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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#191

Post by Fricken »

ythn wrote: post #56
shouldbworking wrote: post #40

Did anyone else notice that cars being lowered leaves a giant fucking hole in the middle of the street?! This is a marketing fluff video untouched by engineers

Someone needs to edit the video so you see a pedestrian falling down the shaft and breaking their neck

There's a sidewalk I walk down, it's quite narrow and runs along a shoulderless road with a steady stream of cars whizzing by at 50 miles an hour. I think to myself 'how much more or less dangerous is this than walking along the edge of the Grand Canyon? One misstep and I'm toast. One misstep from one of those cars and I'm toast.'

We have a hardwired respect for heights, but at no time in our evolutionary history did we ever have to deal with the kind of speed cars move at. So we look at a 10 foot deep unprotected hole in the ground and instantly think 'Hey, that's a hazard', but we don't give nearly enough consideration to speed, and as such 2 million people each year who are killed and injured in US motor vehicle accidents, and we just sort of shrug our shoulders.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#192

Post by objclxt »

fiatjaf wrote: post #153

This is not boring at all. Finally someone found a way to monetize tunnels. Someone is pointing to problems that seem obvious, I can see a lot too, but they've solved monetization.

I can't quite tell if you're being sarcastic or not. If you are, credit to you as you fooled me.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#193

Post by OrwellianChild »

tptacek wrote: post #151

Since this is a thread about Elon Musk, transportation infrastructure, public transportation, and urban design, and because HN has a sort of affinity for the Robert Moses story (The Power Broker was one of 'aaronsw's favorite books), this seems like a particularly on-point Twitter thread to read after the video: https://twitter.com/EmilyGorcenski/status/858022699112824832 You might not agree with all/any of it but I…

Very real risk for developing transport infrastructure... Would checks against this kind of malicious intent be on the digging company, or on the city planning departments that determine route alignments, etc.?

(Real question - I don't understand the relationship between technical contractors and cities in this context.)

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#194

Post by Tiktaalik »

bb88 wrote: post #188
pnathan wrote: post #85

This is very, very wasteful compared to actual mass transit. A subway network is much more effective at delivering people. If he's looking for mega-good, Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. edit: tunnelling is a broadly solved problem. It's difficult, expensive, slow, etc. But there's no engineering reason why a hole in the ground can't happen. Musk might be able to drive some significan…

>Musk would do significantly better to drop a full subway network. In the same way a road offers private and public transportation, a tunnel can do both. Why can't the car be a bus, say?

Because cars, which are relatively wasteful spacewise, create negative externalities on the public transportation by causing congestion, which resultantly makes public transportation less efficient.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#195

Post by Retric »

kolinko wrote: post #186
placeybordeaux wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll have to look seriously at living underground on mars. It won't protect us from solar rays on the surface. One of the cheaper ways to protect yourself is to put a layer of rock inbetween you and the sun.

Perhaps if you're building a cellar. If you want to make a 10-story building - even in a virgin terrain, it's a complicated operation. Not to mention that you need to make the materials such that they resist a huge side pressure, water leaks and so on. Psychological costs are also costs.

Water leaks are not going to be a problem on mars. Significantly lower gravity 3.711 m/s vs 9.8m/s also drastically lowers pressure from burrowing.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#197

Post by ChefDenominator »

kolinko wrote: post #186
placeybordeaux wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll have to look seriously at living underground on mars. It won't protect us from solar rays on the surface. One of the cheaper ways to protect yourself is to put a layer of rock inbetween you and the sun.

Perhaps if you're building a cellar. If you want to make a 10-story building - even in a virgin terrain, it's a complicated operation. Not to mention that you need to make the materials such that they resist a huge side pressure, water leaks and so on. Psychological costs are also costs.

Why build layers at all? Urban concentrations too high?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#198

Post by alexbecker »

mmanfrin wrote: post #157
idlewords wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is to subways like hyperloop is to high-speed rail. A stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea.

Hyperloop is a 'stupid overelaboration of an existing, proven idea'? I was not aware we had so many proven 600mph high speed rails.

The high speed is the "overelaboration". High-speed rails in many countries can reach 200mph. A 600mph train may be 3x as fast, but the marginal utility is pretty low to me compared to increased cost and reduced capacity.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#199

Post by hk__2 »

notahacker wrote: post #41
OrwellianChild wrote: post #27

Don't fully get the benefit of moving cars on rails vs. moving cars on wheels... Higher fixed costs to power the rail vs. just letting cars auto-drive with internal propulsion. What am I missing?

If you want cars to be more closely packed, travelling at higher speeds and controlled by computers, you probably don't want individual car owners to be able to bring the whole thing to a screeching halt through sloppy maintenance or shutting the engine down (See also: Channel Tunnel)

> If you want cars to be more closely packed, travelling at higher speeds and controlled by computers

Isn’t that called “a train”?

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#200

Post by kolinko »

gsnedders wrote: post #185
nostromo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The video shows some sort of shuttle using the track. Those could be small busses or even public transport. http://imgur.com/a/Wv8YD In effect, this is a subway system. It's an underground rail system. The major difference is that you have a mixture of public and private passenger vehicles and smaller vehicles.

But can you get a moving block signalling system such that they can follow each other with minimal separation? Until you can do that, a real train will always win at people/hour due to the fact that you can have more people per consist as ultimately the signalling challenges are comparable and you can therefore have comparable separation.

With all my sympathy for metro - in many American cities it will never be good enough due to extensive suburbs.

In places where land is cheap, and there are single family houses, cars will be the most efficient way to commute for years to come. We'll switch to self-driving electric cars, but still.

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