Elon Musk Posts New Video of 'Boring' Equipment and Company's First Tunnel (cnbc.com)

Elon Musk has posted a new video and several pictures of equipment that will be used to start digging tunnels beneath Los Angeles. There's a picture of boring machine segments that are being lowered into the start tunnel at SpaceX, a front view of the tunnel, an inside view of the tunnel, and a picture of the front of the boring machine that will cut through underground rock. Additionally, the video shows a version of the "skate" that will cary cars through the tunnel at a speed of 125 mph. CNBC reports: The project is one of Musk's latest ventures, which was inspired by a desire to alleviate "out of control" traffic in Los Angeles. He aims to first dig a tunnel from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to the nearby Los Angeles airport. Musk frequently flies from Los Angeles to the San Francisco area, where he runs Tesla. Eventually, he envisions a deep, multilayered network of underground tunnels spanning the city.

Comments

Well.. So what?

[bobbied]

Until he actually digs a tunnel that leaves his property, all this is just fun and games with out much point. Not to mention, where is the exit to this billion dollar boondoggle and where are all those permits you require sir? This IS California you know....

Re:Well.. So what?

[thule]

Exactly! And don't forget that LA used to be a decent oil producer. There are still pockets of natural gas under LA. The current subway project has run into them.

He's going to run into the same issues Google has running fiber in some cities. My guess is that LA much be at the top of bureaucratic nightmares compared to other US cities. I've seen first hand how it took months for fiber to get pulled into a building because they had to tear up a section of the street. That was ONE building and the fiber was a short block away!

Then again, he was able to get CARB to buy into features of the Telsa that weren't available yet (I'd say it was a scandal). He's quite a salesman.

Re:oh man

[bobbied]

Put it where the sun don't shine!

Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[fiannaFailMan]

Solutions like this are classic examples of tech-rich people thinking they have all the answers when there's a whole bank of qualified specialist people already working in that field who know what's really needed to fix the problem but have only been stymied by politics.

If traffic is driving Musk nuts then the solution is not to find innovative new ways to handle more traffic. The solution is to ask why is traffic so bad in the first place.

Recommended reading: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs

Or if that's too heavy, try Suburban Nation: The rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream.

Only then will you come to see the culprit: Single Use Zoning, aka the BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) rules. Single-use zoning forces everybody to make several car journeys just to get through a typical day. Going to work? Car. Going out for lunch? Car. Going home form work? Car. Need to go out for a bottle of milk and postage stamp? Car. Going to a movie? Car.

No bloody wonder the place is flooded with traffic. You try to build a city around the automobile and it becomes a hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. You try to widen roads to accommodate more cars and the laws of induced demand kick in, resulting in even more traffic and roads as choked as they were before.

Learn a few things about urban planning, Elon. Don't arrogantly assume that you're the first person to want to address this problem. Smart growth and sustainable, walkable, transit-oriented development is a far better solution than drilling holes in the ground and cracking puns about the word "boring." It requires years of tedious work and politicking to build support for smart growth. A city is not a private company with which you can do what you like. There are elected councils, public advisory committees, public hearings, tax implications, and all manner of complex bureaucratic hoops that you have to jump through to fix these things.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[kaka.mala.vachva]

For most places, urban planning is too late - the houses are built, offices are built, shopping areas are built.Unless you propose destroying one of these and moving them, urban planning is a wash - nothing can be done. What Elon Musk has proposed is a potential solution that will solve some of the commute issues - and if it actually takes off, we might see planning around this underground transportation. Imagine - shopping, offices, houses being built underground as transportation moves underground. No more heating or cooling issues, and with TV screens getting better and better, it would be easy to replace windows with appropriate screens to mimic day to night transitions. The surface would be dedicated to farms and gardens and forests - sci fi come to reality, as it were.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[AvitarX]

His tunnels, as described are low volume though.

It will solve traffic for the rich, but make barely an impact for anyone else.

at least as I gather from the idea of the sled stopping and elevatering up.

Even without the elevator, I'm not convinced sled to still ground capacity can match road capacity (the sled has to stop at both ends of the tunnel).

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Tx]

Learn a few things about urban planning, Elon. Don't arrogantly assume that you're the first person to want to address this problem. Smart growth and sustainable, walkable, transit-oriented development is a far better solution than drilling holes in the ground and cracking puns about the word "boring." It requires years of tedious work and politicking to build support for smart growth. A city is not a private company with which you can do what you like. There are elected councils, public advisory committees, public hearings, tax implications, and all manner of complex bureaucratic hoops that you have to jump through to fix these things.

I think you've just lost an argument with yourself there, buddy. As you said, it would take decades of tedious effort and politicking to turn a city around to your "smart growth", and with the vagaries of politics and finance, there's no guarantee of success; you're always only an election away from some numpty cutting funding for the projects and spending the money on something else. I wouldn't want to get involved in that, and it seems Elon doesn't either. You can, however, start building tunnels today, as Elon has done. The idea may or may not pan out, and it may or may not play a significant role in urban transportation even if it does pan out to some extent, but it's something that you can start the ball rolling on right away, and have a reasonable degree of control over. That's exactly why Elon goes for that kind of solution, and personally I'm all for it. It doesn't preclude any other kind of development, so if others want to pursue "smart growth", great, it doesn't have to be Elon's job.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Gravis Zero]

Solutions like this are classic examples of tech-rich people thinking they have all the answers when there's a whole bank of qualified specialist people already working in that field who know what's really needed to fix the problem but have only been stymied by politics.

You might be completely right about this but I suspect the traffic tunnels is the excuse he's giving to develop his own machinery. I think the primary interest here is actually to develop the machinery that would be needed to mine for minerals on Mars.

Alternatively, he may be secretly planning to create a bunch of tunnels to connect the continents and then make a rail line that can transport goods faster and cheaper between the east and the west faster than huge boats could ever hope to travel. Something like this would take at least a decade and giving a non-threatening "traffic tunnels" excuse prevents the existing transport industry from putting up their guard and blocking his progress with paid off politicians.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Rei]

His tunnels, as described are low volume though.

Not with computer-controlled spacing between sleds and 125 mph travel speeds.

By dramatically increasing the throughput per lane, and the necessary width of the lane (a typical lane is much wider than a car because people drift), and the need for shoulders, the tunnel diameter can be significantly shrunk for the same throughput. Half the diameter and you quarter the cross sectional area. Boring costs scale linearly with cross sectional area.

Hence one of the publicly disclosed parts of the idea behind Boring Company.

He also plans to bore faster, but not all of the details have come out on this yet. One has, however, which is simultaneous casing and boring, rather than bore/stop/case. There's a number of changes to the head that they're looking to make, but they haven't been discussed yet. Regardless, even if none of the latter pan out, simply reducing tunnel radii for a given amount of vehicle throughput is a pretty straightforward way to reduce tunneling costs.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Rei]

The ability to travel where you want, when you want, at minimal sacrifice, is otherwise known as "quality of life".

And I will always be opposed to people whose "solutions" involve sacrifices to quality of life, as will most people in the world.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Z34107]

I thought I read this pretentious garbage somewhere else before. It's bad enough when the stories are dupes, but, even worse, /. has declined so far that it's taken at least two stories for someone to inform you that LA is already built. Your suggestion to "build it better" is a hundred-odd years too late to be anything other than cock-stroking.

Unless your suggestion was actually to bulldoze everything and start over, now that you're around to plan things properly. It's not too late for that, but it really puts Musk's "arrogant" tunnel suggestion into perspective.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[Diamond Prospector]

He also plans to bore faster, but not all of the details have come out on this yet.

An Elon Musk project where the engineering "details" haven't come out yet? Tell me it ain't so.

One has, however, which is simultaneous casing and boring, rather than bore/stop/case. There's a number of changes to the head that they're looking to make, but they haven't been discussed yet.

Simultaneous lining and boring has been a done deal for decades. I refer you to the Channel Tunnel.

I don't know what kind of bedrock they would be boring through but they all come up against something they didn't expect. Doesn't matter if it's sedimentary or metamorphic rock in the case of the English Channel or igneous rock in the Swiss alps. Add to that an area that is prone to earthquakes....piece of piss, right?

I think I've seen enough of Elon Musk to determine that he is full of shit and preys on people who know precisely fuck all about engineering...or anything else, for that matter. That includes the politicians who give him vast subsidies for whatever is the latest delusional bollocks he happens to come out with.

Absolutely correct.

As someone who worked on the Channel Tunnel at the dirty end, I can confirm 'simultaneous' lining and boring has been carried out for the last few decades.

However, there will always be an cyclic element to the operation as the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) has to push off of something to get thrust forward and that is usually done by hydraulic jacking off the leading edge of the lining behind the head. The TBM usually thrusts forward to the extent of its jacks, then grips the side of the tunnel and retracts the jacks to allow segment erection before jacking forward once again. The 'downtime' also allows for regular maintenance for replacing cutter heads, drilling forward exploratory holes, lubrication etc.

The TBM also has a 'maintenance train' running on rails behind it, of up to 200m long of connected sub modules, which the head pulls along as it jacks forward. The train contains the logistics such as power packs, transformers, spoil handling, temp storage, grout pumps, spare parts, mobile workshops etc. As the lining has to be the full bore of the tunnel, it has to be broken down into sections that can pass through the centre of the train and then be re-erected behind the TBM cutting head. This erection of sections has to be carried out as close to the head as possible to minimise the length of unsupported ground behind the head for both worker safety and technical reasons i.e. the ground could collapse and trap the TBM from the sides. Add in any water issues or soft flowing ground and the erection has to carried out in a sealed/semi sealed environment as well. As a gap will also exist between the final outer surface of the lining and ground, this has to be pumped full of weak cement mix or 'grout' to fill the voids, both providing a waterproof annular surrounding for the tunnel as well as avoiding any point loads from uneven ground on the lining.

With the TBM head (for a 8m dia tunnel) weighing around 200 tons (with a main bearing of around 30 tons) and lining segments to be handled of 1-2.5 tons ea, (maybe 8-12 segments per metre of lining) you're not playing with small numbers to shift around and construct. Appreciate that Elon's tunnels will be smaller diameter but current tunneling methods are continuously being optimized and the TBM design is matched to the predicted ground conditions, therefore there is next to no chance of increasing tunneling speeds by a factor of 10x as is quoted..

As someone who has worked in hard rock tunnels 10,000 feet underground, where the rock was under some much pressure it was continuously 'spitting' small flakes at you, to shallow 'soft rock' tunnels where you worry about the TBM taking too much ground out and causing sinkholes to appear on surface, I have to call Elon Musk out as full of shit

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[marquisdepolis]

Not that I disagree with the obvious problems with Elon's project, but a few words in defence of jumping in and trying stuff. It's extremely easy to start reading about the complexity inherent (social, political, technological) and therefore decide the way things are is the only real practical way things can ever be. Sometimes it's better to jump in, try something, and see if it works. Accepted wisdom is right far more often than wrong (hence accepted) but it's still not 100%, and we should try the corner cases where odds of success are 1% (ideally at least 1% of the time). So even as it's foolhardy I'd rather see more billionaires at least trying new ideas, if only because out of the randomness we'll learn something new rather than rely on accepted wisdom.

Re:Tech-rich people need to do more consultation

[phantomfive]

The problem with books like that is people like to live in the suburbs. They want to own their own home instead of living in an apartment complex.

Re:Earthquakes???

[rikkitikki]

And now you know his real plan as to how he plans to become the first real-life James Bond villain.

Musk's projects are related

[Baron_Yam]

He wants to retire on Mars, so he's building rockets to get there.

Mars has no fossil fuels, so everything's going to be electric and the source will be solar or nuclear. So he's got Tesla working on solar power and storage.

Mars has a nasty surface, so underground is the place to be. Either you build and heap surface material over you... or you bore tunnels. Enter the Boring Company.

Mars has no communications infrastructure... at all. Enter SpaceX worldwide Internet. You think those same satellites couldn't orbit Mars? Probably with less worry of orbital impact or atmospheric drag, too.

Mars has no transportation infrastructure... and the surface (as previously mentioned) is not human-friendly. Mars ALSO has very little atmosphere, and Elon has a boring machine. Enter the Hyperloop. With less gravity and less atmosphere to deal with, the Hyperloop concept seems like it's a perfect fit for a well-bored tunnel.

Each of the things he's working on is part of a future Mars colony, and they all have the potential to make him money here (which helps him get there).