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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.
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...
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.
Old economy square daddies don't. Hip unicorns with agile apps totally do.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
He already used all the tunneling equipment to build his secret underground super-villain lair. This is just re-purposing it for profit.
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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..."
In the play, the eponymous character "Godot" never arrives.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
If this was purely motivated by serving his butt from home to office I'm pretty sure a helicopter would be more economical than boring tunnels up and down Californian metros.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
But he hasn't left his own property yet has he? There isn't a lot of red tape to work though to dig a hole on your own property, some, but not a lot.
It's a tunnel that goes nowhere at this point. Wait, he's going to be tied up in red tape soon enough doing traffic studies, environmental impact statements, building permits and OSHA reports.... Not to mention doing some actual engineering and survey work...
However, I wouldn't be surprised if getting caught up in the red tape isn't the plan. I know of a couple of deep holes being dug in some pretty interesting locations under strange circumstances, including this one. I'm beginning to suspect some kind of Glomar Explorer esk project is going on....This hole in the ground sure looks like a cover story worthy of Howard Huges, dubious in actual value, but plausible enough you cannot just dismiss it out of hand.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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?
IIRC the machine was built for a tunnel somewhere else and he bought it, but wikipedia does not have it and I am not digging deeper.
If only you had some sort of machine to help you dig deeper.
LOL, This IS LA you know... Right smack dab in the middle of some pretty nasty earthquake prone fault lines... It's going to obviously produce a LOT of tailings that will have to be put someplace and likely have to be below the water table meaning it will have waste water being pumped out of it....AND this is California we are discussing... There will be scads of environmental impact studies required for this...
Then there are all the permits he's going to need from all the various cities, county, state and federal interests for just the traffic impacts of his "private" transportation system.... And Building permits..... Engineering studies..... Inspections.... Mining permits... Safety plans... Dang the list goes on and on..
This is just a cover story....He's never going to build the tunnel... At least not one that goes anywhere related to getting to the airport on time.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
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.
They are putting in a tunnel in my city for an LRT system. For many years before they were drilling core samples to know what they were going to be drilling through. Even then we've had 3 sinkholes caused by the tunnelling and it's only been luck that nobody has been hurt.
One does not just decide to make a tunnel through a downtown core without years of preparation and approval. Tunnelling causes a lot of the ground to shift which can cause damage to buildings and the sinkholes. While Musk can afford to pay for the damages the city can't if it's found out that due diligence wasn't done and they permitted this to go ahead.
Dude. Spoilers!
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