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Next Big Thing From Elon Musk? It Could Be 'Boring' (usatoday.com)
A string of tweets put out by serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday hints that his entrepreneurial future may be a little "boring." USA Today reports: The Tesla and SpaceX founder got on Twitter on Saturday morning to rant about an issue he seems to find irksome -- traffic. Musk has also been working on resolving his frustration with traffic issues through above-ground means with his Hyperloop venture, which proposes a plan for mass-transit pods moving through above-ground tubes. But that doesn't appear to be enough, commenting: "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..." He even offered up a name for the venture, calling it "The Boring Company," and began branding it with a slogan: "Boring, it's what we do." Then capped it off by tweeting, "I am actually going to do this."
Or both.....
Poor guy. What he really needs is a helicopter.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Otherwise he'll get run into massive amounts of cost and delays due to existing underground infrastructure - of which some old elements may not be marked accurately (or even at all) on any map.
I can only guess that he feels he has some alternative design for a tunnel boring machine that could be cheaper than today's designs and more tolerant to problematic geology. A thought that may or may not be accurate.
"... even though he sins so much that people cast him out of demons."
They're called Metro systems. There's even one in LA though he may not know that since he probably hasn't been on public transport since he was in his mothers womb. Amazingly they travel through tunnels underground and bypass road traffic! Who knew?
Isn't running:
- A car design and manufacturing company
- A rocket launcher and capsule design and manufacturing company
- A lithium batter design and manufacturing company
- Managing a very high speed mass transportation concept
enough for one person?
It's not like Tesla cars are perfect or that SpaceX launcher's aren't blowing up on the pad and I don't think battery one has come out of SolarCity yet.
Mr. Musk has come up with some great ideas, but I think he needs to keep his (business) interests limited to ensure that they are all successful and outstanding products.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I personally have thought up half a dozen cheap ways to give drivers who are approaching traffic lights enough information that they don't have to hit it red and stop --- things that work like the countdowns provided by pedestrian walk lights. And it doesn't have to be mandatory. If maybe 30% of drivers use the inforrmation to coast through, then the other 70% will have no choice. A lot of gas could probably be saved.
This sort of thing has probably been patented many times but I've never see any mention of it anywhere. Take it and run, Elon.
Regardless of how deep, it will also have to be fast. I believe current borers (correct term?) drill at the rate of 1-2 metres per day.
According to Crossrail, the largest distance tunnelled by one of their boring machines in a single day was "72 metres by Ellie on 16 April 2014 between Pudding Mill Lane and Stepney Green". So 1-2 metres seems to be out by quite a bit.
Southern California isn't the best place for a subway. There are currently only two underground subway lines, and they came in vastly over budget - the Metro Red line's original cost estimate was $400 million; it was completed for $4.5 billion. It held the record for the most expensive civic construction project until Boston's Big Dig.
The reason is that SoCal is full of oil. If you visit, you'll see functioning oil pumps scattered around in random places. It bubbles out of the ground naturally in the La Brea Tar Pits, and into the surrounding ocean as underwater oil seeps. When they dug the first tunnels for the Red line, the workers returned the next day to find oil and tar seeping in through the walls of the freshly-dug tunnel. They had to stop construction until they could come up with new ways to hold back the seepage and insure it wouldn't become a problem in the future decades of subway operation. (The Big Dig was expensive because of similar problems, except with seawater seepage.)
Oh yeah, the earthquakes tend to be a problem too. Especially if your tunnel crosses over a fault line.
I think it was Stephen Colbert who made an attempt to describe the Lincoln Tunnel to people who didn't live in New York:
Imagine trying to get that contents of this container of jelly beans into this bucket, putting them all through these two drinking straws...Also, all of those jelly beans are late to work.
A major problem is when accidents happen in tunnels. There is literally nowhere for anyone - including emergency vehicles - to go. Now, accidents in tunnels tend to be of the fender bender variety, but when a vehicle is rendered inoperable, you're just plain screwed. Making tunnels the way roads are built as a general rule is not the best of ideas - it's why subways make more sense as long as the stops can pick up and drop off enough people to nudge the needle of the rest of traffic. Manhattan would be utterly impassable without the subway moving half a million people a day.
Nobody likes traffic, and nobody likes parking. LA has its problems due not simply to cost, but the lack of a useful alternative when dealing when that level of population density independent of a useful mass transit system.