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Elon Musk Is Really Boring (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the boring-company dept.

Sometimes it is hard to tell if Elon Musk is serious about the things he says. But as for his "boring" claims, that's really happening. In a wide-range interview with Bloomberg, the billionaire talked more about his new venture, The Boring Company. The idea began on a Saturday morning a few weeks ago when Musk tweeted, "Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..." Over the course of next few hours later, Musk added, "It shall be called 'The Boring Company,' Boring, it's what we do. I am actually going to do this. Excerpts from the story: And so, around noon on a Friday in January, an excavation crew started digging. "I was like, 'Hey, what's the biggest hole we can make by Sunday evening?'" Musk says. [...] "My other idea was to call it Tunnels R Us and to essentially troll Toys "R" Us into filing a lawsuit," he says, letting out a loud and well-articulated ha-ha-ha-ha. "Now we've decided to troll AT&T instead! We're going to call it American Tubes and Tunnels." When I ask him if the tunnel venture will be a subsidiary of SpaceX or an independent company, he responds cryptically. "Don't you read my Twitter? The Boring Company. Or TBC. To Be Continued." An aide chimes in: Yes, the Boring Company, aka To Be Continued, aka Tunnels R Us, aka American Tubes and Tunnels, aka whatever, will indeed be an independent company. Tunnel technology is older than rockets, and boring speeds are pretty much what they were 50 years ago. Musk says he hopes to build a much faster tunneling machine and use it to dig thousands of miles, eventually creating a vast underground network that includes as many as 30 levels of tunnels for cars and high-speed trains such as the Hyperloop. Musk chose the SpaceX parking lot as the site of his first dig, mostly because it was convenient and he could legally do so without city permits. The plan is to expand the current hole into a ramp designed for a large tunnel boring machine and then start digging horizontally once the machine is 50 feet or so below ground, which would make it low enough to clear gas and sewer lines and to be undetectable at the surface. 100 marks to Bloomberg for the headline, and the story which is as funny as it is insightful.

7 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Good on him by mean+pun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Before all the sour-pusses have their say, I want to say this: good on him.

    Will it work? No idea, but at least he's trying. And betting against Musk is always risky.

    Is he crazy? Since he has so much money, and since he's not destructive, no, he is not crazy, he's eccentric.

    1. Re:Good on him by ranton · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With Musk the right question is never 'will it work?" but 'will it make any sense factoring in the costs?'

      That is the great thing about having billionaires with the curiosity of engineers. Musk is willing to find out if these 'crazy' ideas make any sense factoring in the costs. Let your average VCs fund the companies whose ideas will most likely work. Men like Musk are the ones with the freedom to investigate the ideas which will probably not work, but would be phenomenal if the general wisdom is wrong.

      IMHO Musk is filling in for governments who aren't spending enough on basic research and grand innovative ventures. For these projects it is expected that you will fail far more often than you succeed, which is why traditional investors stay away. I hope Musk keeps up his current pace of innovation for the next 30 years.

      --
      -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
  2. Re:Serial Entrepreneur by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As long as you leave other competent people in charge of the project, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

  3. Son of a b... he's got a world domination plan by getuid() · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He's already going to space.

    If he gets to build up digging know-how, he'll be the first to actually make a shitload of money off asteroid mining.

    Best part: r&d possibly largelgy paid for by public money (first NASA, and maybe now he can acceds some infrastructure funds or public contracting for the boring part)... That's one hell of a way to hack the system. Go him! :-)

  4. Re:Serial Entrepreneur by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At least he's able to get things started and then bring in the people to see his projects to fruition. SpaceX is moving along nicely. Tesla cars are on the roads. If only 50% of his projects take-off he's doing well.

    We need innovative people like him to really shake things up, even if he does get bored and move on to something else before his projects fully reach completion.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  5. Re: Serial Entrepreneur by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can either talk people down or rise to their level.
    Think well before you choose.

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  6. Re:Focus, Elon, focus!! by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Between making SpaceX & Tesla profitable - or cutting the cash losses - and raising 5 kids, don't you have enough already on your plate?

    SpaceX and Tesla are at an iteration stage. The building blocks are already in place and all that is needed is to ramp up production. Just what do you think Mr Musk should do? Micromanage the assembly line like any good CEO?

    CEOs for the most part make strategic decision. The outcomes of those decision often take a while to come to fruition. About the best thing he can do for both Tesla and SpaceX is leave the damn things alone for a year and let the engineers and workers get the gears turning.