Elon Musk Says Boring Company Will Sell 'Lego-Like' Kits of Excavated Rock (theverge.com)

Elon Musk says his Boring Company will sell "interlocking bricks" made from the rock that its tunnel-creating machines excavate from the ground. In other words, think Lego, he says, except giant, heavy, and made of Earth. The Verge reports: Musk says that the Boring Company will sell "kits" of bricks, starting with one that makes it easy to build things from "ancient Egypt," like replicas of the pyramids, the Sphinx, or the Temple of Horus. The bricks will be "lifesize," though it's not clear what that actually means. And they'll be bored through the middle, to save some weight, but still rated to withstand California's earthquakes. (As is typical, Musk announced the idea in freewheeling fashion on Twitter.) t's unclear when these bricks, or the kits, will be available or how much they'll cost. The Boring Company is currently only digging short, preliminary tunnels in California and Maryland, so there's presumably not enough to start selling any of this upturned rock just yet. But the small company has big plans for tunnels around the country meant to facilitate debatably futuristic modes of transportation, so there will be plenty of newly removed earth if even half of those ever come to fruition.

Comments

A bet between friends

[Anonymous Coward]

"I reckon I could get people to buy dirt from me"

Truthiness

[godel_56]

Even his joking twitter posts still have more credibility then Trump's real ones. :)

New boring tech?

[glitch!]

I must have missed an important tech advancement in tunnel boring. I thought his machines were the traditional super long cylinders with a massive grinding head at the front. The result is probably some kind of slurry that is piped out to the surface.

But if he is getting solid blocks, he must have something more advanced that I had assumed. Maybe something that cuts the sides like a mega chainsaw? Or some variation of a wire cutter? In any event, getting large blocks out instead of grinding everything to a powder must be a great advance, and I am curious about that.

Re:New boring tech?

[mveloso]

They're going to pour the slurry into molds and sell it.

It makes sense, because instead of disposing of the earth (which is quite expensive) he's getting people to pay him for it. That's pretty clever any way you slice it.

Re:New boring tech?

[mikael]

Make giant interlocking blocks that could form tube walls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:New boring tech?

[gl4ss]

if you could do that, you could do it already by disposing of said earth from other projects for "free".

these would be two separate biz moves.

look, superficially these things have a business connection but really they don't have.

it's superficially clever but not at all - if he has some new compress-earth-into-solid-blocks-that-stay-solid technology, then that it's bored from the ground matters little. he could have the earth literally from anywhere if it made any sense financially.

the questions to ask is simply this: is it cheaper than concrete? how is he making them solid enough to build a sfinsk out of it(it has some overhangs)?

announcing this makes one just think that he needs someone to dump some more money into tesla on the basis that "musk is a genius". disposing the earth is peanuts of the expenses of boring a tunnel too and if there were a market for the blocks, the tunnel boring wouldn't produce enough of it.

so again, how is he gluing it together again and is it cheaper than concrete...

Re:New boring tech?

[Nehmo]

I built a 320-foot x 6-foot formed, concrete retaining wall. I overbuilt to compensate for my possible ignorance. (I used 6 instead of 5 bag mix, for example.) The result was the best retaining wall in Kansas City (if I say so myself). I have a background in mechanical things and construction, but I had never done any concrete before. It's not that hard to do, and I learned that many concrete experts aren't.
Despite being technically easy, there is an economic problem with forms. You really need to own them rather than rent them. A one-off job will suffer this expense.
Anyway, at a bit over a $100/cubic yard, concrete is amazingly cheap. That "yard" weighs 3500 pounds, and you get it delivered for that price.

Building a house by placing huge concrete blocks in place would have its own difficulties. These difficulties are the reason concrete is poured in place most of the time. Elon's product's success will depend on its cost.

Re:New boring tech?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

100% bog-standard drilling equipment

What kind of equipment is used to drill bogs? Wouldn't the holes fill in pretty quickly?

i can see where this might lead.

[nimbius]

Elon: I'm going to build a rocket that lands itself after its done
press: okay cool!
Elon: I'm building a tunnel digging company because traffic sucks
press: right on!
Elon: I'm selling a flamethrower if you wanna buy it.

press: ..what?
Elon: Also i launched my car into space on a mission to orbit mars
press:..okay...uh...
Elon: im making legos out of the rocks we excavate from my drilling project, then you use them like legos!
press:...seriously?
Fire Department: OK everyone we need you to clear out of Mr. Musks office immediately, theres been a gas leak here for quite some time and we dont yet know the extent of the exposure

Elon, on a stretcher: I'm building a tunnel you know!

Re:anything but their "core" business

[burtosis]

It can't be thier core business, Elon said the core of the bricks would be hollow.

Re:Flamethrower delivery time

[jeremyp]

No he means he probably may deliver them at some point.

Re:Actually not new

[Immerman]

>Probably for the free publicity that this novelty will generate.

Perhaps. But standardized concrete construction blocks have a LOT of uses (I'm assuming a boring drill can't carve out nice big LEGO blocks from raw stone...). And with the right mobile casting equipment, hauling construction blocks out of a tunnel would be a LOT more profitable than hauling out rubble. And if he gets his machines digging as fast as he would like it could actually make sense to do so. Bonus points if the blocks meet the requirements for lining the tunnels so that a percentage can be used in-place and avoid having to haul in outside construction materials.

Plus if you look at Musk's first love - i.e. what he did when he first came into ridiculous wealth, and basically gambled all that wealth on at least once, you've got SpaceX. He's a geek that wants to live on Mars, at least part time, and basically all of his projects can be seen in that light. Maybe that's just coincidence, but:

SpaceX - get there (and do so economically).
Tesla Motors - you won't find gas-powered cars on Mars, you need free oxygen for that.
Boring Company - underground is the ideal place for early space colonies - you need several meters of rock to get the 14psi of radiation shielding we're used to here on Earth, and a fast tunnel-boring machine would make that a LOT easier than trying to bury structures on the surface.

And now giant rock-LEGOs - if they can be produced easily enough they would be very handy for extending underground structures onto the surface in a location still largely devoid of industrial infrastructure.