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Elon Musk Is Really Boring (bloomberg.com)
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.
...we probably need to legalize whatever he's smoking.
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.
As long as you leave other competent people in charge of the project, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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! :-)
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
That's just the thing. He already has enough on his plate, so now he has to dig under it.
#DeleteFacebook
Not mentioned in the summary is the fact that what got Elon moving on this idea was when some of his SpaceX employees were hit by a car crossing the street to their parking structure:
"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 Musk posted the following Tweets:
@elonmusk Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging..."
SpaceX has been trying to get a pedestrian bridge built there for a long time, but haven't been able to get permission from the city (blame NIMBYism or just bureaucracy). But with the tunnel, they're able to start digging down without permits on their own land (still need permission once they start digging under the street, of course).
That's exactly what he meant.
You leave COMPETENT people in charge.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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?
I don't get it. I see teslas on the road almost daily here in the frozen north. I can only imagine there's more in warmer climes and where there's more luxury cars on the road. They have some of the highest customer satisfaction levels for any car. They flat out outperform the competition in many regards. He built a better mousetrap, but instead of a mousetrap it was a multi billion dollar project to launch some of the most complicated consumer hardware people can purchase into an extremely mature competitive environment.
Whether or not Tesla survives or wins in the car sector, other manufacturers have been forced to respond to the market disruption.
Calling him a failure seems like an ad hominem attack, really.
You can either talk people down or rise to their level.
Well the first one is much easier, so...kind of a no-brainer.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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.