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Elon Musk's Boring Machine Completes the First Section of An LA Tunnel (theverge.com)
New submitter simkel shares a report from The Verge: Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk says his ambitious tunnel-boring endeavor, aptly named The Boring Company, has officially started digging underneath Los Angeles. Musk announced the news on Twitter, where he said "Godot," the Samuel Beckett-inspired name of the company's tunnel boring machine, had completed the the first segment of a tunnel in the Southern California metropolis. Prior to today, it was unclear how long it would take Musk to convince the city to allow him to move the experimental effort beyond the SpaceX parking lot in Hawthorne. We don't have details on what Musk hammered out with the city of LA. But he did tweet earlier this month about a meeting with L.A Mayor Eric Garcetti to lay the groundwork for the necessary permits and regulatory approvals he'd need to start digging with Godot, which weighs about 1,200 tons and runs about 400 feet long. Musk said last month that the first tunnel would run from LAX to Culver City, Santa Monica, Westwood, and Sherman Oaks, with later tunnels covering more of the greater LA area. Now, it looks like the LAX to Culver City route appears underway.
Yes, that machine is SOOOOOOO boring!!! YAWN!!! :)
As it used to say in the Yellow Pages: "Boring: see Civil Engineers".
How exciting!
The article doesn't say, but does anyone know how long this "first segment" is? Since the TBM itself is 400 feet long, I can only assume it's at least 400 feet...
You just don't announce a tunnel boring company and then show up with a huge/complex/costly machine and start tunneling under a city that happens to be handy.
How long has all this been secretly in the works?
Musk's idea is original and terrific! He is proposing building a network of tunnels to move people around LA. No other cities anywhere will have such things. These subterranean roadways, or subways, will be... oh wait.
To keep the concept fresh, he could sell sandwiches on them as well. They would be Subway Sand... nevermind.
He does in less 1/20 the time that it would take the government in the best of circumstances.
Public hearings. Zoning whackos. Tree huggers. LGBTQ. Climate Alarmists. All the usual freaks, fruits, and nuts would have lawyered up and entangled this project for decades if it had been government sponsored.
Bravo, Elon! Bravo!
I wonder what these tunnels will do? Perhaps he's just tired of sitting in traffic in LA like everyone else - in his 100k Tesla - with fanboys gawking at him and he is tired of the lookie-loos? He's more important than everyone else so, hey he's a billionaire, why not just build a tunnel so he doesn't have to share the road with other common folk? 10 to 1 these tunnels will have gates on each end with a pass-code available to only a handful of 1%'ers.
Namaste
where he said "Godot," the Samuel Beckett-inspired name
Whats the chances that a reader does not get the "Godot" reference, but knows Beckett from all his other famous plays?
For those unfamiliar, Beckett won a Nobel Prize in literature, but is better known by your average theatre-goer as the most boring playwright in history.
(And obviously the machine arrived well behind schedule.)
And there I am... just past 50 years old thinking the only revolution I'd see was the internet.
And here we are... rockets, electric cars, and tunneling machines.
I hope I make it to 90!!!
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
LA is not one big city. SpaceX is in Hawthorne, a totally separate city with its own city council, etc. The same can be said of Culver City, Santa Monica, and dozens of other cities that many think of as just part of "LA". Each of these presents another opportunity to get bogged down in local politics.
Transportation of soliciting minors who feed you, 'under' the watchful eye of the unwashed masses who can't afford food, minors, or transportation in LA :)
I'm sure this isn't an issue since they must have smart engineers working on the project, but the first thing that comes to my mind are the earthquakes that plague California. Is this not an issue?
To be useful you need to be able to get traffic in and out. That takes a lot of space, space which in most cities is already in short supply.
Add in the additional traffic problems from injecting thousands of cars/hour into the central city area.
Won't that be fun.
I suspect the not so evil plan is to restrict use to EV only, which solves MOST of the A/C problems.
"...which weighs about 1,200 tons and runs about 400 feet long.
This is the most exciting boring machine I've ever read about!
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do, we do
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do, we do
Who builds Tesla electric cars?
Who makes Elon Musk a star?
We do, we do
Who robs gamefish of their sight?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do, we do!
The Simpsons saw this coming years ago.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You can engineer against anything. At least up to a 50 years lifespan. It's only after 50 years when the rebar is rusting that you have to worry. In other words only old structures are potentially dangerous but then that's why such things are rebuilt.
There is nothing stronger than a tube in the ground. Far more secure during a 12.0 earthquake than any overpass. Your far more likely to die from being trampled in an earthquake than from a tunnel collapse. We are not talking about mine shafts but rather oversized concrete tubes. A tube could split in half and move 3 inches and still be perfectly fine and usable.
The bigger issue is structures on the surface and ground stability during and after the evacuation. If they are drilling in rock or underneath rock then it should be much of an effect. But I can see Musk digging tunnels underneath other tunnels.
Look folks--what Elon's really trying to say:
"I'm a lot like Trump"
"I have A LOT of money"
"I'm SMART"
"I have an A-type personality"
"I haven't been in long term relationships, but have kids"
"I'm a businessman"
Of course, Elon has different social attitudes and handles himself differently... Likely more acceptable and admired by more than the other guy.
But Boring Co just shows he's wants something and he's going to do everything in his power to get it. Money is power and access... plain and simple.
Sure the ends could be beneficial to the rest of us, but the means are pretty clear: "I have a big ego, I want power, look at me!".
And as folks voted for a president I disagree with despite these aspects, I instead agree with Elon--more power to him, but no different from those who voted that other person into office.
And life goes on...
As for me, I'm just another squirrel trying to get a nut around here.
While this 'boring' news seems a little bit exciting, one must not forget that there are lots of seismic faults beneath LA, and many of them are unstable
Or perhaps it's a reference to the (massive, extremely strong, near invulnerable, hyper competent, hyper confident, and utterly laid-back) science fiction graphic novel character Buck Godot.
(Who, himself, is a reference to "Waiting For Godot", but a step removed.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wonder if Musk is planning on combining boring, hyperloop, and SpaceX tech to create a maglev space launch system like StarTram.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
But when a giant space rock comes crashing down and making surface life impossible to sustain, everyone will be quite content to accept the boring company's results.
So when it collapses, like all subterranean things eventually do, who picks up the tab for the sinkholes, shifted-foundation buildings, and associated bedlam back up on the poor ol' surface?
I waiting and waiting for that basturd a long time. Send him to me, time to end this world of pain.
Than just a plain old TBM.
Yeah ok, so he is drilling tunnels with it, but I dont see any differences to any other run of the mill TBM out there.
Elon being Elon, I would have expected at least a plasma drill or maybe even better, a subterrene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I didn't pay much attention to this until I noticed an article explaining the thinking behind it. Basically, the idea is to substantially reduce the cost of a tunnel system, and they are going to try to do that through a combination of:
- smaller tunnels, which will require only 1/4 of the dirt removal of standard vehicle tunnels
- automated, continuous tunnel lining, to reduce downtime for the boring machine
- speeding up both boring and lining
The small tunnel size is what necessitates the cars-on-sleds idea. Can they load cars on sleds quickly and cheaply? Who knows.
Should we start a betting pool on which they hit first? Lava? Oil? A delicate fault line? American Indian remains?