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Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

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Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#61

Post by nickrivers »

throwanem wrote: post #32
antihero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think light rail is fantastic - in London we have the DLR which is fully automated (there is an assistant onboard who can override), and it's a thoroughly pleasant experience. We fondly call it the smallest rollercoaster :)

Same! You actually get to meet people and have conversations with people like a normal human being instead of a filter-bubbled Internet habitué. And it's much easier to be in the world when you don't spend all your time looking at it through panes of glass.

Totally sucks our Red Line in Baltimore was cancelled: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/editorial/bs-md-hog...

I only travel East-West...current one only goes North-South.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#62

Post by mikeash »

vidanay wrote: post #37
Robotbeat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The reason for wanting a tunnel at SpaceX headquarters specifically is to help the employees access their parking structures without being run over crossing the street: http://www.parabolicarc.com/2016/12/30/video-3-spacex-employ... "A news report about three SpaceX employees who were hit by a car on Dec. 17 after leaving work. The incident occurred at 2:15 a.m. About three hours later, SpaceX CEO Elon Mu…

Meh. He probably could have had a pedestrian bridge approved and installed by now for the same cost as the exploratory hole. Or even built over a weekend, then deal with the consequences and approval process after. You can get a way with a lot when it comes to personal safety.

They've been trying to get a pedestrian bridge built for ages. They keep having trouble getting permission for it. The tunnel is basically Elon saying, "screw you, I'll find a way around your stupid NIMBY nonsense."

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#64

Post by dx034 »

antihero wrote: post #28
throwanem wrote: post #3

Light rail solves urban congestion, too, and a city that doesn't already have a subway isn't all that likely also to be so densely involute that rights of way can't be secured for the trackage. Elevated electric trams are a thing, too, and require a much smaller ground footprint. Not that I don't get what he's saying, and I do get that existing and well proven systems aren't sexy, but I feel like either of those is g…

I think light rail is fantastic - in London we have the DLR which is fully automated (there is an assistant onboard who can override), and it's a thoroughly pleasant experience. We fondly call it the smallest rollercoaster :)

But it lowers property values close by, the noise is quite significant. So putting light rail in a tunnel would be the better option.

If Musk can really lower costs, London would be a good client. I'm sure that if he could reduce construction costs for new tube lines by 80% (costs are mostly tunnels), there would be at least 4 new lines that could be approved quickly. After that, they'd still have money left over from what they now plan to spend on Crossrail 2.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#65

Post by itp »

wyldfire wrote: post #52
metafex wrote: post #26

This is just a wild guess, but could there be more to it than just solving traffic problems? I mean, the best solution for a permanent settlement on Mars would be underground, as to shield from radiation etc. It's a funny thought, but it would make sense to aquire experience with large earth-moving operations to improve on the technology and study the feasibility.

s/earth/dirt/ ;)

I think it'll be neat to continue to use the word "earth" as a quaint anachronism in some long distant future. A great opportunity to explain to kids that humanity was once limited to a single astronomical body...

(The optimist in me is leaking out.)

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#66

Post by Symmetry »

pitt1980 wrote: post #38
wolfram74 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note though that solar panels are half as effective on mars given it's distance to the sun, nuclear is even more important on Mars than on Earth.

is that true? how much effectiveness are you gaining with the thinner atmosphere?

It's about 40% of Earth's surface before accounting for the thinner atmosphere and about 60% after.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#68

Post by dahart »

We can't afford to maintain the surface roads & bridges we already built, and tunnels are more expensive and require more maintenance by like an order of magnitude. (I made that up, but I'm pretty sure it's right, to within an order of magnitude... but if tunnels are 1000x more expensive, then I'm wrong).

I can admire someone who has the resources to exclude himself from the traffic problem instead taking action to try and solve the whole problem for everyone. He could do what other billionaires do and buy a helicopter.

Still, the only way that tunnels can "obviously" solve the traffic problem is if they're so cheap that we can easily build more of them than we ever need -- and we can't currently do that with roads, even if we have the space. New York and Boston and other places have some tunnels, and also terrible traffic.

If we really do have the resources to take on an infrastructure project of this magnitude, wouldn't it be worth re-evaluating why we're driving, and reducing that instead? The problem with traffic is the traffic. If there wasn't all the traffic, there wouldn't be congestion, we wouldn't need more roads & tunnels.

The contractor end of a tunnel building project might be a good deal though. Convince enough people it's a good idea, and you've got big business for decades to come.

Re: Elon Musk is boring a tunnel to skirt gridlock

#70

Post by mikeash »

RodericDay wrote: post #11

I've become completely disenchanted with Elon Musk over time. I used to be a huge fan and cheerleader, and enthusiastically pointed to him as inspiration. But slowly I started to realize that I was buying a lot into carefully crafted propaganda. The way SpaceX used lawyers to keep PSLV at bay, all the while Musk gassed on about free markets and competition made me a bit mad. Then he had that quip where he said he was…

Which anti-environment Republicans has he donated to?

As for the rest, look at what he (or at least his companies) have actually done. Tesla has succeeded in making electric cars cool. Their stated mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport, and given the many long-range EVs announced by major car companies in the past few years, I think they've already succeeded at that. SpaceX has succeeded in building a remarkably cheap rocket, has recovered them in a way nobody else has done, and is making great strides towards reusing them (although we can't count reuse itself under the "already done" umbrella).

Does he have some weird opinions? Sure. Does he sometimes do bad things? Yep. But who doesn't? Unlike your typical billionaire, he at least has some pretty awesome achievements to balance that out.

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