of supportive biotypes. very much a noahs ark scenario, but we may best use a number of avenues, such as exoplanetary colonies.
There is nothing that we can do to this planet that would render the environment a tenth as inhospitable as any known other planet.
IIRC we've not even found one that has free oxygen in the atmosphere yet. Even if we did, anything with that and water would be extremely exiting by the standards of exoplanets, even if it had an average temperature of 75 C which would kill humans.
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#25Sometimes when I'm stuck in construction traffic I wish someone would invent the Highway Widening Machine. A machine that in one fell swoop can grind, grade, prep, pour and paint a new lane into a road.
A common but misguided desire.
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#26It's essentially a long ad for the company that makes the machines, but this video (and some of the others they've put out) are fascinating and describe the whole process of tunnel making (with a very high production value): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AV2NcyX7pk
Marti is unmatched. Herrenknecht also puts out some nice material
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#27It's essentially a long ad for the company that makes the machines, but this video (and some of the others they've put out) are fascinating and describe the whole process of tunnel making (with a very high production value): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AV2NcyX7pk
Thanks for sharing this was fascinating. Some of the music is very heist-movie.
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#28Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would be a lot cheaper and more permanent to just have other modes of transportation.
Unfortunately just severely less useful in the majority of the US.
The majority of people in the US live in urban and suburban areas. There’s plenty we can do in these areas to reduce car-dependency instead of paving more roadway (which ends up as waste of time due to induced demand).
Re: The Evolution of Tunnel Boring Machines
#30Wow, as someone who follows the construction progress of Los Angeles' Purple Line (the only heavy rail transit line currently in active boring in the US) I did not know how fast that even reaching the speed of a snail would be:
If we assume the tunnels are being bored at somewhere near the average of ~100meters/week, and the snail is about ~1000meters/week, that's a 10x speedup in the time to dig right there!
The total length of the three segments is about 9 miles (~14,500 meters)[1], with the last segment projected to open in 2027. Digging started in Fall of 2018[2]. Los Angeles is using what looks like 6 TBMS, two for each segment, to dig parallel tunnels. Segment one completed digging in January of 2022[3], and as of August 2023 Metro has delayed full completion of segment one to 2025[4], therefore it appears that even though digging is not the end-all-be-all, it does take up >50% of the entirety of the construction timeline (~4 years digging + 3 years other construction for segment 1, including stations, track, electrical, and testing).
Using the article as a guide, then, somehow speeding up the digging by a factor of 10 would mean digging could take as little as 21 weeks or ~5 months months, rather than ~4 years, and reduce the project timeline by 50% from 7 years to 3.5 years!
This would be huge for when Los Angeles eventually begins to bore the heavy rail tunnel under the Sepulveda mountain pass, which would be 14 miles, most of it likely tunneled [5].
[1] https://www.metro.net/projects/westside/ [2] https://twitter.com/metrolosangeles/status/10458317962341130... [3] https://thesource.metro.net/2022/01/31/purple-line-tunneling... [4] https://twitter.com/numble/status/1709258555117777016 [5] https://www.metro.net/projects/sepulvedacorridor/